Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) (9 page)

Emily examined the business card in front of her. The journalist’s name was Reina Tammerworth. There was a mobile phone number and email address, and the URL for a website that didn’t sound much like the local news:
www.theunsavourytruth.com

“Do you think she meant Karl?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know. She told me to call if Alina showed up. When Nurse Bates read out that letter, I called her the same day. It went straight to voicemail. I tried a few times, left messages. I didn’t hear from her again. Something’s wrong, I know it. That’s why I came here today. I thought you could help.”

“Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

“And tell them what? I have my boy to think of. I need to keep him safe.”

Emily watched the girl stand up. Her dark complexion had grown pale. Her fingers trembled as she fastened the buttons of her coat.

“Rosa, what is happening at Ever After?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I’m scared. Maybe if you can find that journalist she’ll be able to help you. But Emily?”

“Yes?”

“Please, don’t tell anyone I was here.”

And with that, Rosa was gone, dashing through the door, disappearing in a swirl of ice and snow, her red coat fading like a flickering flame.

Emily sat in the booth, unmoving, her mind racing. She picked up the card Rosa had given her, and let out an unsteady breath.

Rosa’s story was deeply troubling. Frightening even. Turning the business card over and over in her hands, Emily watched the snow. There were two paths she could take. One would lead her back to the safety and banality of her apartment. The other would take her along a dark corridor of shadows towards the unknown. Only one would lead her to Alina Engel.

The snow fell throughout the evening, burying the pavements in heavy drifts. The usual after-work drinkers had forgone their usual tipple in favour of heading home. Those pedestrians who had decided to brave the adverse conditions traversed the frozen pavements with care, testing each foothold.

London was a city used to rain and smog, and it showed. Salt trucks were only now rolling out in the suburbs, covering the icy roads in sprays of rock salt. In the busiest parts of the city, vehicle pollution was toxic enough to blast the ice from the tarmac, transforming it into a thick, black slush that slithered into the gutters like primordial ooze.

By the time Emily had finished telling Jerome about her encounter with Rosa, a wind had picked up and whipped the snowfall into a frenzied flurry.

“I don’t like it,” Jerome said. They were sat in his living room, eating noodles from cartons. “It sounds dangerous, not to mention a little far-fetched.”

“Why do you think that?” Emily picked at her food. She wasn’t hungry in spite of having had little to eat all day. It was becoming a habit, she noted.

“Patients disappearing in the middle of the night, mysterious journalists asking questions ... and we don’t even know this girl.”

“Are you saying Rosa made it all up? Why would she go out of her way to meet with me? Why would she invent such a story?”

“It just sounds like one of those made-for-TV movies. Besides, I’m still not completely over our little visit to the hospice.” Jerome paused, staring at Emily. “I’m sorry about your mum though. Is that why you moved away? New beginnings and all that.”

Emily’s eyes stung with tears. Just the mere mention of her mother could bring them on; those tiny droplets containing dangerous fissions of so much grief, so much anger.

“New beginnings and all that,” she said.

Jerome shovelled more noodles into his mouth. “I get that. Sometimes you just need to leave everything behind and move on. I did it. Moving here was a big thing. I left behind my family, my friends. It was hard, I got lonely. But I made new friends, and I’m lucky because my family are always there at home, waiting for me to visit or change my mind and come back. To be honest, if my luck doesn’t change soon, they may just get their wish.”

Emily looked up.

“Sorry. Actor’s ego—I can’t help making it all about myself.”

“It’s fine. To be honest, it’s a good distraction. You’re thinking about going home?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Jerome, picked up his beer and drank. When he set the bottle down again his face was taught with worry. “I mean, I certainly don’t want to go home, but look at how I’m living. I barely have furniture to sit on, I can’t afford the rent now that I’m living on my own, even though I’m working every hour the devil sends my way. I don’t go out anymore. I can’t remember the last time I hung out with friends. What’s the point of living somewhere like London if all you’ve become is a worker ant, working to ensure the rest of the colony thrives?”

