Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) (8 page)

The receptionist looked up, staring at Emily.

“I’m afraid Alina hasn’t been with us for quite some time now,” Nurse Bates said.

“Yes, it’s terrible what happened to her, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Emily felt her mouth drying up. “She disappeared, didn’t she? Our friend told us all about it. Do you know if they found her yet?”

The nurse’s gaze flitted between the two visitors. “I’m afraid your friend is very much mistaken. Alina isn’t missing. She’s gone home, back to Germany.”

“Really? Are you sure? Our friend told us her husband had reported her missing. That one evening, on her way home from here, she simply vanished. Isn’t that awful?”

“I’m very sorry, but I don’t know anything about that,” Nurse Bates said. Any trace of welcome was now gone. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have patients to attend to.”

She walked them away from the front desk and towards the front door, where a security guard now stood. He opened the door and the cold rushed in, tearing through the foyer like a pack of wolves.

“Good afternoon to you both,” Nurse Bates said.

Before either of them could respond, the guard closed the door behind them.

“Our
friend? What the hell was that?” Jerome began marching down the gravel path, back towards the road.

Feeling eyes upon her, Emily turned and saw the security guard had moved into the dining room and now watched her through the window.

She took off after Jerome, quickening her pace, leaving the Ever After Care Foundation behind her.

***

Neither of them spoke on the bus back to the train station. As they waited on the platform for a city-bound train, Jerome was unable to hide his anger.

“You shouldn’t have lied like that,” he said. “I feel terrible.”

Emily dug her hands into her pockets and glanced down the length of the platform. “But you’re an actor. Isn’t it your job to lie?”

The train pulled into the station. The gathering crowd surged towards the open doors, barely giving passengers the opportunity to alight. Jerome entered the nearest carriage and slumped into a window seat. Emily joined him and they both were silent until the train pulled away a minute later.

“Those people were all dying,” Jerome said “They were just sitting there, all skin and bone, waiting for it to happen. We shouldn’t have invaded their space like that. It was disrespectful. And by the way, for the record, you’re a terrible actress! That nurse was onto you in a second.”

Emily shrugged. She was in no mood to be scolded. The Ever After Care Foundation had revealed nothing but a lingering black cloud of suffering and despair that had stalked them through the manor house and now followed them back to the city. Nurse Bates had been insistent—Alina Engel was alive and well, and back in Germany.

“Do hospices usually have security guards?” she asked.

Jerome became increasingly agitated. “Are you even listening? We made this whole story up about your mother dying, pulling on that nurse’s heart strings just to ask a couple of questions that you could have asked over the phone. Well, at least you got what you came for. At least you know Alina is alive and well.”

“My mother died of bowel cancer six months ago,” Emily said. “And I know nothing of the sort.”

She looked out of the window, avoiding Jerome’s shocked expression, his mouth swinging open and shut like a malfunctioning gate.

He tried to speak but Emily was no longer listening. She was gone, her mind travelling back in time, just as the journey they had made that morning reversed itself outside; the present disappearing scene by scene, as if the day’s events had never happened.

Jerome had exited the lift, muttering a goodbye before sloping off to his apartment. Now alone, Emily watched the headlights of the traffic blinking in the coming darkness like nocturnal animals waking from sleep.

Memories of her mother seized her mind. She had refused to stay at a hospice, insisting that her home would be the only place in which she would spend her final moments. Even the hospital was off-limits—not because the nearest was a thirty-mile drive, but because, like a hospice, she refused to surround herself with the sick and the dying. If she wanted that, she said, she need only pick up a mirror.

Even though Emily understood her mother’s needs, she’d resented her decision. Without any say in the matter, she watched her mother die at home in her bed, her body resembling a scattered pile of chicken bones, her last breaths ragged and sodden, each one more protracted than the last.

There was no family to call. No friends to inform of her passing. With that last breath expelled, Emily sat on the edge of the bed, an eerie calm washing over her. Then, in one fluid movement, she reached over to her mother’s bedside cabinet, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one up. Her mouth filled with the taste of ash, of graveyards. Turning her head, she blew the smoke out over her mother’s body, wondering if she might see her spirit swim through it.

The Ever After Care Foundation had proven to be a dead end. Now, as Emily watched charcoal clouds slide across the afternoon, her mood grew darker and darker. Outside, clouds burst and rain fell in heavy sheets. In the street, pedestrians struggled with their umbrellas, bouncing off each other like pinballs.

