Hi Hannah, Geraint here. Really sorry again for ambushing you at the bookshop. Listen, I would love to meet for a coffee or a phone conversation—or whatever you feel happy with. I’ve spent the last five years investigating what happened the night April Clarke-Cliveden was killed and talking to John Neville, and, as I assume you know, he was absolutely resolute from the trial onward that he had nothing to do with her death—that he went to her room to deliver a package and she was absolutely fine when he left.
I totally understand that this opens up a can of worms for you that you probably don’t want to deal with, but I feel like he gave me a task—and that his death puts a responsibility on me to complete that task. Not to prove his innocence—I’ve got an open mind on that score. But to find out the truth and tie up some of the loose ends. Because there’s certain things that don’t add up. Why wasn’t any of Neville’s DNA found on April’s body? Why didn’t anyone hear a struggle? The two boys in the room below said they heard her walking around, but nothing like anyone fighting for their life.
I would love just a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions that have always puzzled me about that evening and the sequence of events. Obviously if you don’t feel able to help with that, I understand. You don’t owe me anything. But I feel like I owe John Neville something, and more importantly, I feel that I owe April something too. Because if it’s true that John Neville didn’t kill April, someone out there got away with murder. And I want to see that person brought to justice. I hope you feel the same way.
I’m up in Edinburgh for the next week and I’d be available any time for a coffee, or for a phone call at any point if this week is not convenient. My number is below.
Warmest wishes, and thanks again for your time,
Geraint Williams
P.S. Please do say hi from me to Ryan if you speak to him!
Slowly, Hannah puts down her phone and sits, elbows on her knees, staring at the shower cubicle opposite. She knows what Will would say. He would say Leave it alone. He would tell her not to open the can of worms Geraint referred to in his email. But that’s the problem—that metaphor is a little too close to the truth, and it reveals something she has refused to admit to herself for a long time. For there are messy, wriggling, unfinished ends putrefying beneath the surface of what happened that night—things that she has refused to think about and look at for a long time. And there should not be.
She cannot just leave this. However much she should. Because if she doesn’t find out the truth, Neville’s ghost is going to haunt her forever.
Will believes that Neville’s death has freed them—but Hannah is only just starting to realize that that’s not true. In fact, if what Emily said is right, if she has made a mistake, then it’s the exact opposite. Because while Neville was alive, he could fight to clear his own name. But now that he’s dead, that responsibility has passed to others. To her.
But she’s getting ahead of herself. Maybe what Geraint has to say isn’t new evidence at all. Maybe it’s just some conspiracy theory he’s spun out of thin air. If that’s the case, the best thing she can do is put it to rest—destroying his illusions and her own fears in the process.
She picks up her phone again, and presses the reply button on his email.
Dear Geraint, I have a day off next Wednesday. If you are available at 10 a.m., I would be happy to meet at Cafeteria, just off—
She stops, thinks, then deletes the last seven words. She isn’t happy to do anything, and she doesn’t want Geraint at the cafe she goes to every weekend with Will. No. Better to choose somewhere else. Somewhere she won’t be bothered about avoiding in the future if the meeting goes sour.
able to meet at the Bonnie Bagel in the New Town for a coffee and to answer any questions you might have. I can’t promise to give you the answers that you want—everything I said at the trial was true. John Neville engaged in persistent stalkerish behaviour for months before that night, and I saw him coming away from our staircase just moments after April was killed. He never denied being in our room, and he never explained what he was doing there—porters weren’t supposed to deliver parcels, so that part of his story was shaky from the start. The bottom line is this—I believe John Neville was guilty. I hope I can set your mind to rest on that point when we meet.
Hannah
Then she closes down her email, shuts off her phone, flushes the toilet, and goes back to join Will in the living room.
BEFORE
Hannah was cold and wet by the time she got back to Pelham. It was also gone nine—she had heard the clocks striking as she turned onto the High Street—and the porters began locking up the back entrances at 9:00 p.m. She had been planning to slip through the Cloade gate on Pelham Street, in order to avoid going past the Porters’ Lodge at the main entrance. Now she might have no other option. Still, it took them a while to get round, sometimes. It was worth a try.
As she turned into Pelham Street she heard the quarter past chime from the chapel bell tower, and she quickened her step. She could see the dark arch of the gate in the long wall just a few meters ahead. “Don’t be locked,” she found herself whispering under her breath. “Don’t be locked.”
And, amazingly, it wasn’t. The wooden door was still open. Inside there was nothing but a metal grille with a card reader cutting off the general public from the quad.
Hannah’s fingers were cold and numb as she fumbled in her pocket for her Bod card, wondering all the time if she would see the figure of John Neville lumbering across the courtyard to lock up, but at last she found it. She swiped the card, held her breath, and when the lock clicked back, she pushed open the heavy metal gate and slipped inside.
The rain-soaked quad was crisscrossed black and gold, with light from the warm bright windows of the rooms in Cloade’s reflecting back off the rain-soaked flags, and as she passed in front of the building, Hannah couldn’t help turning to look up at the third floor, where Will’s room was.
His curtains were open, his window a glowing amber square, and even through the rain Hannah could see him, hunched over his desk, writing. As she watched he raised a hand to rub his eyes tiredly, and she turned away, feeling like an intruder, and ducked beneath the cloisters.
Why? she asked herself as she walked away, forcing herself not to glance back over her shoulder. Why did she torture herself like this? Watching Will unawares, finding her gaze tracing the line of his jaw over breakfast, or the shape of his broken nose as he stared up at high table during formal hall. He was April’s boyfriend, completely off-limits, even if they broke up. You couldn’t date your best friend’s ex. It just wasn’t the done thing.
And in spite of everything, that’s what she and April were. Best friends. In spite of the differences in their backgrounds and personalities, in spite of the fact that right now this second April was drinking Vespers in a private members’ bar, while Hannah trudged home in the rain. They had been thrown together by the simple expedient of being roommates, and out of that had grown an improbable but genuine affection.
She couldn’t betray that. Not now, not ever.
New Quad was quiet, no sound apart from the pattering rain as she stepped out from under the shelter of the cloisters. The gravel path crunched beneath her feet as she crossed the quad. Under the arch of staircase 7 she folded her umbrella, shook off the worst of the water, and made her way slowly up the stairs. Behind each door was a different sound. The silence of study; the laughter of friends congregating; the quiet thump of someone’s music, the volume just slightly too low for Hannah to recognize the song.
When she turned the corner of the last landing, she stopped. Dr. Myers’s door was closed. But the one opposite—the door to their set—stood ajar. Had April beaten her back? Taken a taxi, maybe?
Frowning, Hannah put her hand to the wood and pushed.
And then there was the sound of her umbrella falling to the wooden boards with a clatter and a flap of wet fabric, and her own shocked gasp.