Catch Your Death (25 page)

‘
I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘
Come and sit down.’

‘
No, I really am going to be sick.’

She broke away from him and completed her staggering journey to the bathroom. Crouching over the toilet, she vomited. Last night’s dinner and drinks. She spat and flushed the toilet, falling back onto the floor, her hair in her face, her mouth sour. Paul, who had been hanging behind her in the doorway, unsure of whether to intrude, came tentatively into the room and crouched beside her. He stroked her hair gently and she grabbed him, burying her face against his shoulder.

‘
What did they do to me?’ she whispered.

‘
I don’t know…’

She pushed him to arm’s length, her face contorted with anger. ‘What did they fucking do to me? Those bastards. Leonard. He was like an uncle to me. A kindly uncle.’

‘
It seems to me that Leonard was trying to protect you.’

‘
But he was involved in it all.’ She clutched her head as if trying to dig out the memories that refused to be found. ‘And I don’t even know what it was. Because I was reconditioned.’

‘
Let’s find out what the Pimenov Technique is.’

‘
How are we going to do that?’

Paul got up and went back into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later with his laptop. ‘I checked earlier. Someone around here has wireless internet and hasn’t password protected it. We can surf using their connection.’

‘
Give it to me.’

‘
Kate, maybe you should try to calm down a little.’

‘
Don’t order me around! Who do you think you are, my husband?’

‘
Kate…’

‘
Just give me the laptop.’ She opened it up, but paused before she started typing. She looked up. She was a mess, her hair wild, lips wet, and eyes bloodshot. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Paul. This is just such a shock.’

‘
I understand.’

He got down on the floor and sat next to her, both of them leaning back against the bath.

‘
I must stink,’ she said.

He kissed her cheek. ‘Hmm, more of a pong, actually.’

‘
Hey!’

‘
Do you want me to do the honours?’ He gestured towards the laptop and she handed it over. He Googled ‘pimenov technique’ but there were no useful results, just a load of pages where the Russian surname Pimenov and the word technique happened to appear in close proximity. Nothing about memory or ‘reconditioning’.

‘
Let me try Pimenov on its own,’ Paul suggested.

But that was fruitless too. Pimenov appeared to be the name of a contemporary Russian football player, and there were pages of results about matches he’d played in. Useless.

Kate said, ‘Try it with different words, like memory, or, I don’t know, reconditioning.’

‘
Good idea.’

He typed all three words in for good measure. The first few results were rubbish, but Kate pointed at the screen: ‘What’s that?’

The link was to a site called www.allinthemind.com. Paul clicked the link, and they waited. ‘Come on,’ Paul urged, watching the blue bar creep to the right. Finally the page appeared.

‘
It’s a forum,’ Paul said. ‘A messageboard where people chat about issues they’re interested in.’

‘
I know what a forum is.’

‘
Sorry.’

But Kate was already scanning the page for the mention of Pimenov. Paul hit CTRL-F to bring up a box so he could search the page for the word. He searched up, then down. It wasn’t there.

‘
This happens sometimes. The search engine finds a page but then the page disappears before they realise it’s gone. That’s because search engines can’t crawl every site constantly.’

They went back to the search engine results page. There were two lines of text that must have been pulled from the original page on allinthemind.com.

…
like the CIA, the KGB developed reconditioning techniques. There are reports that Pimenov, a Russian scientist…

…
using a combination of LSD and hypnosis to erase the memory of undesirables, though the methods were said to be…

Paul took Kate’s hand. ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘In your head. They can’t have completely erased your memories. We know that because they didn’t want you to come back to the UK. And that’s why Sampson is after you – to stop you remembering whatever it is they tried to make you forget.’

‘
About what happened to Stephen and Sarah.’

‘
I know what we need to do,’ Paul said. ‘But you might not like it.’

