‘Did you know my brother held himself totally responsible? “Survivor Syndrome”, that’s what the doctors called it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been the cause of everything and so didn’t deserve to be still living. He spent a long time in therapy, trying to come to terms with it. In the end he turned to religion instead. I suppose it happens a lot. You start looking for answers. If you can’t find them in the here and now, you look elsewhere.’
She replayed the events of eight years ago in her mind: her trip to West Virginia; the sound of the crickets on Nurse Kintner’s porch as she told Liv what she knew; the clarity and sense it had all made to her; then the darkness that quickly clouded it again when she shared her discoveries with Samuel. ‘I should never have told him.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Arkadian said. ‘When Samuel blamed himself for your father’s death, did you feel the same way?’
‘No.’
‘And did you tell him it wasn’t his fault?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now: Samuel’s death wasn’t your fault. Whatever you said to him, whatever you think you did to drive him away, he was already on his own path. There was nothing you could have done, one way or another, to change it.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because if he’d harboured some lasting grudge against you, or held you responsible for any of it, why would he go to such great lengths to make sure we found you?’
Liv shrugged. ‘Maybe to punish me.’
Arkadian shook his head. ‘But that’s not the way it works. You must have reported on kidnapping cases, abductions, missing persons.’
‘Some.’
‘And what’s the worst thing about them? For the relatives, I mean.’
Liv thought of the people she’d interviewed: the haunted looks; the constant speculation on all the things that may have happened; the never-ending worry and uncertainty. She thought of the demons that she’d lived with ever since Samuel had vanished. ‘The worst thing is not knowing.’
‘Exactly. But you
The whoop of a siren startled them both as a large fire truck barged through the traffic and turned into the next street. Arkadian watched it disappear then broke into a sprint. Liv watched in surprise for a moment then hurried after him. She caught up as he rounded the corner.
Chapter 63
Groups of people in lab coats and shirtsleeves filled the street, their hands shoved into trouser pockets, their shoulders hunched against the cold. The truck that had driven past them pulled up next to another already parked in front of what looked like a huge mausoleum. Fire marshals in high-visibility jackets checked names on a piece of paper.
Arkadian strode towards the nearest of them, scanning the faces in the crowd and punching a number into his phone. ‘Have you seen Dr Reis?’
The marshal checked his list. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
In his ear, Reis’s recorded voice asked him to leave a message. Arkadian snapped the phone shut and walked over to two firefighters emerging from the entrance. ‘What’s up?’ He flashed his badge. He could smell smoke coming off them.
‘Nothing,’ the larger man said, pulling off his helmet and wiping sweat from his eyebrows. ‘Alarm tripped in a hallway; a fire in a bin in one of the toilets.’
‘Deliberate?’
‘Oh yeah.’
Arkadian frowned. ‘Can I go in?’
The fire-fighter turned his head and spoke into a microphone on his lapel. ‘Charlie Four, you found anything else?’
A burst of static was followed by a metallic voice. ‘Negative. We’re on our way out.’
‘Be my guest,’ he said.
Arkadian moved across the pavement and up the steps. Liv followed, sticking close behind, looking resolutely ahead and frowning slightly in the hope that it would lend her a sense of professional seriousness and make the fireman think she was Arkadian’s partner. The fireman watched her pass, looking instead at her grimy clothes and hair. He opened his mouth to say something but a squawk on his radio distracted him long enough for Liv to bound up the steps and disappear into the building.
She found herself in a large atrium with several doors leading off it, a deserted reception area in front of her and a pair of lift doors to the left. Arkadian punched the buttons and stood waiting for a moment, then turned abruptly through a set of double doors. Liv followed him into a stairwell which echoed with the sound of his footsteps. She matched hers with his, all the way to the sub-basement, so he wouldn’t hear her and tell her to go back outside.
Arkadian emerged from the stairwell and into the corridor. He was immediately struck by how quiet it was. A lab coat lay discarded on the floor, knocked from its hook by someone in the rush to get out. Further down the hallway he could see the door to Reis’s office. It was open. He punched the redial button on his phone and stalked down the hallway towards it.
He glanced inside and saw Reis’s mobile skittering across the abandoned desk. It clinked against a black mug, half-full of milky coffee, steam still rising from its pale surface. Arkadian snapped his phone shut. Heard the silence flooding back. Heard a noise in the corridor behind him. Spun round, his hand reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster.
Liv saw Arkadian’s hand dart into his jacket then annoyance flash across his face as he realized it was her. She glanced past his shoulder into the empty office, desperately wanting to know what was going on, but also knowing this was not the time to ask questions.
Arkadian used the sleeve of his jacket to pull the door closed and the sound of her heartbeat quickened in her ears. She’d been around enough investigations to recognize the significance of this move. He was treating the place as a crime scene.
The door clicked shut and Arkadian turned to look at her again.
‘Stay here,’ he said, heading towards another set of doors at the far end of the corridor. ‘Don’t touch anything.’
He shoulder-barged his way through. Liv scampered after him, slipping through the gap before they had time to swing shut, and found herself in a narrow, featureless room.
It was just a few degrees above freezing, and the smell of disinfectant and something sweet and faintly nauseating hung in the air. One wall was filled with a grid of large filing drawers — about thirty in all. Liv shuddered in the sudden chill and the knowledge of what they contained.
A trolley had been abandoned in the centre of the room. A plastic sheet was draped across the lower half of it, bunched up like bedclothes. It looked as though the occupant had got up when the fire alarm sounded and left the building along with everyone else. Arkadian swerved round it and came to a halt by a drawer at the far end of the room, three rows in and two up, which had a number eight stencilled above a window containing a handwritten note trapped behind a sheet of clear plastic. Liv couldn’t quite read it from where she stood, but she knew what it said.
Arkadian grabbed the handle with the sleeve of his jacket. As it slid open Liv heard a sound behind her. She spun round. A pale, skinny man hovered on the threshold. He held a half-eaten bagel in one hand and pushed a curtain of black hair from his face with the other.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Arkadian yelled.
Reis leaned to one side and looked past Liv. ‘Missed breakfast,’ he said, indicating the bagel. Then his eyes
