Again, he reminded me of you, looking at the best in people, and as so often with you, I must have looked skeptical.
“He was a research fellow before becoming a hands-on doctor,” William continued. “The rising star of the university, apparently. Rumor had it that he was brilliant—destined for greatness and all of that.”
I was taken aback by this description of Dr. Nichols; it didn’t tally with the man I’d met at all; nothing about Dr. Nichols had suggested this.
William went to get milk from the counter and I wondered if Dr. Nichols had played me. Had the dog and the scruffy clothes at our first meeting been carefully constructed to present a certain image, which I had unwittingly bought? But why would he go to that much trouble? Be that deceitful? Manipulative? Used now to suspecting everyone I encountered, distrust felt familiar. But I couldn’t sustain my suspicion of him. He was just too decent and scruffily hopeless to be connected to violence. The rumor of his brilliance was surely wrong. In any case, he met you only after you had Xavier, and then only once, so unless he was a psychopath, what possible reason could he have for murdering you?
William came back with the milk. I wanted to confide in him; it would have been a relief to share what I knew, but instead I stirred my coffee, and saw my ring. I should have given it back to Todd.
William must have noticed it too. “Quite a rock.”
“Yes. Actually, I’m not engaged anymore.”
“So why are you wearing it?”
“I forgot to take it off.”
He burst out laughing, reminding me of the way you laugh at me, with kindness. No one but you ever teases me that way.
His pager went off and he grimaced. “Usually I have twenty minutes to get to the emergency. But the juniors on today need more hand-holding.”
As he got up, his gold wedding ring, hanging on a chain around his neck, swung out from beneath his scrubs top. Maybe I signaled more than I intended.
“My wife’s in Portsmouth—a radiologist,” he said. “It’s not easy finding jobs in the same city let alone the same hospital.” He tucked the ring on its chain back inside his top. “We’re not allowed to wear a ring on a finger—too many germs can fester underneath. Rather symbolic, don’t you think?”
I nodded, surprised. I felt that he was treating me differently than I’d been treated before. And I was suddenly conscious that my clothes were a little crumpled, my hair not blow-dried, my face bare of makeup. No one from my life in New York would have recognized me as I furiously sang the lullaby in Dr. Nichols’s consulting room. I wasn’t the slickly presented, self-controlled person I’d been in the States, and I wondered if that encouraged other people to let the untidy aspects of themselves and their lives show in return.
As I watched William leave the cafe, I wondered, as I still do now, if I’d been wanting to meet someone who reminded me of you, even a little bit. And I wondered if it was hope that made me see a likeness to you, or if it was really there.
“Who did you think had played her the lullabies?” Mr. Wright asks.
“I didn’t know. I thought that Simon was capable of it. And Emilio. I couldn’t imagine Professor Rosen knowing enough about a young woman to torture her like that. But I’d got him wrong before.”
“And Dr. Nichols?”
“He’d know how to mentally torture someone. His job guaranteed that. But he didn’t seem in the least cruel or sadistic. And he had no reason to.”
“You questioned your opinion of Professor Rosen but not Dr. Nichols?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Wright looks as if he’s about to ask me another question, then decides against it. Instead he makes a note.
“And later that day Detective Inspector Haines phoned you back?” he asks.
“Yes. He introduced himself as DS Finborough’s boss. I thought, to start with, it was a good thing that someone more senior was calling me back.”
“I have sympathy for you, Miss Hemming, but you can’t simply go around indiscriminately blaming people. I gave you the benefit of the doubt when Mr. Codi lodged his complaint, out of sympathy for your loss, but you have used up your quota of my patience. And I have to make this clear—you cannot continue crying wolf.”
“I’m not crying wolf, I—”
“No,” he interrupted. “You’re crying several wolves all at once, not sure if any of them are actually wolves at all.” He almost chortled at his own witticism. “But the coroner has reached a verdict about your sister’s death based on the facts. However unpalatable the truth is for you—and I do understand that it is hard for you—the truth is she committed suicide and no one else is responsible for her death.”
I don’t suppose the police service recruits people like DI Haines anymore: superior, patriarchal, patronizing toward other people and unquestioning of himself.
I struggled to sound self-possessed, not to be the irrational woman he thought me. “But surely with the lullabies you can see that someone was trying to—”