CHAPTER 32

Vernon rang the doorbell of Miranda’s house and took a step back, looking up at the bay windows with their Laura Ashley curtains. Miranda had always been a bit twee, he’d thought – not that he’d met her many times. She lacked Kate’s spunk, her vivacity, although he had always suspected that his sister-in-law had the hots for him. The times they’d met, she’d looked at him in a certain way, from under her lashes. Shame she was so wussy. It would be quite deliciously thrilling, having Kate’s sister; a great way of getting one over on his wife.

Thinking about siblings, his thought trail led on to Jack and his regret that the poor little guy didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Vernon had wanted another child – a girl, preferably – but Kate had turned frigid on him while she was pregnant with Jack and had never thawed. She had always been an ice princess. She had the lowest sex drive of any woman he’d ever been with. Coaxing her legs open was like trying to persuade a cat to go walkies. He pitied whichever man she moved onto, assuming she didn’t spend the rest of her life locked up in a lab studying creatures you couldn’t even see. He could foresee her future: she’d end up with some other boring asshole in a white coat, pouring all their passion into their research, winning some dull award and having a disease named after them.

He was lucky the marriage hadn’t dragged on any longer. It was far better to extricate himself now, while he was still young enough to enjoy life. And he was going to have his son by his side while he did so. Well, perhaps not exactly by his side – he didn’t want his style cramped too much. He had plans to send Jack to boarding school once he got him back to the States. Somewhere his mother wouldn’t be able to poison his mind and make him soft.

Vernon heard footsteps coming towards the door inside the house, causing his heartbeat to speed up. It was possible that Kate was here, and with her, Jack. At the very least, Miranda would be sure to know where they were.

The door opened and a bald, middle-aged man said, ‘Can I help you?’

Vernon looked past him. No sign of Jack. He fixed the man with his most authoritative Harvard lecturer’s stare. ‘Is Miranda here?’

The man appeared confused for a moment, then his face cleared. ‘You mean Miranda Hetherington? I’m afraid she doesn’t live here any more. She and her family moved away about a month ago.’

Vernon processed this information. ‘That’s a real pity. I’m an old college friend visiting from America. I guess I’ve had a wasted journey.’ He shook his head disappointedly and exhaled a long, tragic sigh.

‘
Oh, don’t worry,’ smiled the man. ‘I’ve got her new address. I’ll just fetch it for you.’

Vernon grinned. ‘Would you? That would be marvellous.’

On the way to Kate’s sister’s house, Sampson found himself driving past a large out-of-town shopping estate, a Toys R Us standing out among the DIY superstores and carpet warehouses. On impulse, he pulled in and minutes later was walking the aisles of robots and plush monsters, videogames and karaoke machines, looking for a pink teddy bear. He hadn’t intended to do this, and he wasn’t doing it because he found it amusing – he had no sense of humour – or for sentimental reasons. He just thought the bear might be useful.

He remembered little Amelia’s happy voice on the phone. He had never killed a child. He’d never had call to, or been instructed to do so. He wondered what it would be like: if it would feel any different to killing an adult. When he had taken his first life, it had excited him, thrilled him, and he had spent the years since hoping in vain to replicate that thrill. That first murder had been when he was eighteen. A girl called Kelly who had spat in his face when he raped her on their first date. He put his strong hands around her throat and pressed his thumbs into her windpipe. The disbelief and terror in her eyes turned him on. When she went limp and stopped breathing he was still inside her. It was a beautiful moment. Come to think of it, she looked a little like Kate did when she was around that age, at the CRU. Not as stunning as Kate, but there had definitely been a similarity.

Since Kelly, no murder had given him that charge of excitement. Perhaps killing a child would do it.

Killing Kate’s child. Now that would be something.

He could picture Kate’s face as she watched her son die at his hands. Hear her screams. She would be in thrall to his power. Her pain would be like a star bursting. Immense, intense. Afterwards, she wouldn’t struggle or fight any more. She would be dead inside. And she would be his.

