Mr. Nobody(96)

    Chris looks down at the tracks once more, scowling. Where were they going? Should he call Rhoda back at the hospital? he wonders. Or he could call for backup, but he thinks better of that. Emma specifically asked him not to do that. He’s got to trust her; after all, she’s trusted him. No, he just needs to find her.

He breathes in deep and races to the car park’s exit. On the snowy country lane, tracks. The car turned right onto the lane. The hospital is left; they drove right, away from the hospital. And suddenly Chris realizes what he has to do next.

Without pausing, he turns and bolts back the way he came, back to the lay-by where he left his car. Wherever her patient took her, it wasn’t back to the hospital.





46


DR. EMMA LEWIS


DAY 13—HOME FREE

My eyelids part and daylight breaks through as the blackness lifts. The soft blur of the world sharpens around me. I recognize the window first. Blinking open my lashes, I see its dark wood lattice, the bare tangle of wisteria clinging outside it. We’re not at Stephen Merriman’s childhood home anymore. We’re at mine.

Panic rises inside me and I feel a dark throb pulse through my skull as I dip under again.

When I surface he’s standing in front of me, Matthew; he’s talking. He’s telling me things. Horrible things that have happened. I float in and out of consciousness, from the soft embrace of blackness to reality and back again. He towers over me, his face different somehow. I try to work out what has changed exactly and realize it’s that he doesn’t care about my opinion anymore. He has stopped trying to be the person he thought he might be, the good person. His voice is freer, skipping along with him as he confesses more, gruesome things I can’t un-hear, things he’s done and has to remember. I am no longer a purveyor of cures, I am a receptacle for nightmares. He knows there is no way back for him and he wants to tell me all about it. A problem shared. I want the sweet release of unconsciousness to take me again but I have no control over it. Some primal survival instinct is keeping me awake, ready, even though there’s nothing I can do.

    I know I’m not leaving here. Not if he’s telling me this. He’s come too far down this road. He talks of names, places, and tells me of the lives of people who never made it home and never got found because of him. He tells me it all with sadness in his eyes but anger in his voice. And I know I won’t be allowed to leave here.

I look down at my hands, zip-tied to the arms of a chair. Red welts rise puffy and sore around my wrists. My bandages are long gone. I must have struggled against the ties at some point, though I don’t remember doing so. I can see now that the hand I bricked straight through my car window is broken; it lies red and swollen against the armrest.

When I look up, Matthew is leaving the room, saying something I don’t catch. I watch his legs disappear into the hallway. He’s going to get something. I think about running. I shift my weight forward on the seat but the rush of blood to my head makes me lose balance and I tip forward, crashing down, chair and all, onto the parquet flooring. The side of my head makes a sharp thump of contact and there’s darkness again.

It’s a strange noise that brings me around. The sound of something being slowly rolled toward me, rising in proximity and volume. Something small rolls across the parquet floor toward my face, then a soft tap on my cheek. Another rolling noise begins, tumbling closer and closer, this time ending with a tap to the end of my nose.

I open my eyes. Matthew is sitting slumped against the wall opposite me, rolling stubby-looking red tubes toward me. Another brushes my lips and I struggle to focus on it. It rolls to a stop inches from my face, red plastic with a coppery metallic end, like a joke shop lipstick but not.

I bolt upright, realizing what they are.

Shotgun cartridges.

    With a whimper I shuffle back as far as I can while still bound to the toppled chair, my eyes frantically searching the room for the gun.

And then I see it, propped against the door next to a large canvas carryall. The shotgun. Oh God, oh God. This is real. He’s going to kill me.

I barely have time to turn away before the vomit comes. A retch of pure terror onto the reclaimed flooring, the smell sharp and vile mixed with the fresh-paint scent of the house.

I understand instantly why he’s brought me back here. My whole body starts to tremble as the tears come unbidden and silent down my cheeks.

He’s going to shoot me in the same room my father shot himself fourteen years ago. I’m going to die here, like this.

I sense Matthew rising opposite me but I refuse to look up at him, so he approaches, squatting down in front of me solicitously. There is something in his hand. A piece of crisp white paper.

“Have a read of this, Emma. Let me know if you’re happy with it? I can change the wording if you like but I think I got the handwriting pretty good.”

I can’t focus on the words dancing in front of me. It’s a letter. Some sort of letter. Bizarrely, the handwriting looks just like mine, but I didn’t write this. I read the words.

Please. No.

It’s a suicide note. My suicide note. I didn’t write this. I look up at his face hanging over me. He’s not just going to shoot me. He’s going to make it look like I committed suicide, in the exact same way my father did. That’s why he’s brought me back here. That’s why he didn’t just kill me at Lillian Merriman’s house. Because when the police find my body here it will tell a very different story. And it’s a story I know some people will be more than eager to believe.