Emily shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get an audition soon. Maybe we’ll see your name in lights.”

“The last time I had an audition was nearly three months ago. The only time I hear from my agent now is when I call him.”

It was as if his bank of smiles had finally exhausted itself. Emily didn’t like to see him this way, bereft and despairing.

“You know, if you need money I can give it to you,” she said. “I just sold two houses—my mother’s and my own. It’s just sitting there in the bank collecting dust.”

Jerome raised an eyebrow. He was quiet for a minute as he thought it over, then he said, “That’s a really kind offer, thank you. But by the time I’ll be able to afford to pay you back we’ll both have grey hairs. Besides, it won’t really solve the problem.”

“It might buy you some time. And you can just have it.”

“You’re a crazy lady. You can’t just give money away to people you’ve known for five minutes.”

“Why not? I don’t care about money. It’s just bits of paper.” Emily looked down at the table. “I know we haven’t known each other for long, but you’re the closest thing I have to a friend right now. I’m not trying to buy your friendship, Jerome. I like you. I don’t want to see you unhappy. And I don’t want to be all alone here. Is that selfish?”

They both were quiet. Emily shifted positions on the sofa.

“I’m not going to take your money,” Jerome said. “But thank you for offering.”

His smile fell away. Emily tried and failed to hide her disappointment.

“In that case, you’d better jump on that computer and find out all about Reina Tammerworth. I tried calling the number on the card but it goes straight to an automated voicemail, just like Rosa said.”

A fresh beer in hand, Jerome positioned himself at the table. A few seconds later, they were staring at the landing page of
theunsavourytruth.com
. It was roughly put together, lacking the polish and visual splendour of a professionally built site.
Welcome to The Unsavoury Truth
, the header read in thick red letters,
The Facts Behind The Conspiracies
.

“Great. A paranoid shut-in’s wet dream. What kind of journalist did you say this woman was?”

He clicked through the pages, which covered all manners of conspiracy theories, from the classic—the assassination of JFK, faked moon landings, the reptilian elite—to the more obscure—tsunami bombs, the Ararat Anomaly, and the Great Electronic Conspiracy. They spent the next ten minutes scanning through stories, each theory more bizarre than the next, and checking the names of contributors as they read.

“This site is huge. If Reina’s work is on here it might take a while to find it,” Jerome said. “Assuming she is a staff writer and not just a loon.”

“You’re such a cynic.” Emily nudged him out of the way. She clicked on the
About Us
menu tab, and was presented with a list of key contributors.

“Don’t tell me you believe in this crap.”

“I like to keep an open mind.”

Reina Tammerworth’s name wasn’t there. Emily tried typing it into the site’s search engine.

“I don’t understand,” she said, when the search results came back empty. “Why would she have this site listed on her business card if she has nothing to do with it? Unless she’s using a pseudonym.”

Jerome’s response was to spin his index finger next to his temple. He grabbed the laptop, brought up a fresh page and began typing.

“Never underestimate the power of the internet,” he said moments later, sliding the laptop back towards Emily.

She stared at the screen. Jerome had accessed an online phone directory. There were only a handful of Tammerworths listed and Reina wasn’t one of them.

“Tammerworth is an unusual name,” Emily reached for her phone. “Someone on the list has to be related.”

“Are you sure you were a teacher in your secret former life?”

Emily looked at him, a flash of panic lighting up her features.

“What happened to you, Emily?” Jerome asked. “How come I’m your only friend?”

Punching in the first number on the list, Emily waited for the phone line to connect.

“I ... this isn’t the time,” she muttered.

Jerome put his beer down. “I’m a good listener, and I don’t judge. Much.”

It was ringing now. Emily turned away and waited for someone to answer.

