Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition (4 page)

I called out and Janet came running back into the room.

“What’s happened?”

I pointed at the screen “Jan. Look at this.”

She stared at the image of the girl but didn’t yet understand. “Why is this so important?”

“She’s missing. I know her. She’s one of the women I’ve been telling you about, the one’s I’ve been seeing. I know her name, it’s Cathy.”

Janet held up her hands. “Wait, Tom. That’s what it says on the screen caption.
Cathy Newsome, missing teenager.
That’s where you saw the name.”

“I already knew the name. I told you - one of the girls is called Cathy. You must remember.”

She sat beside me. “Yes. But that’s just coincidence. There are lots of women called Cathy.”

“I recognize her face.”

“Are you sure that isn’t because you’ve just seen her picture on the TV? Sure you’re not confusing that with what you’ve been recalling? If she’s been missing for awhile, you could have seen an appeal for help in finding her weeks ago, even from before the accident.”

“No, Jan, I swear, I’m not confused. As soon as I saw her face on the screen, I knew where I’d seen her. And you know what it means? Those memories of mine are real. The Cathy I see has really disappeared. This proves it.”

Janet put her arms round me. “Tom, I could call Josh Healey, ask for an earlier appointment.”

I pushed her away. “I don’t want Healey. I don’t believe a word he says about my memories being false. I know what’s real.”

She looked shocked that I had reacted in this way. “So, if you don’t want to see Healey, what do you want to do?”

I moved closer to her once more and held her hand. “Jan, that girl is missing and I can no longer doubt that I know what happened to her. I have to tell someone. You’ve seen the agony of her parents. If there’s anything I know that might help them, I need to come forward.”

“So, who?”

“The police. I need to call the police.”

It was something Janet didn’t want me to do, but I called the phone number shown on the screen during the appeal for Cathy Newsome.

They must have been busy. I was held in a queue.

Doubts filled my mind as I waited.

Should I be doing this?

What I knew could end the agony of Cathy’s troubled parents.

But would anyone believe me?

I was on the point of giving up when a tired female voice came on the line. “Metropolitan Police.”

At first the words wouldn’t come, but at last I summoned up the courage to speak. “I’ve just seen the appeal about the missing girl.”

When she replied it sounded as if this was the hundredth time she’d said it. “Cathy Newsome?”

“Yes.”

“You have information that might help the enquiry?”

“I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her die.”

She asked me to repeat it. “Are you clear about what you’re saying, sir?”

“I’m aware how strange this must sound but I saw her as she died.”

Her voice betrayed the fact that to her this was no doubt sounding like just one more of the crank calls that appeals like this were bound to attract. “And how was that, sir?”

“In my visions. I see her and the others die.”

“You know, don’t you, sir, that it’s an offence to waste police time.”

“No, I want to help. I want to help you find her. To find them all.”

“So, you know where this happened?”

I faltered. I was trying to think of anything that would allow me to pinpoint the location of the book-filled room but I realized then what little of real use I knew. “It’s near a railway line. I recall hearing a train rattling on the tracks somewhere nearby. But that’s all.”

“I thought you said you saw what happened?”

“Yes, I saw the room it happened in but I didn’t get to see where it was.”

She sounded close to exasperation. “So you don’t know where she is?” She paused. “I have to warn you again about wasting police time. Do you have any idea how many calls we get after an appeal like this, how much false information we have to sift through, how many man hours that takes when we could be using that time for something more useful?”

“I’m trying to help, I really am.”

“And this is the best you can do? Can I ask if you’re on any medication, sir?”

“Some sedatives. I’m recovering from an accident.”

The change in her voice told me that she was trying to be understanding despite the pressure she was under but it sounded more like pity to me. “And don’t you think your response to the appeal has been affected by that?”

“No, it’s real. Everything I’m saying is real.”

“We have your number, sir. Do you want to leave a name?”

“It’s Tom. Tom Markland.”

“Thank you Tom. We’ll be in touch if we want to talk to you further.”

It was clear she’d concluded that I was a timewaster. I wasn’t making her understand the importance of what I was saying. “There are others, other women. I’ve seen them, too.”

“You have their names?”

“Rebecca. Margot. Felicity.”

“No surnames?”

“No, that’s all I have.”

She was even less convinced now. “OK, Mr. Markland. We’ll be in touch if you can help us with anything.”

I sank back in the chair.

Why wouldn’t they believe me?

It wasn’t difficult to answer my own question.
I
wouldn’t have believed me if I’d been that officer on the end of the line.

I felt better for having made the call.

And it was a relief having told someone other than Janet and Mr. Healey.

It was something like a confession. I had tried. I had tried to get someone to believe me.

Janet acquainted me with more of my life, through images on her tablet, through her own recollections and what I must have told her before the accident. It was still like learning about myself second hand, as if I was this other person I must become. And, though I couldn’t say any of this felt like the real me returning, like the dam had broken and memories were flooding back, I got to know much more about this person that I was.

