The Vault (4) The men in suits

The first I knew of their existence is when I felt their presence behind me while I was cooking spaghetti.

It was more frightening than if they'd barged the door down with a crashing and smashing of timbers.

I knew they were there without hearing them, without seeing them, without smelling them. Some long-forgotten sense from our primeval past, an alertness to predators unseen, unheard, untouched, untasted, unsmelt. 

They filled the kitchen.. They were both huge, though one was taller and one was fatter. They both wore ill-fitting suits, good quality cloth of the kind that is usually tailored to fit, which gave the impression that they'd both taken their clothes from a recently-deceased body.

Their very presence was a threat. Not just their size and build, their soulless, mirthless faces, but also by implication. The stealth it implied, silent break-in, I never did find out how, followed by silent advance. But for my sixth sense they might have reached me and snapped my neck dead before I'd noticed their presence. 

"We need to talk," said the taller man, who seemed in charge. The fat man said nothing, he twiddled idly with a spoon, which still, somehow, managed to seem threatening. 

"The door's locked," I said. "You broke in."

"It's okay," the man said, "We didn't do any damage, you can lock it behind us when we leave."

That was hardly the point, though I didn't dare say so. As a result there was a silence. All was still. I felt a bead of sweat form on my forehead and drop to the floor, the forces of fear and gravity still active in a seemingly still scene.

"We're here about your memories," the taller man said.

"My memories?" I repeated. It seemed the last thing two suited thugs would break in my house for. My body parts, highly conceivable, my valuables, if I had any, my soul, this I was sure they would gladly rip out, bag up and sell to the nearest devil, but my memory?

"One memory in particular. You witnessed the assassination of the prime minister when you were a young child."

"I did, but I was only five. I was so traumatised by the whole experience, I couldn't recall anything. The police and their doctors spent years trying to coax it out of me. There's no point asking me to remember, you might as well attempt to translate the wind. "

"We've got new techniques," the man said. "We think we might be able to help you remember."

"But why? It's nearly twenty years. The PM is long dead, how can it matter now?"

"It might matter," the man said. "It might not. We won't know until you are in a position to tell us."

"I can try," I said.  "But I don't see the point."

"We'll pay you for your work." He gestured to the fat man, who withdrew a large envelope from his briefcase.

"There's £49,760 in there," he said. 

"That's an odd sum of money," I said. "Why not £50,000?"

"We had expenses," the man said. "In return we've arranged for you to take a month off work. We'll need you to work on the memory full-time."

"I'll need to check with work," I said.

"No you don't. As I say, we've arranged it already."

"I see. Well as I've told the police many times I can't remember anything. I remembered seeing the PM earlier, but not the assassination."

By this time I'd turned off my spaghetti, but we were still all standing in my kitchen. 

"We should sit down," the man said. Have a beer. It's going to take a while. Jeff, get three beers from out of the fridge. The opener's in that drawer."

"How do you know I've got beers in my fridge. How do you know where my bottle-opener is?"

In answer he just looked at me sadly, as if I'd just done something foolish, or said something foolish. 

We sat down in my lounge, each of us drinking cold beer out of the bottle. The memory he'd asked for was a memory I knew well, or at least the words to it, as I'd repeated tale of it a thousand times throughout my life. 

"I was on a train with my mother. I was about five. The toilets in the main section of the train weren't working, so I went to the ones in first class. My mother came with me, but she was stopped outside the second carriage by a man in a suit. "I'm afraid you can't come any further," he said, "We have a special passenger on the train today and the public aren't allowed through."

"But the boy needs to use the toilet," my mum had said.

"The boy can come through, but not you. Don't worry, we'll take care of him."

"I passed through the Prime Minister's carriage. He said hello and I sort of recognised him. I went through the door at the end of the carriage and went to the toilet in the cubical the other side. I'd learnt to go to the toilet by myself, but had never done so on a moving train. I was pleased that I managed to do what I went in to do without wetting myself.

But when I came out, there was a dead body on the floor outside, one of the security guards. I ran  through to the Prime Ministers carriage, wanting to run to my mother, but there .. and that's where my memory goes. I'm told I witnessed the killing of the Prime Minister, but I can't remember. All I remember is a policeman taking me to my mother. There were lots of police, lots of questioning, but that's all."

The man said nothing, so I continued.

"I've been hypnotised, had therapy, they tried everything. I've never been able to recall any details. The memory is lost to me."

The man was silent, watchful, throughout my speech. Jeff, if that was really his name, had returned to the kitchen and was rattling cutlery. 

"No memory is ever entirely lost. We have a new technique," the man said. "With time and effort you can learn to access memories. The method takes a few days to teach. There's a new drug that can help the process. The first stage is a meditation technique to take you to a different level of consciousness, I can help you develop the technique, ready yourself for the pills, to reach a state of mind we call The Zone. Once you're in the Zone you need to construct an internal narrative, a way of tricking your brain to letting you have access to your memories. The actuality of the process varies from person to person, all I can do is show the principal. I can give you the drugs and the meditation, the rest is up to you."

"And what does Jeff do?"

"Jeff fetches the drinks. It's going to be a tough few days."