Room 15: A Gripping Psychological Mystery Thriller

By Charles Harris

A twisty psychological thriller with “the ingenious structure and leaps in time and memory of a Christopher Nolan movie” from an award-winning director (Camden New Journal).

Ross Blackleigh is on trial for four crimes which he insists he didn’t commit. A detective inspector and a thoughtful self-reflective man, he goes against his counsel’s advice and takes the stand in court.

This is his story.

Ross found himself wandering the streets one night, bleeding from the head and unable to remember the past year and a half. But before he could make sense of it, he was summoned to a crime scene where a nurse had been brutally murdered.

His amnesia unnerved him and, fearing the worst, Ross allowed himself to be taken to hospital, only to be viciously attacked by a stranger with a knife.

Suspecting that the attack was connected with the nurse’s murder and that his own police colleagues were behind it, Ross set out on two parallel investigations: one into the killing and the other into his own mind.

But when he digs into his own psyche, he is scared by what he finds . . .

Is Ross being set up or is something far more disturbing behind the killings?

“Profoundly creepy in the best way, and the desperation of the haunted protagonist makes it a compellingly nightmarish journey.” —Life in Sci-Fi

“These changes of gear, the mix of brutal realism and a sense of darker, inexplicable forces are what give Room 15—I won’t reveal the significance of the title—its power, as the novel hurtles back to the courtroom and the jury’s verdict.” —Camden New Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504070454

Charles Harris

Charles Harris is an award-winning writer-director for cinema and TV. With fellow professionals he co-founded the first ever screenwriters' workshop (now Euroscript) and teaches writers and film-makers from all over the world. He created Pitching Tuesday for the London Screenwriters' Festival and his book Teach Yourself: Complete Screenwriting Course is recommended reading on MA courses. https://charles-harris.co.uk/

Book preview

1

February 2011

Not until you sit in the dock yourself do you realise how alone and powerless you are. I gaze down rather as a climber looks down at a landscape or an audience in the gallery looks at a stage, and try not to show how I feel. Below, I see the barristers with their assistants, the solicitors behind them, the jury in its box, the public on the other side and, of course, the judge. Everyone is so busy, so sure of themselves – all of them knowing what they’ll be doing tonight, next week, next year. While up here I sit with just police officers for company, unable to imagine anything beyond the next few days or to do anything to save myself.

Only at the start was I asked to speak, when the clerk read out the charges – four counts of murder, one of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. I replied ‘Not guilty’ to each, but my voice sounded weak. My own voice undermined me. Since then, for the past two and a half weeks, I have remained silent. For seventeen painful days and sleepless nights.

But finally, it’s my time. As I stand and leave the dock to cross the court, I try to appear certain. As if I’m sure. As if there isn’t a part of me that wishes my barrister, Stone, had stood his ground and managed to persuade me not to speak. The prosecution barrister sits back behind his pile of box files, eyes half closed, waiting for a fumbled answer he can use against me. I know the risks only too well. All it takes is a misunderstanding or a slip of the tongue. And then, to my surprise, as I enter the witness box, the door to the public gallery opens and my wife comes into the court for the first time since the start of the trial. Soberly dressed in a dark work suit, she finds one last seat at the back and takes her place. I try to smile up at her, to show how much stronger I feel, knowing she’s there, but she avoids eye contact.

The air is dry and oppressive – I don’t like these modernised windowless courtrooms, shut off from the outside world – and the place is quieter than I’ve known it this last fortnight. I feel I’ve walked into a trap.

I glance at the jury. All they need, to find me not guilty, is a reasonable doubt. For two weeks I’ve been watching them, trying to guess if any might have any doubts. There’s a young woman in a mauve hijab and an older man who’ve both remained impassive throughout, while behind them a middle-aged black woman, who wears a succession of yellow T-shirts, listens to everything with her mouth open. Is it good or bad if a jury member looks shocked? Will I have more of a chance with the red-headed woman who makes careful notes, or the attentive young Indian to her right who keeps shaking his head?

