by Dylan Young
‘You need some help, Cameron.’ Haldane’s echo in my head this time. Nicole sees me messing with the spoon, the soup slowly cooling in its dish.
‘You should eat.’
I try a spoonful. Piquant tomato and basil. But my appetite is shot.
‘I really wish I didn’t have this blasted wedding to go to,’ Nicole says.
‘You must,’ I reply. ‘It could be the last time anyone can get married for a long while. Adam told me a lockdown is imminent. Just like in Italy. No pubs or restaurants. No cinema. No church.’ I glance around and drop my voice. ‘No coffee shops.’
Nicole sighs. ‘Ugh, don’t. Mia, the bride to be, has texted me five times in the last hour. At least twenty guests have cried off already, and the list is growing. People don’t want to travel. Plus a crowd were supposedly flying in from the States and their flights are all cancelled.’
‘All the more reason for you to support her then.’
Nicole squeezes my hand and pouts. ‘You are so nice.’
‘As I say, this place will likely be shut next week.’
Nicole lets out a heavy sigh. ‘So awful. But I will not let that change anything. As soon as the wedding is over I’ll tell Aaron we’re finished. The reception’s in Oxford and I’ll be staying overnight. But by Sunday night it will be done. Mia will say I’ve ruined everything, wanting the drama for myself, but I don’t care. By Monday, lockdown or no lockdown, we’ll be fine. I promise.’
I smile stiffly.
‘Oh, Cam, don’t be sad.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. None of this is your fault. Can’t be easy for you. But promise me you won’t contact this Haldane again. He sounds like a creep.’ She sighs. ‘Together we can get this sorted. I’ll come with you to see the private investigator chap, and even Emma’s sister next week if you want. Two heads and all that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Now eat your soup before it goes cold.’
I manage half the bowl before pushing it away. At a quarter past one, Nicole glances at her watch. ‘I must go.’
‘Thanks for listening.’
‘I hate to leave you like this.’
‘I’m fine,’ I lie.
She leans across the table and kisses me. I watch her go, pay the bill and leave.
I drive back to the flat using a route I planned out. No point paying unnecessary congestion charges. I’m in the process of letting myself in through the main entrance when a voice calls from behind me. I turn around to see Detective Sergeant Keely and the lanky DC Messiter walking towards me.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ Keely says.
‘Why? Are you coming to tell me I’ve just won the lottery.’
‘The police don’t do that,’ Messiter says.
Keely cuts in, admonishing. ‘He was making a joke, Dan.’
Messiter flicks me a bemused glance.
I nod.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Must be your deadpan delivery.’
I toy with giving him a mini lecture on the reasons for my altered affect. Adam has a long and jargon-filled list to explain the causes. But life, as Josh says, is waaaay too short.
‘Can we come up, Cameron?’ Keely asks.
I open the door and let them in. In the flat, I put the kettle on and offer them tea. Keely orders one with milk and sugar. Messiter wants coffee. But he’s befuddled by the choices I offer him from my bean to cup machine.
‘Instant will do,’ he pleads.
‘I don’t do instant. How about an Americano?’
Messiter looks doubtful.
‘Nice with cream.’
‘Okay. I’ll try it.’
Keely mutters, ‘Pleb.’
I make the coffee and tea and we sit in the living room and I watch the two officers study my wall. I explain. Messiter seems relieved.
‘At first I thought it was one of those weird obsessional pinboards. You know, the kind you see in TV cop shows with a loony stalker and a wall full of cuttings and photos of the victim.’
Keely rolls her eyes and, seeing it, Messiter blushes and hides his face behind his mug. Then she turns to me.
‘Mathew Haldane,’ she says, ‘ring any bells?’
Messiter is staring at the morning post and the notebook I’ve left open on the coffee table. The names I’d read on Stamford’s list of people who’d hired cars in Turkey are visible. I get up and pick up the notebook and some other flotsam. ‘Let me make some more room. I’d have teddied up if I knew you were coming.’