At the checkout, he paid for the teddy bear, which was called a Care Bear. The insipid smile on its face made him sick. But the young woman behind the counter smiled at him like he was a kindly father or uncle. He looked around the store. There were children everywhere, little girls and boys of every size and colour. Perhaps he should take one, see what happened. Practice. But as the cashier slipped the Care Bear into a carrier bag he decided not to waste his time. He had to get on.

In the car, he consulted his map and headed south – towards Kate’s sister. Towards Kate’s son.

Miranda peered out of the window and wished it would stop raining so the children could go and play outside. The boys were in George’s room, playing video games, watched by Amelia. Every now and then she heard Amelia squeal, ‘Let me have a go.’ The Playstation was an even better childminder than the TV, though Miranda felt horrible for letting them play on it for so long, especially Jack, who had never been allowed to play video games before. Miranda had this nagging voice in the back of her head telling her she should be encouraging them to create their own entertainment with pens and coloured card. But that would be deemed “boring”.

She checked her watch. Five thirty. Was it too early for a glass of wine? She had a really nice bottle of Merlot on top of the fridge. She could taste it, the fruitiness on her tongue, the smoothing of her nerves. But she would wait half an hour. Then pour herself a really big glass. If she timed it right, she might be in a good mood when Pete got home from work. Assuming he came home at the usual time and didn’t stay behind for a drink as he’d been doing a lot recently. There was a new woman working at the veterinary surgery, some skinny young creature called Jennifer, who Pete talked about a lot, as if he couldn’t help but mention her at every opportunity. Miranda didn’t think anything would come of it. It was probably just one of those little workplace crushes that time would dampen and kill. The thing was, she found she didn’t really care as much as she should. She wondered abstractly what it would be like if Pete left her, bringing up the children on her own. It wouldn’t be too bad. At least it would be a change.

Damn rain, she thought, making her feel melancholy and discontented. It was always the same when it rained in summer. She went into the kitchen – refusing to look in the direction of the Merlot – and opened the cupboard doors, trying to decide what to give the children for their tea. Kate was bringing up Jack as a vegetarian, which was annoying, but he certainly looked well on it. He was a lovely little boy. Mercifully unlike his father.

It had been lovely to see Kate, of course, but Miranda couldn’t help but feel envious of her sister. She had always envied her a little – her career, living in America, her looks – but now she wished even more that her life was as exciting as Kate’s. Okay, perhaps leaving your husband, fleeing halfway across the world and going on some bizarre hunt with the brother of an ex-love could be better described as traumatic, or at least stressful… but it wasn’t domesticity. It wasn’t being stuck at home longing for a glass of wine while your husband flirted with his junior – his young – colleagues.

Maybe she should have that glass of wine now. It was nearly six. And it wasn’t as if it would do any harm. Just a small glass, sipped slowly. Then she’d make tea. She took the bottle down from the fridge and uncorked it. She filled the glass up rather higher than she’d intended – how clumsy – but she really shouldn’t waste it. She took a big, warming gulp. Then another.

That was better.

She sat at the kitchen table and ran a finger around the rim of the glass. She heard a shout from upstairs, and her first instinct was to leap up and make sure everything was okay. But then she heard laughter and relaxed. The children were merely enjoying their game. George and Amelia seemed to like having their cousin over from the States. The first thing George wanted to know when they met was whether he’d ever seen a gun; Amelia wanted to know if he’d been to Disneyland.

The telephone rang. She jumped up, thinking it might be Kate. ‘Hello?’

‘
Hello darling.’ It was Pete. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I’m going to be late home. We’ve had a hell of a day – it’s been like a whole series of All Creatures Great and Small rolled into one.’ He chuckled. This was an old joke of his. ‘Anyway, I had to rush up to the Grange to see one of old Mountford’s favourite horses, which I managed to save, and now Mountford wants to take me and the whole surgery out for a drink to say thanks. You know how hard it is to say no to him.’