Stone sips a glass of water, pushes himself slowly to his feet. He’s a tousle-haired public school man with an estuary accent, who talks as if he learned English from a slightly ageing dictionary of clichés. His favourite expressions are ‘in the ballpark’, ‘giving it some welly’ and ‘make a good fist of it’; and he made a show of relaxed professionalism in our pre-trial meetings, but as the trial progressed, his ease of manner started to disappear and that frightened me.

Yesterday afternoon, downstairs in the grubby over-lit custody-area meeting room, we had another bad row over whether I should take the stand. I said I had to tell my story. He thought I shouldn’t. That I’d come over badly – too cold and unemotional. I tried to argue. I know people sometimes see me as cold and professional. I can seem passionless to others, withdrawn, even, but it’s the job. Inside I’m not. I can be as emotional as anyone, and in any case I’m no stranger to the witness box. But, he said, not as a defendant.

My solicitor and the police rep agreed with him but I refused to give in, told them I could sack them all if I wanted and represent myself. Then, as we were about to go back into court, Stone unexpectedly backed down. I could take the stand, he said, even though he still thought I was wrong.

Now, as I wait, he checks his notes, turns half to me, half to the jury, and says in an even voice, ‘DI Blackleigh, tell us what you first realised on the evening of Saturday, 13 February 2010.’

‘I realised it was snowing.’ My words are chosen carefully. Words I’ve run and re-run in my head, lying in my remand cell, searching for tripwires, dangerous references, phrases the jury might misunderstand. Trying to look calm, I wait for his next question.

‘Snowing?’ Stone raises his eyebrows, although of course he knows this already. ‘And why was that of significance to you?’

‘Because I thought it was summer. I thought it was Sunday, 10 August 2008.’ Does this sound too slow, too thoughtful? I make a mental note to show that I am capable of strong feeling, despite everything the jury’s heard.

Stone glances down at his papers. I sense his own caution. He looks up at me again. ‘And why did you think that?’

And now we both know there’s no turning back.

2

The previous year: Saturday, 13 February 2010, 9pm

Something feels terribly wrong. It’s starting to snow, but it’s August. I look up at the flakes swirling under the street lamps and as I do, a car horn blares in my ear. Annoyed, I turn towards it and find I’m standing in the middle of a road, which is swaying slightly under my feet, but I’m not drunk, of that I’m sure. The driver shouts something that I don’t catch and then swears loudly as he accelerates past.

What am I doing here? The night is dark and desperately cold – colder than I’ve ever known in summer before – and, banging my hands together to try to get them warm, I set out to continue walking the way I was going. But which way was that? Dimly lit council flats rise on either side. In one direction stands a darkened church, its black spire jabbing up at the sky. I don’t remember it. In the other there’s an unlit car showroom, the ghosts of unsold cars faint behind the glass. To my growing horror, I don’t recognise that either.

Two men have seen what happened and cross over. One reaches out, takes my arm and helps me onto the pavement.

‘You okay, mate?’ he asks.

Embarrassed, I mutter something about how they shouldn’t have bothered. The second man peers into my face.

‘Too many bevvies? You want to sit down? Take the weight off?’

‘No, fine, I’m fine,’ I say. Then I realise, with a shock, that he’s reaching his hand into my fleece pocket. I knock his hand aside, but again he tries to pull out my wallet. I shove him and he dances away laughing.

‘Piss-artist,’ he calls.

‘I’m not drunk,’ I say and try to grab the other one but he steps back too, waving his hands as if nothing was going on. I go to chase after them – but my leg hurts and the two men have a head start and soon disappear into a side street.

I stop, breathing heavily, and lean on a wall for a moment, to get my bearings, feeling foolish and confused. The snow is settling on the wall and on the pavement, a faint glimmering of white. My neck hurts, so I rub it and watch the flakes drift down to land, one on another – then I look at my hand.

It’s wet with blood.

3

Itry not to panic, to breathe slowly. What’s happening to me? Have I been in a car crash? A fight? Squinting at my reflection in a puddle, I see I’m bleeding from the left side of my neck and from my forehead, but as far as I can tell there’s no serious damage.

