Trauma: a gripping psychological mystery thriller Read online

  14TH OCTOBER. CAM’S DO WITH QUANTIPLE.

  PANTS ON FIRE?

  Keely reads it twice and then asks, ‘Does the date mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. But I did some research. Turns out the company I worked for had an annual meeting. I was meant to attend.’

  ‘Can you remember attending?’

  ‘No. But I realise what pants on fire means.’

  ‘Okay. So what do you think the two things taken together mean?’

  ‘After I read this, I thought perhaps we, Emma and me… I had this impression that things were not as perfect as people made out they were between us.’

  Keely frowns. She has a ton of work to do. The last thing she needs is a half-recovered trauma victim telling her he’s had a feeling about a case that most people accept as a tragic accident. She recalls the statements from Emma Roxburgh’s family describing Cameron Todd. They’d said nothing that might be classed as an outright accusation, but it was clear they had not liked Cameron much. Thought that Emma should have done better than a nerd. They weren’t snobs, but they’d lost their middle-class golden girl and needed someone to blame. Keely has seen enough of grief to realise it distorts logic and renders the most rational mind an emotional shipwreck. Still, their attitude to a very damaged Cameron Todd had not endeared them to Rhian Keely.

  ‘I realise how this sounds. All a bit wishy-wash-up. I meant wishy-washy. You’ve looked into Emma’s life. Was there anything to suggest she was involved in anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  He shrugs. ‘I have this weird idea that she got involved in something to do with the hospital. Some person who was dealing drugs.’

  Keely puts down the file. ‘Can I ask where the hell all this has come from so suddenly?’

  Cameron’s gaze is steady. ‘All I can tell you is what my brain is telling me.’

  ‘I can recall nothing in the file that suggested Emma was anything other than a first-class citizen. She was not in any trouble with us. No record of any wrongdoing.’ She almost adds, as opposed to you and your misspent youth. The feckless student reprimanded for possession of cannabis. The festival arrest for drunk and disorderly. But what’s the point. He doesn’t remember.

  Cam’s head shifts away, searching the room. Small, jerky movements that remind Keely of a bird. ‘Is this being recorded?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So can you find out if there was something like that going on at the hospital where she worked? See if someone was abusing drugs maybe? I have a suspicion it might have been an anaesthetist.’

  Keely sits back. This is not what she’s been expecting. ‘That’s remarkably specific.’

  Cameron nods. ‘It’s what I recall.’

  Keely taps the file with her pen. ‘Even if there is, how does that affect what happened in Turkey?’

  Cam flattens the flesh of his left cheek with the palm of his hand and runs his fingers along the angle of his jaw. ‘Might be nothing. Might be everything.’

  ‘But all you have is a feeling?’

  ‘No one knows what happened in Turkey. Feelings are all I have to go on for now.’

  Keely looks at the file and then up. ‘If visiting her place of work has helped, it might be an idea to visit Turkey…’

  Cam hesitates and then says, ‘You are probably right. But given the travel restriction the FCO are putting out daily I doubt that this is the time to visit anywhere.’

  Good answer. And he’s right. Still, the copper in her can’t help wondering at the convenience of it all.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time,’ Cam says.

  ‘You haven’t. This is an ongoing investigation. And I did say to you that if you ever had any fresh information, I wanted to hear it.’

  ‘This is all I have.’

  Keely shuts the file. ‘Okay. I’ll look into it.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you think it is worth me contacting Harriet and asking her?’

  Keely stifles the urge to laugh out loud. Not unless you want your head bitten off, chewed up and posted back to you in a brown parcel. She says instead, ‘I’d wait if I were you. No sense in upsetting Emma’s family if this has no legs.’

  Cam blinks, his gaze unflinching.

  She sees him out and fetches a tea before heading back to her desk. Messiter is concentrating, doing his utmost to appear busy and not catch her eye. ‘Any joy with those calls, Daniel?’

  He’s been tasked with following up on another suspect in the Peckham killing’s alibi. A thankless time-suck. Especially when the people you’re trying to engage consider talking to the police tantamount to stabbing themselves in the eye.

