Lost Days

I woke up with a fuzzy feeling that not everything was right or real. I sat up and realized that this room was strangely unfamiliar, there was nothing that I recognized about it at all. I climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom but it wasn't where I expected it to be, but then I didn't know where I expected it to be. When I found it I discovered an unfamiliar but used toothbrush and an almost depleted tube of toothpaste along with shaving gear that I didn't recognize. I stripped off, just my underwear, and got into the shower but even after ten minutes of water running over my face I was none the wiser.

I looked for clothes to put on but there was nothing in the closet, just what was draped over a chair. Left with no alternative I dressed in the crumpled clothes from whenever it was that I got here. What I found next did nothing to ease my confusion. There was an attaché case on the bench and I opened it to be confronted by money, a lot of money, a case crammed with money, all of it in large denomination notes and packaged as if it came straight from the bank. In a pocket in the inside of the lid was a wallet containing several credit cards and a Drivers Licence. The picture looked like what I'd seen in the bathroom mirror, so I assumed that it was mine, and the name matched the one on the credit cards, confirming my identity. But it still didn't help me, I had no recollection of any of this, the name rang no bells at all and the photo of a beautiful woman didn't spark any memories.

I took a pack of notes from one corner of the case, there was a bank label on it that told me that each pack of notes contained one hundred $100 notes. I removed the packs under the one that I'd taken out and there were four layers. There were sixteen packs in each of the four layers, that meant that there was $640,000 in the case, surely enough to jog some memory, but no. I had no memory of the money or where it came from.

There was a television set on the bench so I turned it on and immediately wished I hadn't. The talking head sitting at the news desk reading the news had a grim look about it; "Melbourne detectives have confirmed that they wish to interview wealthy industrialist Byron Pollard following the discovery of the body of his wife in their Toorak mansion." Superimposed on the screen was a large version of the photo in the wallet. "Pollard was last seen driving from his home on Tuesday evening at about 9:30pm and hasn't been seen since. His black Jaguar XKR was found in the car park at Tullamarine airport the following morning. There was no record of him having caught a flight, and a close examination of CCTV footage has failed to identify him anywhere in the terminal building. A police spokesperson has stated that at this time he is not considered to be a suspect, and that they are concerned that he should be found quickly because of a medical condition that will worsen dramatically if he does not seek urgent medical treatment. Police also stated that he has not accessed his bank accounts or credit cards. He has not been sighted for three days and police fear that he himself may have met with foul play. Anyone with any information is asked to contact police or Crimestoppers."

I just sat there and stared blankly at the screen, no longer concentrating of what was being said, the world could have come to an end for all I cared, because my world certainly looked to have met that fate. I was jolted back to reality by the talking head. "That's all the news for now on this Friday the thirteenth of February." Friday, it can't be Friday, or could it be. Could I have lost three days from my life? Or had I lost more than that? I couldn't remember driving to the airport on Tuesday, had I driven there at some other time? I didn't get a chance to think about that for very long. There was a tap on the door. "Just a minute." I said to it as I packed the money back into the case. I opened the door to be confronted by a man and a woman both flashing police identity cards.

"Mr. Pollard, My name is Detective Sergeant Madeline Allison and this is Detective Constable Samuel Benson, may we come in?" She said.

"Certainly." I stood back to allow them into the room.

"Mr. Pollard, we would like to ask you a few questions."

"And I would like to ask you a few questions, like how and when did I get here, wherever here is, and what has happened to the last three days?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have absolutely no recollection of the past three days. I woke up a few minutes ago in this strange and unfamiliar room, I have no clothes other than what I'm wearing, and I've just this minute found out that my wife is dead, I assume that you've come to ask me what I know of that, and I can only say that I know nothing." I could see by the expression on the faces staring at me that this is not what they'd expected.

"Do you expect us to believe that you can't remember a thing of the last three days?" Constable Benson was obviously sceptical.