I ease myself painfully down onto the pavement. A woman laughs from somewhere in the block of council flats nearby and the strange frightening summer snow continues, icy flakes abseiling through the lamplight. I watch the whirling dots glimmer briefly on my fleece and then die. The fleece itself is quality – Patagonia, dark blue with trimmings – though badly scuffed – but it can’t be mine. It’s not my style. Nor the expensive designer jeans and Timberland cross-trainers either. Where are my usual clothes? M&S suit and anorak?

Legs sprawled out on the icy ground, I wipe my hand on the damp pavement. Clean off the blood as best I can, thanking God there’s no one around to see me sitting here like a beggar. I’m normally a calm person in most situations and I believe in going by the rules, finding a process to follow. No matter what the problem is, there is surely a process. So, I try to regain my composure by methodically searching the pockets of this unfamiliar fleece. First, I find an expensive wallet I don’t recognise. Next I pull out an Audi car fob and a bunch of house keys I’ve never seen before, along with a BlackBerry that’s also not mine. Now I’m shitting myself. Have I stolen them? In the other pocket I find another expensive mobile. To my surprise, both phones have been switched off.

My fingers are starting to go numb with the cold, but I manage to open the wallet and inside, to my relief, I find my own warrant card and driving licence. Though I’m more startled to see a large wad of cash – I generally count it a good day if I have as much as two twenties in my pocket. Placing the wallet and keys on the pavement beside me, I turn on the phones. Immediately, the BlackBerry fills up. It has my work numbers and there are a hundred new messages from the station, asking what I’m doing.

I switch to the other mobile and scroll through the contacts list. These are mine too, my personal ones, but then I notice: all the messages on this one have been deleted. The recent call list only shows two calls – both this evening, both to the same number. I look up the number in the contacts list but it’s not there. Not in the work phone either. I try ringing and an automatic voice from Vodafone tells me that the other person is not available and doesn’t have voicemail.

The wind gusts around me, blowing thin flakes into my face. I’m hungry. My body is stiffening. I really ought to move but it feels less frightening to stay here on the ground. I check my watch – half past nine. Should I go home? Should I go to hospital? But I’m not dying. I’ve just forgotten a few things. I can remember others: my name, my job. I remember Laura. It would be good to go home to her – to my warm bed and my warm wife.

But when I try to remember what I’m doing here, nothing comes. It’s like this is a test and I’m failing it. I don’t know what’s going on and am starting to feel very frightened indeed.

But enough is enough. Maybe if I force myself to move, it will trigger something. So I push everything back into the pockets of the fleece and pull up to standing. Once more I try again to remember, to go back to the moment before I found myself in this street. Where was I going? Where was I coming from? As an experiment, I start in the direction of the darkened church. But after just a dozen steps, I lose heart. It feels wrong. I turn towards the closed car showroom. But that’s wrong too. This is useless. In desperation, I step off the pavement to get a clearer sighting.

As I do, a flashing blue light floats down the street towards me through the falling snow. I hesitate, unsure how to deal with this. The police car eases to a halt and a sergeant stares up at me. He’s black, middle-aged and rounded at the corners.

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘You’re needed.’

4

There’s this nightmare – I used to have it when I was very young – the shape behind the door. I don’t remember what I’m doing here tonight, but I can remember that nightmare, though I wish I couldn’t. It sounds like nothing, put into words. Each night, I’d lie awake, watching the door, scared to fall asleep. When I did, the nightmare would come. A faceless shape, more animal than human. It stood in the dark behind the bedroom door, preparing to leap on me and smother my face. I’d wake in a panic, fighting for breath. Even now, recalling it unnerves me. I must have had that nightmare countless times and each time my mother would rush to my room. This was while she was still healthy.