  Messiter rotates his hand in a gesture of frustration.

  Keely writes the words Guy’s and anaesthetist on a Post-it note and sticks it on the rim of Messiter’s screen.

  ‘I want you to go to the hospital and chat with whoever runs HR. Ask them about disciplinary actions against doctors abusing drugs in 2018.’

  Messiter turns a quizzical face up. ‘What about the stabbing–’

  ‘Think of it as a lesson in time management, Daniel. And there’s no need to thank me. The pleasure’s all mine.’

  19

  March still has blustery winter hanging on to its coat-tails as I walk back to the flat from Borough High Street. I ponder my visit to the police. Sergeant Keely was always polite to me. I could see that she was confused by what I said, but I hope she believed me. And now we’ll see if she can dig up anything about this anaesthetist.

  I didn’t mention Nicole because I don’t want to tell anyone about her yet. Not until she sorts out her own life. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. But of course, there is another reason. I’m wary of what people might say. And by people I mean Rachel. She’s a mother hen on acid when it comes to me. She’ll say that I’m being naïve. That I’m gullible. She’s right to a degree. When you have bugger all recollection of what’s happened to you in your life you have no option but to take everything at face value. It’s my life, though, and I need to get on with it.

  Like they say in that film of ordinary prison folk – Josh’s pithy description of The Shawshank Redemption which is so far one of my all-time favourites – it’s a question of ‘get busy living’.

  I always leave out the other part when I repeat this mantra to Rachel because if I ever said, ‘or get busy dying’ she’d yell loud enough to shatter all the glass in a three-mile radius.

  I’ve been in limbo for months. I’ve tried to embrace the fact that I’m part of a bigger tragedy, but the truth is I have only me to measure my experience against. I’m not Emma, nor her family. I empathise, I do; the Roxburghs lost a daughter and a sister. But I’m Cameron Todd who had to relearn how to tie his shoelaces and how to wipe his own arse. Just a confused crock of a bloke into whose blighted life walks Nicole Grant. A pretty, sympathetic, breath of fresh air. Too good to be true has crossed my mind many a time since yesterday. But fate can be a strange mistress. And, as Josh would say, usually in a shit American accent, ‘About time you caught a break.’

  I perceive that I am no catch. Not now. One glance in the bloody mirror confirms that in spades. Perhaps I never was a catch. Harriet has a firm opinion on that if I ever need confirmation. Though her sister, Emma, must have thought differently.

  I’m one-eyed, shaky on my feet, too thin, and have a tremor that rules out neurosurgery as a career (Josh again). No oil painting doesn’t even come close. But Nicole remembers me from before. Stronger, fitter, relatively undamaged if you accept thirty-odd years of drinking a bit too much and eating a lot of crap as not too damaging. And it was definitely me kissing her in that selfie she showed me. She’s watched me from afar. Seen me survive, too scared to come near me because I might not be the person I was. Terrified that I might reject her out of hand. Not remember anything about her. How much courage has it taken for her to finally reveal herself to me?

  She’s been remarkable. She’s been brave. In return I owe it to
her to play things cool. Even if I get a little warm under the collar whenever I think of her.

  I spend the afternoon doing my thing again. A bit of work for Josh, some TV. A lot of reading; technical stuff in the main. I’m playing catch-up with the developer side of things, but the internet is an amazing source of more or less everything. So I’m knee-deep in some articles on artificial intelligence when the doorbell rings at quarter past five.

  I press the intercom.

  ‘Hi there. Remember me?’ Nicole’s voice is tinny through the intercom. ‘I’m not staying, but I wanted to see you so badly I thought I’d call on my way home from work on the off-chance–’

  I buzz her in before she can finish the sentence.

  I put the kettle on. But she doesn’t want tea. She declines the offer by saying, ‘Drinking tea in bed can make such a mess.’

  She knows her way to the bedroom by now. I follow. No complaints. We fall into my made bed. A pulse-surging repeat of last night but more measured because I’ve learned what she wants me to do to her. And I’m an apt pupil, so it seems. We don’t speak, but there are giggles and a little laughter. The day before it was nervous. Today, sheer abandonment. She’s lithe and moves with gymnastic grace. Sometimes she’s under me, sometimes above, active and dynamic and exciting. I don’t have to ask her to do anything. Nicole has skills. She’s patient and tantalising but I read hunger in her expression. Nicole likes to be fed.

