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She follows him, pulling his boots off his feet, then lying next to him.
“Maybe when this is all over,” he mutters. “Maybe then.”
They lie together in silence. The day is coming to an end, darkness closing in, but she doesn’t put a light on. She thinks about Patrick, about his last moments. About the fear he must have felt, the pain. His struggle as the fire burned around him. She knows his last thoughts would have been about her and Alice, and tears silently roll down her face.
“I just want this nightmare to be over,” she whispers, lying next to Griffin. “I want to see my daughter. I want to go back to my life.”
“But what is that now?” she hears Griffin mutter.
She waits for the world to make sense again. And she thinks, What is my life from this point onward?
Do I stay here, in this apartment, with Griffin? Or do I leave? But go where?
She waits, as the apartment grows cold around them, as shadows form across the walls. She waits for the answer that never arrives.
CHAPTER
46
CARA SITS IN her office. Everyone else has gone home, even Deakin. But she doesn’t want to leave. She doesn’t like to go until she has a clear idea of where to focus the investigation the next day, and right now she has no clue, let alone a clear one. There are so many routes to take. She knows she needs to make a decision.
She reads update reports from the team. So far, despite the brutal rapes, the beatings, the murders, he’s left no evidence behind. Not a trace. The mood is downcast.
Earlier, she sat with one of the seconded detectives, going through the raft of evidence they’d reviewed for the cases from West Yorkshire. But there was nothing.
“And what’s this?” she asked, pointing to the final document.
The DC pulled it up on the screen. “It’s a report from an agricultural botanist. They had the plant matter found on the body reviewed.” He shrugged. “Guess they had budget to burn because the one odd thing identified was a type of rare grass only found on peaty moorland.”
Cara frowned. “And what did they do with it?”
“Nothing.” He looked at Cara. “I mean, it could have been a lead—the guy could have lived in the countryside. Or”—and he listed the options on his fingers—“he could have been on holiday once; he could have brought it there deliberately to throw them off track; or it could have come from the victim.”
She got him to write it on the board anyway.
And now their best leads came from apartment 214. Her gaze drops to the box of VHS tapes, still on the floor in her office. She leans down, moves them around in the box, thinking. Her stomach feels like a block of lead is inside. The tech team have already confirmed that the tapes are old, murders unconnected to their current spate of copycats, but it brings little reassurance. She can’t watch them, she just can’t.
But as she goes to sit up, one of them catches her eye. It’s not like the others: the label is different. She picks it up. Hampshire Children’s Services, RDK (DOB 03/31/86), 1 of 2, 02/27/96. Curiosity grabs her and she plugs the VHS machine in again, pushing the video into the slot.
To her relief, it’s an office. There are toys on a table—cars, dolls, Lego bricks—and a large, hearty-looking man sitting on the right.
“Do you know why you’re here, Robert?” the man asks. He has small round glasses and red cheeks. His tone is kind and encouraging. “Do you remember what happened to your father, to your uncle?”
The person he’s talking to is just out of shot. Cara sees a child’s hand move forward, playing with one of the toy cars.
“Can I go home?” a subdued voice says.
The man looks downcast. Cara assumes he’s a social worker. “No, I’m sorry, Robert, you won’t be able to go home for a while. Do you have any other family you could go to?”
The car moves back and forth. Then: “They call me Robbie.”
“Who does? Your dad?”
A pause. Cara assumes the boy must be nodding. The man on the tape scratches his forehead, then flicks through his notes.
“Robbie, can you tell me more about what we were talking about yesterday? About your dad and your uncle?”
Cara watches as the car is pushed off the table.
