“Do you want to see your mummy?” I called to Grace. A great big smile broke out on her face, and she pulled her hand from Paige’s running past Luke without sparing him a glance and took my large hand. Paige nodded to me, her eyes sternly sweeping towards Luke. Mills wandered nearer to them, stationing himself at her side as I led Grace down the hallway to Abbie. I inched the door open, and she skittered in. Abbie’s smiled, tears streaming again as Grace shouted,
“Mummy!” And launched herself up onto Abbie’s bed, directly in her arms. Abbie laughed against her hair, cradling her close. She opened her eyes briefly to meet mine and nodded in thanks. I smiled back and lifted my hand in a wave, stepping from the room as Paige flew in, hopping up onto the bed too and adding herself to the vice-like hug. Abbie reached out a hand to stroke her cheek and hold her tighter, and I backed away, shutting the door and wandering over to Mills, a grin plastered to my face.
“Alright, sir?” He asked, taking in my expression with amusement.
“Where’s Campbell?”
“Headed out. Paige said she’d talk to Abbie, and once she’s better, then they’d talk.”
“Bastard,” I muttered.
“Apparently,” Mills told me as we strolled away. “He just wanted to check that she was okay. He heard about what happened.”
“Heard from who?”
“Botanists, sir. They’ve got eyes and ears all over the place.”
I laughed, and we left the hospital, walking into the warm early evening towards the nearest pub.
Epilogue
I trailed off after that, thinking that Liene probably didn’t want to hear about Mills and I sitting in a pub, staring into space whilst nursing our way through a few pints. Though we had made a good evening of it, even convinced Lena to come and join us when she was finished with all her work with Dr Olsen. We’d celebrated properly after the hospital got in touch to tell us Dunnes and the other constable from the hospital would be alright, that they’d make full recoveries. Which they had, and it was the little silver lining around an otherwise very bleak case.
The story of that summer wasn’t a story that I wanted to tell often, and if anyone but Liene had asked, I’d have told them to piss off. We had let Sonia Petrilli down, and we almost led Abbie down in the end. It was a slip and an oversight that bothered me to this day, that we’d fumbled around so much in the beginning and cost Sonia her life.
Not that, once the smoke had cleared, anyone else seemed to mind. The evidence held up strongly, from Kask’s own work at his house, Abbie’s statement and the DNA match that came through not long after Kask was arrested. And the Whelan family had held up throughout, the three of them sticking close together as Abbie recovered and then got released from the hospital. When I saw her at court, she’d stopped for a chat, and it was strange that a woman I had known so much about was still technically a stranger to me.
She had stopped the study, stopped working at the research centre entirely, and now she worked solely with the plants, working in the arboretum. She’d gotten a house just outside the city, and Paige had moved in with her and Grace. All was well with them.
I wasn’t sure what had happened with Luke Campbell, but we hadn’t been needed again, nor, as far as I was aware, had Susanne. The Petrillis had mourned and managed to find a way through their grief. Dr Quaid carried on at the research centre, with a new greenhouse built in memory of Sonia and Michele Picard had gotten the rightly deserved justice for her son. She’d even spoken to Abbie after the trial, and they tearfully talked about what had happened those years ago, swapping apologies back and forth until Paige stepped in and whisked Abbie off home.
And Mills and I had carried on as before, pottering about the station with Sharp and Smith and the rest of them, waiting for the next case to show up in the middle of the night.
Recounting the story took it out of me slightly. I’d forgotten just how weary the whole thing had actually made me, and I leant back in my chair, picking up my pint and looking at Liene as I took a long sip. She stared at me, her lips parted, brown eyes wide, her skin, where it wasn’t flushed by the fire, paler than usual. She sat forward in her chair, reaching out a hand to take mine, her slender fingers cold against my skin, rings pressing into me.
She breathed in and out deeply, holding my gaze with sympathy written all over her face. “No wonder you were so tired when I saw you after all that,” she said with a soft smile. I smiled back, remembering that I hadn’t been the finest of company when she’d returned to York.
“Seeing you at the end of it all was nice,” I replied, “Worth all of it.”
Her smile grew, and she tightened her grip on my hand. “You’re a mighty fine, Inspector.”
“How many Inspectors have you met before, Dr Dorland?” I asked teasingly.
“Sadly, only you. Thank you for telling me that story,” she said.
“Has it helped?” I asked, hoping that regurgitating the bleak case had at least soothed some of her anxiety. She nodded slightly, but the nerves appeared to creep back in, and she looked me over, eyes landing on my chest.
“The tattoo that Lin Shui drew for you? Sounds like a familiar design.