She was small yet fiercely intense, as if anything bad that happened to me was somehow her fault, even my dreams. She’d turn on my bedside light and put her arms round me as I lay, rasping, unable to speak, unable to explain. Her body was soft in her towelling dressing gown, she smelled of the apple-blossom perfume she always wore, and she’d talk about anything. She’d make up hopeful stories about monsters who turned out to be friendly. She’d sing songs she used to sing when she was a child. And we’d tell each other what we’d done the day before and what we’d planned to do the day after. She’d always try to plan a treat, a visit to the zoo, say, or a new kind of cake she’d buy for me. Paul never came. (I’ve always called him Paul. I forget when I stopped calling him Dad.) He stayed in their bedroom and left me to her. They agreed on that at least.

Much later, when it was just the two of us, Paul’s way of showing his paternal love was very different – revolving mostly around church and pub. The church visits were supposed to be good for both our souls, while the pub would be more for him than for me. Usually lager, sometimes a single malt. It loosened his tongue and allowed him to temporarily forget his criticisms of me, myriad though they were. Those were our best moments together. Luckily for him, the police cared less about weight and fitness than they have since I joined, and by the time they did, he’d resigned. Me, I’m lucky that I’ve never drunk as much as him and I’ve always worked out. My father wouldn’t know a Swiss ball from a kettlebell.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about that nightmare now, as the sergeant drives me into the unknown. But it’s like there’s a splinter of memory, sometimes visible, sometimes slipping just out of reach. A shape. A sense of running somewhere. The sound of breaking glass, a glint of August sunshine, smell of spilled wine. A party. I try to catch these fragments but they’re gone again. It’s a nightmare in itself. Am I having a stroke? Is there a cancer in my brain?

I hold down the panic and think through what I can remember. I remember my childhood. I remember school – I was always better at football and boxing than reading Shakespeare and taking exams. But I tried hard. I took my test reports home to my mother, who would stick them to the fridge and gloat over the marks for every test that I scraped through as if I’d won a Nobel prize. Paul knew better but for once had the sense to keep his mouth shut and let her bask in my reflected dishonour.

I’d always wanted to be a policeman. My mother was already ill by the time I first told anyone and in no real state to have an opinion either way – or maybe she was afraid to express one – but Paul always refused to accept the idea of me joining him in the job.

No matter. My first posting after police college at Hendon was well away from him, on the streets of Hillingdon. I remember my promotions. I became an acting detective constable over in Hackney. (By then I’d begun to joke that there was some devious assistant in Human Resources who’d marked my file so I’d only be sent to boroughs beginning with H. I waited patiently to be assigned next to Haringey or Harlesden.) I enjoyed life in plainclothes, but the police expect you to zigzag, so it was back to uniform after my sergeant’s exams (Walthamstow. HR must have had a change of heart – or staff) before escaping as detective sergeant into the DPS. If you want to be despised by your fellows, go to the Directorate of Professional Standards. No one should be confused by the bland name – we earned our living investigating bent coppers; and I soon learned that while honest coppers hated bent coppers, they hated the coppers who arrested them even more.

This summer I took my inspector’s exam and passed first time – the only exam I’ve done particularly well in – to my gratitude and relief. Last week I was busy planning my promotion party.

The sergeant slows for a queue of cars, blips the siren and slides into the oncoming lane. The traffic seems to be as thick as the weather and I watch every move he makes. He’s treating me with friendly respect, as if we’re on good terms. I remember passing him in the corridor but have never known his name. Then again, I’ve not been in the borough long. How close are we then? Have we worked together and I’ve forgotten it? Have we shared personal secrets I’m supposed to remember? It terrifies me, not knowing what he expects me to know.

He taps the wheel heavily and says, ‘It was great you could make it to the pub for my birthday, sir. And that you could stay so long. It went down well with the lads. And a nice little speech too. Very funny,’ he adds warmly. ‘Though you didn’t have to.’

I don’t know what to answer to this, since I don’t remember going with him for any drinks and I normally hate making speeches.

‘No trouble,’ I say in the end, feeling sick with fear. But he smiles and focuses back on the road. Talks about everything except where we’re going. Even when he’s complaining about the traffic, his voice has a rolling lilt that could lull me into relaxing my guard and confessing that I don’t remember him.

