Mr. Nobody Read online

  “What’s the person waiting’s name?”

  Milly blinks at me blankly. “Oh, sorry, his name is Peter Chorley.”

  I nod. Ah, okay. Well, that makes sense.

  “Thanks, Milly. Tell him I’ll be out in a second.” I don’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that Richard was so certain I’d say yes, but then I suppose he is a neuropsychiatrist and human nature isn’t exactly brain surgery, is it? Oh, wait, it kind of is.

  I lift the receiver back to my ear as Milly slips out of the room.

  “I think whoever was on their way is here, Richard.”

  “Ah! Perfect timing. I’ll leave you to it then. Listen—let me know how it goes, I’m interested. Your secretary has my number. If you need anything at all, you know where I am, Emma. Don’t be a stranger.”

  5

  THE MAN

  DAY 1—BACK ON THE BEACH

  “I understand that, Mike, I do.” Officer Poole and the photographer for the Brancaster Times have reached an impasse in the car park. Mike Redman’s camera hangs from the thick Nikon strap around his neck between them. “I appreciate that you have a job to do, but let us do our job first and then…fire away. Does that sound fair? The most important thing is we get this guy taken care of. Could you just put the camera away, please, mate?”

  Mike scowls, obviously not considering Poole to be his mate.

  Officer Poole shifts his six-foot, four-inch frame into Mike Redman’s personal space and gives him his most reasonable look. “Come on, mate, just put it away.” Mike is unmoved.

  “Look, Mike, the last thing we need is for this guy’s family to find out the state he’s in in the bloody local news. There’s a procedure. So can you please delete those and just…just get back in your car. Now.”

  In the distance an ambulance siren wails closer.

  “Can’t do that, mate.” Mike smirks, with clearly no intention of deleting anything.

  Officer Poole exhales loudly and rubs a hand over his face. “Ah, come on. Look, we both know how you got here so quick. Play the game, Mike. You’ve been warned already. I don’t know why you keep testing the system, ’cause we’re gonna have to charge you at some point, Mike. You know you’re not supposed to be listening in on Airwave. It’s an arrestable offense to listen in on police radio and you know it, mate. I don’t know what equipment you’re using but it’s not legal, the frequency’s supposed to be secure. We will search the office, Mike, I’m serious. We will come down there and search it.”

  “You seriously think The Times is going to let you search their office? On what grounds? You’ve got absolutely no cause. Personally, I’d check for a leak on your end, mate. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Okay, first of all, Mike, you don’t work for THE Times, okay? You write for the fucking Brancaster Times, so don’t get uppity with me. Secondly, if you did work for The Times, you wouldn’t be out here arguing with me in a rural car park, would you? So, do everyone a favor and put the camera away.”

  Behind Mike, at the edge of the car park, an attractive woman rises from a bench, finishing a phone call. Poole has been deliberately ignoring her. Now she pushes her long red hair off her shoulder and makes her way toward the driver’s side of the only other car in the car park. Chris Poole’s face falls. Things are going to get much more complicated now.

  She’s in her early thirties, relaxed, confident as she rests one arm against the open car door and reaches in languidly to pull out a full take-out coffee from the cup holder. She holds Poole’s gaze as she sips.

  “Is there a problem, Officer?” she purrs. This is Zara Poole. Officer Poole’s wife.

  Zara is the only person that can suck the wind right out of his sails and fill them up again. And after all these years, he still feels like the teenage boy Zara flirted with at school whenever he’s around her. She still makes him nervous because, if he’s honest with himself, she’s the only woman he’s ever really wanted to impregnate but she hasn’t let him, yet. They’ve practiced, obviously, but Zara isn’t quite ready to step back from work. Meaning power-play situations never tend to end in his favor.

  “Zee. Honey, can you get Mike to stop, please? No pictures. No anything. Just…let’s just call it a day now, shall we?” Officer Poole holds his wife’s gaze, his weary face imploring. “Zara?”