I heard more about my colleagues at the paper.

I began to feel a connection with Evan Hamilton, my boss. Janet told me how he’d advanced my career as a journalist, given me the breaks that had taken me from reporting petty crime to the front line in the investigative trade.

“He’s been something of an inspirational figure to you.”

“Maybe we should meet.”

“He wants to visit. To tell the truth, he’s been insisting. But I told him it’s too soon, that your recovery is still in the early stages.”

My recovery? I guess I had to accept that’s what it was but it was still a shock to have to accept that I had been driven so low. “If he needs to see me, maybe next week?”

Janet nodded. “Maybe then. I want him to see you at your best, as the uncompromising journalist they all know you to be.”

I wanted to know more. “Who have we investigated?”

It was a question Janet had been waiting for. “I keep a collection of your articles.” She smiled. “I’m your greatest fan. You can read them all here.”

She handed me the tablet and pointed to an icon that was labeled
Tom’s Stories
. I tapped the link and was sent to a folder in the cloud that opened to show a hundred or more articles, presented in date order.

She snuggled up to me. “It’s all there. Every article you’ve published since we met. You should read them. If you’re ready for this, it may help.”

I wanted to know. “Yes, I’m ready.”

She left while I sat and read.

It was complex, this backstory to my life. At first, I found the names and organizations mentioned were a blur. I couldn’t believe I’d ever written any of this. But I decided to approach this just like I’d taken on board everything else I’d heard from Janet. It didn’t feel like it was me but it
must
be me and I needed to learn it and believe it was true.

I decided not to let myself be overwhelmed by the detail. I needed to extract a broad picture from the jumble of names, people, places, organizations, acronyms and dates. I needed to understand the outline, at least for now.

The early stories were based around small time crime. The kind of stories a young journalist gets handed. As time ran on, the crimes I was reporting became more serious until just about every one concerned murder. Then, just a few months back, there had been a change, a move to cover financial crime. Behind all that lay securities fraud. The kind of scams in which investors lose millions. I was now part of a special team at
The Herald,
led by Evan Hamilton, set up to investigate financial malpractice. I had been given an archive of the background that Hamilton had developed on the investigation and Janet had included this along with my own earlier stories.

In all the wealth of detail on the new investigation, one name stood out. Tyrone Montague, CEO at OAM Securities. I tried to understand why I had the strongest sense that I needed to be interested in this man but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find an explanation of why I felt this way.

I knew then that there were more than a few people out there who were very angry with us, with me, about what we’d done to them.

Yet somehow I knew that what had been published so far was just the tip of the iceberg. The real culprits were still out there, evading scrutiny.

I closed the file and put the tablet aside. I knew I would have to return. I needed to discover as much as I could about these people, what they did, who they’d cheated.

That night, the visions returned.

I’m looking on as Rebecca dies, as I squeeze the life out of her.

I can’t look away.

The tattoo on my left forearm is visible again. I’m trying to make it go away, to prove to myself that what Josh Healey says can’t be true – that I’ve invented the tattoo to protect myself, to prove to myself that it couldn’t be me carrying out this cold blooded murder. But try as I might, the tattoo will not go away. It’s real, as real as everything else I’m seeing.

And there’s something else.

The hands around poor Rebecca’s neck. I’m seeing the fingers of the right hand.

Short index finger, long ring finger.

This is important. But I don’t know why.

I see her die.

The vision ended.

I looked at my hands.

My index finger and my ring finger were the same length. Somehow I knew that, just like eye or hair color, these differences in finger length were characteristics that separated people from others. And the one doing the killing could not be me.

I knew what Josh Healey would say. I was inventing this to prove to myself that it was not me doing these terrible things. Just as I was inventing the tattoo.

But I no longer believed him.

This was evidence.

Evidence that it was not me.

It was someone else.

Someone I was beginning to know more about.

I needed to discover who this was. Who had been doing these killings.

And I knew then that finding this man was the only way I would recover my past.

When the police arrived it came more as a relief than as a shock.

Perhaps, after all, my phone call was understood for what it was.

He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Stephen Ives. DI Ives.

He was young, angry looking, not the type you’d send on a goodwill mission.

He told me that the short, uniformed woman officer with him was Detective Sergeant June Lesley. DS Lesley.

There were no informalities. He came straight to the point. “You phoned in as a result of the Cathy Newsome appeal?”

I nodded. “Yes. She’s been found?”

He shook his head. “It’s still a missing persons enquiry.”

“Then why are you here?”

“You gave us some other names.” He looked at his notes. “Rebecca, Margot, Felicity. Said they’d been killed along with Cathy Newsome.”

“That’s what I wanted to say. I didn’t think I was getting through to the officer taking the call.”

“We almost passed it over. It wasn’t until DS Lesley investigated the report made about your call that we became interested.” He paused and looked once more at his notebook. “Tell me, Mr. Markland, do any of these names mean anything to you?”

He read them out.

