Читать книгу Down to Earth - Melanie Rose - Страница 17

An hour later I found myself sitting on a squishy sofa in a deceivingly comfortable room, nursing a colourful mug of hot, sweet tea. I had been taken from the police station by a second WPC and driven to what looked from the outside to be a small residential house where I had been issued with a disposable all-in-one suit while my clothes were sent to foren-sics for checking. There was a watercolour picture of a group of shells on the wall, which my eyes kept straying to; pink and beige spirals that interlinked and overlapped. I remembered reading about the Fibonacci sequence and how everything on the planet was designed to the exact specifications of the golden rule: phi or 1.6181. The pattern made by sunflower seeds, the measurements of a dolphin from snout to tail, and those spiral shells were just a tiny example. I was glad to have something other than my present dilemma to occupy my mind and fell to thinking that if there was a grand designer of that pattern, then what else could they be responsible for?

The shell painting, I was sure, had been specifically designed to put traumatised young women using the rape suite at ease, but my mind was far from easy. By what great design had I possibly lost six years of my life in the space of a day? Was it design, I wondered, or an accident?

I wanted to go home, but with my parents gone and Calum believing that I had abandoned him, I wasn’t sure where home might be for me now. It was a sobering thought to add to the rest of my problems but I refused to allow it to overwhelm me. I had to try and keep some semblance of control or I might go mad.

To keep my mind from dissolving into self pity I looked at the shells again and remembered the holiday Calum and I had taken the summer before, when we’d first been dating. He had been a keen body-boarder and had wanted me to experience the adrenalin rush and the powerful feel of conquering the might of the sea. I had loved the idea and we had taken Abbey with us to Cornwall, and watched her build sandcastles on the beach as we paddled out on our boards through the bracingly cold water.

The first couple of runs had gone well and we had whooped for joy as our boards flew towards the beach, turning and hurrying back out with each successful run to catch the next big wave. But then the sea had become choppy. A few of the bigger waves ran into each other and I felt myself caught in one of the undertows for which the area was renowned. No matter how hard I paddled my board, the sea was stronger. I was soon swallowing salt water, gasping for breath and tiring quickly in the cold water, despite my wet suit.

And then Calum had been at my side. ‘Just keep your head above the water,’ he’d told me as my limbs began to numb with cold. ‘You have to fight until the lifeguards come and rescue us.’ And I realised he’d risked his own life by coming to my aid. We trod water, spitting salt, concentrating on keeping our heads above the breaking waves, while the current bore us irrevocably further from the beach.

Eventually the rescue dinghy came for us and we were hauled aboard by two strong life guards, shivering, exhausted and grateful to be alive. When we got to the beach I could barely stand, but I was aware of the crowd that had gathered to watch, and Abbey crying inconsolably.

Calum, Abbey and I had clung shakily together. Looking back, I wondered if almost dying together was what had cemented our fledgling relationship into something more solid so quickly after our first meeting. Within two months I had moved in with him and we became a couple, but it was the last time we had gone body-boarding; the last time Calum and I had taken any sort of risk – until I had done the parachute jump. And look where that had got me.

The door opened and DI Smith walked in followed by a woman of Asian descent, wearing a skirt suit very similar in design to the DI’s but in a pale lilac colour, which flattered her dark complexion. I had intended to remain aloof and distant, knowing that no one was going to believe what I had to say anyway, but when the DI introduced me to Dr Soram Patel I warmed to her immediately, with her soft compassionate eyes and gentle smile.

Dr Patel was a police doctor and SOTO officer, which apparently stood for Sexual Offences Trained Officer. I wasn’t sure why they were treating me as a possible rape victim, when I’d made no comment or complaint that I had been abused by anyone. I’d tried telling DI Smith that several times, but she’d merely smiled patiently and told me it was best to get me properly checked out so they knew what they were dealing with. ‘We would like you to tell us everything you remember about the last six and a half years,’ DI Smith said shortly.

‘In your own time,’ Dr Patel added with an encouraging smile.

So I told them mostly what I remembered from the moment I left Calum’s house on the day of the jump, to the time DI Smith had come banging on his front door, discreetly leaving out the bit about my having spent the night in Matt’s bed. ‘So you see, neither Matt, nor Calum had anything to do with it,’ I finished, settling back into the softness of the sofa, relieved that for better or for worse, my story had been told.

‘How did you come by the cut on your hand?’

‘I told you, I nicked it on something when I climbed into the plane just before the jump.’

The two women exchanged glances.

‘Have you heard of hostage dependency syndrome?’ Dr Patel asked softly.

‘You mean when a person who has been held against their will, becomes emotionally fixated on their captor?’ I felt the first tug of the underlying current snatching at me.

The two women nodded in unison.

‘One would have had to be kidnapped for that to happen,’ I replied, eyeing them both with suspicion. ‘I’ve just told you I wasn’t kidnapped, held anywhere against my will or even beamed up by a spaceship. I don’t know what happened to me.’

‘We have to allow for the possibility that your perceptions of recent events have somehow been altered.’ DI Smith said shortly.

‘The human mind is complex and works at more than the one level of consciousness,’ Soram Patel explained more gently.