  She grins. “Out of my hands, sweetheart. Photography is not my department. I just do the words! And, um, Chris honey, quick question? Where are your shoes?” All eyes travel to Officer Poole’s naked feet.

  Poole gives Zara a look. This is the kind of thing they’ve talked about before. Undermining him at work. They’ll talk about this later. Again.

  He changes tack. Letting his uniform do the talking.

  “All right, that’s enough now. I’m going to have to ask you both to get back in your vehicle, please.” He ushers Mike over toward the car, his arms wide like a shepherd’s.

  “Okay, Chris. Okay,” Zara reluctantly acquiesces.

  “I’m going to have to ask that you both remain within your vehicle until the medical crew arrives.”

  Zara slips into the car’s leather interior shaking her head. “Unbelievable…”

  An ambulance flashes into sight through the hedgerows.

  “Sir.” Officer Poole gestures again to Mike Redman. “Sir, if you could also get in the vehicle.” The photographer looks through the windshield to Zara. She nods. A police caution wouldn’t sit well at the paper.

  Mike strolls toward the car as the ambulance roars into the lot, flashing and whirring like a fairground ride. Officer Poole depresses his radio button. “Graceford, this is Poole. Ambulance has arrived at access point. Stand by. Over.” Poole sets off at a jog to meet the first paramedic as he dismounts from the passenger side. The female driver cuts the siren.

  “This is Graceford. Received. Pulse still stable. No change here. Over.”

  “Hypothermia? And shock, yes?” the paramedic asks Poole. He grabs his kit bag and slams the passenger door in one fluid motion.

  “Yes, both. He could have other injuries; we didn’t want to move him. He’s currently stable but unconscious. It’s this way.” Poole and the male paramedic set off back toward the beach. The female paramedic follows with a stretcher under her arm.

  Zara leans back into the warm leather of her car seat and sips her hazelnut latte. She slips her mobile phone out of her bag and scrolls through her contacts. She taps out a message and presses send. Mike, still standing outside the car, leans in through the open passenger window.

  “You know him, Zara, is it worth popping over and grabbing a few more photos, or will he kick off?”

  Zara thinks for a second. “Best not. He’s a bit crabby at the mo. Just grab some iPhone wobble-cam footage. We can pass it off as a member of the public’s footage if we use it. Don’t be too obvious, though, Mike, okay?” She smiles. “I don’t want a divorce. It’s not even a year yet.”

  She watches Mike wander back toward the beach, making his way through the tall grasses on the dunes. Apparently, Mike used to work freelance for the News of the World. When it existed. He only moved back to Norfolk because his mum got sick. She watches his receding back and thinks, There’s always been something slightly off about Mike, but at least he gets the job done.

  Her phone starts to vibrate in her hand. She checks the number and answers.

  “Yeah, so, what we’ve got so far is an unidentified male washed up on the beach. No ID. Witness confirmed. An old guy, we caught him before he left, got a statement. Yeah, I’ve got some story ideas. I’m thinking a Brexit angle. Illegal immigrant washes up, or broken-Britain Middle Englander failed suicide? Either way…” She stops and listens.

  “No. No. We don’t know yet. That’s the point, if he speaks English we’ll go, you know, no job, la la la. If he’s foreign we’ll do the immigration angle. It’s fi
ne whichever….Okay, great, that’s great. Listen, I’ll get more and put something together, get it over to you by five. See how you feel, if you want it it’s yours.” She takes another slurp of coffee. “Yeah, sure, but don’t contact me through the office, I’m going to go freelance on this one. Mobile. Great. Okay, Len, I appreciate it.” She presses end call and looks out at the swaying grasses of the dune. Mike is nowhere to be seen.

  The wind slicing through the open window sends a shiver down her spine. She clicks on her heated seat and the stereo, letting the soothing sound of music drift out from the walnut dash. She closes her eyes. And drifts, suspended for a moment, lost in her thoughts.

  A scream rips long and horrifying through the wind and the low mumble of the radio.

