Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

Madeleine watched as the uniformed British Airways attendant poured her tea.

‘Would you like some cake, Mrs Giannelli? Some shortbread?’

‘Oh, shortbread, please,’ said Madeleine. She liked shortbread, even more than she liked chocolate digestive biscuits, Britain’s two greatest contributions to world culture, as far as she was concerned.

She sipped her tea. The first-class lounge at Heathrow’s Terminal Four was almost empty. A young man whom she thought she recognized from the television was reading a tabloid newspaper in a seat not far away. Young? He was probably fifty.

She was worried. She hadn’t heard from Clémence at all. There were no messages from her at the Connaught when Madeleine had checked out a couple of hours earlier. Madeleine didn’t own a cell phone, so she was effectively out of touch until she got back to her apartment on Park Avenue later that night.

Also nothing from Jerry.

Actually, although she was worried, it was nice to be out of touch for a few hours. Up in the sky, there was nothing she could do that would have any impact on the disaster that was unfolding in Scotland.

At times like this, she missed Nathan. They had been such a good team. Both of them capable, both of them ambitious, both of them respected each other. They had achieved a lot together, she and Nathan.

But it was all built on one massive, horrible lie. Nathan had killed her little sister Sophie and then kept quiet about it, despite all the havoc it had caused in so many people’s lives. Actually two lies. Nathan had killed her first husband as well. For their entire marriage Madeleine had been happy to go along with the others that it was all some ghastly accident, but now she wasn’t so sure.

Her fury, which was never dormant for long these days, reignited.

Nathan had deserved to die. She didn’t regret her part in that for one moment.

All along she had done what she could for Sophie’s family. She had tried to keep in touch with her sister’s three children. She had helped with Clémence’s education, and with Beatrice’s children’s. She had even bought a small flat for Stephen to live in when he had been let out of jail. But she hadn’t made it right. Only Nathan’s death would make it right.

But the rest? She was too tired for all the rest. Like Alden’s death, and Sophie’s, Nathan’s killing was giving birth to a whole series of unintended consequences, to at least one unintended death. Because Alastair Cunningham would probably now be dead.

And Madeleine regretted that now. Sophie had loved Alastair, of that she was sure. Alastair would have made a much better husband for her than Stephen. And she had felt some sympathy for the courageous old man she had met over the last couple of days, trying to do his best to sort out the chaos he had created.

Fabrice had insisted that Alastair had had to die, and Madeleine felt that she owed Fabrice her help and protection for killing her husband. When she had learned from Stephen that Nathan had really killed Sophie, she had felt it her duty to get in touch with all Sophie’s children: Rupert, Beatrice and Fabrice. Beatrice and Rupert had not wanted to know, but Jerry, as he now was, had flown to Phoenix from LA immediately.

They had met in secret at a hotel in Scottsdale. She wasn’t sure whose idea it was to kill Nathan; they both seemed to think of it at the same time. Jerry had already killed once before. Madeleine had been involved wittingly or unwittingly in the cover up of at least two deaths.

Nathan had had to die, and Jerry had run him down in a hit-and-run, using precise information from Madeleine about where and when Nathan went for his evening strolls at their house in Scottsdale.

But Alastair, rather than just shutting up, had kept asking questions, to the point where he had guessed or discovered what Fabrice had done, and was threatening to make it public. Although Alastair hadn’t made the connection between Fabrice Trickett-Smith and Jerry Ranger, the police would once they started looking through their databases. Madeleine had felt duty-bound to tell Jerry, and having aided in his actions, didn’t feel she had the right to stop him from protecting himself, even if that meant killing Alastair.

And, of course, once Jerry had killed Alastair, he would need to lie low. Probably get a new identity. All with Madeleine’s help.

And so it would go on. And on. Who knew who else might end up dead in the future? Not Clémence, please not Clémence.

Actually, now Nathan was dead, Madeleine wanted to finish it all. Tell the truth, all of it. And face the consequences.

She bit into her shortbread.

‘Mrs Giannelli?’

She looked up to see a polite young man in a suit holding out a warrant card. Two uniformed airport policemen armed with machine guns stood behind him. The other inhabitants of the first-class lounge were silent, staring.

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Detective Constable Ford. Will you accompany me to the police station? We have some questions to ask you in connection with the murder of your husband.’

Madeleine closed her eyes. Opened them. Smiled. It was over.

‘With pleasure.’

Thursday 22 April 1999, St Andrews

Clémence slipped out of her French New Wave film studies lecture and hurried down the Scores to the hotel. She saw the old man alone at a table in a corner of the dining room, examining the menu.

‘Alastair!’ she shouted and rushed over to him. He scrambled to his feet and accepted her hug with a grin. ‘It’s so nice to see you!’ she gabbled. ‘Thanks for coming all this way to take me to lunch. You look very well.’

‘Not at all,’ said the old man. ‘I feel very well.’

Clémence sat opposite him. The world-weary confusion had been replaced by sprightliness. His brown eyes twinkled. He was still thin, and very old, but there was steel in the way that he sat, in his jaw, in the way he held his menu. Steel that glinted.

Clémence was almost overwhelmed by a surge of emotion, which it took her a moment to identify as happiness. She was just so pleased to see him alive and well and eager to see her. It was too much of a stretch to say that he was the only family that she had, yet with her mother entwined with her banker boyfriend in Hong Kong, her father in a Vietnamese school and her fairy great-aunt in jail, that’s what it felt like.

‘Nice smile,’ said the old man.

For some reason, Clémence felt her face reddening.

‘And nice blush.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she said. She pulled a thick hardback book from her bag and dropped it with a thud on the table. ‘The Oxford English Dictionary,’ she said.

The old man glanced at her under his bushy eyebrows. ‘I know. I’ve looked it up.’

‘Read it out loud to me,’ Clémence ordered.

The old man flicked to the relevant page. He cleared his throat. ‘“Atelier. Noun. A workshop or studio. Origin seventeenth century, from French.”’

‘I think that’s pretty clear, don’t you?’ said Clémence, in triumph. She replaced the dictionary in her bag. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Train. I drove myself to the station. I’m driving now. I own an old Rover, you know. The MacInneses were looking after it.’

Clémence raised her eyebrows.

‘I’m perfectly safe.’

‘Is Sheila looking after you as well as your car?’

‘She keeps an eye on me. But I can do everything myself now. I even went down to London last week to buy Stephen those two pints I owed him.’

‘How was that?’

‘He only drank one of them,’ said the old man. ‘He is a miserable old git. But we’re going to stay in touch.’

They ordered. With only a moment’s hesitation, Clémence opted for the steak and chips. As an experienced student, she knew meals out were opportunities not to be missed. The old man joined her, and they each ordered a glass of red wine.