One of Us. Michael Marshall Smith
been?’
It's not a huge apartment. We checked the few remaining spaces. Deck walked carefully into the second bedroom, tossed the closets and looked under the bed – came out shrugging. I did the same in the main bedroom.
‘Nearly finished,’ Woodley said I passed behind him, expecting me to hassle him. ‘And for your information, she's an occasional user. Smack – but not for a while – and a little bit of Fresh.’
This didn't surprise me. ‘What do I need to do now? Recovery-wise?’ The closets were empty. Nothing appeared to have been taken. You'd have to have pretty specific needs to want to steal something from my bedroom. The memory receiver was still in the closet, and that was all that really mattered.
The old guy shrugged. ‘Don't ask me. Didn't do that bit. Boys I used to operate on were just given a gun and told to go back out again.’
‘You're a doctor, Woodley. You must have some idea.’
He shrugged again. ‘Chicken soup. Keep her off the bottle for a few days. Or give her a stiff scotch. Whichever works. Don't let her go bungee jumping.’
‘Woodley …’ I stopped abruptly, staring at the head of the bed. The sheets and cover had been turned back, very neatly, as if by a maid. It was so unexpected, so bizarre, that I hadn't even noticed it at first. ‘Did you do that?’
‘Like to think I operate a one-stop service, dear boy, but it doesn't extend to making your bed.’
I paid him off, and waited impatiently while he gathered his stuff together. I ran an eye over the living room, and came up empty. Nothing obvious was missing, and trust me – the decor's so austere you'd notice if anything was gone.
When Woodley had left, I grabbed Deck and pulled him through to the bedroom. ‘The bed,’ I said, pointing at it.
‘We've been friends a long time,’ he said gently. ‘But I just don't care for you that way.’
‘Someone's turned back the sheets.’
Deck raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I'm sure. Does it seem something I'm likely to do?’
‘Not unless there was money hidden underneath.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So someone's picked up your messages and turned back the bed. You got an imaginary girlfriend or something?’
‘Not even a real one.’
‘Nobody else got a key? The building's Super, for instance?’
‘The Super is in prison for breaking and entering.’
‘That's a no, then. Anything missing?’
‘Not that I can see.’
‘Okay, so, to recap: someone's broken into your apartment and done a bit of tidying. You're twitchier than a pig in a tin, and you're waving your gun round like a flag. There's a woman on the sofa with wrists like a road map, and you just paid Woodley quadruple rate to keep his mouth shut. Maybe now would be a good time for you to tell me what's going on.’
I took my dressing gown off the hook on the back of the door, and got Laura Reynolds into it. I stuffed the bloody one in the trash where, knowing my housekeeping, it would probably remain for two years. Laura still seemed to be unconscious, but that was probably due to medication: there was a lot more colour in her cheeks, and with a combination of neat stitching and skinFix her arms looked a little better. Now that the blood had been swabbed away you could see both that the cuts were fairly manageable, and that they weren't the first. Old, white lines in very similar places said that tonight's dive for the tunnel hadn't been the first of its kind. Didn't make it any less important for her, I guessed, or any more clever.
I carried her through to the second bedroom as gently as I could, and got her into the bed. I laid a couple of my old coats on top of the bedding, and turned the heating up a little.
Then I went back in the living room and got the answering machine to repeat the messages which someone had already picked up. There were only three, and they were all from Stratten. The first was polite, the second businesslike. The third just said ‘Call the office. Now.’
Time was running out. I got a coffee and told Deck the score.
In the five months I worked memory, Ms Reynolds had been one of my most regular clients. Though I didn't know her name then, she'd dumped the same memory on me six times.
The memory was this. She'd been down by a stream, in a patch of forest behind the house where she lived. I don't know how old she was, but probably early to mid teens. The day was hot and it was late afternoon, and she'd gone into the wood for something important. The main impression I got was of anticipation, and vulnerability, and the memory always made me feel very young. She was standing there, waiting, when suddenly there'd been a shadow over her, and she'd looked up to see her mom. Her mother was a very tall woman, quite thin, with a mass of reddish brown hair. Laura had slowly looked up until she'd found her mother's face. In the memory what she needed a break from every now and then was the expression she saw there. A look of fury – mixed in with a little glee.
The memory always ended abruptly at that moment, and I don't know what the look meant or what had happened afterwards. I'd always been kind of glad I didn't. It was one of the memories I could understand someone wanting to get away from once in a while.
Then last week I came back from lounging round a hotel pool in Santa Barbara to find I had an email message from an address I didn't recognize. Before I even read it I ran a check on the source: sometimes people set their mail to send back a received signal when it was opened. The domain code didn't set any alarm bells ringing, but even so I got the console to hardcopy without technically opening it.
The mail was from this same woman. We'd never been in contact before – all transactions were brokered through REMtemps on a double-blind confidentiality principle – but she mentioned the memory, and I worked out who she was. The message said she had something she wanted me to carry, and would make it worth my while.
I stared at the piece of paper for a few moments, then set fire to it and let it burn in an ashtray. I spent the rest of the day round the pool, and the evening in a bar at the beach end of State Street, playing pool and bullshitting with the locals.
When I got back I had another message from the same address. It listed a phone number. It also mentioned twenty thousand dollars.
I watched a movie on the in-house system for a while, but you know how it is. The back brain makes a decision instantly, and no matter how long you put it off, you know what you're going to do.
At about midnight I left the hotel room and went back to the bar. There was a phone box round the back, out of sight, and I called the number from the message.
A nervous-sounding woman answered the phone. She had me describe her memory in detail. Then she told me what she wanted. She had another memory, one which wasn't usually a problem. Ten years ago she'd gone on vacation with a man she'd just met, to some place on the Baja she'd known for years. Ensenada. They stayed there a while, hanging out, eating seafood, having a good time. Then she'd come back.
‘That's it?’ I asked.
She'd recently met a new man. She liked him a lot. In fact, she was thinking of getting hitched. But they were going to go away together first, just to make sure. He wanted to go to the same town she'd been to with the other man all that time ago. She tried to suggest going somewhere else, but Ensenada had become a kind of lovers' in-joke between them, and it would have looked weird if she'd insisted.
I still didn't see the problem, and said so. As long as you steer clear of some of the taco stands, Ensenada's a cool place to be.
She said she didn't want to go back remembering what it had been like with the other man. She thought it might make her see things differently this time. She really loved this new guy, and didn't want to compromise the trip.
I