Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller Read online

  Becks hasn’t spoken since we left Tina and the silence has been notable.

  ‘Was that true, sir?’ he says, turning fast into the long, snow-packed, one-way system round Camden Town. ‘What you told that trannie about your memory?’ His manner is stiff and formal. A subordinate betrayed. I feel bad about it, but I can’t pretend.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I fucking knew there was something,’ he mutters. He might be swearing again under his breath, but I can’t be sure. ‘But me – you told her you remembered me.’

  ‘I don’t. I lied.’

  Becks accelerates, passing a nervous Fiesta hugging the kerb. ‘We should call for a rapid response unit.’ No respectful ‘sir’ this time, I notice.

  ‘We’ll get there faster than anyone else.’

  An early cyclist jumps a red light in front of us. Becks brakes and swerves.

  ‘You are aware,’ I say, ‘that under police regulations your duty is to tell DCI Gardner about my condition?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t.’

  ‘I thought so.’ The monosyllables drop heavily, as if he can barely hold his feelings in.

  ‘Trust me,’ I say.

  ‘So is that why you didn’t tell me before – because you trusted me so much?’ His voice is bitter. ‘So you don’t remember the raid on Lonely’s last year?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Tearing me to pieces in front of the team for being late in last week?’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like me.’

  He shakes his head, with a sick smile, as if he knew better.

  ‘I’m asking you to trust me now, Becks. Give me that much benefit of the doubt.’

  He chews his lip angrily. Everywhere the ice lies thick and he’s driving as fast as he can without skidding.

  ‘There’s more,’ I say. ‘You said something earlier about when the team raided Lonely’s. You said I thought they might have been tipped off… I could have been right. The man who attacked me at the hospital – he didn’t find me by chance. He knew I was there. And the only people who knew I was in A&E last night were our guys on late turn at the station.’

  There’s no need to elaborate. The worst fear for any policeman is not being able to rely on the people working with you. Whether you’re facing an angry crowd with baseball bats or a young kid with a knife, you need to know who you can trust to watch your back.

  Becks takes a fast right off the grimy slush of Hampstead Road into the tangle of streets near the tower blocks. He loses his way twice. The first pale light of sunrise shimmers under dark clouds and touches the tops of the higher buildings with a soft yellow glow. I remember, suddenly, a young American security adviser Paul once told me he’d heard about. The man was in London guarding a senior petroleum executive. Off duty one evening, he met a businesswoman of his own age in a bar. He was in need of intelligent company and she was bright, thoughtful and amusing. They ended up going back to her place, in one of the Gordon Road tower blocks. It was one of those moments you are sure will never happen to you, until it does. They talked, they discovered each other, they had sex. He felt he’d known her his whole life.

  Next morning, full of plans for their future, he went to buy breakfast. The morning was misty and cool and everyone he passed seemed as happy as he was, but when he turned to go back he realised too late that all the blocks looked the same. He didn’t remember where she lived, hadn’t looked for the flat number and had never even got round to asking for her surname or told her his. He searched as long as he could, every entrance, every passageway, and then, already late for work, he had to give up. That afternoon he was due to escort his client to a conference in Oman. Two weeks later, he flew back and searched again, sat for hours in the crowded little bar. Walked the streets until darkness fell and then some. He returned six times over the next two years, but he never found her.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said to my father. ‘He wouldn’t have gone. He’d have missed the conference. Resigned from his job. Something.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘For sure. For sure.’

  ‘You’re a romantic,’ he said.

  We do find the block that Amy Matthews shared with Crystal. It’s tall and grey – a vertical filing cabinet for storing people when they’re not needed. There’s a downstairs door made of steel. As we cross the square in front, I see someone has wedged it open with a lump of splintered wood.

  We both avoid the lift. Becks runs, I limp, up concrete stairs that smell like a zoo. The flat’s on the third floor and the corridor here is dark and cold. The dawn silence is broken only by the squeak of my trainers. I have an unexpected memory of Laura touching me. Or was that from the dream in the taxi? A brief contact, soft and mysterious. But somehow it makes me feel all the more lost.