Before the world fell apart, the views from Emily’s cottage had been wonderful. And like a play, the scenery changed with each season. Spring grew brilliant green buds and fragrant blossoms, while summer brought thick lawns and meadows. Then, with the arrival of autumn, colours became crisp and corroded. And yes, winter showered the land in plenty of rain, but it was a leafless, roguish wilderness born from stark beauty.

Here in the city, looking through the window was like looking at an enormous photograph. Nothing ever changed. And the nothingness was like an omen that had come into being.

Emily could feel herself falling; a weight of frustration, remorse and loss wearing her down. She thought about the Ever After Care Foundation. Why had she really gone there today? Jerome was right. It would have been easy to ascertain the same information over the phone. But she had felt compelled to go there. She had needed to see what it was like inside.

Suddenly, she felt dirty. Her skin itched.

After taking a long shower, Emily dressed into cotton pyjamas and sat on her bed, wondering if she should skip dinner and take an early sleeping pill instead. Shrill ringing pierced the silence. She tensed. It had been so long since anyone had called her phone that the ringtone sounded unfamiliar. Who was calling her? Only three people had her number—Lewis, Paulina Blanchard, and Jerome.

Hurrying back to the living room, Emily picked up her phone from the table. The caller ID read: UNKNOWN.

Emily caught her breath. If Paulina had followed through on her request, there was a fourth person who might now have Emily’s number.
Karl Henry
.

Fingers trembling, she hit the answer key and listened. Quick, anxious breaths filled her ear.

“Hello? Miss Swanson?”

It was not Karl Henry. The voice belonged to a woman and it was filled with worry.

“Who is this?”

“I’m sorry to call you. I have your number from when you made your appointment. This is Rosa, the receptionist at the Ever After Care Foundation. I wanted to talk to you about Alina.”

For a moment, Emily couldn’t speak. Then she said, “Of course. What do you want to tell me?”

Rosa’s voice fell to a hush. “Can I meet you somewhere?”

“Now?”

“No, tomorrow. Four-thirty. There’s a diner called Bramfords. I’ll text you the address. But Miss Swanson?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t tell anyone about meeting me.”

The line went dead before Emily could say another word.

For the next few minutes, she paced circuits around the living room. Just as Emily had given up hope, Rosa had stepped out from the shadows. Synchronicity. She looked across at Alina’s portrait, into the fathomless blue of her eyes.

“I’m meant to find you,” Emily said, her voice filled with new vigour. “And I will.”

Outside, the rain continued to fall.

The morning arrived in a swirl of ice and wind. Entering the cramped supermarket, Emily picked up a basket and trawled through the aisles. She had picked a good time to shop as the store was void of its usual train of people. There was a different man working the cash register. As he scanned and packed her items, Emily glanced across at the noticeboard. The missing persons notice was gone, replaced by postcards advertising tarot readings and rooms to rent.

Back in her apartment, she made herself a cheese sandwich and swallowed it in three hungry bites. It was the first food she’d eaten in over a day. Next, she called Jerome, reached his voicemail, and hung up. It was one o’clock. There were still three and a half hours to fill until she met Rosa.

Unable to relax, Emily crossed the hallway and knocked on Harriet Golding’s door. A few minutes later, she was sat in the old woman’s living room, being served tea while she relayed yesterday’s visit to the hospice.

“What an odd thing to do!” Harriet said, pulling a folded blanket from the back of her chair and draping it over her lap. A draught was seeping in from somewhere. “Why ever did you go there?”

Andrew, who sat across from them, looked up from his book.

“I thought her colleagues could tell me what happened to her,” Emily shrugged.

“And did they?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’m meeting one of them later, a girl called Rosa.”

“Well you be careful, my dear,” Harriet said, leaning forward. “You should be off finding yourself a nice fella instead of getting yourself into all kinds of mischief. And what about a job? I don’t know how you can afford to keep that place all by yourself and not have to worry about finding work.”

Not in the mood for Harriet’s invasive questioning, Emily drank her tea and then made her excuses. By three-thirty, she had cleaned and polished her entire apartment and filled the washing machine with dirty laundry. At a quarter to four, she grabbed her thickest winter coat and headed out.

Bramfords Diner was north-east of The Holmeswood, in Shoreditch. Using the map application on her phone as a guide, Emily walked the thirty-minute journey. She was becoming more and more familiar with the streets surrounding her home, and although she still found crowds intimidating and had to use her breathing exercise to remain calm, she was learning that it was easier to move with them than fight against them.

