dressings.
McAvoy leans in. ‘You survived, sir.’
‘Sergeant …?’ The voice is dry and sore. ‘Sergeant McAvoy?’
McAvoy replaces the stopper and deposits the small vial of clear liquid back in his inside pocket.
‘I’m sorry to have done that, Mr Chandler,’ he says, settling his large bulk on the bed at Chandler’s side. ‘I just need yes and no from you, sir. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. You are in hospital. You attempted to end your own life.’
Chandler’s eyes begin to open. He’s swallowing painfully, and McAvoy pours him a beaker of water from the jug on the bedside table and lifts it to the writer’s lips. He takes a few sips and then collapses back on the pillow.
‘You worked it out, didn’t you,’ McAvoy says, locking eyes with the pitiful figure in the hospital-issue pyjamas. ‘You know who and why.’
Chandler gives the faintest of nods. ‘My fault,’ he says. ‘My big mouth …’
‘He would have done it anyway,’ says McAvoy, and means it. ‘He’d have found a reason. The thing that was inside him would have come out no matter what.’
‘But he was a good man,’ stutters Chandler. ‘I was just talking. It was just drunken bollocks. I wasn’t telling him to change everything he believed …’
‘Grief is a terrible thing,’ says McAvoy.
‘So is murder,’ says Chandler.
They sit in silence for a moment, then McAvoy stands. Turns away from the bed. Walks to the window to compose his thoughts. Looks past the yellow curtains at the damp car park with its swaying trees and rain-lashed vehicles and scampering, stick-insect figures. Perhaps it is the elevation, the sense of looking down upon them, but he has never more felt that it is he, and he alone, who carries the burden of protection and justice. He turns. Wants to end this.
‘Simeon Gibbons,’ he says. ‘Where is he?’
The name hangs heavy in the air. Chandler’s lips close. The tension in his body seems to ease a little. McAvoy watches as he licks his lips afresh.
‘I wish I knew.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘About ten minutes before they arrested me.’
‘He was there? At Linwood Manor?’
‘He’s a permanent resident. His room’s paid for by an old army mate of his.’
‘Colonel Emms? Runs a private security firm in the Middle East?’
Chandler nods.
‘Deep pockets, has Sparky.’
Chandler looks away.
‘He made me his confessor without telling me a thing.’
McAvoy hopes that Emms is now confessing all to Pharaoh, who had set off for Bronte country as soon as he’d told her what he’d found in Anne Montrose’s room. ‘Tell me how it happened,’ he says. ‘How you worked it out.’
‘It was Chief Inspector Ray. During the interview he was reeling off a list of names. People Simeon may have hurt. I think it was your research. He mentioned a young woman in a coma. Anne Montrose.’
‘And you recognised the name?’
‘I knew she was called Anne. The rest sort of made sense.’
‘He told you her name was Anne? In rehab?’
‘He would cry out in his sleep.’
‘Did he tell you what happened. In Iraq?’
‘He told me about his life. People do that, tell me things. They think I’m going to make them famous. They think I’m going to write a book about them and they’ll somehow matter …’
‘But Gibbons didn’t want that?’
‘He just wanted somebody to talk to. He was a mess. Did you see him, when you came to visit me? No, he’ll have been covered up. His face, Sergeant. It’s a mess of burns and scars. From the explosion. The one that nearly killed him.’
‘I’m a writer, Sergeant. I ask questions. When we were paired up, we got to talking.’
‘You became friends?’
‘Yes, I would say so. It was boxing that got us started. I was telling him about my book. The journeyman one I told you about. He mentioned he used to box in the army. That was how it started.’
‘Was he in there for alcoholism too?’
‘He wouldn’t touch it, Sergeant. Whatever it was that kept him going, he didn’t want it dulled.’
‘So, depression? Posttraumatic stress disorder?’
‘Perhaps. I just knew he was very, very sad.’
‘And Anne?’
‘We got to talking about past loves. I didn’t have much to say, but he told me he’d only ever been in love once. That she’d been hurt in an explosion. He’d walked away but she’d never woken up. Thought he meant she was dead. He didn’t. It came out she was in a coma. That she was in a private health-care centre. I didn’t know what to say. Made some crack about Sleeping Beauty. He liked that. Smiled for the first time since I’d known him. Seemed to come out of himself a bit. Started talking. Telling me about the things he’d learned over there. In the desert. How his mind was opened.’
‘Opened to what?’
‘To everything.’ Chandler closes his eyes. ‘Have you ever wondered about pain? About who it afflicts? About why some are lucky and others aren’t? Have you ever wondered if you take one person’s pain away, whether that pain goes somewhere else? Whether there’s an agreed amount of agony in the world? That’s what he used to talk about. That was what used to torture him. I suppose I indulged him. Let him talk. He used to bring me bottles …’
McAvoy nods. ‘You told him about your work? The people you’ve interviewed? Funny stories?’
Chandler closes his eyes. ‘It was just chat.’
‘Fred Stein?’
Chandler nods.
‘Trevor Jefferson?’
Another nod.
‘Angie Martindale?’
Again.
McAvoy swallows hard. ‘Daphne Cotton?’
Chandler says nothing. Just keeps licking his lips. His hands, without a pen and pad to hold, are lifeless, feeble things.
‘Sole survivors, eh?’
Chandler nods.
They sit in silence for a moment, listening to the wind and the rain kick listlessly at the grubby windows.
‘When did he decide to kill them all?’ McAvoy asks, staring unblinkingly into Chandler’s eyes. The writer screws up his face like a tissue and begins to cough. McAvoy helps him to more water and then sits back, all without ever breaking eye contact.
‘We were talking one night,’ he says, more to himself than to McAvoy. ‘He liked to hear my stories. Remarkable people, you know. I said that it made you think. Made you ponder the big picture. What’s it all about. The nature of existence.’
‘And Gibbons was a Christian man, yes?’
‘Middle-class boy. Went to church every Sunday and said prayers before bed when he was at boarding school.’