  Was I here last night or not? No one can tell me. Becks slows, checking flat numbers. But I tap his arm: further down I can see a vertical line of early daylight shining on the opposite wall. One of the doors must be partly open. As we reach it, I press gently and it opens a fraction more.

  And then I hear a scuff of a shoe and a sigh, hardly more than a breath.

  Becks moves away from the flat, taking out his phone to call for backup, while I carefully push the door until I can see a glimpse of hallway, burnished bright by the rising sun, shining straight at me though a back window. Squinting, I can just make out the shape of a man.

  I blink, but even before I recognise his silhouette, I get that sickening smell of sweat and aftershave. I flinch instinctively, drawing back out of sight, but only for a moment, before I look again.

  The young East European is facing away from me, still wearing the crumpled jeans and green-brown anorak he wore when he attacked me in the hospital. He stoops over something on the floor.

  He stands up suddenly. That head, that same jerky angry movement. Then seems to come to a decision and walks into one of the other rooms. I step deliberately into the flat, holding a hand over my eyes to block the sun, and on the floor I can now see the body of a woman, her arms thin and at angles. Blood has leaked into a pool from her nose and ears, black and ugly. This must have been Crystal. I run to the body and reach down. Her skin is cold. I check for a pulse in her neck and as I expected there is none. I feel sick. Defeated.

  Then I feel the faintest of flickers and see the ghost of a movement from her chest.

  Without another thought, I yell to Becks, ‘Ambulance!’

  And through the other door I shout, ‘Police.’

  I go straight in. This is my only hope, my only chance of surprise. I’m in a living room, small, a mess, drawers pulled out, curtains open, the low sun dazzling. But he’s not there. Instead there’s another half-open door, and through the gap I see clothes bundled out of cupboards. I shout ‘Police’ again and run through.

  The door slams full in my face, knocking me back, and the pain is intense and nauseous as I fall. I’m furious with myself for being caught twice like this, and he’s out and past me and away, running through the living room, crashing into Becks in the doorway. Becks goes down with a sliding thud and tries to grab the man’s legs, but he’s too late.

  I push past. I can see the attacker further down the corridor, running. I try to sprint after him, my breathing laboured, my legs agony, round a corner in the stairs, tensing my stomach against a sudden surprise attack, a punch or knife, but he’s not there, nor round the next, and I can hear his feet clattering below.

  Forgetting the pain. Pushing out through the wedged steel door onto the icy tarmac. He’s ahead, past parked cars. I find the lungs to shout again, ‘Police! Stop!’ but he doesn’t pause. He’s not athletic. He’s lanky, uncoordinated, but desperate.

  My own muscles are failing. But I chase him across the square, gulping freezing air, slipping on the snow, now regaining balance. He’s doing the same, teetering, tottering, running again. Keystone cops. It would be almost funny if it wasn’t tragic. If it wasn’t painful. If a w
oman wasn’t dead and another dying.

  He glances over his shoulder. He’s pulling away, but he shouldn’t have looked back. He’s not seen the squat parking ticket machine, smashes into it with a grunt of pain and a yelled swear word. Cannons off a Lexus four-by-four, pinballs onto a lamp post, twists and pushes himself on.

  But it lost him five important seconds.

  I’m ten metres behind him now, feet slapping through the icy snow.

  He races through a line of bins, arms waving wildly, sends them rolling, rubbish bags falling. I jump, skid, keep running. He disappears behind a metal fence.

  I round the fence, ready again for an attack but almost falling headlong down steep stone steps, grabbing a handrail, cold, scraping my hands. Across the other side, I catch a glimpse, another man, but then he’s gone.

  My head is on fire, my knees tearing with pain, but I force myself on, it’s all I have left. I have no memory, no one to trust, all I have is this man: this man who tried to kill me in the hospital last night. He is the key.

