It was nearly all gone. Three more squares. Two.
Scott didn't see the last blocks fade: there was simply a moment when he realised he was staring at a blank white canvas, abandoned against a wall.
A moment when he realised he'd lost her.
4 DECEMBER
5 HOURS, 20 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
2.00 A.M.
Mark
Each floor of the hospital seemed to inhabit its own shade of the spectrum. The reception area and waiting room downstairs had been pale blue. Here, one floor up, everything was either washed-out green or turquoise. Whoever had designed the building had used a colour-scheme with all the vibrancy sucked out of the palette. It was all very 'hospital', I thought. If you woke up here confused, the pastel shades alone would convince you that you were sick.
Because of the nature of our enquiry, Scott Banks had been given his own room in the east wing. It was small, with enough space around a single bed to fit a trolley of equipment on one side and a chair for me on the other. It was also very dark. The blinds were drawn and the lights had been dimmed. It felt appropriate that the bandaged figure on the bed had a covering of shadow to rest under.
He was sleeping, his slow and steady breathing interrupted by an intermittent hitch in his throat: a wheeze and a click. The only other sound in the room was from the equipment: the quietly comforting beep of his pulse, registered by a quivering green line on a machine by the bed. He was on a drip: IV fluids were keeping his temperature steady and administering morphine to take the teeth out of the pain he'd feel when awake.
The entire right side of his head was padded with gauze to form a football of bandages; his left cheek was patterned with butterfly plasters. White blankets on the bed were pulled up to his chin.
Another wheeze and click, his chest rising and lowering almost imperceptibly.
I found I was synchronising my own breathing with his, allowing it to calm me down. It had been tense downstairs after Pete left, and I'd been glad when Li returned. He'd brought me up here about ten minutes ago, a journey that took in a cramped, noisy elevator and then what felt like endless corridors filled with movement and activity. Wherever I'd walked, I was exactly where somebody else needed to be. More practised, Li had moved through the throng with ease, while I floundered behind, catching the instructions he called back to me.
'... sleeping at the moment. And that's all I ask; that you let him sleep when he needs to. He has to rest ...'
And so on.
I'd nodded, although he couldn't have seen me, and wondered what the fuck he thought I was going to do. Jab his patient with a pen, presumably.
When we arrived at the room, the security guard had already been in place. He was tall and solid, dressed in a pale brown uniform. Li introduced me, but I showed him my badge anyway and made sure he understood the deal. Hospital personnel and myself aside, nobody was to be allowed in to see Scott Banks.
Now I was sitting quietly with his file on my lap, attempting to formulate an interview strategy. But the quiet and the dark were soothing, and it was difficult to think. I felt the tension and the bustle of the day lifting from me, the length and exhaustion settling in, and I had to keep mentally slapping myself back on course.
Confidence comes from knowledge.
What did I know here? The closest parallel I could think of was Daniel Roseneil. He had also been tortured, but physical pain was only a part of it. Roseneil was a man who had been forced to abandon someone he loved. Even though that decision was tempered by the context, the responsibility for it had been too overwhelming for him to bear, and so he had let go of the memory - thrown it where it couldn't be found. It was likely that Scott would be the same.
He wants to help but he's afraid to remember.
I pictured it as a door in his head. His mind would have shut the trauma away on the other side. But he could still see the door itself and he'd be getting certain impressions of what lay behind it. His girlfriend was behind it, and she was in danger, so part of him wanted to open the door and help her. But another part of him knew what else was shut away there and wouldn't let him go near. My job was to help him reconcile the two. I had to keep the scared part comforted and distracted while I led the other across to the door and helped him open it.
To do so, I would have to disregard the argument we'd had downstairs. Thinking with my head, I was sure Pete was right. Scott's girlfriend was probably dead and the killer gone. Inside this room, though, there were going to be two simple truths that I would stick to no matter what: Jodie was alive; and we were going to find her. Those were the ground rules.
Then there was the method.
When it comes down to it, all interviews are actually very similar. I remembered interrogating an old man we were fairly sure had abducted a child from a playground, and when I sat down with him I knew straight away that he was our guy. He was eaten up with self-disgust, and a part of him clearly wanted to confess and get what he'd done out in the open; but at that time he couldn't bring himself to admit it. So all we got was lies and evasions. He wasn't there, he was somewhere else; he never saw her. He would never hurt a little girl.
But the truth existed in the straight chronology of his memory, and so I took him along it, step by step. Where were you at twelve? Then where did you go? Visualise it - walk through the day in your head. The old man did, and every so often he'd bump up against one of his lies and have to blur the detail. At that point, he suddenly couldn't remember quite as well, and so we'd back off for a bit and talk about something else. Then we'd press a little more. He wasn't going anywhere and he knew it, which allowed the truth to come out in degrees. Yes, he was there at the playground, but he didn't do anything, didn't see the little girl. Ten minutes later we'd got to, well, maybe he did see her. Then, yes, she went for a walk with him but she was fine - he left her by the trees and someone else must have hurt her afterwards. And so on. Step by step, he gave it up. He knew we had him, but it was too difficult for him to run straight there and say, 'I did it.' At the end of the interview, he actually looked grateful.
This was a different situation, but the same principle applied. Scott's experiences formed a wound. I would have to press carefully around the edges to see which parts were tender, slowly getting him used to the pressure. We would work gently, approaching the truth with patience.
Or as much patience as the time limit allowed.
I looked up from the rise and fall of his chest to his face. The part of it I could see, anyway. It was two o'clock in the morning; about seven hours until dawn. Regardless of my promise to Doctor Li, if Scott Banks didn't wake up soon I might end up having to jab him with a pen after all.
In the meantime, I adjusted the file slightly, leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.
'Hello?'
