A Memory of Demons Read online

  David Ambrose read law at Oxford and has worked internationally in theatre, film and television. Visit his website on www.davidambrose.com

  Acclaim for A Memory of Demons and David Ambrose

  ‘Ambrose’s narrative seems inspired by a strain of mind-shrink thrillers from 1940’s film noir, driven by a fascination with the suspicion of therapy. The trick is, keep the twists coming, don’t play safe and always assume life’s not fair. Ambrose abides by these rules and throws in a couple of slammers from the left field. The moral: there is no recovery, only temporary remission before the nightmare returns’ Guardian

  ‘Gets the old grey matter ticking’ Mirror

  ‘Highly ingenious storytelling’ Douglas Adams

  ‘Demonstrates Ambrose’s proven skill in constructing the darkest of plots. The story grips from the opening pages . . . to the climax’ Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Wit and panache . . . Ambrose is always several steps ahead of the intellectual game’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘David Ambrose has a unique approach to the thriller’ Clare Francis

  ‘Compulsive’ GQ

  ‘No one monkeys around with your mind quite like David Ambrose’ Paul Davies, Mirror

  ‘He just gets better and better’ Anne Robinson, Guardian

  Ambrose writes with verve and lucidity, carrying the reader with him every step of the way’ The Times

  ‘Disturbing but also exhilarating’ John Bayley, Evening Standard

  ALSO BY DAVID AMBROSE

  THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO HIMSELF

  MOTHER OF GOD

  SUPERSTITION

  HOLLYWOOD LIES

  THE DISCRETE CHARM OF CHARLIE MONK

  COINCIDENCE

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2003

  This paperback edition published by Pocket Books, 2004

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A Viacom company

  Copyright © David Ambrose, 2003

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  The right of David Ambrose to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0–7434–4075–7

  eBook ISBN 978-1-4711-2806-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Polmont, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  A MEMORY OF DEMONS

  Contents

  PART ONE: ‘Suspicion’

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  PART TWO: ‘Confession’

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  PART THREE: ‘Judgement’

  54

  55

  PART FOUR: ‘Afterlife’

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  Read on for an extract from David Ambrose’s thrilling new novel

  PART ONE

  ‘SUSPICION’

  1

  Tom Freeman contemplated the white-coated figure perched on the end of his bed. ‘I’m afraid it’s a death sentence,’ was all he remembered of what the doctor had just said.

  Then he heard, ‘That’s a certainty – unless you make some big changes in your life.’

  So, there was an ‘unless’. But did he want an ‘unless’? Wouldn’t he rather just die, and as soon and insensibly as possible? He tried to say as much, but could only make a rasping noise in the back of his throat. He reminded himself that he was in a neck brace and his jaw was wired. In addition, he was encased in plaster for three broken ribs, a fractured shoulder, a cracked hip and a broken leg. It was a miracle, he had been told, that he was alive.

  The doctor, who was in his mid-thirties, only a year or two older than Tom, went on: ‘At some point your liver or pancreas will go, or your kidneys, maybe the whole lot. Not to mention the brain damage that becomes inevitable with that level of sustained drinking. And all of this is without even mentioning your coke habit.’

  He paused, his gaze focused solemnly on Tom’s eyes, hoping to see that his message was hitting home and having some effect. Tom stared back in defiant silence. It was his firm belief that everyone had the right to go to hell in their own way. In fact, it was just about the only thing he believed in – his one article of faith. He just wished he could get his mouth to formulate the words so that he wouldn’t have to listen to any more of this pious monologue which was really starting to piss him off.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor was saying, ‘the good news is that you’re unlikely to die from any of those drug- or alcohol-related conditions, because you’ll probably get yourself killed in some dumb accident before that. Like last night. You must have been hit by a passing vehicle – most likely a truck, from your injuries. You probably don’t remember anything.’

  Tom tried to shake his head, but the doctor held up a hand in alarm.

  ‘Don’t try to move your head! You were pulled out of a ditch over on River and Pike. Somebody had called in to report a corpse. When the paramedics arrived, their first response was that you had no vital signs, then they found a pulse. They revived you in the ambulance, though nobody thought you would live – yet here you are.’

  Tom started to ask where the hell River and Pike was, but once again had to abandon the attempt. Besides, what did it matter? It would mean nothing to him. He would have no memory of how he got there.

