Room 15: a gripping psychological mystery thriller Read online

  So it seems the text on my phone was right: I did meet the DAC. It’s like a brief flash of light in the terrifying darkness. One more tiny piece of knowledge. Gerry covers his phone and speaks briefly to someone nearby. I decide to take the risk. ‘What did “people” say?’

  ‘DAC Siddiqi liked your ideas,’ Gerry says with a light laugh. ‘Well done. Whatever you said to him, it worked. They want clever enthusiastic high-fliers, Ross. The Yard’s desperate for promotable coppers who are good at politics. And when you land the job I won’t be sorry to have myself a friend in high places.’ He’s obviously pleased for me. But it’s alarming that I have no idea what I said. Once more I feel I’m being sucked into a whirlpool, unable to save myself. I search for something to say, but Gerry speaks first. ‘One thing, Ross.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just don’t fall over too much.’

  Half an hour later, a doctor pushes through the cubicle curtain. She’s in her early thirties, thin and pale. Standing over me, she peers wearily at the wound on my neck and the cuts to my face and hands, then shines a light in each eye in turn. Next come the questions. She is one of the most exhausted people I’ve ever seen and appears so fatigued I can hardly bear to burden her with my problems. But despite her tiredness, I warm to her. She seems to like me and wants to make me better.

  She asks if I’ve been in an accident or a fight, and I tell her I don’t know. She touches my hand with a metal dish and then a mug of tea and asks which is hot and which is cold. She asks me for the date, the time, my age – which makes me stop and think. I remember being twenty-nine, but if it’s 2010 I must be thirty-one. The thought shocks me. I go for thirty-one and wait, but she accepts it without comment. She asks for the first thing I remember, the last thing I remember.

  ‘I remember my wife,’ I say, ‘and hearing her voice on her voicemail a few minutes ago. I remember my mum (deceased and much missed) and my dad (undeceased). I remember the names of three characters from EastEnders and believe, on good evidence, they’re not real. I remember the name of the Prince of Wales and assume, on no good evidence, that he is real. I remember a party that I thought was only a few hours ago but turns out not to be. I remember finding myself in a side street in the snow.’

  As she carefully wraps a blood-pressure cuff around my arm, she asks me for the names of the prime minister and the president of the United States. I find out that the president is the same as I remember but the prime minister isn’t.

  She asks more searching questions about recent events and in a stupid way I feel I don’t want to fail her. But step by step, I find I can’t avoid the truth. I’m a time traveller. Aliens have abducted me from 2008 and one of them, even now, is conducting tests on me in the guise of an NHS doctor filled with infinite tiredness. I want to say how sorry I am to be giving her this extra work.

  After a few more examinations, she remarks that she can’t see any significant physical damage and starts filling out a new form.

  ‘So, what? Am I mad?’

  ‘No, not mad. You’ll get a letter of appointment to see a memory specialist.’

  ‘A letter? Can’t you do something now?’

  She gives me a paracetamol for the headache. ‘I’ll have your head scanned, just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’ This is a new development.

  ‘Probably nothing,’ she says. ‘Simply in case.’

  ‘In case’ is a civil servant’s get-out clause... ‘In case’ there’s something she should have spotted. ‘In case’ I’ve had a stroke. ‘In case’ I have a brain tumour. ‘In case’ I get paralysed or die.

  ‘In case’ of a whole load of cases I’d rather not imagine but now it seems I must.

  9

  My very first memory: I was playing in a park. I was three years old. Daffodils shone brightly and early leaves flickered in the cool breeze. My mother sat on a bench. My father stood next to her, sucking on an ice cream cone. I generously shared the last licks of my own smaller ice cream with my mother, before she wiped my mouth, zipped up my jumper and ruffled my hair and watched me run onto the grass.

  There was a dog nearby, sniffing at the tree trunks. It can’t have been ours. My mother liked dogs but Paul hated them; he would never have allowed us to own one. I fell in love with it. A black and white mutt, with long floppy ears. I wanted to chase it, to make friends and bring it back for her. It barked and ran away. I ran after it, as fast as I could across the grass. After a while the dog got fed up with running and stopped by a rose bush next to the entrance to the park, panting. I contemplated it and started to move closer, offering my fingers in friendship.

