His heartbeat is building a little as he opens the last door into the bedroom. It is small, like the living room, and dark because the window overlooks the back of the house. There is a form in the bed, but the duvet is pulled up high.
Shane moves closer. People are so easy to read when they are asleep. Shane feels, sometimes, as though he can see into sleeper’s souls, that their stories float around their lifeless bodies like an aura. He can tell the good from the angry from the damaged beyond repair. Sometimes, not often on the streets, but sometimes, he sees the bad.
He needs to see the doctor’s soul.
As though sensing the approaching danger, the sleeper stirs. He mutters something and pushes the duvet a little further down the bed. Now his face, damp with sweat, can be seen. He is a youngish man, only a little older than Shane, and his face is handsome in the poor light.
He is talking in his sleep. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, get away from me.’
The aura around him is deeply troubled. This man seems lost, more in need of help than many of the street sleepers he spends time among.
So worried does the sleeping doctor look, that Shane begins to back away, but a folded newspaper on the bedside cabinet catches his attention. Another story about the murdered girl; Bella, he’s learned she was called. Shane has followed the investigation, stealing newspapers whenever he can, picking discarded ones up off the ground when the newsagents are more vigilant.
Pain is building in Shane. Thinking about Bella is so hard. His breathing is getting deeper and faster. His fists clench and the handle of the knife digs deep into the flesh of his palm. Sweat breaks out all over his body. He pictures himself slashing the knife indiscriminately around the room, ripping open everything in its path. He howls his misery but the sound doesn’t escape his head. Shane has had years to perfect the art of silent rage.
His head is spinning.
The doctor called Joe is waking up. His breathing is no longer audible. He is lying still; is possibly even conscious. Without making a sound, Shane turns and leaves the bedroom.
He relocks the door to the stairs and leaves the knife on the worktop in the kitchen. He makes sure the windows are as he found them and then steps out through the door, locks it and then takes a moment to throw the key carefully back through the narrow gap in the window. He hears a low thud as it lands on the rug.
The pain is beginning to subside by the time he reaches the bottom of the fire escape. He scales the wall and sets off through the night-time city.
28
Felicity
When the River Cam leaves the city behind, it loses much of its reflected colour and nearly all of its noise. Also, quite a bit of its momentum. The Cam of the countryside is a slow-moving waterway of gentle greens, lit by lightning bolts of silver where the light can reach the water. Once out of the city, the willow trees become bolder, leaning perilously close to the water, as though they might take hold and halt its progress altogether. Nettles, brambles and ferns join the conspiracy from the banks as do the weeds that stretch out in the flow. Both the river, and the surrounding vegetation seem to soak up all sound. The river, once it leaves Cambridge, becomes a slow, silent slither of green.
On this evening in early July, the heat of the day is gone and a breeze lifts the surface of the water. The hedge beyond the towpath is dense and the trees behind that are high. The rear end of a mother duck bounces around near the bank whilst her babies mill about her, hoping she might disturb something that they can gobble up. In the fields nearby cows will graze until darkness claims the land. It is a scene of perfect English peacefulness, marred only by the fair-haired young woman, staring wildly about her, on the verge of screaming.
Felicity isn’t injured this time – she checks quickly – but she’s exhausted and her clothes are damp with sweat. Her phone tells her it is 9.15 on Tuesday 2nd July. She has four missed calls and two messages.
Her phone starts ringing and she answers in a low, hesitant voice.
‘Felicity? Are you OK? I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I’m OK,’ she says, although she knows she is not. She wishes it hadn’t been Joe, and yet who else would call? A wave of loneliness sweeps over her. She has no one but a man whom she pays to talk to her.
‘You missed our appointment. I’ve been ringing you for three hours. I’m outside your house right now.’
He is persistent, her only link to humanity. He says, ‘I’m sorry if that seems intrusive. I didn’t want to cross the line, but I’ve just finished work and thought I might as well drive round.’
‘Is my car there? Is my car outside the house?’ She speaks without thinking.
‘Felicity, where are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
His voice drops. ‘Felicity, talk to me. Don’t hang up. Are you hurt?’
She checks again. She can feel no blood on her face, no fresh tenderness. She doesn’t think she is hurt and tells him so.
‘I can get the police out to you if you’re in danger. I’ve got contacts.’
‘No!’ She cannot be involved with the police again.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m by the river.’
‘In the city?’ She hears the fear in his voice. Does he imagine she is about to throw herself in?
‘Felicity, listen to me. Does your phone have Google Maps?’
It takes her a second or two to process the question, then, ‘I think so,’ she says.
‘If you open that app, it will tell you where you are. Can you do that now?’
She should have thought of that herself. She would have thought of it given time. She puts the call on hold and finds the app.
‘I’m between Waterbeach and Upware,’ she says, when the GPS has found her.
‘OK, bear with me. I’m trying to find you on my phone. All right, I’ve got it. You’re actually on the towpath? Are you closer to Waterbeach or Upware?’
She checks the app again. ‘Upware. I’m not far from Upware.’
‘Right, I want you to walk upstream. I think I can see a road that runs close to the river. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
* * *
It is dark by the time he finds her. She doesn’t see him until he shines a torch in her direction. He walks towards her and for a second she thinks he is about to take her in his arms. He lowers the torch and they stare at each other in the moonlight.
‘Do I need to take you to a doctor?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. I’m so sorry.’
He takes her back to his waiting car. There is a blanket on the front seat and she doesn’t object when he places it over her.
‘Do you have your keys?’ he asks, as he sets off along the narrow country road that will take them south.
She feels her shirt pocket and finds the irregular lump. ‘I do.’
Only when they are on the edge of the city does Joe speak again. ‘Can you tell me what happened.’
She replies, ‘I don’t know.’
They drive in silence for a little longer then he gives a heavy sigh.
‘I should have made it clearer when you came last week that there are physical causes of memory loss,’ he says. ‘Even if we can rule out a head injury, there are other possible problems.’