Nicci French - The Memory Game

The next cupboard was crammed with magazines and newspapers, probably old reviews and interviews. The next was what I was looking for. Piled along the shelves were dozens of hard-backed notebooks. I pulled one out at random. On its cover was written 1970. was close. I thumbed through the pages, all of which were densely filled in with the events of a day. I picked another volume and then another. They were all the same. At least he had kept up one form of writing. From far down in the house I could hear voices, the chink of china. Nobody was coming up here.

I quickly found the volume I was looking for. I opened it and a piece of paper fluttered out and landed at my feet. I hurriedly flicked through the volume but when I reached July I found something I hadn’t expected, the stubs of pages which had been ripped from the book. From the beginning of July until September there was nothing. Then the entries resumed as before. I felt stymied. Almost as a reflex, I bent down to pick up the slip of paper that had fallen from the book. It was a yellowing piece of lined paper, full size, folded in half. I opened it out. It looked as if it had been hastily torn from a notebook because it was ripped jaggedly across the top. I instantly recognised the blue-biro handwriting as Natalie’s. I still knew her handwriting as well as I knew my own. It read:

I don’t know what the point is of avoiding me. We’re in the same house! You know what you’ve done to me. You know what’s happening. Do you think you can do nothing? Do you think you can get away with this? Okay, don’t talk to me. So long as you know that I’m going to do what I have to even if it brings the whole family down. I’ll tell everything and I don’t care then if I have to kill myself. I still can’t believe it. I thought families were about protection.

Natalie

I felt entirely calm now. I refolded Natalie’s note, and slipped it back inside the diary volume. I turned and saw Alan standing in the doorway. He was still wearing his large coat and the rubber boots which had masked his footsteps on the stair carpet. He was breathing heavily from his climb.

‘I think you’d be more likely to find the binoculars downstairs.’

‘I wasn’t looking for the binoculars. Where’s Claud?’

‘Downstairs. If you’re going to break into my study, Jane, you ought to be more careful about switching the light on. From the wood opposite it was not unlike the Blackpool Illuminations. What are you doing here, Jane? I see you’ve been reading my great works.’

‘I saw you, Alan.’

‘Indeed?’

‘I saw you kill Natalie. I saw you strangle her. I forgot and I’ve remembered again. And now I’ve got proof.’

‘What do you mean “saw me”? What proof?’

He approached me. I tried to move past him but he caught me by the wrist, and the book fell to the floor. I cried out in pain as he pushed me down into a chair. I struggled to get up and he pushed me back down with his other hand on my neck, then both hands.

‘Is this what you saw? Was it like this?’

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I was rocked by spasms as I fought for breath. Then he let go. As I coughed and gasped, he slowly bent down and picked up the diary. He quickly found Natalie’s note and opened it up and read it. He replaced it in the book and closed it. He handed it to me.

‘You raped your daughter and killed her,’ I said. ‘But I saw it.’

Alan started to blubber messily. Then he struck himself on the head repeatedly, while snotty liquid poured down his cheeks.

‘You did, didn’t you Alan?’ I shouted. ‘You fucked your daughter and murdered her?’

A thin trickle of blood made its way down his face. He touched the blood with a finger and held it up.

‘Guilty. Guilty guilty guilty!’

Then he subsided. He slumped down on the floor and sat there in silence, apparently unaware even of my presence. I got up from the chair, clutching the book, and tiptoed past him.

I didn’t want to meet anybody. I crept down the stairs and out of the back door. I slipped the notebook safely into the inside pocket of my thick coat and strode away from the house. I chose one of the walks I knew best, one of the longest, most exposed and one of the most familiar, which I knew I could manage without any thought. I walked through woods and then up hills with winds so strong they almost blew me over and, on this cold, blustery day, such a view that I could have sworn that I could see all the way to the Beacons in Wales.

I went on and on, never turning for home. When it was getting dark I reached a pub and I phoned the Stead and told Claud not to expect me back for supper and I’d explain everything later. I ate a lasagne with some warm frothy beer, followed by an astringent rhubarb crumble with custard and black coffee. The woman behind the bar showed me a map and I was able to walk back to the Stead along the road under the illumination of the fullest of moons. By the time I heard my boots crunching on the drive, all the lights were out. I went straight to my room and fell heavily asleep, the diary under my pillow.

By the time I came down in the morning it was after nine. I could see Fred and Lynn outside, loading the car. Claud was fixing a shelf in the kitchen. I asked him where Alan was and he told me that Alan and Theo had driven into town. Shopping, he supposed. He gestured to the oven. Inside was a pan with eggs, tomatoes, bacon. I devoured them with tea and orange juice. Would it be all right if I borrowed Claud’s car for the morning? Yes. He asked if I had anything to tell him. Not yet, I said. I swallowed the last of the tea, took his keys and went to the car, hugging Fred and Lynn on the way.

At the front desk of Kirklow police station, I asked for Helen Auster. She was away.

‘Can I see whoever’s standing in for her, then?’

I looked at the posters until a thickset young man appeared and introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Braswell. I showed him the diary and Natalie’s note and in a few sentences explained where I had found it. He looked startled and led me through the station to the office of Kirklow CID, pleasingly modern and industrial in design. A hum of conversation stopped as I entered and several people looked at me in curiosity. Braswell led me through them and out to an interview room. He asked if he could take the diary for a moment. Within a very short time he returned with two more men, the younger of them carrying a blue plastic moulded chair which he placed in a corner. The other, obviously the senior officer, was a slight man, with a florid face and dull brown hair, combed flat with obvious effort. He stepped forward and shook my hand.

‘I’m Detective Superintendent Wilks. I’m in charge of this inquiry,’ he said. ‘And I think you’ve met Detective Constable Turnbull before.’

I nodded at the young man hovering in the corner. We all sat as Wilks continued.

‘DS Braswell, assisted by DC Turnbull, will do any interviewing that is necessary. I just wanted to sit in for a preliminary chat, if that’s agreeable to you. First, is there anything we can get you? Tea? Coffee?’

Turnbull was dispatched to get four teas.

‘Where’s Detective Sergeant Auster?’ I asked.

‘On leave,’ Wilks said.

‘In the middle of the case?’

‘DS Auster is no longer on the case,’ said Wilks. ‘At her own request.’

‘Oh.’

‘Now, Mrs Martello, can you tell us about this diary?’

I described in detail how I had searched Alan’s study and found it and the note inside.

‘Yes,’ said Wilks, lifting up the note which was now encased in a plastic folder. ‘There is no doubt that that is the handwriting of Natalie Martello?’