Free Catch Your Death by Louise Voss, Mark Edwards Page B

story sent a shiver through Kate’s bones, and she folded the paper and dropped it onto an empty chair. To Paul she said. ‘So what are you doing?’
    He swivelled the laptop so she could see the screen then brought up Google and typed “cold research unit salisbury”. He scanned through the list of results. ‘These are sites telling the history of the Unit. Maybe there’s something on there that could help us.’
    ‘ Let’s have a look,’ Kate said, skim-reading the page. There was a black and white photo of part of the Unit, taken from a distance. The blocky, utilitarian buildings and the green spaces beyond. A chill made the hairs on her arms stand on end. She read The Unit closed down in 1990 without having found a cure for the common cold. All those years of research with no success. Had it all been a waste of time? The possibility made her feel intensely sad, especially for Leonard and Stephen.
    ‘ This just gives the official history of the place, and a very abridged version at that,’ she said.
    He went back to the search engine page and clicked on a few other results. There was very little information available.
    ‘ The net isn’t going to be much help to us,’ he sighed. ‘Which is a shame. I get so used to finding everything I want on Google.’
    Kate drummed her fingers on the table. Next to her, Jack was happily drawing a picture of Billy standing on an alien planet, firing a laser beam at a many-tentacled alien. She could sense Paul’s growing frustration and wished so badly that she could help him.
    ‘ Who else would know what Stephen might have been talking about? Is there anyone else that you might have talked to about it? Friends? Family?’
    ‘ Aunt Lil’s my only family, and she wouldn’t be able to help even if I’d told her everything. She’s got dementia. She barely recognises me now.’
    She thought back to her frustrating visit to the nursing home two days before. It had been one of the most depressing experiences of her life. The woman who’d looked after her all those years, after her parents died, was gone, replaced by this paper-skinned creature with a body and mind that didn’t work properly any more.
    Paul murmured some words of sympathy, then said, ‘You’ve told me about when you first went to the Unit. Tell me what happened after the fire? What do you remember?’
    She glanced at Jack. He was still engrossed in his drawing.
    ‘ I remember the night of the fire itself.’ She told Paul about the rush from the building, passing out and waking up outside. And then seeing a body being carried out. Stephen’s body. After that, she must have passed out, although she had this strange, vague recollection of a doctor, a guy in a white coat, or that might have been mixed up with her next memory: waking up in hospital.
    ‘ I asked them how long I’d been in hospital, and they told me three weeks. I couldn’t believe it. Three weeks – lost. Apparently, I had woken up a few times, but I couldn’t remember it at all. That was one of the first things they asked me: what do you remember?
    'At first, I couldn’t remember anything. I had no idea what had happened to me. They told me amnesia was common among people who’ve suffered a trauma, without telling me what the trauma actually was. I heard the doctors and nurses whispering about me. They told me I needed to rest and get strong before I could leave. So I let them look after me.’
    She stared through the window at the London street. A couple walked by, hand-in-hand. A homeless man begged for change across the road. Red buses and black cabs. After sixteen years in Boston it all seemed so strange.
    ‘ It took me a couple of days to remember the fire and Stephen. I think I started screaming when I remembered. All the nurses came running and, well, I guess I was sedated. When I woke up again there was this man who came and sat by my bed and talked to me about how I felt. I assumed he was a therapist. He told me I had