  He knew he was in Albany, but the last place he remembered before that was Manhattan – some club in Tribeca where he’d known one of the musicians, and somebody had started talking about driving up the Hudson Valley. There was a rock festival, they’d said, just outside Albany. The next thing he remembered was the limo. Some lunatic had hired a limo. Whose idea had that been, he wondered? He suddenly had a horrible feeling it had been his. He remembered that a bunch of them had piled in, and there’d been a bar which, now he thought about it
, they’d stopped at least a couple of times to replenish on the way. Plus of course they’d had all the usual drugs.

  That much came back, but that was all. They must have reached their destination, though he had no memory of arriving. What, he wondered, had happened to the others? It was unlikely he would ever know, because he had no idea who they were. He could not remember even a single face. The whole thing was a blur of booze and coke and more booze, followed by a few more reviving lines of coke, plus pills and joints . . . until he found himself in this place, trussed up and suspended from hooks and pulleys like a carcass in the slaughterhouse. Who the hell did he have to fuck to get a drink around here? Not that he was going to be able to fuck anybody in his present state. Which boded badly for a drink.

  The doctor looked on, arms folded patiently, waiting for whatever dialogue Tom was having with himself to come to an end. When he saw Tom’s gaze flicker up to meet his own once more, he delivered his final warning. ‘You’re going to recover physically. I told you it’s a miracle that you’re alive. It’s also a miracle that you’ve done yourself no permanent damage – at least not yet. You still have a chance. It’s up to you.’

  Once again Tom tried to speak, but managed only an angry grunt. What he had wanted to ask this fresh-faced prig in front of him was whether he’d been born sounding like a summer camp religious counsellor, or whether he’d taken a course in that crap along with anatomy and pathology?

  ‘Try to get some rest,’ the doctor said. ‘It’ll be a while before you can talk, but we’ll fix you up with a pad and a pencil soon as we can. Is there anything you have to tell me right now? Anything you need? Give me one blink for yes, two for no.’

  Tom thought for a moment. Of course there was something he needed; a large vodka with ice and a line of coke would do nicely. But he knew he wasn’t going to get that, so he blinked twice in the simple hope of being left alone.

  As though reading Tom’s thoughts, the doctor nodded his acknowledgement, said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and left.

  Tom lay paralysed, beginning to feel his body itch and ache, and wondered how long this could go on before he went mad.

  2

  The drugs helped, of course – painkillers mostly, powerful enough to take the edge off going cold turkey. Perhaps they slipped him something else to get him through it; he didn’t ask, just waited impatiently for the dispensary nurse to make her twice-daily rounds with the little paper cup of pills and capsules that made his life in that place tolerable.

  But as his physical injuries healed, they started decreasing the dosage. The young doctor, whose name Tom knew by then was Richard Pierce, was perfectly aware of the effect this was having.

  ‘No, absolutely not, I’m sorry,’ he answered in response to Tom’s urgent pleas for increased medication. ‘I’m here to get you well and back on your feet, and that’s all I’m promising. The rest of your problems you’re going to have to take care of yourself. There’s an open meeting of AA held in this hospital three times a week. Go and check it out – right now, in your wheelchair.’

  Tom muttered some angrily dismissive response. He gave short shrift to the well-meaning hospital chaplain who stopped by to talk with him, and was needlessly offensive to the psychiatric counsellor who asked if there was anything she could help him with. In a perverse way, he was convinced that the more unloved he made himself amongst the people caring for him, the sooner they would make an effort to discharge him and let him get on with his life.

  His life. What was it worth, his life? There was not one person in the world who would be grieving now if he had died in that ditch. Nor was there one person whose presence in the world made him positively want to go on living. He could not envision a future worth striving for, nor did he deceive himself that he could ever return to those heady days of a decade or so back when life’s possibilities had seemed endless. With a brilliant degree in journalism and political science, and membership of Phi Beta Kappa, all doors had been open to him. Banking, the media, politics – all beckoned. Perversely, and perhaps fatally, he had chosen to ignore those heady opportunities and to take a shot at his undergraduate dream of making films. It was now or never, he told himself. If he failed, he could always fall back on something in the ‘straight’ world.

  To begin with, the compromises he made were so small he almost didn’t notice them. Besides, what was wrong with advertising and PR work? You learned your craft that way. A lot of great directors had started like that.

  Some, however, stayed there. Tom, after five years, was proving to be one of them.

  To a casual observer he was a big success. He was working hard and earning large amounts of money – far in excess of most of his college contemporaries. But in his heart he knew he was going nowhere. Perhaps that was why the drinking got such a hold on him, and then the drugs. But drink and drugs came with the job; they were part of that world, everybody did them. He could handle it, Tom told himself and anyone who asked. But soon it was handling him. He started doing bad work, and then the offers started drying up.