  Zara sits bolt upright in her leather seat. Out of her field of vision, on a grassy dune that slopes down to the beach, Mike Redman rises slowly from his crouch to stand, his camera phone raised and still filming.

  On the beach the fallen man’s screams fly up into the sky. He has regained consciousness with strange hands on him. All over him.

  Midair, his legs gripped firmly by the paramedics, he twists, spine arching, writhing with every ounce of strength he has left, his legs kicking out, arms lashing, scratching. He screams. As if he’s trapped. As if he’s being tortured.

  Officers Poole and Graceford stand lost for words for a microsecond before diving in to assist.

  Graceford, dropping to her knees in the wet sand, restrains the man’s arms, pinning them to his chest, securing the upper body. Poole places his hands down firmly on the man’s flailing shins.

  “Sedative,” the male paramedic directs to the other.

  “Got it,” she replies as Poole nods to her: he has the legs secured. She nods back. Retrieving a small pre-prepped syringe from a Velcroed drug roll, she rips at the paper and plastic.

  “Vein,” she calls out.

  The male paramedic has already rolled up the left sleeve of the man’s wet black top, securing the elbow crease in place. “Ready,” he replies.

  As the female paramedic leans in, the man screams louder.

  In the distance Zara’s head, then shoulders, then body rise into view. She stops in her tracks as another scream rips through the air.

  She pulls her coat tight around her as she stares out across the open expanse of sand to the huddled figures in the distance.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispers to herself.

  And suddenly the screaming stops.

  6

  DR. EMMA LEWIS

  DAY 6—PETER CHORLEY

  Peter Chorley looks exactly as I’d imagined. A reassuring mixture of tweed, butter, and library dust. A kind but sharply intelligent face. Peter is a comfortably dressed Cambridge professor in his sixties. He greets me with a smile, his eyebrows raised mock-conspiratorially at the unusual nature of our first meeting; his handshake is firm and surprisingly warm considering the bitter January cold he’s come in from. I notice his cheeks are flushed and he’s slightly out of breath from his brisk walk from King’s Cross station to the hospital.

  Thankfully, Peter Chorley doesn’t fancy the hospital canteen, so we head back out into the bitter chill of the London streets. I suggest the Wellcome Collection Café, just next door, to get us out of the cold quickly. It’s a medical museum that boasts the tagline “a museum for the incurably curious,” but they also do great coffee and a nice line in homemade pastries, which hits all my major sweet spots. I’ve been coming in here since I moved to London to start medical school. These days I tend to pop in and do admin on my laptop, when I get one of my increasingly rare breaks.

  We order our coffees and choose a table overlooking the museum bookshop.

  Peter stirs a brown sugar into his espresso. “Richard was very keen on you from the get-go,” he says judiciously. “His first choice. I’ll be honest, we had to look you up; we weren’t that familiar with your previous work, case studies, patients, what have you. But it’s impressive. Your work. And regardless of your relative lack of clinical hours in this exact field, Richard’s opinion is trusted. It carries a lot of weight. As you know, he’s the go-to on this sort of thing. Has been for years.”

  A warm feeling spreads through me. I was Richard Groves’s first choice. But then, I already knew that, didn’t I? Still, nice to hear it out loud. I take a sip of my coffee to try to cover the wave of childlike pride I feel sweeping over me, reminding myself that this is still a job interview, even if it doesn’t feel like one.

  Then I snap myself out of it. After all, I don’t even know who exactly it is who is interviewing me just yet. “I really appreciate you coming all the way down here to meet with me, Peter,” I reply. “But I have to ask: what exactly is your role in all of this? Richard mentioned you specialize in neurolinguistics, is that right? You don’t have a background in neuroscience yourself? Are you connected to the patient’s hospital?” I ask, because although very exciting, none of this quite seems to make sense to me yet. The call out of the blue from Groves, the sudden arrival of Peter. I’m not really sure who is asking me to do what. What does Peter Chorley have to do with all this?

  He takes a sip of his espresso and gazes out across the bustling café before looking back at me.