  It was then my father noticed how far I’d gone and sprinted towards me. He was shouting. I didn’t know why. He yelled at the dog to keep away. He shouted furiously at me to stand back. But I didn’t want to. The dog liked me, I could tell. It wanted me to pat it on the nose.

  Paul had gone red in the face. My mother was following more slowly, calling to him to calm down but he yelled at her instead and she stopped short in the middle of the grass as if he’d hit her. He picked up a piece of fallen branch and waved it at the dog.

  Maybe the dog was too hot, or frightened by the noise. Or maybe Paul was right all along. It turned and looked up at me. It sniffed the hand I was holding out. And then it sank its teeth into it.

  I remember that.

  I’m clutching my notes in a cardboard folder, following a red line that winds through the basement like a magic path through a haunted forest, and which I hope will lead to the truth. Like in any good haunted forest, I have a goblin to accompany me, called Francis. He’s a stocky hospital porter in his fifties and also has a limp and a crooked but not unpleasant smile. We get along okay, sharing a few lame jokes.

  Along the way, we cross paths with other creatures of the night. Another porter scurries past pushing a covered trolley. A worried young man in an anorak overtakes us and disappears into the distance, leaving behind a tang of aftershave and sweat. The corridors fall silent again. Most of the rooms down here are not in use during the night and there is something obscurely oppressive about the succession of locked doors. Finally we reach a windowless clearing with a little row of seats. Here, Francis takes my folder and hands it ceremoniously through a hatch to a small Indian woman perched behind a computer.

  She leaves with the folder. Francis pulls out a packet of Bensons, inspects his watch, coughs and says they won’t call me for my scan for half an hour at least. I smile and tell him I’ll be fine if he has something urgent to do. He does.

  After Francis has left, I walk to the nearest corner to investigate. I smell that aroma of aftershave and sweat again, but the corridor beyond is empty. Just the same endless line of ever-burning strip lights. The tablet the doctor gave me is kicking in. My head and neck hurt less, but I feel myself slowing down, losing focus. I go back to my seat and pick up a magazine. The glamorous people on the front cover mean nothing to me. The straplines float out like messages from another planet.

  To my surprise, it’s only ten minutes before I’m called for my CT scan and Francis still hasn’t returned from his urgent cigarette. I’m strapped down and fed into a metal tube by two pale-faced radiographers. There’s no space inside to move my arms. They tell me to relax, so there I lie blindly, imprisoned, as the machine groans, sending its rays deep into my brain. I think about how I’d be unable to escape if anything went wrong, a fire, a power failure.

  After twenty minutes of this, the hellish groans come to a stop and I’m pulled back out. I breathe deeply, happy to be out in the open again, and one of the radiographers tells me to go back to A&E for my results. I return to the waiting area, but it’s empty. A faint scent of stale Benson and Hedges suggests that Francis came back while I was being scanned and then discovered another important tobacco-related errand to perform.

  I yawn and decide I’m big enough to find my own way to the surface. Meanwhile, I visit the toilet, which is opposite the hatch. It’s marked for
disabled use only, but I feel I’m disabled enough tonight.

  I turn unthinkingly to lock the door. But it smacks open. Straight into my face. For a second I’m stunned. I push it closed but the door slams into me again, shoving me against the sink, the edge jabbing painfully into my back.

  And now I see him – the young man who passed us in the corridor earlier. The smell is strong – aftershave and sweat. He kicks the door shut and punches me hard in the stomach. I double up in pain. He strikes down on my head. I drop to my knees, trying to protect myself with my arms. But he boots me between the eyes. He shouts incoherently and hits me again on the back of the neck. I fall, smacking my forehead on the grey vinyl floor.

  The flurry of blows stops and I twist round. He’s kneeling over me, red-faced, and then there’s a knife in his hand. Small and dirty.

  ‘Police!’ I yell. ‘I’m police. I’m a police officer.’