  I will have to remake the bed.

  Wash the sheets, too.

  Later, I make tea. We sit at the kitchen table to drink it. Me with my shirt out and feet bare, Nicole in my old rugby jersey again with the sleeves hanging over her hands like mittens.

  ‘I went to the police today,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Nicole blinks at me over the rim of her cup.

  ‘I spoke to the sergeant who’s assigned to my case. To my and Emma’s cases. Both still open because the Turkish police haven’t totally accepted it was an accident. Sergeant Keely is the link between here and there. A lesson.’

  ‘Liaison?’

  She says it nicely. As a question. I nod.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ Nicole asks. She’s intrigued.

  ‘I asked them if they knew anything about Emma being involved in something iffy at the hospital.’

  Nicole leans in, eyes wide. ‘Oh my God. Really?’

  ‘Yes. It was news to them. They knew nothing, but Keely says she will look into it. And I believe her.’

  There’s a pensive pause before Nicole replies. ‘If anyone could find out what went on they could, couldn’t they?’

  ‘I trust Keely.’

  ‘Weren’t they surprised at you just turning up?’

  ‘I told them something had come back to me. A shard of memory from visiting the surgery. I even showed them what Emma had written in her notebook. I didn’t say anything about you.’

  But Nicole looks eager. ‘I’ll speak to them any time if they want me to.’

  ‘They will. Once Keely comes back to me, if she finds something out, we can see her together.’

  ‘Perfect.’ Nicole’s eyes sparkle. But then her expression becomes uncharacteristically serious. ‘I need to get this next week out of the way. There’s a wedding. One of my best friends. And she knows Aaron – that’s the bloke I’ve been going out with – too. Otherwise, I’d walk away now. But it would devastate her and I’d get blamed for ruining her day. Drama queen doesn’t even come close. She’s been planning the thing for fourteen months, going large on the day. I’ve already refused to be a bridesmaid in a dress the colour of a cow’s womb. Yesterday she was hysterical at the thought it might be called off because of the virus. And this weekend there’s another hen do. The third.’ Nicole rolls her eyes. It makes her look cute.

  She catches me watching her intently and her face dissolves into sympathy. She grabs my hand. ‘Don’t worry. Once the confetti’s thrown I am walking away from Aaron for good.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that for me.’

  ‘It’s not just for you. This’ – she bouquets her hand up and out – ‘has made me realise how much I need to. Seeing you has made me understand how much of a deep hole I’m in. If I don’t start digging myself out… Aaron and me…’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s the last in a long line of men I’ve just stumbled into looking for another you. And I am not a bitch. Not usually. I’m even guilty about coming here tonight.’

  ‘Are you?’

  She nods. Tiny movements in an unhappy face. ‘A bit.’ But her smile is only a couple of heartbeats away. ‘I just couldn’t keep away. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t dreamt the whole bloody thing.’

  ‘I’m real,’ I say.

  She kisses me. I kiss her back. She tastes wonderful. We sit and talk and she asks me about why I have a notebook by the side of my bed.

  ‘I use it to record my fugues.’

  Nicole blinks, her expression blank. So I tell her about the rooftop bar and faceless Emma and Ivan and about how I relive Emma’s death and my accident over and over. When I’ve finished, she’s still blinking. Pumping away the tears, trying to avoid a deluge.

  ‘It must be horrible to go through that over and over,’ she whispers.

  ‘You’d think so but it’s not like a nightmare. I know these people. I spend hours with them. And the end… the falling… is all part of it. An ending of sorts.’

  She clenches her teeth together as if a sudden pain has shot through her.

  I put my hand on her arm. ‘It sounds mad but I’m hoping that one day I might find an answer on that rooftop. You never know.’

  She gets up and gives me a hug.

  ‘Can I ask you what perfume you’re wearing?’

  She tilts her head, delighted that I’ve asked. ‘Bandit by Robert Piguet.’