I jerked awake. Scott's file hit the floor and the papers spread out in a fan. Shit. I leaned down to gather them back together, looking up at the bed at the same time. Scott was watching me. My brain told me that in order to salvage my self-respect I would have to pretend I hadn't been asleep, but I decided that was hopeless.
How fucking professional do you look right now?
'I'm sorry.' I spoke quietly, as though he was still asleep. 'It's been a long day.'
'That's okay.'
He kept his voice down, too. Perhaps it was the room: the hospital forcing us into a conversation full of whispers.
'You looked like you were having a nightmare,' he said.
'I was. I'm sorry.'
The dream was already fading, but I knew it had been about Lise. I couldn't remember what. Had it been the same as that morning? The only impression I had left was the sound of the sea, rushing and breaking. The same feeling of despair; it was like starvation, but inside the heart.
'I keep having nightmares, too,' Scott said. 'I can't remember them properly. Everything's confused.'
'I think that's to be expected. Do you know where you are?'
He nodded carefully. 'But you're not a doctor. Are you here to protect me?'
'Like in the movies?' I could have smiled - some guard I'd be right now - but it wouldn't hurt for Scott to know he was safe. 'I suppose I am, sort of. My name's Mark Nelson. I'm a detective. Basically, I'm here to keep you company, chat for a bit. See if we can shed some light on what's happened to you this evening.'
He considered this for a moment, and then began an attempt at pulling himself up into a sitting position. The trolley by the bedside moved with him, the bag on the drip beginning to rock gently.
I felt a flush of panic. 'Careful you don't knock that.'
'I'm fine.'
There was a hard edge to his voice, like he was suffering and finding it hard to take, but determined to keep going. The covers fell away slightly, revealing a slim, athletic body. There were bruises like black and purple stains on his skin. I kept my wince inside: bruises don't appear that quickly unless you've been hit very hard. I saw more bandages as well, covering what must have been numerous cuts. The tube leading from his arm to the trolley was tied tightly to him with swathes of white cloth.
'Your doctor would kill us both if he saw you doing that,' I said. 'He seems a pretty tough guy.'
'He didn't want me to speak to you.'
'No.'
'But I have to.'
I nodded, noting the language: 'have to', not 'want to'.
'I need to tape record our conversations.' I gestured at the equipment I'd brought. 'Is that okay?'
'Yes.'
'If at any point you want to stop' - I spread my hands - 'that's fine. We take a break, pick it up again later on. Basically, I'll be back and forth for the duration. We'll see how we get on.'
'I don't know how much help I'm going to be.' He frowned. 'My head keeps going ... in circles.'
'Well, we'll just take things easy to start with,' I said. 'I want you to stay as calm and relaxed as possible. You may not remember properly at the moment, but I know you're very worried about your girlfriend.'
Immediately: 'Jodie.'
'I know you're worried about her. And that might make you feel panicky. As much as possible, I want you to try not to worry. The guy in charge is the best there is at this sort of thing. So we'll do the worrying for you.'
'But she's still there. In the woods.'
'We know.' I tried to be as reassuring and decisive as possible. 'And we're going to find her. There's a search team in the woods. Jodie's going to be fine.'
His expression settled down a little. 'Do you promise?'
'I promise.'
Change the subject.
'What I want to do first is get as much information from you as possible. Some of it might help us find Jodie, but we'd be talking about all this anyway, because you've been the victim of a crime. This conversation is about you. Okay?'
He nodded uncertainly. I weighed it up and decided to keep moving the conversation away from Jodie. Steer it onto safer ground for now. I put his file on the floor and gave him my full attention.
'Let's start with your flat. You were working at home today?'
'Not really working.'
'What were you doing?'
'I've got the week off. I was doing some things on the computer. Photo-art stuff.'
'Oh, right. You're an artist?'
'No.' He looked sad for a moment. 'Not really. But I was messing around with that today. Then I went and did some weights in our spare room.'
Our
spare room. So he lived with Jodie. No great surprise, but still an important detail. And it raised the question again. This couple had a base, but rather than holding them there like all the others the 50/50 Killer had taken them into the woods instead. Why had he done that?
'What time was this?' I said.
'About three, maybe.'
Scott ran through what he remembered. The delivery was slightly fragmented, but I took that to be a symptom of both the painkillers he was on and the overall confusion he was suffering. The important thing was that the basic details matched what he'd told the first officer on the scene, and then the doctors here. It was a good indication that what he
could
recall was at least coming out right.
When he'd nearly finished exercising, he'd heard a noise, he said, and emerged from his weights room expecting to find Jodie home from work early. The television had been on, but the front room was empty. He'd walked across.
'And I had time to think "What?" and then he came at me.'
The man hiding in the kitchen had leaped out from the side. Scott had been attacked and subdued - hit hard, before having something pressed into his face. That was all he could remember from the flat.
The more he talked, the more frustrated he became - increasingly angry, to the point where he seemed almost disgusted with himself. I recognised the emotion, and as he finished, if his hands hadn't been bandaged up like boxing gloves, I thought he might have punched himself on the thigh in anger. It was something I'd done myself over the past six months, when the feelings got too much for me. Sometimes you had to let them out.
'I was so stupid,' he said. 'So useless.'
'No, you weren't.'
I tried to put myself in his situation. He obviously kept himself in good shape, yet all that time spent working out had proved meaningless when it actually mattered. If he'd been able to defend himself everything would have turned out differently. By failing, it felt like he'd condemned them both to what followed.
It was an area of self-recrimination that I wanted to keep him away from for now.
'I lift weights a bit, too,' I said. 'You know how it feels after a big workout - you can barely lift your arms. The man who did this to you has done it before, and he's smart. He waited until you were exhausted and less capable of fighting back, and he distracted you so he could get the upper hand. It would have happened the same to anyone.'