Messiter frowns.
‘Tidied is what I meant.’ I move the bundle to a stool in the corner. ‘There. Haldane, you said, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ says Keely. ‘We’ve had a nice long chat, he and I.’
‘About?’
‘You contacting him.’
I don’t respond. All three of us drink our hot infusions until Keely says, ‘As you know, he is under an indefinite restraining order for all things Emma Roxburgh-related. He spoke to his parole officer to report your call. He wasn’t in breach of the court order, but because he wants to remain a good boy, they’ve asked me to find out what the hell is going on. So, why did you contact him?’
I sip tea and formulate my answer.
Keely hasn’t taken her eyes off me. She shifts her weight on the chair and smooths down her trousers. ‘In your own time, Cameron. If you please.’
43
Messiter gets into the squad Vauxhall Insignia on the driver’s side. Keely slides into the passenger seat and senses her colleague’s displeasure hovering like a bad smell between them.
‘Come on, Dan, spit it out.’
Messiter has his hands on the wheel but has not yet switched on the ignition. ‘Okay, honest opinion? You were a bit hard on Todd. Again.’
‘Yes, well, I’m all for stopping situations before they become a complete disaster rather than after the event when, more often than not, it’s us who are left picking up the rancid pieces.’
Messiter doesn’t engage with her. Instead, he starts the car and indicates to pull out. It will take them half an hour to drive the nine miles to the station at this time of day. Despite the government’s appeal to people to work from home, judging from the current traffic and the number of commuters cramming the Tube Messiter took to work this morning, nothing much has changed yet. In fact, the Northern line from Highgate, where he rents a room in a flat with two others, was about as full as he can ever remember it. If there was a virus floating about, it must have had a bloody field day on the 7.40 from High Barnet to Morden.
The morning briefing from the super hinted at more draconian measures being brought in, too. Messiter’s sister has asthma. She would be very vulnerable to the coronavirus. He’s all for making sure people comply. And London is full of idiots in foil hats who think this is another bloody conspiracy, whining about an affront to their personal space and freedoms. They clearly don’t watch the same news bulletins about what’s happening in China and Italy and Spain that he does.
‘Did you see that wall full of photos? Of his mother and his dead girlfriend? Just so he can remind himself of what they look like.’ Messiter raises a hand in acknowledgement to the van that has just let him out.
Keely takes a swig from a litre water bottle she keeps in the car. ‘I did. But none of that gives him the right to poke his nose into places where it might get bitten off.’
Messiter throws his sergeant a glance. ‘I read up about Haldane. He’s a creep.’
‘Creep he may be. However, he’s a creep who does not want the conditions of his restraining order compromised by someone wanting to rake up old manure.’
‘Todd is trying to get his life back on track.’
‘Really? Is that what he’s trying to do?’
‘Come on, sarge. Can’t be much fun not remembering anything at all about your old life. Your parents, your girlfriend.’
Keely stops mid-swig. ‘I’m beginning to think you have a thing for h
im, Daniel.’
‘I’m AC not DC. And suggesting that is bang out of order. What if I suggested you fancied him?’
Keely grins. ‘I’d have to caution you for triggering me. For having offensive thoughts. Far too late, matey. You lot lost the battle ages ago. We blew you out of the water with armour-piercing #MeToo shells. It’s up to us girls to have all the non-PC fun now.’
Messiter shakes his head and Keely grins at seeing a little muscle clench and unclench in his jaw.
‘Besides,’ she says, not wanting Messiter in too much of a mood when they get back to the station. He’s got a mountain of work to do on top of the pile she’s about to give him. ‘His sister rang me. She was worried about him. He has these hallucinations.’
‘Fugues,’ says Messiter. ‘I looked them up.’
Keely shoots across an eyebrows-raised glance. ‘Whatever they are, they aren’t–’
Messiter pulls up at some lights and snaps his head around. ‘What? Normal?’
‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t think I had to. He’s damaged and vulnerable. Exactly the type who slips off the grid surprisingly quickly through no fault of their own. He needs a little guidance. Rules to know what’s safe and what’s quicksand.’
‘I still say you were too hard on him. You more or less accused him of going off the rails.’
‘What if I did? Consider the evidence, detective constable. First, this paranoia over his girlfriend and the anaesthetist. And now he rings Haldane of all people. What has he got to do with anything?’
‘Nothing much. Oh, except for the fact that he’s the git convicted of harassing Todd’s dead girlfriend.’
‘Less of the sarcasm, Daniel. That all happened years ago. Okay, Haldane is a narcissistic toerag. But he wasn’t anywhere near Turkey when Emma Roxburgh died. And even toerags can feel threatened by nuisance calls from–’
‘Don’t say it.’
‘Come on. We both know Todd isn’t… like he was.’
‘That’s not what you were going to say.’
‘I was going to say not firing on all cylinders.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Okay, plain speaking. I do not want to be the one shovelling his brains off the pavement.’
‘What?’
‘His sister told me his fugues are all about being up high. On a roof, or a cliff.’
Messiter shakes his head. ‘I think the guy just wants to get back to normal.’
The lights change and they pull away.
Keely lifts the bottle to her lips but adds one more retort before drinking. ‘And I’m with him on that. Then we may finally find out what really happened on that beach in Turkey.’
‘You still think he could have done it?’
‘Let’s say I’m keeping all my options open. And so should you, detective constable. So should you.’
44
SATURDAY 21 March
I get up on Saturday with my mind jittery from the police’s brief visit. At first, I was angry. But then I try to see it from Keely’s point of view. Not a pleasant sight.
I do my stretches, drink water and then sit at the table and review everything and remember – hah, sometimes I do – that I didn’t take my medication yesterday. I reach for my pillbox and swallow a modafinil. Chase it down with a gulp of hard London tap water, rinse and repeat with quetiapine as I let the dull resentment from the police’s visit simmer.
Then I realise that I’ve taken both together when they should be four hours apart.
Nothing bad is going to happen. At least I don’t think so. But they’ll probably negate one another and leave me a bit mushy.
Concentrate, Cam.
I sit for an hour, all the while preoccupied by the thoughts of what Keely said. More so by what she’d left unsaid.
She’d warned me off. Suggested I ought to be careful. Suggested I get some help.
Get some help. My new catchphrase.
People are concerned about me. Rachel, Nicole, Adam… I think about adding Keely but decide against it. She’s too abrasive. But like the others, she too, worries I may be losing it. Whatever the hell it is. My mind? Control? Ability to reason?
What’s left of my coffee has grown cold in the cup. But I don’t want another one. My mind is buzzing like a fly at a window despite a sudden wave of tiredness flowing through me like thick oil. I slide over to the sofa and plop, head against the armrest, one foot on the floor. In repose. Is that the term?
I feel languid and useless. So much for the modafinil. This morning quetiapine is three rounds up and in danger of winning the bout hands down.
Damn it. I need to be more careful. For a moment, I ponder that. Usually I am. So what’s distracting me? I already know the answer. Despite everything I’ve done I am no further forward with remembering. I’m a man trapped in a dark cave with no lamp to guide me.
I fish out my phone and open up the photo app. To an album entitled Emma. I lost my old phone somewhere in the sea in Turkey. So did she. Both washed away on the tide. Some fisherman gutting a tuna might get lucky and find my iPhone 6. But even if it was found mine would be useless because I can’t remember the passcode. Emma’s is a similar blank. If we were comfortable enough with each other, I like to believe we might have shared our passwords. Other people do. Many’s the time I’ve watched Rachel pick up Owen’s phone and use it without needing to ask.
I study the Emma album. Somewhere in the Cloud there are hundreds of out-of-reach photos of me, Emma and us as a couple. Rachel told me Harriet tried gaining access to Emma’s phone account but was met with a fat refusal.
I correct myself. I mean flat refusal.