  It’s as if he doesn’t hear. He stabs down at my throat. I squirm to the right, banging into the toilet bowl. The knife scrapes the side of my temple and digs into the floor. I snatch at his wrist and the blade cuts my hand. He pulls the knife back and swears in English and in a language I don’t recognise.

  ‘Stop!’ I shout.

  Then he speaks my name, repeating it in a thick East European accent. ‘Ross Blackleigh,’ he says. ‘Ross Blackleigh. Ross Blackleigh.’

  I hesitate a moment in shock, and the hesitation almost kills me as the knife flicks like a snake’s tongue at my eye. I writhe to the left and it cuts my cheek. I push him away – he’s surprisingly light – and scramble up towards the red emergency cord. Still groggy. Every movement an effort. But before I can reach it, he cannons me into the wall and shouts at me wildly in a mix of words that make no sense. The knife comes back, unstoppable, blind, seeking my blood.

  Now I’m seriously frightened – I abandon training and punch out furiously. And for a brief second he falters. Enough for me to kick him near the crotch and push him backwards. I pull open the door, trying to hit him with it. I’m no longer a policeman, or even a man, I’m an animal fighting to survive.

  He slams the door shut. But immediately it crashes open again, thumping into his body.

  Someone’s outside. Francis. The goblin. Francis forces the door open with his heavy shoulder. His strength surprises me. He reaches through the gap and grabs the man by the hair and the attacker falls back against the door frame, making a vicious untranslatable noise, slashing the knife madly, catching my sleeve. This time I manage to trap his knife arm behind the door and slam it hard against the wall. And then the man writhes free, bolts past Francis into the corridor and out of sight.

  Francis runs after him, faster than I’d have thought he could manage.

  It’s then that it gets me. My whole body shakes. I bend over, unable to move, my hands on my knees, lungs burning, gulping air. With the emptiness comes weakness. And fear. All the pain comes back to my head and legs. I can scarcely breathe. I pray to God that the man doesn’t come back to attack me again. I have no strength left to defend myself. I feel hot and cold. Like an amateur. Like a victim. Like I’ve never been in a fight before. I feel very alone.

  I can hear Francis running back towards me, shouting my name in concern. I straighten up and am about to answer. Then I remember the attacker also shouted my name and I realise something I should have realised at the time. I turn and instead of calling back, I limp as fast as I can round the far corner to the entrance to the scanning room. Here I wait, out of sight, listening, trying to still my breathing, as Francis runs into the waiting area. He calls my name again and he sounds confused, worried. Then I hear him turn and go back the way he came.

  I wait for his footsteps to move out of earshot and walk as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

  The courtroom is silent. I take a moment to look around. Stone realises that I need a pause, some time to gather my thoughts. He turns a page of his notes, then says, slowly, quietly, ‘You’d been viciously attacked.’

  ‘Yes. But I had no idea who this man was.’

  ‘You were sure you’d never seen him before.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. But of course my memory…’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But he obviously knew me – or at least he knew who I was. Which made me think. And as I thought about it, it seemed obvious to me I’d been targeted. But that meant he had to know I was there. This is what I realised while I heard Francis calling my name. And as far as I knew very few people knew where I was at that time.’

  Stone looks up at me in the witness box and asks evenly, ‘Who were they? Who was it that knew where you were?’

  10

  1am

  I’m lying in the warm summer sunshine on the grass in a park near where we were holding our party this afternoon. Laura is kneeling next to me, cradling my head and saying something soft I can’t quite hear. It’s 2008 after all and I’m relieved to be back here with the woman I love, not in that nightmare in the snow. She touches my face and tells me how much she missed me. She was worried for me. We kiss. I can smell wine from a glass I seem to have spilled – though I can’t remember how – and as I look to my left, my father is standing over us with Gerry. I wonder vaguely what they are doing here. And as Laura rocks me to and fro, I’m aware that the wine is starting to smell more acidic, more like antiseptic…

  But the smell comes from a bandage on my neck. I’m not with Laura in a sunlit park but alone in a taxi at night, and the movement I’m feeling is the taxi turning down the side streets of northwest London.

