giving the driver her destination. Even then she gave the road just down from hers, not her exact address – just in case. Was Jonesy at the station because he was catching a train, or meeting someone coming off one? Twice now he’d been there when she had. Did he know the times of the trains she usually caught? Was it coincidence he appeared just after the mystery man?
The object.
She wriggled in the back of the taxi, the seat squeaking as she retrieved the object from her trouser pocket. She slowly unfurled her fingers. A small, black memory stick, with the word ‘SanDisk’ in red printed on it. Why the hell had that man given her this? What was on it? Was it a mistake – meant for someone else? He’d shoved it in her hand and said … what was it again? The sheer panic that had washed over her now rendered her memory inadequate. She squeezed her eyes. Come on, come on. ‘I’ve got to give you this’? Was that it? Yes, that was right. She opened her eyes again, stared down at the stick which lay in her clammy palm. I’ve got to give you this. Did that mean he had a burning need to hand it to her? Or that someone else was making him give it to her? Perhaps the answer lay in whatever resided in the memory of the two-inch piece of plastic.
The mugginess inside the back of the taxi threatened to suffocate her. She wound down the window, it stopped halfway. With her face turned slightly and angled so she could push it out as far as possible, Connie sucked in the cooler evening air. The taxi driver was talking. She withdrew her head.
‘You all right, love?’ His eyes, reflected in the mirror, found hers. She smiled weakly.
‘I will be. In a minute.’ When I’m home, she thought. ‘You can drop me at the end, just up there by the park. Thanks.’
She rummaged in her bag for her purse.
Connie waited for the taxi to drive out of sight before turning the opposite way and walking as fast as she could back down the road they’d driven, then ducked through the alleyway between Park Road and Moorland Street. Her house came into sight. She relaxed.
The front door key took a few attempts to find its home, her fingers trembling and preventing the easy action. Once inside she locked and bolted the door and flung her handbag at the banister, the long strap wrapping itself securely around it. She kicked off her shoes and called for Amber, breathless from all the exertion. A white bundle of hair hurried towards her. ‘Hello, baby.’ Connie scooped her up and fussed her, comforted by Amber’s ecstatic purring.
The day’s heat had been trapped within the walls of the house, so Connie went to the kitchen, letting Amber scramble down from her arms, and opened the small window. Then she went to the lounge, her feet moving soundlessly over the thick, soft carpet. New. The smell still lingered in the room even though it’d been two weeks ago now. She reached to open the large bay window, but stopped herself. She stood looking out on to her street.
The opposite row of houses, all converted to flats, were bathed in a yellow hue from the street lamps. It still wasn’t properly dark – the sun not setting until around nine thirty. The street was quiet, no strange figures hanging around. She yanked the curtains across.
What was she going to do with the memory stick? She’d be mad to insert it in her laptop; it could upload a virus. But could she hand it over to the police, even though she didn’t know what it contained? Who had given it to her – and why? She’d have a bath, then something to eat before she decided what to do with it.
Wrapped in her fluffy cream dressing gown, Connie shoved her frozen pizza in the oven and retreated into the lounge. Her laptop lay on the rectangular coffee table in front of the TV. She paused, staring at the memory stick which she’d placed on the closed lid, as if it might pounce on her if she got closer. She really should hand it straight over to the police, to DI Wade, and have done with it. But while she’d been relaxing in the bubbles of the bath, Connie’s curiosity had been piqued. She wanted to be prepared, no surprises.
She had to look.
But not on that laptop. If there was a virus, or spyware, she didn’t want to risk it destroying her new device. She had another laptop – had used it during her degree work. It’d been redundant for some time, due to its age and bulkiness – it wouldn’t matter if she plugged the stick in and it screwed it up.
Now, where was it? She’d still got boxes in the second bedroom; the spare room, which she hadn’t got around to sorting yet. She’d moved in two years ago; laziness had prevented her dealing with them. That and becoming too busy with setting up her consultancy. It took half an hour of rummaging through containers filled with junk – an old video box-set of The X-Files she’d been obsessed with when she was a teenager, puzzles she used to do with her mum, old Vogue magazines from a time when she’d cared about fashion, Stephen King novels she hadn’t got around to putting on the bookcase – to find the laptop and charging cable. She carried it downstairs and plugged it in. It still worked. Connie’s stomach contracted. Should she do it? Her hand, the stick clenched in it, hovered over the port. What was she worried about? What could possibly be on it that would cause her to be nervous? Come on, Connie. Just do it!
The high-pitched alarm jolted Connie back into the moment, a painful sensation shot through her heart like a knife piercing it. She dropped the stick and jumped up, running to the kitchen. Smoke billowed from the oven. The pizza. She grabbed a tea towel and recovered the blackened circle from the oven, blinking her eyes to rid them of the stinging. She threw it into the sink, hearing a loud hiss as it touched the water. She sighed. It’d have to be baked beans on toast then. After. She’d have to do the deed first otherwise she’d likely burn the toast too.
Kneeling on the floor, laptop open, she finally placed the stick in the USB port.
Two file names appeared.
And both took the breath from her lungs.
She stared with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. She had to open them now.
One click and the news article from 1995 filled the screen. And the sadness she’d felt back then returned automatically. A single tear began its journey, surging over her cheek and landing on the keyboard.
Who wanted to give this to her? It’s not like she needed a reminder of the incident that had rocked her world. It was part of her.
Connie clicked on the other file. She read the document, her curiosity slipping into anger, and she slammed the laptop shut.
Why the hell was someone dragging this up now?
Wednesday 7 June
Having been sleep-deprived for the second night in a row, the journey to her office was slow, her legs leaden. Connie was heavy – with resurfaced grief and anger. She was glad she’d looked at what the memory stick held though, before handing it blindly to the police. It had nothing to do with their investigation. Just her. And her family. But the who and the why were questions she needed answering. Another burden she didn’t need.
The fresh cut grass wafted from the room as she opened it, and for the first time the scent made her stomach churn, like the queasiness of early pregnancy. For a moment Connie stood, hand placed over her belly, and thought. No. She couldn’t