Rebecca French.

Margot West

Felicity Jenkins.

Rebecca, Margot, Felicity. The names of the other girls I’d seen being killed.

I thought hard. I was sure I’ve never heard their surnames before.

I gave him an honest reply. “I don’t know those names.”

“But, Mr. Markland, aren’t those the same first names you told us about in the phone call?”

I agreed. “Yes, but I don’t recognize their second names.”

Janet was by my side and had remained silent up to now. “As I told you, Inspector, my husband has been through trauma. Amnesia. He’s no longer certain about events in his past. You promised me you would show understanding.”

He turned towards her. “And I’ll keep my promise, Mrs. Markland. But, please bear with me for a few more minutes.”

He pulled a transparent envelope from his inside pocket and removed a half dozen photographs. “Do you recognize anyone here?”

I stared at the photographs, one by one.

There was no doubt. Three of the images were heads and shoulders pictures of Rebecca, Margot and Felicity.

I separated them from the pack and handed them to DI Ives. “These ones. I don’t know about the others.”

He spread the images of the three girls on the table before me. “These are the ones you recognize? You’re sure of that?”

I nodded. “What about the other photos?”

He looked angry that I hadn’t yet answered his question. “They’re stock photos of young women about the same age.”

I understood why he’d done this. If I was one of the many damaged people who offered false information in cases like this, I might have picked out all six. Or picked out one by chance. But to have picked out just those three?

He asked again. “The three girls. You’re sure you’ve seen them before?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“What names do you know them as?”

I pointed to each picture in turn. “That’s Rebecca. That’s Margot. And that’s Felicity.”

“And you know them from where?”

“I tried to tell you in the phone call.”

“So, tell us again.”

“I’ve seen them. In visions. In my mind’s eye. Being killed.”

“Tell me why that is?”

“I don’t know. That’s the truth. That’s all I know. I see them. They die.”

“How do they die?”

“Strangulation.”

“Where did this happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s a dark and lonely place. A room filled with books. Somewhere near a train line. I can hear the sound of trains somewhere close, but that’s all I know.”

Janet could see I was distressed. “You need to hold off, Inspector.”

He turned towards her once more. “What if I was to tell you that all three young women are missing. That their families are as distraught as Cathy Newsome’s family, wondering what’s happened to their daughters? Would you want me to tread any more carefully, Mrs. Markland?”

Janet started to cry. “You need to explain, Inspector. Just what this line of questioning is implying.”

He gestured towards me. “Look, Mrs. Markland, what do you expect. Your husband phones us in response to one girl’s disappearance and gives the names of three others. When we check missing persons, we find matches to all three names. When shown photos of the girls, he recognizes them. He could have recognized Cathy Newsome’s picture from what’s been shown on television so we didn’t show him that. All four women are missing. Your husband has some explaining to do.”

Janet came to my defense. “We need to talk, Inspector. But first, don’t you think you have a duty to let my husband know if you’ve made any progress in finding out what happened to him? Someone’s getting away with attempted murder.”

Ives faced off against her. “That’s not my case, Mrs. Markland.”

“We’ve heard nothing. Nothing in weeks.”

“I’m sure one of my colleagues will get back to you when they have something. But if Mr. Markland can’t help them and no other witnesses come forward, what are they expected to do?”

“And that’s all?”

“I’ll check it out. Get back to you.” He paused. “But I want you to be in no doubt that my priority is to find Cathy Newsome. And those other young women. You must understand that.”

DI Ives and DS Lesley talked with Janet for longer than I would have expected.

They were in the kitchen, out of my hearing, but they could only have been talking about me.

When they were finished and Janet had shown them out, she came back into the room.

I wanted to know. “What did he want?”

She sat beside me. “He wanted to know about you. Where you work, what kind of person you are, what happened in the accident. I told him I’d have to be the one to tell him what I knew about all that because, since the incident, you can’t remember.”

“And you told him what?”

“That you’re a kind, wonderful person. That you’re lucky to be alive after being beaten and nearly drowned. That they’d left you for dead.”

“He didn’t say they were anywhere further with investigating who did that to me?”

She shook her head. “No. Like he said before, he told me he wasn’t aware of the case until now. But he’d look into it, liaise with whichever colleague of his was in charge and come back and let us know.”

“I’m not expecting any breakthroughs. They’ve not been showing much commitment to finding who was responsible.”

She gave me a reassuring smile. “The important thing now is that you shouldn’t fret about it. Give all your strength to your recovery.”

I knew she was right. Yet I made a vow to myself right then that when I was stronger, when I could remember again, I would find who’d done this to me.

I tried to move on. “What else did Ives want to know?”

“He asked about your memory. I told him you were being treated by Josh Healey. He said he’d call him.”

“And?”

“He wanted to know as much detail as I could give him about your work at the newspaper. I think he plans to interview Evan Hamilton and some of the others.”

“Gathering background on me?”

“Yes, and understanding how you got know about those women.”