  As his money dwindled, he got occasional freelance work to keep himself afloat, but he achieved little and was paid less. Even before this last episode he was close to broke and living way beyond his means. Now he didn’t even have the courage to call his bank to find out how bad the damage was. Luckily his health insurance hadn’t lapsed and would see him through his hospitalization. But after that he would be on his own in every way, a burnt-out case with a great future behind him.

  The depression he entered in that painfully uncomfortable orthopaedic bed gradually darkened into an all-pervading anger with the world and himself for being part of it. There was a black hole at the centre of his life, something into which all the promise he had once shown, all the talent he had squandered, had vanished for ever. Now, he decided, he would vanish into it himself. It was the only thing to do. The ultimate implosion.

  He had noticed the ‘Staff Only’ elevator from his wheelchair on the way to physiotherapy every afternoon. It was wide enough to take a stretcher or even a whole bed, and he could see from the indicator above the doors that it ran from the basement to the summit of the building. Oddly, he only ever saw it in use once. He asked the nurse pushing his chair about it, and learned that there was a more convenient central bank of elevators in the new wing of the building. It was all Tom needed to know. This was the chance he had been looking for – heavensent, he thought with bleak amusement.

  A week later, he was able to make the journey to physiotherapy alone on a walking frame, and was encouraged to do so. He decided he would wait a while longer to explore the elevator, until he had the strength to deal with whatever obstacles he might encounter on the upper level. There could be steps, locked doors or windows, parapets. When the time came, he would be ready, prepared in mind and body. It was surprising how the fact of having a goal in life, even if that goal was self-destruction, made all the frustrations and discomforts he was subject to more bearable. The knowledge that he had made his decision brought him an extraordinary peace of mind.

  Ten days later he had swapped his walking frame for two light alloy crutches. His muscular strength was returning and he was starting to move around almost nimbly. He decided it was time. Late one afternoon, which he had noticed was one of the quieter times in the hospital’s routine, he checked the corridor in both directions, and pressed the call button. He waited, trying to blend innocently into his surroundings, as hidden machinery whirred and eventually the wide doors parted. He got in quickly and pressed the top button, willing it to respond before anyone came around the corner and spotted him. As the doors came together with a soft shuddering motion, he heaved a sigh of relief and realized he had been holding his breath.

  The elevator rose smoothly, without stopping, and opened onto a narrow corridor. It was deserted, but he had the impression that this was the usual state of affairs up here. There were no distant sounds of ringing phones or voices, no echoing footsteps, no impression o
f life going busily on around corners or beyond the few closed doors he could see, and which he guessed were probably storage rooms.

  He walked a few yards until he reached an intersection where identical corridors split off in opposite directions. He carried straight on until he reached the next corner, where he saw what he was looking for. To his left, three steps led up to a reinforced-glass partition beyond which he could see an expanse of blue-grey cloudy sky. There was a door in the partition, and he mounted the steps praying that it would be open. He shook the handle; it didn’t budge. He was cursing softly and looking around for another way, when he saw a key protruding from the lock in front of him. He turned it, and the door opened effortlessly.

  His first instinct on the far side was to fill his lungs with fresh air for the first time in weeks. He had forgotten how different it smelt and tasted from the atmosphere inside. But it was only a momentary response; he reminded himself that he was not up there to feel good about life, but to end it.

  He looked around. The flat surface of the roof was dotted with ventilation ducts and larger structures housing elevator and air-conditioning machinery. Beyond all that he could see a parapet of brick, topped with flat concrete flagstones, no more than two feet high. He hobbled over to it, dropped to his knees, and peered down.

  Below him lay the parking lot. Two cars had just pulled out, leaving him with an oil-stained hard surface that would annihilate him on impact. It was perfect. Luck was on his side this afternoon.

  It took him a moment to realize he was hesitating. And several more to realize why. First of all, he had the odd impression that something had changed, stealthily and silently, without his noticing, while his attention was elsewhere. Something had changed, but what?

  Something in him? Or something around him?

  Was it possible that, having got right down to the wire, as it were, he had discovered that he didn’t really want to die? That his despair was an illusion?

  He thought for some moments before he identified where this strange new feeling was coming from – the same place at the back of his mind as his decision to end it all. But this wasn’t a decision. It was a need. He wanted something badly, something more than death.