The house was situated in St. Albans, an historic market town standing on the site of the Roman city of Verulamium, and now home for thousands of people making the daily commute to London in return for a more affordable cost of living.

By the time Emily had stepped off the train and flagged down a taxi, the morning had passed over into the afternoon. It had continued to snow through the night, painting the land in flat, featureless hues.

The salt trucks had covered the main roads throughout the town but had missed the more suburban streets, such as the one the taxi was now pulling into. As a result, local schools had declared a snow day. Excited youngsters dressed in rubber boots and vibrant knitwear piled through the snow drifts like explorers negotiating Antarctic wastelands.

Emily paid the driver and climbed out of the car. The house was the same as every other on the street—white walls, two storeys, sloping slate roof, and a small garden in the front, which was buried beneath half a foot of snow.

Emily pressed the doorbell. From somewhere inside came a high-pitched yapping. After a short wait, a tall, gaunt-looking woman in her early seventies answered the door. Cupped in her long fingers was the source of all the yapping—a charcoal and brown Yorkshire terrier.

“Mrs Tammerworth?”

The woman gave her a welcoming smile. “Please call me Claudine. And you must be the girl who telephoned yesterday.”

“That’s right. I’m Emily Swanson.”

“Do ignore Henry,” Claudine Tammerworth said as she ushered Emily inside. “He’s not as fearsome as he presumes.”

It was as if time had stopped still fifty years ago. Turquoise flock paper adorned the living room walls. Moss green carpet covered the floor, while mustard armchairs and a matching studio couch took care of the seating. Porcelain dolls and china plates covered every available surface.

Claudine showed Emily to the couch, then headed for the kitchen with Henry chasing after her. Emily moved to the mantelpiece, where photographs sat in dusted frames; a timeline of a family she knew nothing about.

The first pictures showed two girls, one with the grace and posture of a dancer, and the other shorter and stronger, with a steely countenance that pierced through the glass. As Emily’s eyes passed from one photograph to the next, she watched the girls grow up. The tall girl grew thinner. The strong girl cut her hair short. And then, as pubescence metamorphosed into young adulthood, the tall girl disappeared. The remaining sister grew into a woman, sombre and inauspicious, her head turned from the camera’s gaze.

“I see you’ve found my girls,” Claudine said, setting down the tea tray. She moved up besides Emily with surprising dexterity. Henry scurried alongside. For a moment, Mrs Tammerworth looked terribly sad. Then, with a sweep of a hand, she waved Emily away from the mantelpiece.

“Carmilla wanted to be a ballerina.” she said, pouring the tea. “She was always dancing, always spinning around like a wind-up toy, daft thing. So, off we took her to ballet school and my, how she loved it. At least, at first.”

She paused and looked down to where Henry sat at her feet. She patted her lap and with a wag of his tail, the terrier climbed aboard.

“While she was certainly no oaf, she was no Fonteyn either. And the thing about Carmilla was that she had to be perfect at everything. It didn’t matter how many times I told her perfection didn’t exist. You should have seen the tantrums!”

Emily sipped her tea, refraining from interrupting the woman to ask about Reina.

“Well that put paid to that. It was clear she was never going to be top of the class, so no more dancing for Carmilla. Of course, she moped around the way she did when things didn’t go her way. Usually, her moods would last for a few days, and then she would find some new interest in which to immerse herself. This time, however, her moods grew worse.” Claudine ran her fingers through Henry’s fur from head to tailbone in gentle, rhythmic movements. “You see, she’d gotten it into her head that the reason she didn’t excel at ballet was because she was overweight. The girl never had more than a pinch of fat on her. She began to starve herself regardless; refusing to eat her dinner, or vomiting it back up when her father and I insisted there would be no leaving the table until she’d eaten. Of course, once you stop eating, all other kinds of ailments occur. Carmilla grew ill. She shut herself away, even from her sister. She began ... harming herself. Not knowing what else to do, we involved the hospital.