By the time she found the diner hidden away on a cobbled side street, her entire body trembled with cold. Bramfords was a gimmicky affair modelled on American diners of the nineteen-fifties. Red booths with white tables lined both sides of the room, while a bright pink counter jutted out into the centre. Rock ‘n’ roll versions of traditional Christmas songs played from a jukebox.

Slipping into a booth, Emily ordered coffee from a waitress with silver-blue hair and tattoos on her knuckles that read HELL YEAH. As she watched the windows, snow suddenly began to fall; a sprinkling of flakes at first, which soon turned into a flurry.

The pavements were already covered when Rosa appeared five minutes later. She stopped in the doorway, her long red coat like a streak of blood against the white.

Emily half-stood, half-waved a hand.

“My sister’s taking care of my son right now, so I can’t stay long” Rosa said, sliding into the opposite seat. She was maybe nineteen, twenty years old at most, with olive skin, thick black hair worn in a ponytail, and dark, deep-set eyes that reflected the light as she nervously surveyed the room.

“That’s fine,” Emily replied. “Thank you for calling me.”

The waitress came over and Rosa ordered a coke. When they were alone again, Rosa squinted at Emily and said, “So, who do you write for?”

The question threw Emily off-balance. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a journalist, right?”

“Me? No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

Confusion washed over Rosa’s face. “When you asked Olivia—Nurse Bates—about Alina, you said you’d met her through a friend at a party.”

“That’s right.”

The waitress came back with the coke. Rosa pulled it towards her, pinching the straw between finger and thumb.

“Alina didn’t go to parties. She went to work and she went home. And she certainly wasn’t allowed to have any friends. You’re not a journalist?”

Emily shook her head.

“Then who are you?”

“I know this is going to sound strange,” she said, “but I moved into her old apartment a couple of weeks ago. I found out she was missing and that no one was doing anything about it.”

“So you are?”

“I’m trying.”

Rosa took a sip of her coke. “That
is
strange. I thought maybe you were with that other woman, the journalist.”

“Who do you mean?”

Pushing her glass to one side, Rosa said, “She turned up a couple days after Alina disappeared, said she was a friend of hers, that she was looking for her. She wrote for some website, something like that. She was asking all about Alina, and then she started asking about Ever After. Did I think it was well managed? Did I ever see anything out of the ordinary? Questions like that. So I told her.”

Emily leaned forward. “Told her what?”

Rosa stopped to look over the room, her eyes flitting from customer to customer.

“That something’s not right at Ever After. That I don’t think Alina made it back to Germany, no matter what anyone says.”

Silence fell across the table. Outside, the snow came down thick and fast.

“The evening before Alina disappeared,” Rosa began, “one of the night nurses was running late because of the traffic. I volunteered to stay on and help with the less palliative duties until she arrived. I do that sometimes. Being a single parent isn’t easy, sometimes I need to take the extra hours to pay the bills. Anyway, Alina was also down to do the night shift. When she showed up she was even quieter than usual. If her shithead husband wasn’t on duty you could usually get a few words out of her. But not that night.”

Emily put down her coffee. “Wait. Karl Henry worked at Ever After?”

“Still does. He’s the head caretaker. Anyway, that night when she came in, Alina kept holding her side, like she was in pain. I asked her what happened, even though it was obvious, but she kept saying she was fine.”

“Karl had hit her?”

“Let’s just say it wasn’t the first time she’d come in like that.” Rosa paused, looking over her shoulder at the falling snow. “The nurse I was covering for turned up around eight. I was getting ready to leave when Sandy, one of the other nurses, asked me if I’d seen Alina. She needed her help with some paperwork but she couldn’t find her. When she didn’t answer her pager, we went looking for her. And I mean we looked everywhere. But Alina was gone.”

“She left?”

Rosa shook her head. “It was so strange. We checked the bathrooms, the patient wings, staff facilities, everywhere. Then, about twenty minutes later, she suddenly appeared on the stairs. Something was wrong. She’d been crying. But it was more than that. She looked scared to death. Before anyone could say anything, she ran through the front door. Doctor Williams came down and followed her outside. When he came back a few minutes later, he told us he’d sent Alina home early, that she was having some personal troubles and wasn’t well enough to work.”

Rosa looked up with glassy eyes. “It was the last time any of us saw her. She didn’t show for her shift the next day. Neither did Karl. And then the police came, asking questions about her behaviour at work and about her relationship with her husband. I didn’t lie—we’d all seen the bruises. Meanwhile, that bastard was walking around with the sun shining out of his ass.”

“But what about the police?” Emily interrupted. “Did they talk to Doctor Williams about that night?”