  ‘French then. Great name. It smells expensive.’

  ‘That’s because it is. My little indulgence. Do you like it?’

  ‘I do. Very much.’

  Nicole leaves at a little after seven but I can still smell her in my bed that night. It keeps me awake. I ponder Keely and the look she gave me when I told her about the anaesthetist. The look you give a sick dog you feel sorry for. I wonder if she will do anything. Maybe she’ll file it away under wild imaginings. I suspect it’ll carry more weight if she hears it from Nicole, too.

  But that will have to wait.

  Instead, a new idea nudges Keely aside. There is someone else who might know all about Emma. And it isn’t Harriet. Rachel would get me sectioned for even contemplating the thought. But the time for procrastinating is long gone.

  I turn over. Nicole’s perfume oozes out from the pillow.

  I’d like the bed to smell of Nicole every day.

  But I owe it to the both of us to sort out exactly what the hell happened to Emma and me on that night in Turkey. Keely is one step in the right direction. Now I need to take a running jump.

  20

  FRIDAY 13 MARCH

  There is a place somewhere between sleeping and waking. Adam calls it a hypnagogic state. The dark cupboard in your head where hallucinations usually live. Sometimes vivid and troubling, often the sensation that there are other people in the room. More disturbingly, an awareness that you are awake but unable to move. Most commonly, they occur when people suffer from narcolepsy, sometimes Parkinson’s disease, occasionally schizophrenia. I’m up on all the jargon.

  But sometimes they happen in normal people as part of some great subconscious jape. That awful sensation of falling that jerks you awake. A smell or a taste or, even more creepily, a feeling like something is touching you. If you ask a hundred people over half will tell you they’ve experienced something like it in their lifetime.

  But what I have is very different. My hallucinatory fugues are a genuine rarity. The trouble is that the hypnagogic state that can give ordinary people the heebie-jeebies is also one that is an almost perfect breeding ground for my fugues, too. So as well as daydreaming on lengthy walks I oft
en get to visit the rooftop bar just before I wake up. When I fugue, I don’t stay in bed. I get up and do things I am completely unaware of. If it wasn’t so bloody tragic it would be funny.

  But I gave up laughing a long time ago.

  And this morning, this ordinary Friday morning – how appropriate that today is the thirteenth – I experience a humdinger as I drift up from the depths of unconsciousness.

  For a change, it isn’t night-time on the roof. It isn’t exactly daytime either, but there is daylight – of sorts. A kind of ominous grey that leeches through the cloud-heavy sky to give the scene a sepia tint. The music is different too. Light, daytime jazz. Nothing Cam recognises but full of cool, ethereal, sparse chords. The Russian is on the far side of the roof. No girls with him this time. Impossible to tell what he’s doing but it looks like he may be taking photos with his phone. Cam turns away from Ivan to look around and see that for once he’s not sitting in a booth. He’s sitting up in a bed. Faceless Emma is pouring coffee whilst all around staff in white aprons are dusting tables, collecting glasses, cleaning up.

  ‘Time to get up, Cameron,’ says Emma.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to get ready to jump. Take a shower, get dressed.’

  ‘Do we need to dress up to jump?’

  ‘We need to look our best.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘You know we do. And the maid is waiting to clean our room.’

  A girl in a black and white uniform stands next to a cleaning cart near the bar, patiently waiting. She shimmers like a bad hologram, vague and insubstantial.

  ‘Besides, there’s a storm coming.’ Faceless Emma points over Cam’s shoulder. He turns to follow. There, in the distance, on the edge of the fugue city of minarets and domes that waver in a heat haze, a wall of boiling ochre and black clouds is tumbling towards them, buzzing and hissing like a plague of insects.

  ‘What kind of storm is that?’ he asks. But when he turns back, the wind sweeps in and carries in its hurling fist a spattering, hammering payload of sand and gravel. Cam feels nothing as the wind howls about him, but Emma gets blasted, though she appears not to notice. Even as he watches, she is erased from the rooftop along with everyone else, except the weirdly shimmering girl. And now he sees she is immune because she’s made of stone.