I sat up straight.
Your diary should document the crucial facts of your existence, Mariska said with a long-suffering sigh. As if she were explaining things to a child. Dates, times, and events that matter. Facts you may need in the future. So that it sounds convincing enough to the warders.
I can even show you my own diary if you wish, she offered with a puckish smile. Lips curling up in slight amusement. If you ever require inspiration.
But it was the next thing she said that made me gasp:
Your stepmum told your dad that she found your paper diaries in the trash bin all those years ago. Your dad thought you’d gone mad. That’s why he decided to drag you to a psychiatric ward in Cambridge. That’s why you eventually ended up here. That’s why the orderlies are eager to read your diaries. That’s why they’ve kept you here for such a long time, fearing that you were one of those delusional full-memory sorts. That’s why they’ve taken special pains to make sure you didn’t escape. Except you never bothered to write in the iDiary they gave you later. Thought I should tell you this, sweetheart. While yesterday’s conversation between the two warders remains clear in my mind. You surely don’t wish to join those three fools buried on the far side of the island, do you?
Something clicked in my head. The weak sunlight filtering through the poplars took on a sudden sinister tone. Everything made troubling sense. I felt enlightened, if threatened. Grateful to Mariska for opening my eyes to the realities of St. Augustine’s. To possibilities beyond its perimeter.
Like vengeance, for instance. The revenge I both desired and deserved.
I mumbled my thanks. Because she had prodded me into action. Made me desperate to get out.
Now I sit under rain-sodden eaves. Haunted by nightmares. Consoled by a giant bottle of vodka.
But at least I’m free, thanks to Mariska. Shame about the cardiac arrest. Pity she never got back to Amsterdam. Kissed her cold lips before they took her to the mortuary. She was right about getting out of the Outer Hebrides in a coffin.
I will not repeat the mistakes that led me to St. Augustine’s. If you can’t remember the past, you’re bound to repeat your errors. But if you can, you shouldn’t be making too many of them. I have plenty to do from now on. I should stay focused. Go back to sleep. After I’ve finished my vodka, of course.
I’m going to start by screwing the man who screwed up my life.
Regularly.
I woke up this morning and realized I can’t remember what happened two days ago. What a catastrophe. It feels as if someone has just thrust a large knife into my heart. Spent most of the day walking around in a daze. I’ve always thought that I’m a Duo. Everyone was sure I would take after Duo Dad (and not Mono Mum); after all, I’ve been the top student in every class I’ve attended since the age of seven. I have to register with the Department of Monos tomorrow as per the Class Registration Act (1898). I will also have to tell my superiors at the Cambridgeshire Constabulary. My future career is dissolving into wretched pieces: I will still be a lowly constable when I retire. (Note to Self: I’m going to keep quiet for a while and see what happens. How would anyone know that I’m a Mono if I decide to keep this a secret? There must be a way out, I’m sure. They say that when it comes to learning the contents of diaries, Monos and Duos are equals. I’ll write really detailed entries from now on and learn them carefully. Wake up early each morning to do so; I’m sure I can retain more than 70 percent if I work hard enough. I’m not going to let my dreams and ambitions evaporate.) —Diary of Hans Richardson, 1990
Chapter Four
Hans
13? hours until the end of the day
I had to let Mark Henry Evans go, regrettably. Though I would have loved to clap him into a cell at the back of the station.
The man was a liar. He was so fishy he reeked.
But I had nothing on him. Apart from a muddled and incoherent diary left behind by a dead woman who had embarked on an affair with him despite bearing some sort of a grudge. A Botox-addled, ex-bulimic female who had spent seventeen years in a mental asylum. Who had apparently opened her eyes one day to discover that she remembered everything about her past. It wasn’t exactly the sort of compelling, in-your-face evidence I needed to pin Evans down.
I study the alignment of forces on my chessboard and edge a white pawn forward.
The man’s a liar. I don’t believe him. But the woman’s worse. I can’t trust a single word in her diary. Fact: The protein responsible for short-term memory is inhibited after the age of twenty-three. Sophia Ayling’s claim to full memory defies both scientific explanation and logic.
It must surely be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
I push a black pawn forward in turn. The move looks positively suicidal.
What happened yesterday is crystal clear in my head. I remember everything about the day. In vivid color, too. Every single snapshot, from when I woke up in the morning with a slight hangover to when I fell asleep reading “Ten Things You Should Know About Getting Ahead in Your Job.” What happened before my eighteenth birthday is just as vivid. Like the contents of those criminology courses I took, down to the minutest detail. I can even visualize the pores on the face of the grizzled professor who taught Introduction to Criminal Investigation (and who wrote the accompanying five-volume textbook). He had also reeked of stale tobacco, unwashed corduroy, and burned sausages.
But how on earth does one remember everything after the age of twenty-three? That’s impossible.
I prod a white bishop on a forward diagonal and knock the suicidal black pawn out of the fray.
If something sounds like undistilled fantasy, it probably is. I am of two minds as to whether I should finish reading Sophia’s diary today. Or leave it until tomorrow. Fact: Concrete, indisputable evidence is what should interest me in the first twenty-four hours after a crime comes to my attention. Especially when it involves a murder. Besides, I hope to work out the killer’s identity before the end of the day.
I rise from my chair, itching for another dose of coffee. But as I take my first step in the direction of the vending machine, young Toby hurtles in through the door of my office.
“I’ve run her fingerprints through various databases,” he says. “Nothing shows up at all.”
I’m not surprised. Sophia did not look like someone with an existing criminal record.