"How can I expect you to believe that when I can't believe it myself?" It was then that I became aware that I was scratching the back of my hand, there was a small speck of blood on the skin over one of the veins as if there had been a needle inserted into it. "This is strange."

"What is?" The Sergeant Allison came over to have a look at my hand.

"This." I said, pointing. "It looks as if there has been a needle in my vein, like you have in hospital when you are receiving intravenous medication. I think I need a tox screen to see if there are traces of any medication in my system. By the way, how did you know that I was here?"

"We got a tip-off through Crimestoppers, someone rang and told us that you were seen checking in on Wednesday morning so we checked with reception. You had us fooled for a while because you didn't use your own name and paid for a week in cash so there were no credit card details noted on the card, but when we showed your picture one of the housemaids told us that you were in this room, and that you had a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on your door. She had entered the room last night because you had not come out for two days. You were asleep, so she left. She did mention it to the Receptionist, just to be on the safe side, in case something happened."

"Didn't the Receptionist remember me from when I checked in?"

"No, it seems as if you didn't actually check in. A woman made the arrangements on your behalf, she told them that she represented a clinic here and that you were not well and were here to seek treatment for your illness. The CCTV images from the foyer showed her helping you in at around 10:00pm on Wednesday night, she took you straight up to your room and left immediately."

"And no-one has been in this room other than the housemaid since then?"

"We'll check on that. Do you remember the last time that you spoke with your wife?"

"No. According to the news that I've just seen on TV, I must have spoken to her on Tuesday night, that is if she was home, but I have no recollection of that at all, in fact I have no recollection of being at home on Tuesday night at all. In fact I have a vague memory of being here in Sydney last Friday but nothing since then."

"Where were you last Friday?"

"I was at the cricket, there was a one day international on and I was in the Members."

"Were you with anyone?"

"I was with a client, we'd been in meetings all day and he invited me to the cricket for the last session to wind down, it had been a tough couple of days."

"You can remember this but can't remember anything about the past couple of days? Don't you think that's a bit odd?"

"I do, that and the mark on my hand lead me to believe that someone doesn't want me to remember those days."

"If you were here in Sydney on Friday night but didn't check into this hotel until Wednesday, what happened to Saturday and the other days?" Sergeant Allison asked.

"That's what I'd like to know. If I was into conspiracy theories I'd think that I was meant to believe that somehow I could have done something bad that I couldn't remember, and had no provable alibi for. It would be my word that I didn't do it against a whole lot of evidence that I did. Somehow I don't much like where I am at right now."

"I think that you should come with us to the police station so that we can take a statement. I would like the M.E. to take a blood sample to see what turns up, I hope for your sake that whatever you believe has been injected into you isn't one of those drugs that doesn't leave a trace after the effects have worn off."

"You hope? How do you think I feel about this? If there's nothing in my blood I have no leg to stand on." I picked up the attaché case.

"What's in the case?" Sergeant Allison asked.

"Money, a lot of money, and before you ask, I don't know how it is that I have this money in this case, which isn't mine but had my wallet in it, at least I think it's mine, it has my Drivers Licence and some credit cards along with a picture of someone I assume is my wife, was my wife."

"Do you mind if I have a look?" I handed it over.

"I think that before you contaminate it you'd better have your fingerprint people check it out, you'll find mine on a couple of bundles of notes in one corner, I did a quick count, there's $640,000 in there."

"Wow! And you've never seen this before this morning?"

"No, I'm not in the habit of carrying that amount of cash around with me."

"We'd better take this with us for safe keeping and for forensic examination, it has now become evidence, although I don't hold out much hope of finding anything, if this is a conspiracy against you whoever is involved will probably have used rubber gloves so that all we'll find are bank employees' fingerprints." She ushered me from the room and locked the door behind me. She turned to Constable Benson. "Will you go down to the car and get some crime scene tape and put it across this doorway."He scurried off and as we walked to the lifts she said. "This is going to piss off the hotel, not being able to even clean the room until we've finished with it. I'll have Forensics go over it with a fine toothed comb, if the hotel is conscientious with its cleaning there shouldn't be too many prints there. Other than yours, that is."