Icy waves began to wash over my head. What were they getting at?

‘You mean I could have been brainwashed?’

‘Not brainwashed. Though there is the possibility of self-induced amnesia caused by prolonged trauma,’ the doctor replied. ‘With your permission, I would like to do some psychological tests on you. It may help establish your mental state and give you some much needed answers.’

‘And if I don’t give my permission?’ I could feel the current tugging me forcibly out to sea.

‘It would be much easier for us and for you, if you cooperated fully.’ DI Smith crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in her chair.

I glanced at the door, remembering that I had nowhere left to run. Calum and Abigail obviously didn’t want me back, and if Calum had been telling the truth, my family home had been sold when my mother had been committed to the institution.

‘I haven’t even seen my mum yet,’ I said out loud. I was grabbing at straws, hoping to elicit their sympathy. ‘Calum told me that my father died four years ago and my mother is in some kind of nursing home.’

Dr Patel nodded, tapping the notes in front of her. ‘That is the case I’m afraid.’

‘Could I speak to Calum?’ I assumed he was still being questioned at the main police station and hoped they’d take me back there. No matter what he thought of me, I had hoped to find him by my side, being there with me even at the expense of his own safety.

‘Mr Sinclair has been allowed to leave,’ DI Smith replied. ‘We haven’t charged him with anything so he left with his daughter.’

I could see from her expression that this must have been a disappointment to her. It was a severe disappointment to me; he had left me on my own to sink or swim.

I remembered that Calum hadn’t been the only person dragged off to the police station because of me. ‘What about Matt?’ I asked in a tremulous voice.

‘Mr Matthew Treguier is still helping us with our enquiries.’

I realised with a jolt that I hadn’t even known Matt’s surname. Matt Treguier … I toyed with the name, letting it flow over my lips. Then I saw Dr Patel watching me intently and I closed my mouth with a snap. Matt was in enough trouble because of me.

But it was too late. Like the vastness of the ocean, this institution was bigger and infinitely more powerful than me. DI Smith narrowed her pale eyes behind those glasses, her expression intent. I remembered what she’d said about hostage dependency and realised I’d been swept right into her clutches.

‘Can you tell us about your feelings for Mr Treguier?’ Dr Patel asked in that deceptively soft voice. ‘Do you feel responsible for him, protective of him, perhaps?’

‘I hardly know him,’ I replied.

‘Then how do you account for the fact that the jumpsuit you were wearing when you went missing over six years ago has been found, along with a toothbrush, which we are currently testing for your DNA, in the back of Mr Treguier’s car?’

I felt as if a particularly icy wave had slapped me in the face. I’d forgotten to mention in my statement that I’d brought the jumpsuit back with me from Kent when recounting the incredible events of the previous day.

‘I put them there.’ I tried to regain some semblance of control. ‘Matt hasn’t done anything wrong. Ask Kevin – he was with us.’

‘Would that be Mr Kevin Wheeler?’

‘Yes.’

Dr Patel leaned towards me, her expression intense. ‘And what can you tell us about your relationship with Kevin?’

The DI gave a triumphant smile as I reeled backwards, shocked that every word that escaped my lips seemed to implicate someone else. ‘We were rather hoping you would mention Mr Wheeler. He’s been of interest to us for some time. He was one of the last people to see you before you disappeared, I believe?’

I nodded reluctantly. My case had been left open and now they could see a chance of solving a six-year-old mystery; a statistic to add to their end-of-year clean up rate.

‘Can you tell us why Mr Wheeler might be in possession of an unusual amount of documentation concerning your disappearance?’

‘He was interested in what happened to me, I suppose. It seems my so-called disappearance did make quite an impact on his life.’

‘ An obsessive amount of documentation,’ DI Smith declared as if I hadn’t spoken. Her eyes watched me closely for a reaction. ‘Newspaper cuttings, photos of you, computer printouts of other disappearances; the sort of collection someone with an unhealthy interest in your case might accumulate. He and Mr Treguier are friends, I believe?’

‘I think they have become friends recently – since the jump. They had never met each other prior to the day … it … happened.’

The DI leaned forward, her eyes fixed on mine. ‘Would you be surprised to learn that Mr Wheeler did know Mr Treguier before you and your other colleagues went down to the airfield that day?’

A picture of the four of us – Graham, Kevin, Ingrid and me – arriving at the airfield and being introduced to our instructor swam before my eyes. Neither Matt nor Kevin had given any indication of having already met.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘We have records showing that Kevin Wheeler had already completed a static line jump the week before he went with you to the airfield on the day you vanished. According to the parachute company’s log book, Mr Treguier was his instructor.’

Calum had told me to fight, but the breakers just kept toppling over my head. No matter what I said, no one was going to believe me. They’d decided I’d been kidnapped by Matt or Kevin, or both. I gulped in a desperate breath of air. Hadn’t I fleetingly suspected both Matt and Kevin myself? Perhaps it was time to give up the battle and simply sink beneath the waves. Maybe DI Smith and Dr Patel’s theory was right and I had been drugged and abducted by Matt and Kevin and simply couldn’t remember anything about it. After all, it wasn’t as if I had a better explanation …