Afterwards

something tangible before you’ll desert your post.

Like me, I think that each time you leave her ward and then return you allow yourself to hope that a heart has been found for her. And that somehow not being there will make it more likely; a watched-pot-never-boils on a life-and-death scale.

Nothing has changed.

Jenny is outside ICU.

‘No heart?’ she says and waits a moment. ‘Sounds like a bid in bridge.’

‘Jen…’

‘Yeah. Gallows. Sorry. Aunt Sarah’s phoning Addie and Granny G.’ Her face crumples. ‘He’s in the clear, Mum.’ Her relief is expressed in tears. Her love for Addie is one copper-bottomed fact about her that never changes.

‘About Ivo, Jen-’

She pulls sharply away from me. ‘Lay off the interrogation. Please.’

She walks quickly away and I watch her go.

I think I glimpse someone in a blue coat, getting out of the lift. I hurry towards him.

Is that him, turning a corner towards ICU? God I wish you were here.

I race to catch up.

A group of doctors are going into ICU and I can’t see anyone in a dark coat.

Maybe that’s him, hurrying away, half obscured by a porter wheeling a patient.

But there’s no way they would have let Donald go already. Surely?

Nothing now. The corridors empty, just two nurses in the lift.

I can’t be sure I saw him. I’m probably just jumping at shadows.

In the car park Mohsin is waiting for Sarah.

‘It’s really not good form to be late for your own disciplinary meeting,’ he says, teasing her. But she doesn’t smile.

‘Addie still isn’t talking,’ she says.

But surely now everyone knows he’s innocent, he’ll be feeling a little better? Surely he can now at least turn away from the burning building?

‘I just spoke to Georgina,’ Sarah says. ‘I thought that when he knew he was cleared it would change things for him, but…’

She’s always spoken neatly before, correctly finishing her sentences, but nothing is neat about this.

‘Give him a little more time,’ Mohsin says. ‘Maybe it hasn’t really sunk in yet.’ Both Sarah and I hold onto his words.

He drives her to the police station. The car is fogged with heat, the air-con uselessly blowing hot air back in. The heat-haze on the tarmac gives a mirage. For a while Sarah is silent.

‘They say that Grace has no brain function,’ she says abruptly.

‘But you said-’

‘I was a coward.’

I want to shout out that I’m here, as if they’ll suddenly discover me and be embarrassed.

‘I’ve argued with them. Said they were talking bollocks. Because I can’t bear Mike to lose her. Can’t bear for him to go through that.’

Mohsin puts his hand on hers as he drives, reminding me of you.

‘When Mum and Dad died I promised him that nothing awful would happen again.’

‘And you were what?’ Mohsin asks. ‘Eighteen?’

‘Yeah. But I still kept thinking that. Until Wednesday, I thought that because he’d already been through something terrible, nothing else bad would happen to him. As if terrible things, losing people you love, are doled out equally. God, as a police officer I should have known better. And now, it’s too much for him. And I can’t make it better. I can’t make it better for him.’

I realise, fully, that she loves you as a mother; as I love Jenny and Adam.

* * *

In the police station, jackets are discarded, belts loosened against the heat. Sarah goes into DI Baker’s office, closing the door behind her. There’s no need for me to shadow her any more, not now that we know the arsonist, and Adam is no longer blamed, but I want to be with her when she’s hauled over the coals.

I just want to be with her.

DI Baker’s doughy face is shiny with sweat, his too-tight clothes clinging to his paunchy body. The stagnant air is sticky with body odour.

He glances up as she comes in, his voice is curt.

‘Take a seat.’

He gestures to a plastic chair but Sarah remains standing. She goes closer to him.

‘Is it clear to you now that it isn’t a case of a little boy playing with matches?’ Her anger startles me and DI Baker.

‘Detective Sergeant McBride, you are here to-’

‘You owe Adam a formal and public apology.’

Her pent-up, furious energy reminds me of you.

‘This meeting is about your conduct. It is about-’

‘Are you going to prosecute your supposed “witness” for what he or she has done to Adam?’

Has Sarah already written off her career? Is that why she’s come into this room all guns blazing, because she has nothing to lose?

‘This is not a meeting to discuss the case, or what you have found out through your illegal methods. Ends do not justify means, Detective Sergeant. Even before PACE, what you did would have been seen as beyond the pale. I understand the emotional strain you must be under but there are no excuses. All the reforms of the last twenty-five years have made the police investigate cases by the book. And rightly.’

‘But you just flipped to the end of the book – decided on an ending, to use your analogy – not bothering to do any work at all to get there. Not bothering to investigate at all. Because of your laziness and crass stupidity, a child could have been blamed for this for the rest of his life and the real culprit not be punished.’

‘Are you asking for a mutual pact of silence – in effect, trying to blackmail me, Detective Sergeant?’

What I see as nothing to lose he sees as blackmail.

‘Fortunately,’ he continues, his voice icy in the hot room, ‘the person who made the complaint against you withdrew it just over an hour ago.’

Perhaps Mrs Healey felt compassion for Sarah once she knew she was Jenny’s aunt and my sister-in-law. Or maybe she thought the police would go easier on her if she’d been kind to a fellow police officer.

‘But that doesn’t detract from the seriousness of your misconduct-’ Baker continues, but a knock on the door interrupts him. The sharp-featured Penny Pierson comes into the room.

‘What is it?’ Baker snaps.

‘Silas Hyman gave a sample of DNA on Wednesday night when we questioned him about the fire. His DNA didn’t match anything at the site of the fire but it went into our database.’

‘So?’ asks Baker, impatient.

Penny turns to face Sarah. I think I see a flicker of an apology on her face.

‘Silas Hyman’s DNA matches the semen in the condom sent to Jennifer.’

30

‘We are now certain that Silas Hyman is Jennifer Covey’s hate-mailer,’ Penny continues. ‘The condom was a part of his malicious-mail campaign. We think it must be Silas Hyman who also attacked Jennifer Covey with red paint. We therefore need to seriously consider whether he also tampered with her