Data protection is unmalleable. Even for the dead.
So my album, on my new phone, comprises of images Emma and I had shared on social media, that appeared on other people’s timelines and phones. Images I’ve been sent by friends and acquaintances after I appealed to them. They number a couple of hundred.
I scroll through and stop occasionally to try to remember. No joy, despite labelled dates and places. But I’m drawn to a series of photos of us taken on a sunny winter’s day. The hats and clothes we are wearing hint at the bitterness of the weather. We’re obviously not in London. Too much green and a stunning architectural feature stretched over a picturesque countryside. Namely, the viaduct at Hockley near Winchester. I count half a dozen snaps of us walking over the viaduct, and half a dozen more of us looking back towards it.
Rachel told me I had a thing about trains in my other life. Even had a train set when I was a child. I’m thirty-five now. That means I was thirteen when the first Harry Potter book came out. I, like countless others, became a little obsessed. I say that because I’ve only seen the first two films (an everyday story of a speccy boy wizard and Robbie Coltrane in platform boots according to Josh) and not read any of the books. Not since the accident anyway.
So trains and viaducts were a thing of mine courtesy of JK Rowling and Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. The question is, did I drag Emma along or was she a willing victim? But looking at her expression in the photographs suggests no coercion. We enjoyed ourselves. The smiles are not forced; the pleasure seems genuine. Emma looks pretty in her beanie hat. And suddenly I need some of that. Suddenly, I want to stop obsessing about the day Emma died. I want to remember her alive.
I go out for a walk, shop for essentials. But I can’t empty my mind of its looping mentation. Time for a change of scenery.
I don’t question the impulse as I punch directions into Google Maps. The estimation is two hours in current traffic conditions. I check the time. Almost 3pm. I could be there by 5 and it would still be light.
Why not? Why the hell not?
The phone rings. I don’t answer it. My mobile has twenty WhatsApp messages from Rachel. I don’t want to speak to her. Not now. Not after the way she’d helicoptered me with Adam and Keely.
I grab my car keys from on top of the small pile of letters and papers I’d moved off the table yesterda
y to stop Messiter’s beady eyes from clocking them. It’s a clumsy manoeuvre and the papers fall to the floor. Cursing, I pick them up and stare again at my notebook, at Stamford’s list of people who hired rental cars in Turkey and who had been in Cirali the day Emma was killed.
I put the list down on the table with the rest of my spilled pile and head out. I don’t want my brain cluttered with all that now. I just want space.
My usual congestion-charge-avoiding route takes me around the Oval and over Vauxhall Bridge, down through Twickenham to Sunbury and the M3. The radio is on and I listen to someone discussing films. I hear nothing in the recent or upcoming releases I want to see. Besides, Josh says I need to watch Zombieland next. One of Josh’s top ten. Predominantly because of Emma Stone, he said. I caught him reddening up a bit when he said it.
Approaching Winchester, the satnav takes me to the Otterbourne Road, to the park and ride. Rain is still spitting as I lock the car and head north along a cycle path towards a busy road. I cross near a roundabout and then stroll to the signposted Hockley Link across the main railway line. I may well have been here before but I do not remember any of the turns. So I follow the map on my phone. A few yards further on, the path enters open countryside, and the viaduct opens up on the left half a mile away. From this angle I count fourteen of the thirty-three brick arches. I wait for the rush of pleasure I’m hoping will take me back. But there’s nothing.
Not yet.
From the viewpoint it’s an eight-minute stroll along the edge of a field alongside the M3 and then up a ramp and onto the viaduct. The red-brick parapet walls are almost six feet high except where the upper few feet have been replaced with steel rails to afford a view of the meadows beyond. I stand at one of these viewpoints and gaze out over the lush greenery below. Just as Emma and I had in 2016.
Rain still pops sporadically against the hood of my jacket. The same jacket I’d worn in the photograph of me and Emma. A deliberate choice. All part of the experiential technique for triggering memory Adam has suggested.