“By then, you could see her bones jutting out through her skin. Our GP suggested a private clinic that would be able to help us. We were barely able to afford it, but what choice did we have? Well, that’s where we met Doctor Chelmsford. He was ever so charming, the kind of man that listened to every word you had to say. We felt we were in safe hands. He told us he’d helped several young girls like Carmilla, and with great success. We were so relieved. The past months had taken a toll on us all. And poor Reina. During that whole time it was as if she’d become invisible. I made her a promise that once Carmilla was better, we’d all take a holiday to the seaside, where we could enjoy ourselves again as one happy family.”

Mrs Tammerworth paused. Her eyes darted across the room towards the mantelpiece. In her lap, Henry gave a little whine and rested his chin on her knee. “A week or so later, we received a call from the clinic telling us that Carmilla had passed away. Pneumonia. They said her immune system was very weak, which had made her susceptible. You can imagine our surprise.”

“I’m very sorry.” Emily’s impatience had vanished.

“Do you know, they wouldn’t let us see her?” Claudine said. “We’d expected it when she was first admitted. Doctor Chelmsford told us we’d need to stay away in the first weeks to let Carmilla adjust to being at the clinic. And who were we to argue? But we certainly hadn’t expected it after she was ... after she had passed. Imagine that, trying to prevent us from seeing our own daughter’s body. My husband and I kicked up quite the fuss, threatened to go to the press and the police if they didn’t release Carmilla to us.”

“Why wouldn’t they let you see her?”

“They said they needed to do an examination to confirm the cause of death.”

“You accepted Doctor Chelmsford’s explanation?”

“Of course. He was a doctor, and Carmilla was already very sick. I was surprised when they closed down the clinic. It wasn’t until years later, when Reina couldn’t let things go, that we started to question what we’d been told.”

“Why was the clinic shut down?”

“Their funding was withdrawn. The newspapers said it was because of what happened with Carmilla. That the medications she was prescribed were too strong for her immune system, which was why the pneumonia came on so suddenly.”

“You believed the newspapers, Mrs Tammerworth?”

The woman sighed. “We spoke to solicitors. We thought about suing. But an inquiry found nothing untoward. Carmilla’s death certificate said pneumonia, and by then all we cared about was burying our little girl and taking care of the daughter that was still with us.”

“And what do you believe now?” Emily asked.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. Reina was so utterly convinced that Doctor Chelmsford and his colleagues had been up to no good that I began to wonder myself. When she started talking to other patients—the ones that survived that is—well, it’s very confusing. Half of them had severe mental health issues, so it’s difficult to separate truth from fantasy. And you’re talking about something that happened almost forty years ago.”

“These patients, what did they say?”

“You’ll have to ask Reina about that.” Claudine picked up Henry, who woke with a start, and placed him on the carpet.

“Where is Reina?” Emily asked. “I thought she’d be here today.”

Claudine let out a thin sigh. “I’m afraid Reina’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“That, my dear, I can’t tell you.”

“You mean she’s missing?” A chill ran in between Emily’s shoulder blades.

“It depends on your understanding of
missing
. One minute Reina’s here, the next she’s not. She took her sister’s death very hard. She began running away shortly after the funeral. When she became too old for that kind of behaviour, she took to travelling the world instead. She never married, has no children. I’m an old woman without grandchildren. Do you know what an empty feeling that is? Meanwhile, my daughter is off flouncing from one country to the next, filling her head with all sorts of paranoid notions until her money runs out. It’s why she’s remained living with me. She’s incapable of staying in one place for more than a few months, never mind holding down a job. You’d think that at almost fifty she would come to some sort of peaceful agreement with the past. But no. As she grows older, so does her distrust. If only she could learn to let go of things.”

“When did you last see her?” An anxious feeling coiled around Emily’s stomach.