  I wake slowly, but some of the disturbing oddness of the dream still clings to me: the sound of my wife’s voice, along with the touch of her hand on my face. I rub my temples in an attempt to clear my head.

  I remember finding the cab at a rank up the hill from the hospital, though I can’t remember how I got there. More terrifying forgetting – but at least this time I seem to have only lost a few minutes, not a year and a half.

  ‘It’s a long way,’ he said, when I told him my address. ‘And I was about to knock off.’

  ‘I have an up-to-date resident’s visa for Pinner,’ I said. ‘The Home Office says it’s safe to go there now.’

  He was about my age, late twenties, early thirties, with John Lennon granny specs which he tapped thoughtfully on the steering wheel. ‘Double fare,’ he says. Sense of humour failure…

  I turn now and squint out of the back window. To my relief, there’s nobody following. All I can see is the road behind us, the taxi’s tyre tracks disappearing as the snow fills them in. Am I overreacting? A man just tried to kill me. But worse than that, he knew who I was. The very idea chills me but it brings my thoughts into sharp focus. The man with the knife wasn’t some random patient who’d escaped from the psychiatric ward. That means I was targeted. But how did he find me? The only people who knew I was in the hospital were the medical staff and my own colleagues in the police.

  With effort, I push myself into a more-upright position. My right arm feels numb, like it was trapped as I slept, and on my phone there are three missed calls from Gerry Gardner.

  A text from Gerry arrives: Heard you were attacked. Where the fuck are you? What’s going on? I wish I knew, and I wish I knew who I could trust. I gaze at the message and then delete it. Next, for safety, I turn off both phones. It feels stupidly melodramatic, but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve never thought that someone wanted me dead before. I’ve dealt with scrags who wanted to knock my head off, and received my share of threats, but not a serious cold-blooded hitman. The heating is on full in the taxi but still the thought chills me.

  I watch my reflection in the side window, flashing on and off as lights flicker past outside, then staying solid when the cab heads past the darkness of an unlit park near our house. I look gaunt – older than I remember, thinner, unshaven, my eyes hollow. There’s also a new gash above my right eye, like a red tick or a raised eyebrow. My left hand is bleeding too, so I wrap a hand
kerchief round it.

  ‘Right or left?’ the cabbie calls, slowing for the turn into our street, affable now that he’s journeyed to darkest Pinner and survived. I lean forward and tell him the way.

  I miss my wife and wonder when I last saw her. It seems only a few hours since I was watching her handing out bowls of crisps and exchanging legal gossip with friends. But what happened after that? Have I also lost eighteen months of shared memories, anxieties, arguments, jokes?

  ‘What number?’ The cab driver glances at me in the mirror. I say, third lamp post on the right.

  He gives me a look. ‘You meeting someone here?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  He shrugs and unlocks the cab door as he stops. I shove money in his hand and step out.

  The snow hits me hard in the face and I try to make sense of what I see. The end of the road has gone. The line of houses finished fifty metres behind us. Where our front door should be is a large building site surrounded by green wooden walls with wire gates.

  I hear the cab U-turn in the street behind me and shout to the driver over the noise of the wind. He brakes.

  ‘You changed your mind?’ he calls, wiping his glasses wearily with a tissue.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  He jams his granny specs back on his nose with the supreme confidence of all taxi drivers. ‘This is the road you asked for,’ he says. He starts up again, and again I shout at him to stop.

  ‘This is the right address,’ I say with a sick feeling of dread. ‘I know it. I live here.’

  ‘Saturday nights,’ he says to nobody. ‘Always the same.’

  I look back and check – yes, this is my street. There, under a pile of broken bricks, was the garden where we were drinking in the summer sunshine, which still feels like it was a few hours ago, but which I’m beginning to accept was a year and a half in the past. Number 7 should be to my right – where, two nights after we moved in, the owner sat naked on the roof, stoned out of his mind, until I talked him down. Number 11 was on the left – here, every six months, we’ve had dinner with Katie and Steve in the spirit of neighbourliness, watching Katie get progressively more drunk and Steve progressively more anxious as the evening went on.