‘I’m going back to Greece.’
Although I’d been half expecting it, that didn’t soften the blow. Objections and arguments flashed through my mind, until I looked at her face. Thinner than it had been, with shadows under her eyes. Rachel had always been strong, but there was a brittleness about her now I hadn’t seen before.
I’d put down my own cutlery, what little appetite I’d had gone.
‘When?’
‘Sunday. They’re letting me rejoin the boat for the rest of the research trip. And they’ve…’ She’d paused, forcing the words out. ‘There’s a chance I can extend my contract. For another year.’
There was a dull ache in my chest. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘No,’ she blurted. ‘But we can’t go on like this. I can’t… I don’t want to break up, but this is… I just need some time.’
I got up and went over. Her tears had wet my shirt as I held her, staring past her at the doorway through which Grace had entered our lives.
We’d sat up most of that night, talking it through. I didn’t want her to go, but she’d made up her mind even before she’d told me. And part of me knew it was best for her. Violence had visited us twice in the short time we’d known each other, and that always came at a price. Rachel was still coming to terms with her sister’s murder, so this attempt on our lives — in a place she’d felt safe — had struck at her core. She’d responded with violence herself and, justified or not, the world seemed a different place after that. We couldn’t pretend nothing had changed, and trying would have been slow torture. She deserved better.
Three days later, on a grey October afternoon, Rachel flew back to Greece. ‘It isn’t all that far. You could still come out for a holiday,’ she’d said, as we’d stood in the hallway by her suitcases.
I’d smiled. ‘I know.’
We’d see.
I’d moved back into my old flat. I’d wondered if it might feel strange, like going back in time. It didn’t, but it didn’t feel particularly good either.
Just familiar.
Professionally, I was more in demand than ever. There was a gruelling trip to Ireland that I wasn’t physically ready for but took anyway, followed by a bizarre series of murders in the Welsh Borders. And I’d received another job offer, much more intriguing than the one from BioGen. A private company was looking to set up a new anthropological research facility, the first of its kind in the UK. There were legal and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, but they felt it was something I’d be ideally suited to, given what they called my ‘unique experience and expertise’. The letter didn’t say what the facility was, but I could guess.
I’d trained at one like it in Tennessee.
I’d yet to make a decision, and meanwhile the fallout from St Jude’s continued to rumble on. I’d watched on TV as a crane swung a wrecking ball into the surviving walls. After all the protests and demonstrations, all the needless blood and tears, the old hospital came down meekly in a billow of dust. One good thing that might yet come out of this was that, after such negative publicity, the developers were showing signs of backing down. A new proposal had been put forward to redevelop the entire site for social housing, and a petition had already been set up to name it Oduya Park.
Coincidentally, the day after that I’d heard from Ward that the activist’s police ‘source’ had been found. He was a PC whose wife had given birth to their twin daughters in St Jude’s and who was now approaching retirement. The officer’s name meant nothing to me, until Ward mentioned it was the older partner of the young PC on the gates. He wasn’t part of the main investigation team, but he had ears and people like to talk shop, regardless of their profession.
No one had the stomach for any more negative headlines, so the PC’s retirement had quietly been brought forward. I was glad he wasn’t punished more severely, though I wondered how things might have played out if details of Christine Gorski’s pregnancy hadn’t been leaked. Would Oduya still have spoken to me after the public meeting if he hadn’t wanted to confirm what he’d been told? And if not, would events still have conspired to make him shout my name across the rainy street, just as a hooded Mears was crossing the road? Or would the course of all our lives have been changed, and I been the one picked out in Grace Strachan’s headlights that night?
There was no way of knowing.
I’d met with Oduya’s family, including his partner, a thoughtful man in his forties who I’d already met to collect paperwork for the pro bono case Oduya had wanted me to take on. The activist’s parents had been restrained in their grief, not outwardly blaming me for their son’s death. Still, it was a difficult meeting for all of us.
Though not as difficult as the one that followed. One afternoon, against Ward’s advice, I’d gone to see Mears. The forensic taphonomist was out of bed when I went in, sitting in a wheelchair in dressing gown and shorts. One thin leg was bare, the other ended in a bandaged stump above the knee. He was staring into space, an open book face down on his lap. The red hair was lank and uncombed. At first he didn’t see me, then a spectrum of expressions crossed his face. A flush flared on his cheeks.
There was an empty visitor’s chair by the bed, but I didn’t sit down. ‘How are you?’ I asked, the words sounding trite.
In answer he spread his hands, offering himself and the bandaged stump as evidence. ‘How do you think?’
There’d been an intensity to his stare that made it hard to meet his eyes, but I wouldn’t let myself look away. For days I’d been wondering what to say, and now I was there all the ideas I’d had deserted me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I’d told him.
I knew he’d been informed about who’d been driving the car that had hit him. And why. Mears tried to give a laugh, but it wouldn’t come. The flush had spread across his entire face and neck, making the hollow eyes look feverish.
‘You’re sorry. Well, that’s all right then. That makes everything hunky-fucking-dory, doesn’t it?’
‘Listen, if I could—’
‘Could what? Could go back in time? Give me my leg back?’ He’d turned his head away, his mouth trembling. ‘Just leave me alone.’
Ward had been right: I shouldn’t have gone. Wordlessly, I’d started to leave.
‘Hunter!’
I’d stopped and turned. Patients in the other beds were staring. Mears looked close to tears, his hands clenched on the arms of the wheelchair. His voice shook.
‘It should be you sitting here. Don’t forget that.’
I’d let the doors swing shut behind me.
Ward continued to give me periodic updates about the St Jude’s investigation. Professor Conrad was released from hospital and was expected to return to work before much longer. And Wayne Booth’s condition continued to improve with treatment and therapy, although he would never regain anything like full mobility or speech. As for Lola, Ward had told me that she’d suddenly stopped cooperating, refusing to respond to or even acknowledge the charges against her. Her silence came after the police made another discovery.
‘We dug back into the patient death the neighbour told you about. The fourteen-year-old boy who died from the insulin overdose,’ Ward had told me. ‘Lola wasn’t prosecuted because there was no reason to think she’d done it deliberately. Everyone assumed it was an accident. But we’ve found out the boy went to the same school as Gary Lennox. He was two years older, so there wasn’t an obvious connection, but guess who he’d been bullying before he went into hospital?’
‘She killed a child because he’d bullied her son?’ Even after everything else she’d done, I was still shocked by that.
‘She’s not admitting it, but that’s what we think,’ Ward said. ‘If it wasn’t tragic, it’d be funny. All those people died because an overprotective mother thought they’d hurt her son. And then she ends up killing him himself.’