“It was early September,” Claudine replied. “She was meant to drive me to my hospital appointment, but as always, she’d taken off in the middle of the night. I expect I’ll receive a postcard from some godforsaken part of the world any day now. Then a week or two later, it will be a phone call promising she’ll be home for Christmas. She left me on my own last year, you know. What a thing to do! I trust you’ll be spending Christmas with your mother?”

The question was like a blow to the chest. One moment she was wondering why Claudine Tammerworth had brought her all this way knowing Reina was gone, the next she was contemplating spending her first Christmas alone. She would not celebrate it. She would treat it like any other day.

Pushing the thoughts to the recesses of her mind, she returned her focus to Claudine Tammerworth. It was suddenly clear why she had manipulated Emily into coming here—the woman was desperately alone. That was something Emily could understand with unfettered clarity. As for Reina Tammerworth, the timing of her disappearance was too much of a coincidence. She had vanished right around the time of her visit to the Ever After Care Foundation. Two missing women, somehow linked.

Claudine stared at her.

“Did Reina ever mention a place called the Ever After Care Foundation? Or a woman named Alina Engel?”

The old woman wrinkled her brow. “Reina talks a lot of nonsense a lot of the time. Conspiracy theories she calls them. Ridiculous fantasy is a better name. She may have mentioned those names, but to be perfectly honest after years of Reina raving on about flying saucers and secret societies, I stopped listening. Save it for those ridiculous articles you write, is what I say to her. How she’s managed to get published is a mystery itself.”

“Does she keep her work here?”

“Oh yes, it’s all in her room, tacked to the walls and everywhere else. Would you like to see?”

Emily nodded, unnerved by how easily Claudine had invited a stranger into her home, had answered all of her questions without suspicion, and was now even inviting her to look around. The woman wasn’t just lonely, Emily realised. She was angry. To lose one daughter must have been unbearable, but to be abandoned by the other was something else entirely. And she wanted Emily to know what a wayward daughter Reina was. How thoughtless, how selfish.

Claudine led her upstairs. When they reached the top, she took a moment to catch her breath and then ushered Emily along a darkly lit landing.

“Here we are,” she said, pushing open the door. “You’ll excuse the mess. Reina was never one for keeping tidy.”

The air was musty. A fine layer of dust covered the room, undisturbed until now. Emily stifled a cough as she entered. It was a large room with a double bed and an antique wardrobe. Shelves brimmed with books, while more were piled up on the floor like a miniature city block. In front of the window was a desk, on top of which sat an old computer, untidy stacks of notepads, and newspaper clippings.

On the walls were photographs, documenting Reina’s worldly travels—carcasses of elephants slain for their tusks by poachers in Tanzania, destitute street children in Mumbai, devastated rainforests in Borneo—and fixed in between them were yellowed newspaper and magazine clippings, stories she’d written as she’d travelled from one continent to the next, following a trail of inhumane acts that were, as she saw it, evidence of the New World Order feeding like vampires on the blood of the innocent. Globalised poverty, social apartheid, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, the destruction of the environment—they were open veins; invitations for the meek to misplace blame, to tear each other limb from limb while the rich wagered bets on who would be the last to fall.

“Miserable, isn’t it?” Claudine sighed. “Her wall of pain, Reina called it. I can’t imagine trying to sleep in here at night.”

Emily moved from photograph to photograph, from article to article, feeling Reina’s anguish and outrage sink fingers into her chest, piercing its stone-like veneer. Suddenly, she felt small and insignificant, with nothing to offer the world that would help to heal it. But that was wrong. She did have something. She had Alina Engel. And now she had Reina Tammerworth. They mattered, and so did finding them.

Downstairs, a telephone began to ring.

“I should answer that,” Claudine said, glad to have a reason to pull herself from the gloom. “Probably a sales call. I tell them not to bother, but they just can’t help themselves. Close the door behind you when you’ve finished looking. And try not to touch anything. Reina doesn’t like it when things get moved around. She can always tell.”