We stopped in the foyer while she asked to speak to the Manager. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but room 1002 is not to be touched by anyone, not even the cleaners, it is officially a crime scene and, until you hear from me it is off limits to everyone except the Forensics team who will be here in a few minutes, you, and only you, will escort them to the room and let them in, understood?"

"Yes."

He wasn't happy, at close to five hundred a night, this was going to prove costly, but then, if, as the sergeant had said, the room tariff was paid for a week, he won't start losing for a few days.

I don't want to sound picky, but police interview rooms are hardly a place to inspire confidence in your innocence, they scream out that the only reason that you are there is because you are guilty of some heinous crime. The confrontational seating arrangements didn't help either, I was on one side of the desk while Sergeant Allison and Constable Benson were opposite me. I could see the CCTV camera on the wall opposite me. Its red light was blinking, telling me that it was recording.

Sergeant Allison began proceedings by pushing the record button on the tape recorder. "Record of interview with Mr. Byron Pollard commencing at," She looked at her watch. "11:14 am on Friday the thirteenth of February. Present are Detective Sergeant Madeline Allison and Detective Constable Samuel Benson. We will begin with your full name, address and date of birth."

"Byron Michael Pollard, I live at 43 Fordyce Crescent Toorak, and my date of birth is the 23rd of March 1978."

She folded my wallet. "I sometimes wonder why we do this, if you weren't able to memorise those details I'd be surprised. Your car, what make and model is it and what is the registration number?" She looked at the photo of a car in the file in front of her.

"If as you said, I could have memorised my name and date of birth, I'd probably memorise the make and rego of my own car."

"Humour me, I'm assuming that it will be a part of your pre-amnesic memory. There's nothing in your wallet that would identify it."

I thought about it for a few seconds. "It's a black Jaguar XKR and the rego number is a personalised plate; 'BYRON 01'."

"Nice." She said. "When did you last drive it?"

"That would have been on Tuesday last week. I left it at home on Wednesday and caught a cab to the airport. I haven't driven it since then. Wait a minute, I was staying at the Hyatt, they'll have a record of that, and probably still have my luggage, my car keys were in my case, it's one of those wheelie bags and it would be in the front pocket along with my . . ." I stopped for a few seconds. ". . . wallet."

"But your wallet was in this case." She patted the case on the desk.

"I realised that just then. Whoever it was that is responsible for this will have had plenty of time to fly to Melbourne and kill my wife, then drive my car to the airport and leave it there. If he wasn't as tall as me he will have had trouble driving it, because of the seat memory, you see when the car is unlocked using my key the seat adjusts to my setting and seeing as how I'm fairly tall and have long arms, the seat is set a long way back on the tracks. My wife drives it from time to time but she's much shorter than I am so her key sets the seat much further forward. I would assume that whoever left it there would still have the keys."

"Can the car be accessed without the keys?"

"No, any attempt to force the door locks or hot wire the ignition will automatically shut down the computer, which then has to be fully reset and that takes time, and costs a lot of money."

"So we have to assume, if we are to believe you, that someone has stolen either your keys or your wife's and driven your car to the airport and left it there. It all seems a little far-fetched to me." Constable Benson obviously wasn't buying it and this brought a sharp look of disapproval from Sergeant Allison.

"How soon before the results of the blood test come through?" I asked.

"It all takes time, it's nothing like those CSI type shows on TV where a sample is placed into a machine and the results are instantly available, and then there's the matter of priority, I can't just go to the lab and demand instant results, it just doesn't work that way."

"So where do we go from here?"

"You stay here for the time being, there's an application before the court to extradite you to Victoria, but I'm hoping that we get something from the lab before they get here, otherwise you'll have to go back with them. I'm going to request my people delay for as long as possible so that I can finish my investigations."

