One by One by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t wake up I’ll never know, but he didn’t, even though he was splattered with her blood.
    After I’d finished I washed myself, washed the hammer, put it away in the cupboard I’d got it from and went into Marla’s bedroom and lay on the spare mattress on her floor, wondering what I was going to do, until eventually I fell asleep.
    I’m glad I’ve told you everything. The guilt’s haunted me over the years and, as you know, I’ve been paid back many times for the sin I committed that night. I’m sorry Rachel’s dead. I always have been. I’m sorry the others are dead too.
    On the way over in the boat, I’d offered Pat a smoke and he’d taken it, so I searched through his pockets now, and struck lucky, finding a half-full pack of Rothmans and a box of matches, as well as a bunch of keys. I found the one that opened the front door, then, as my breathing slowed to normal, I lit a cigarette and used the rest of the matches to set fire to the lounge curtain, before wandering round downstairs, setting more fires.
    Only when the flames began to really take hold did I leave through the front door and, with barely a look behind me, I started the walk through the trees down to the beach and the jetty, finally enjoying breathing in the fresh country air.
    It was time to begin the rest of my life.



One
    I’ve been worried that I’m not who they say I am for a while now.
    It started a week or so back after I fell down the cellar steps en route to getting a bottle of red wine and smacked my head on the stone floor. They kept me in the local hospital overnight as I was showing the symptoms for mild concussion, and ever since they let me out, things haven’t felt quite right.
    To be honest, the whole set-up here’s pretty odd. According to my sister, she’s been looking after me at her house for over two months now, and that feels about right, although it’s impossible to tell for sure because the days just seem to drift into one another in a kind of soft fog. The thing is, I’m not sure whether I’m being paranoid or not. When you’ve got no long-term memory you’re as helpless as a young child, which means you’ve got to trust the people around you. And particularly those whose job it is to bring your memory back – like the man sitting opposite me across the room.
    Dr Bronson’s a big, dapper man at the wrong end of his fifties with a quite magnificent mane of black hair, tinged with silver, and a long, thoughtful face that would have been described as ruggedly handsome a few years back but which is now beginning to lose its fight with gravity. Even so, you can still imagine that he’d have his pick of single ladies of a certain age. He has that kind of gravitas, but at the same time he also gives off the impression that he doesn’t take himself too seriously – not if the clothes he’s wearing today are anything to go by, anyway. His latest adornment is a tweed three-piece suit, a red bow tie that matches the rims of his glasses, well-worn brown brogues, and loud pink socks.
    â€˜So how have you been, Matt?’ he asked me, his voice soft, yet sonorous and reassuring. We’d been seeing each other twice a week every week here at my sister’s, and this had always been his opening line.
    â€˜OK, I guess. Nothing much changes really.’ Which up until a few days ago had been the truth. Now, though, I was less sure.
    â€˜I sense you’re looking a little despondent today,’ he remarked. ‘Don’t lose hope, whatever you do. Recovery from the kind of immense brain trauma you suffered takes time. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. We’ve both got to be patient through this process.’
    The brain trauma he was referring to was my car accident. Early one morning some months back, I was driving in a semirural stretch of Hampshire when my car left the road, went down an