  I smell his aftershave again, and rancid sweat. I skid down the steps, and he’s there.

  Fallen, trying to get up, and I snatch at him. He scrabbles for something among the weeds.

  I slide on the ice and my ankle folds under me. The agony shoots up my leg. I try to get to my feet and the man’s above me, stabbing at my neck with a broken bottle.

  Then Becks is next to me, launching himself at the anorak. What’s he doing? He should be with Crystal, trying to keep her alive. Has she died?

  The young East European kicks and punches angrily. I try to grab his knees, the broken glass flashes and Becks flinches. He tries desperately to stop the man jabbing the bottle down at his eyes, shouting at him to give himself up.

  I look for a weapon: wood, stone, anything. Becks blocks the bottle and loses his footing, cracking his head against the low wall. The young man drops the broken bottle and runs off.

  I try to stand, and push myself halfway up, but the pain in my ankle makes me sick. I see the attacker running away down the alleyway through and out into the blinding white snow.

  Becks is on the ground, blood on the ice from his head. I can hear sirens wailing, but the killer’s gone. I sit down on the ground next to Becks and look at the gash. His round stubbled face is grey and his breathing is shallow and it doesn’t look good. I pull him upright and try to get him to talk. To say anything, about anything. I take out a handkerchief, bundle it into a ball and push it against the wound.

  We sit on the ground like that and wait as the sirens approach.

  There’s a jug of water in front of me in the witness box. I must have asked for it earlier. I pour some into a glass and take a sip.

  Everyone waits. The jury is watching my every move. Is this going well or badly? I can’t tell. Stone was right, of course; for all the hundreds of times I’ve stood here giving testimony, it’s very different when my own future is at stake.

  I place the glass down and Stone says, ‘And then?’

  ‘The next thirty minutes disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘The amnesia again. The next thing I knew it was half an hour later and I was standing outside the flats. Becks had disappeared and I was talking to a police sergeant I didn’t remember ever seeing before.’

  ‘How did that make you feel?’

  I hesitate. Do I sound too unemotional? Is that why he’s asking? The truth is that I know I often come over to people as dispassionate, but I’m barely holding myself together as I feel the horror again. ‘I was terrified. I thought it was bad enough before, but… I’d hoped it was just the once but it had happened again. I was sure I was going insane. Like some alien was occupying my head and could turn my memory on and off again at will. It was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had. But I didn’t dare show it.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Why did you carry on, Mr Blackleigh? Why didn’t you simply report sick?’

  ‘There was someone who wanted me dead. Who’d already tried to have me killed. And if he could find me in hospital once, he could find me there again.’

  18

  7am

  Little has changed in half an hour except everything has. The dazzling sunrise has faded behind flat clouds. Three police cars are parked at angles by the entrance, beside Becks’ red Vauxhall, and faces peer from windows in the flats above, because there are always people ready to watch.

  I find myself outside the tower block where Amy Matthews and Crystal lived, and alongside me stands Detective Sergeant Brian O’Shea. And I remember nothing about the last thirty minutes.

  My trainers and fleece have gone. Instead I’m wearing a pair of old plimsolls and a frayed Primark anorak. Is it even the same day? It is, according to my phone, but I’m starting to trust nothing, not even that.

  How do I know O’Shea’s name? I have no idea. Maybe he told me. He appears to be a solid enough copper, rectangular in shape, with wiry ginger hair and a liking for reasons why things won’t work (it’s Sunday… and the snow…).

  However, I do remember Crystal, lying unconscious in a pool of blood. It feels as if this was a few moments ago. I’ve jumped in time once more and it petrifies me.

  Children have come out of the flats to throw small snowballs and loud insults. The younger ones try to get under the do-not-cross tapes wherever they can. Despite myself I find I’m grinning at their cheeky attacks, while two young coppers fight a running battle to keep them away.