‘Shitting weather,’ he says. ‘And did you hear the forecast? Snow for the entire weekend.’

‘Well, it’s going to fuck up the summer tourist trade,’ I say, in an attempt at humour. But he gives me a weird look. What have I said?

‘It’ll certainly fuck up something.’

I stare out of the window at the pedestrians and lighted shopfronts. I feel I should recognise these streets. They look like Camden Town. If so, we might be heading south, but I can’t be sure and I keep my mouth shut.

Spilled wine. With a shock I realise this is the last thing I remember. A glass broke at my promotion party only a few minutes ago. Except it’s night now, so it must be more than a few minutes.

I was standing in the hot summer sunshine. I’d been relaxing, drinking with a couple of friends but I’d started to feel tense – I don’t remember what about. Laura was nearby. Smiling at me and then dragging her fingers absent-mindedly through her hair. It’s a habit of hers. She’d been talking energetically to one of her work colleagues, going over cases, no doubt, or office politics. It’s not an easy life for a woman lawyer – and black.

Something interrupted her and she’d given me a worried glance before smiling at me. A sudden unexpected smile of togetherness and support. It was then that I heard a glass break and smelled spilled wine. I felt angry. About the glass? About something else? I can’t recall.

Next thing I know, I was standing in the middle of the street, staring up at the falling snow.

The sergeant looks across at me in the passenger seat, as if I’ve spoken, but I’m sure I haven’t.

He says, ‘You want to have those looked at.’ He means my face and neck. I try to stay calm and tell him I’m fine. He’s too much of an old hand to ask directly what caused the damage, but I can see him working out the odds.

We turn towards King’s Cross. I’m now sure of the streets. It’s a relief. I take out my work BlackBerry, open the messages, and this time I scroll back to look at the older ones. One of the earliest arrived at eight yesterday morning: a reminder of a three o’clock meeting at Scotland Yard with a deputy assistant commissioner. But I have no memory of it and this frightens me all over again. An appointment with one of the top officers is not something you easily forget. But then I notice with a shock that the message isn’t dated August 2008. It says February 2010.

It’s a strange mistake for someone to make. I check the phone for today’s date. It shows 2010 there too. Saturday, 13 February. There must be a problem with the network. I look at my personal phone. The same. I’m sweating, in spite of the cold. How can they all be wrong by a year and a half?

‘Found him,’ the sergeant says, without warning. I’m about to ask him what he means when I realise he’s talking to his radio. ‘And we’re five minutes out.’

During the interchange he gives his name as Norris. I think that’s what he says. He signs off, looks across at me and repeats, ‘In five.’ But he doesn’t say what we’re five minutes away from.

I don’t reply. I can’t. What I really want to say is: what year is this? Is this a Sunday in August 2008 or a Saturday in February 2010? Have I lost eighteen months of my life? It’s like I’m holding a single thread. Pull on it and my whole mind might unravel. But where that leads I don’t want to begin to contemplate.

5

We pass King’s Cross station and turn into a narrow one-way street, busy with night-time traffic, and ahead of us is a police car, blues flashing but empty. Norris (if that’s his name) pulls over behind it and climbs out, muttering. I fight an irrational urge to turn and run. But Norris is a muscular man and in my state I’d get about five metres before he caught up with me. And then, as if reading my thoughts, he says, ‘Our good luck, me seeing you, sir. Short-staffed. Half the station sick with flu. Barely a DI standing. I think you’re the only one around at the moment. With this weather. The snow…’

And it’s now I realise to my dismay what he needs me for.

Most cases start with someone phoning 999. The first to arrive at the scene will be a PC. Often there’s nothing to report. A drunken fight or a shouting match between husband and wife. The trick for the PC, in those cases, is to make the peace and not get caught in the middle. But sometimes the incident is bigger. A fatal accident, say, a suicide or a murder. He secures the scene and asks for the on-call DI. There’s always a detective inspector on call for emergencies, allocated by rota. Tonight of all nights, that must be me. I’ve been called.