"So you believe my story then?"

"I wouldn't quite go that far, let's just say that I have some reservations."

"Thank you for at least being honest with me." She pushed the button to end the interview and Benson went off to fetch us all some coffee.

"Byron, we're off the record here so I can say what I think. I believe you. If you're not telling the truth you are a completely heartless and very devious person to go to all of this bother just to kill your wife. If you were such a person you'd need to show an arrogance that you don't if you think that we wouldn't eventually find a way to convict. Everyone makes a mistake, and even the smallest and most insignificant of mistakes will inevitably be discovered. With the advances in Forensic Investigation that are happening each and every day, it is virtually impossible for your murderer to stay ahead of the game."

"That at least has given me some hope. Sergeant, I love my wife, and there is no reason that I can think of that would cause me to take her life, and the life of our daughter. We have been trying for some time to have children and it has finally happened. We couldn't have been happier." My mind went back to the day just over a month ago when we got the news that she was pregnant. After a celebratory dinner we cleared a room and began to set it up as a nursery. The whole house took on a new life, gone were the days of just hoping for a miracle, it had arrived. Now it has all gone.

"You remembered something nice and now it's gone." Madeline, I feel that I can call her that, not to her face mind you, reached over the desk and placed her hand on mine and squeezed it.

I sat there with my head bowed for a minute or two and then raised my face and brushed the tears from my eyes. "I was just remembering when we found out that Jenny, her name is really Genevieve, was finally pregnant. Now it's all gone, finished, along with my hopes and dreams."

The mood was shattered by the return of Benson with our coffee and some biscuits (Cookies not scones). He put the tray on the desk and helped himself to three biscuits before sitting down. Madeline held the plate of biscuits for me and I took two along with the cup of coffee. It tasted as bad as it looked, a barista he wasn't. I noticed that Madeline thought about the same as I did about it.

"By the way, the boss said to tell you that there's a court hearing in about half an hour."

"Thanks for the warning. I guess we'd better finish this and head straight over to the courthouse." She finished her biscuit and swallowed her coffee, grimaced at the taste of it, and stood up. I ate my biscuits and swallowed enough coffee to wash them down and followed her. Benson seemed to be in no hurry to finish his, even grabbing another biscuit, before noticing the look that Madeline gave him and following us. "You could at least take the tray back." She told him. He grabbed it and headed for the lunch room.

We were sitting outside the courtroom when a couple of plain clothed policemen came over and introduced themselves to her. "We're applying for extradition based on the evidence that we have. We have a very strong case and don't expect to have any trouble in convincing the Magistrate of that."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that. We are pursuing a line of inquiry that will throw some doubt on the strength of your case."

"We'll see." A clerk came out and called us into the courtroom.

As we walked into the courtroom I touched her hand to get her attention. "Ask them how it was that they got here so quickly, given that they would have had to apply for the necessary paperwork before they left Melbourne, get to the airport, fly to Sydney and get from the airport to here. They must have known I was here all the time but they couldn't have found flight records for Tuesday night because I didn't travel on Tuesday night."

"You have a point there, we'll see how this pans out."

The Magistrate called us to order and Detective Sergeant Roxburgh rose to his feet. "Your Honour, the state of Victoria is applying to extradite the prisoner, Byron Pollard to Melbourne to face charges of murdering his wife Genevieve Marie Pollard on the night of Tuesday the 10th of February. We have credible evidence to prove these charges."

"If it please the court, your Honour the New South Wales police are pursuing a separate line of enquiry to that of the Victorian, and we also have credible evidence only our evidence can prove that Mr. Pollard, who has not been arrested on any charge, had neither the motive, the means or the opportunity to murder his wife, in fact Mr. Pollard has been in Sydney since Wednesday of last week and we have proof of that."

"He was seen leaving his house shortly after his wife was killed, his car was found at the airport and there were traces of her blood in the matting on the floor of that car that could only have come from his wife."