  Upstairs, Forensics will be working the corridor and the flat. Meanwhile, O’Shea is telling me he’s scraped together a little team to search outside – four uniformed and two plainclothes – and apologising for how few he could find – ‘Sunday, sir, and the snow…’ – while the team members stand ten metres away, next to one of the police cars, talking in low voices and glaring at the kids whenever a snowball falls too close.

  Before I can reply, a woman trots out of the nearest entrance with a clipboard.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she says with a warm smile. ‘We need another signature.’

  It seems she’s a Forensics assistant and sometime in the past half hour she bagged up my fleece and trainers for evidence. But I only signed for the fleece. She’s a few years younger than me, and there’s a certain sassiness to her, which I like. She reminds me of Laura when we were first married. That alluring mix of brashness and self-doubt. So I smile back and scrawl my name.

  I don’t know how long I can keep getting away with this. I have no memory of what’s been done with Crystal. Is she in hospital? Is she dead? And where’s Becks, who nearly got himself stabbed with a broken bottle saving my life? It’s a mess.

  One thing I did notice. Just now, I signed my full name, as I always do. But when the assistant tore off the receipt, I saw the previous page. I’d signed for the fleece with a single letter: R.

  There’s no time to think. I contemplate the little crew that O’Shea has collected and tell three of them to flash-search where I ran after the attacker, and to look for dropped weapons, drugs, anything. The rest are to knock on doors for witnesses.

  O’Shea rounds his shoulders. We both know people here don’t talk to coppers. However, even a house-to-house is less boring than sitting in the office, and a minute later I see him instructing his team and pointing urgently in all directions. I should phone Laura, though it’s still early. I don’t fancy waking her up only to tell her about her car. I lose my nerve and decide to go upstairs instead, but as I start towards the metal door my phone rings.

  ‘Boss?’

  It’s surprising how pleased I am to hear Becks’ voice. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In Camden General and feeling great,’ he replies brightly. ‘They say I can come back to work.’

  Seeing O’Shea returning for further orders, I limp in the opposite direction. ‘And the truth is?’

  ‘They want me to stay for more tests.’

  ‘So you wait for tests. And then you get your car and go home. Your
shift ended two hours ago. You’ve got someone to go home to? Girlfriend? Wife?’

  ‘Girlfriend and son. But Aisha knows what the job’s like.’

  ‘Didn’t I ever teach you to pace yourself?’

  ‘No, you taught me to work as long as it takes and you gave me a bollocking if I didn’t.’

  It’s odd that he says this. I don’t generally give bollockings. It’s not my style. It’s yet one more thing that doesn’t fit and it scares me, but I let it go. Certainly, he wants to catch this bastard as much as I do. He rattles on about how he wheedled information about Crystal’s condition from staff who didn’t want to tell him. I give up waiting for him to get to the point.

  ‘What are they saying then?’

  Becks’ voice darkens. ‘Fractured arms, smashed ribs, brain bleed, internal organs. Not nice. They’re having to operate.’

  A policeman sees the worst, but the worst is still shocking. I don’t want to think about what I saw when I found her: that broken face, the dark pools of blood. Instead I fall back as ever on the process. It’s always safest to follow the rules. ‘We need swabs. Under fingernails. DNA.’

  ‘I’m getting it sorted, but she had to go straight into theatre. Though there’s one thing,’ he says. I wait again. A crudely made snowball bounces off a police car next to me. ‘The consultant says the damage was done earlier.’

  ‘What do you mean by earlier?’

  ‘A good few hours. He can’t be precise, but, judging by the clotting, Crystal had been lying there since yesterday evening.’

  I consider this for a moment, trying not to imagine what it must have been like for her lying helpless all that time. I hope she was unconscious.

  ‘But good news, she works for the same nursing agency as Matthews. I’ve rung their twenty-four-hour service desk and it seems she was also posted here, in one of the clinics. I’m going to do some more ferreting around.’