“What time is it?”
“It’s…” Hel looked at her phone. “Ten thirty a.m. Just gone.”
I put my hand to my temple, trying to do the mental maths, though the simple sum made my head hurt. The movement gave me a painful twinge in the back of my hand and when I looked down at it, I saw that the thing I had taken for a tether was a cannula taped just below my wrist, its snaking tube attached to a drip bag.
My last memory was of chasing Cole down the stairs, then being tackled by that police officer. It had been just gone midnight.
“So I’ve been asleep for… ten hours?”
Hel’s face changed. She shook her head and said gently, “Ten thirty on Monday. You’ve been unconscious for over twenty-four hours, hon. I was really worried. We all were. You did come round a bit in recovery, but I’m not sure if you knew who I was.”
“Recovery?” I tried to compute what she was saying. “What do you mean, recovery?”
“Surgical recovery—they had to operate.”
“What?”
“On your side. You’ve got a ton of stitches. The doctor said… Christ, what was it? Septicemia and a delayed ruptured spleen, or something like that? What on earth did you do to yourself? Did you get shot?”
I suppressed a groan. Suddenly the drip bag and the strange pulling sensation in my side made sense. Stitches. Of course. And I was probably still doped up to the eyeballs, which explained the oddly distant quality of the pain and my muddled thoughts.
“No, this was completely self-inflicted. I stabbed myself on some kind of spike. Climbing a wall.”
“Of course you did,” Hel said. She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. “Of course. What else. Christ on a bike, Jack, I was so worried. I was so, so worried. I can’t—I couldn’t lose you too. Not after Mum and Dad. You’re all I’ve got!”
It was the same thing she had told me… how long ago? It felt like a lifetime, back in the kitchen of her house, before all this started. Now she leaned in, hugging me gently, and I shut my eyes, feeling her arms around me, hugging her back and wanting to cry—but not for the reasons she meant. Because it still wasn’t true—not for Hel. She had Roland, and Kitty and Millie, a whole new family of her own.
But it was true for me.
I had done what I’d set out to do. But nothing could bring Gabe back. He was gone. And now I would have to face my future alone.
I swallowed hard, and Hel gave a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes, laughing at herself. As she straightened up, groping for a tissue, a noise came from outside the cubicle curtains.
“Knock, knock. May I come in?”
“Sure,” I said shakily. And then the curtain drew back, and DS Malik’s face came through the gap.
My body reacted before my brain made the connection—a huge jolt of adrenaline pulsing through me and setting my heart racing at a speed more suited to escaping predators than sitting in a hospital bed. It felt like I’d been on the run from this woman forever—it was hard to make myself remember that I’d stopped running.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, a little tentatively. I pulled a face, trying not to show how her appearance had jolted me.
“Pretty crap. But did you—did you arrest him? Cole?”
Her face changed at that, cleared.
“Yes. He was somewhere up the road when we caught up with him, but thanks to your recording—”
“Recording?” Hel broke in. “What do you mean?”
“I take it you haven’t been on Twitter recently?” Malik said, a little dryly. Hel shook her head, puzzled, and Malik gave a short laugh— halfway between amusement and exasperation. “Your sister’s gone more than a little viral the last twenty-four hours. As if uploading an exact guide to hacking one of the most popular security apps on the market wasn’t enough, she then decided to livestream breaking into the culprit’s house. It’s going to make the whole court case fairly interesting. Christ knows how they’ll find a jury who hasn’t seen the livestream. But I don’t think we’d have a case against him without the recording, so…” She shrugged.
“What?” Hel said. She looked from me to Malik, bewildered.
I shut my eyes, too tired to explain, but remembering that split-second decision when I’d pulled Gabe’s phone out of the rucksack, turned it on, pressed record, and then slipped it into my hip pocket, with the camera facing into the darkness. I’d had no idea if it would capture Cole’s face, let alone his voice, or whether the whole thing might turn out to be a messy, inaudible dark blur. But it was that phone I had hung all my hopes on—that phone, and the homing beacon it was sending out to Malik, telling her exactly where to find me… and Cole.
And Malik had heard it.
I had been reaching for that phone when the arresting officer hit me, the bastard. Not that I could blame him, exactly. I should have known better—my work had taught me that if there was one rule about an interaction with edgy police officers, it was that you didn’t reach into your clothing without warning them what you were going to do. And then, on the run from the police, wanted for murder, what had I done? Reached into my pocket without asking him first. He couldn’t have known about my side. But he didn’t need to hit me so fucking hard. Presumably it was that blow from the baton that had ruptured my already damaged spleen.
“So… my sister’s cleared?” Hel was saying now, frowning. Malik nodded.
“Yes, I’m authorized to tell you that you’re no longer a suspect in your husband’s murder,” she said. She was answering Hel’s question, but she was speaking to me, her dark eyes shining with compassion. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Jacintha.”
“It’s okay,” I tried to say, but the words would barely come. My throat was suddenly choked with tears, and in any case we both knew that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t okay; nothing about Gabe’s death was okay, and I would never be the same person again.
“And are you charging Cole as an accessory to Gabe’s murder?” Hel was asking. Malik shrugged, not quite a don’t know but a maybe.
“Not my decision. My gut says that even with the taped confession, that one might be hard to make stick. But there’s plenty under the Computer Misuse Act. He’d compromised Watchdog and Puppydog to the point where they were effectively running twenty-four-hour surveillance on everyone who used the apps—camera, microphone, location, you name it. And he could be facing counterterrorism and espionage charges too, when we find out where the information was going.”
“So you’re closing in on whoever was behind this?” Hel asked.
Malik nodded. “Not my department, but between us, I think MI6 have a pretty good idea of who they’re dealing with, it’s just a matter of tracing back the digital bread crumbs. They’ll get what they can out of Cole, of course, and I’m sure there’ll be some horse trading regarding sentencing in exchange for testimony, but he’ll be going away for a long time, regardless of what he coughs up.”
I swallowed, feeling the tears brimming at the edges of my eyes, trying not to let them spill over.
“Thanks,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
Malik nodded, just once, rather brusquely, as if she too did not quite have the words for the moment.
“Well, look, we’ll have a few more questions, but they can wait until you’re feeling a bit stronger. For the moment, take care of yourself, Jack. And if you need anything…” She put a business card down on the bedside locker and tapped it. “Just call.”
“Thanks,” Hel said. She glanced at me, then stood up. “I’ll walk you out. I think Jack needs a rest. Is that okay, Jack?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and watched as the two women slipped through the gap in the curtains. I heard their footsteps fading as they walked up the ward, then a swing door opening and closing, and then silence.
I shut my eyes, feeling the hot tears I had been holding back for so long, ever since Gabe’s death, spill over, running down my cheeks. And a great sob seemed to rise up, a huge choking gout of grief that felt like it was ripping me apart from the inside.
It was over. It was really over. And I had no idea what to do next, what was left for me now. There was nothing else I could do for Gabe. There was no reason to keep going anymore, keep putting one foot in front of the other as I had forced myself to do, day after day after day, in the hopes of finding his killer.
I had found him—if not the person who’d held the knife, at least I’d found the person responsible for leading them to Gabe.
And now what? What did I have left?