A belief in duty can be a curse. Most of the rest of the world gets away without it but that’s not the way I am. I don’t like letting people down. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t like that. So I limp after Sergeant Norris across the icy pavement, treacherous with new snow, till we reach an unlit sign saying: Aviva Hotel. He bangs on a glass door and it’s opened immediately by a young night porter in jeans and an Oasis T-shirt.

‘Upstairs, room 15,’ he says simply and points towards the rear of the hotel.

Norris says, ‘Mr Blackleigh,’ very formally, and indicates for me to go ahead.

My job is to take charge of the scene. My fear is that there’s something seriously wrong with my brain and I could screw up the investigation from the start. But the weather… the snow… I’m trapped by my sense of duty.

So we follow the night porter in a line, me, then Norris, past an unused business lounge with a single computer, up a flight of narrow stairs to the first floor. The hotel appears tidy and smells freshly painted, though with an undertow of something less pleasant I can’t pin down. Norris talks on, back on his favourite subject, the weather, delighted to find a new person to moan to, and the young night porter nods and sighs from time to time, to show solidarity with a fellow night-worker, even if that worker is police.

We pass two rooms, lights on, bedclothes thrown aside as if the occupants left in a rush, then the route bends in the strange awkward way of old hotels and the ceiling suddenly lowers and there stands a copper, waiting for us with an air of self-congratulation. He straightens up respectfully and addresses me as ‘sir’. Norris calls him Ryan. I don’t know if I’m supposed to remember him.

Ryan looks like he’s only just finished his probation – young, ruddy-faced. Unable to ignore the side of my neck, he asks, ‘Is that all right, sir?’

‘It’s all right,’ I answer but he can’t keep his eyes off it. What does he think of me, bleeding, clothes battered? But duty works both ways: he has a duty to defer to me as his superior, at least until he has a good reason not to. Then, for all his presumption, he falls silent and I see the half-open door behind him: room 15. Inside, I can just make out a crumpled rug and the corner of a bed.

Instinctively, I fall back on procedure, hoping the right words will come. ‘Okay, tell me,’ I say, and he pulls out his notebook with a nervous shake to his hands he can’t conceal.

‘I arrived at 9.05pm,’ he reports. ‘The door was as you now see it, sir, two inches open. I perceived the window partially opened also. Definitive signs of recent struggle. I made a contemporaneous sketch–’

I feel sorry for him. He’s hiding in police officialese but in truth his hesitancy helps me, giving my mush-filled brain a minute to dredge up the routine. I put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to relax.

He unbends a little but still doesn’t look towards the room. ‘Young woman sitting on the bed. On inspection from the doorway, I found her to be apparently lifeless.’

‘Apparently lifeless?’ The technical language jars more than usual.

‘Sir. Yes, as I said. To avoid contaminating the crime scene, I remained at the door and I took notice of many bullet holes… entry wounds…’ Ryan comes to a shaky halt and glances at me hopefully.

‘Her name?’ I ask, playing for time while the steps come back to me. He shakes his head. We all turn to the night porter, but this is not the kind of hotel that takes names from its guests. I search for inspiration. ‘The scene should have been cordoned off.’ This is something concrete I can grasp hold of. ‘Why wasn’t it?’

The PC reddens even more. ‘I was the only one here, sir. I didn’t want to leave it unguarded while I got the tape from the patrol car.’

I take pity on him and tell him not to worry and then somehow I find myself recalling the process. It feels good to be doing something definite. I only have to keep the ball rolling, follow the rules, then go home and sleep. I could get this right after all.

I ask for two cordons, blue tape downstairs, red across the corridor up here, then when Norris disappears to get the tape I tell the night porter I’ll interview him in five minutes. He remains hovering and I tell him to go down and wait in his office. He leaves reluctantly, as if I’m shutting him out from the fun. I’ve started a headache and my brain feels full of fog, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen my way out. This is not going to be my case, I’ll hand it on to the Homicide Assessment Team, who in turn will pass it over to the Murder Investigation Team