“They did, but I couldn’t tell you what was said. A couple days later it was all cleared up. Nurse Bates and Doctor Williams called a staff meeting, told us Alina had sent a letter. They read it to us.”

“What did it say?”

“That she was sorry to have left so suddenly without saying goodbye, but for personal reasons she’d had to go, right then and there. Back to Germany. Of course everyone breathed a sigh of relief. People were sad to see her go, but at the same time they were happy she was safe. Happy she was away from him. Nurse Bates told us Karl would be returning to work the following week and that under no circumstances were we to mention Alina. Everything was to continue as normal.”

“What happened when Karl came back?” Emily had been listening to the girl’s story with growing concern, and now her mind pulsed with thoughts.

“It was like Alina never existed. That man went back to work like, I don’t know, like he couldn’t care less that his wife was gone. That didn’t make sense to me. Even if he didn’t love her you’d think he’d be pissed off she’d left him.”

“You think he had something to do with it?”

“All I can tell you is that he wasn’t behaving like a grieving husband. And that letter? Anyone could have typed it up. Everyone just accepted it, like Alina had stood there herself and read it to us.”

“But you didn’t believe it.”

“No, I didn’t. It was a feeling, I don’t know. Something telling me this wasn’t the truth.” Rosa paused, checked the door again. “I went through the employee files and pulled up Alina’s details. Her parents were listed as next of kin. So, I called them. They didn’t speak a word of English and I don’t speak German. But it didn’t matter because when I mentioned Alina’s name, they became upset. I don’t know what they were trying to tell me, but they kept saying her name, over and over. You don’t need to speak the same language to know when something’s wrong.”

Emily sucked in a deep breath. Alina hadn’t made it home after all. “Do you still have her parents’ number?”

“Someone removed her file. It’s gone. You know, at first I told myself she just hadn’t made it home yet, that she’d written her resignation letter and then disappeared for a little while to get her head straight. But then I remembered her talking about her parents. She’d said they were both old and getting sick, and that being an only child she always felt guilty about living so far away from them. Doesn’t that tell you that if she left, she would have gone straight home? I made that call a week after Karl came back to work. That gave Alina over two weeks to get home. But she didn’t make it.”

The gravity of what Rosa was saying left Emily feeling uneasy.

“Who have you told about this?”

Rosa pushed her coke away again and drummed her fingers against the table top.

“That journalist. And you.”

“What about your colleagues?”

Rosa hesitated, shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“Why?”

“Because Alina’s not the first person to disappear.”

Emily thought back to what Rosa had said earlier.
Something’s not right at Ever After
.

“There have been patients,” the young woman’s voice dropped to a whisper as she wrapped her arms around her ribcage, as if protecting herself from an invisible attack. “Just a few, but all with the same background—self-referred, no friends or family to speak of. The kind with money, but who are scared of dying alone. Anyway, these patients, they’ve checked in, and within a day or two, maybe three ... they’ve gone.”

“What do you mean? They died?”

“I mean, they’ve
gone
. Disappeared. In the middle of the night, as if they changed their minds and left without telling anyone.”

“How many exactly?”

“This year? Three.”

Emily thought about it. “Maybe they did change their minds and leave.”

“And walk off into the middle of the night? These people were sick. They were dying, with weeks to live. Besides they’d have to get past the staff without being seen. No one on duty the nights they disappeared reported seeing anything suspicious. They’d just vanished from their rooms, like in those alien abduction movies. The nurses were freaked out but the only explanation anyone could come up with was that somehow those patients had found a way out and gone off to die who knows where.”

Emily thought back to her findings from the missing persons website—all those unidentified bodies locked away in drawers like unsorted papers in a filing cabinet.

“I know I sound paranoid,” Rosa said, leaning closer. “Maybe I am. But after the last patient disappeared, I checked the rota to see who had been on duty that night, and when I saw who it was, I checked the nights the other patients vanished. The nurses were different each time—we have a bank who work on rotation—but one person’s name came up every time. Someone who wasn’t a nurse.”

Emily’s stomach somersaulted. “Karl Henry.”

“Usually we keep cleaning and maintenance to daytimes, but sometimes there’s a need to carry out certain duties at night. Karl Henry was on site each time a patient disappeared.”

“And now his wife is missing.”

“There’s more,” Rosa said. She opened her wallet and fished out a card, placing it in front of Emily. “That journalist, she told me there were people working at Ever After who were there for their own personal gain, that I should be careful of who I trust.”