Free Land of the Living by Nicci French Page B

done it. There’s no problem for the afterwards bit. I woke up and I was there in that place. I didn’t know how I’d got there, didn’t remember being grabbed. Before it’s different. I can’t remember the last thing I did or anything like that. There’s no cutoff point. I just have vague recent memories of being at work. It was like I went into the darkness slowly without noticing.’
    ‘I see,’ Charles said, and wrote something more. It made me nervous when he did that.
    ‘But isn’t there something ridiculous about it? The one thing I need to remember is gone. I don’t want to know who the bloody Prime Minister is. I want to remember how I was grabbed, what he looks like. What I’ve been thinking is, could it be something that happened that was so disturbing that I’ve suppressed it?’
    He clicked his pen shut. When he replied it was almost as if he were trying to hide a faint smile. ‘And that maybe I could dangle my watch in front of your face and it would all come flooding back?’
    ‘That would be very useful.’
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure your amnesia is unrelated to any form of post-traumatic stress. Or indeed any psychological symptom.’
    ‘When I’m talking to Cross—I mean the police—it just feels so ridiculous.’
    ‘It’s unfortunate and frustrating,’ he said. ‘But it’s not ridiculous. Posttraumatic amnesia after a closed head injury such as yours isn’t uncommon. It usually happens in car crashes. They bang their head during the smash. When they wake up after the injury they don’t remember the crash, but often they don’t remember the hours or even days leading up to it either.’
    I touched my head gently. Suddenly it felt so fragile.
    ‘Post-traumatic,’ I said. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t something psychological.’
    ‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘Psychogenic amnesia—I mean amnesia caused by psychological influences, rather than an injury to the brain—is rarer in cases like yours. And also—how shall I say?—more dubious.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    He gave a wary cough. ‘I’m not a psychologist, so maybe I’m biased. But, for example, a substantial percentage of murderers claim to have no memory of committing their murders. These are not people who have received physical injuries. There could be various explanations. They are often very drunk, which can result in memory black-outs. Committing a murder is, presumably, an extremely stressful thing to do, more than almost anything else that can be imagined. That could affect memory. Some of us sceptics might also say that there is often an incentive for a murderer to claim he has no memory of what happened.’
    ‘But being kidnapped and threatened with death must be pretty bloody stressful. Couldn’t that have made me forget for psychological reasons?’
    ‘Not in my opinion, but if I were standing in court and you were a lawyer, you could get me to admit that it was possible. I’m afraid you’re going to have a few other people prodding you like a lab rat to answer questions like that.’
    He stood up and mustered his files under his arm with some difficulty. ‘Abigail,’ he said.
    ‘Abbie.’
    ‘Abbie. You’re a fascinating case. I don’t think I’m going to be able to resist coming back.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I seem to have lots of time on my hands. But I’ve got one question: Is there any chance of my memory coming back?’
    He paused for a moment and pulled an odd face, which must have been some sort of indication that he was thinking. ‘Yes, it’s possible.’
    ‘Could I be hypnotized?’
    Suddenly he looked shocked and rummaged in his pocket, which was a particularly awkward operation with his armful of files. He extracted a card and gave it to me. ‘That’s got various numbers on it. If anybody comes in here and starts dangling things in front of your eyes or talking to you in a soothing voice, call me straight away.’
    With that he was gone, and I