  “Ah, yes, sorry, neurolinguistics as charged.” He gives a pinched smile. “No, no background in your chosen field. But I like to keep up with most areas, or at least I try to.” His laugh is self-deprecating. “For my sins, I’ve been asked to coordinate on this, to source a specialist. I’m here in a purely advisory role.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, it may not look it but I do have a fair few years of clinical experience under my belt, as they say, but now I just tend to advise on the occasional initiative. And teach, of course. No money in any of it, of course.” He chuckles. “But I doubt any of us got into it for that!” His eyes twinkle at me knowingly and I smile back.

  He got that right. NHS pay isn’t great. For perspective, I earn about as much as the average recruitment consultant in London and less than the average mortgage adviser. Of course, I could be earning a packet as a Harley Street psychiatrist—I just don’t want to. I don’t just want a job, I want a vocation. A life.

  “So, you’re working for the government on this? The NHS? The civil service?”

  Peter smiles back at me, amused. “Yes. Yes, I am.” There’s that twinkle again.

  Wait, which one? The National Health Service or the civil service?

  He holds my gaze, inscrutable. He’s not going to tell me who he works for.

  He’s not going to tell me? What the hell is going on?

  I suddenly get the paranoid feeling I might be taken for a ride here. I understand the need for patient confidentiality and the point has been drummed home that this case is going to be tricky in terms of press intrusion, but this is ridiculous. It’s obviously Whitehall. Boarding school children playing at politics. “Riiight. Sorry. I’m sorry, Peter, but you are going to have to tell me who exactly you work for or I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on this.”

  Peter leans forward quickly in his seat, eager to dispel any worries. “Emma, look, I can’t stress enough how keen we are to have you on board. They’ve requested you as a substitute for Richard because they are—and I am—confident you can diagnose and treat this patient in the correct manner. But there are certain things…There is certain information that…well, due to the nature of this case, we’d, or rather they’d, prefer to hold back—at least for now. Until we have some sort of idea what kind of situation we’re dealing with here. There is a concern about the identity of this man. Information around it may prove to be sensitive, but we don’t know yet.” He lets that sit with me for a moment before continuing. “I am the last person in the world for reveling in the dramatic, Dr. Lewis, but if you accept this temporary post, then there will be a substantial amount of, well, of
nondisclosure paperwork.”

  His words throw me for a second. I wasn’t expecting that.

  He continues. “Which I personally may or may not have already signed….Do you see?” He taps out a little tune with the flats of his hands on the café table.

  “Right,” I say carefully. “I see.” Peter has signed a nondisclosure agreement. There are certain things he can’t tell me about this case.

  Why on earth would they have him sign nondisclosure forms? Concern about the patient’s identity? Who the hell do they think the guy is?

  “Then you understand my predicament. Good.” Peter smiles. “We’re on the same page.” He tips back the last of his espresso and dabs his mouth with a paper napkin. “Thank you for your patience with this, Emma. I know it all seems very strange. And very sudden. Well, it certainly does to me.” He frowns slightly, eyes drifting over the concourse once more.

  If there are certain things I can’t know, then I think it’s about time I heard the things I can know. I straighten up in my seat. “So…what exactly can you tell me, Peter? About the patient. About the case. Could you give me an overview? Richard suggested retrograde amnesia or fugue. But of course there’s the possibility of malingering, which no one has mentioned?”

  “He’s not faking, Dr. Lewis. If he’s a fake then he’s the best malingerer I’ve seen in my forty years of medical practice. I examined him yesterday at the hospital. He’s not speaking, hasn’t said a word since he turned up. I ran some structural scans on the language processing areas of his brain. But there’s no atrophy—I have no idea why he’s not talking.” He holds my gaze now, all softness gone. The air in the café changes and the hairs on the back of my arms rise slightly. This is exciting.

  Peter delves into the rucksack on the floor next to him and retrieves a slim silver laptop. “Have a look,” he says. I feel another shiver of excitement fizzle through me as he opens it up and slides it across the table.