“So you’re saying—”
“I’m saying someone went up there to see April, probably with the intention of killing her. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment, crime-of-passion thing, or the students below would have heard an argument. It must have been planned, someone waiting for their chance to surprise her. So whoever it was lulled her into a false sense of security, and then while they were talking, Neville knocked. April went out to talk to him, and the killer stayed in the bedroom. Then they came out and killed her as soon as Neville shut the door.”
“But they couldn’t have known Neville would come up…” November says slowly. Hannah shakes her head.
“No, I don’t think that part was planned. I think it was just the killer’s good luck that Neville gave them the perfect alibi.”
“The timing would work…” They have reached the taxi and November opens the door and slides back inside. Her face, golden in the sulfurous yellow of the streetlamp, is troubled. “It would make sense of Neville’s story, and it would explain why you never saw anyone coming out after him. But… wait, how would whoever it was know not to take the stairs? They had no way of knowing you were waiting at the bottom.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Hannah says. She feels more than a little sick, and it has as much to do with what she is about to say as it does with the aftermath of her argument with Will. “And if I’m right, if the killer did escape down the drainpipe, then I think what must have happened is this: The killer knew they couldn’t afford to be seen coming down the stairs—so they would have waited until Neville was well clear to leave. They wouldn’t want to bump into him in the quad if he was still hanging around. So whoever it was, they probably killed April, then hung around by the window to check Neville was gone. By the time Neville came out of the building—”
“By that time, they would have seen you crossing the quad,” November finishes. Her face is pale. “Shit. You mean they saw you coming. They knew you’d be coming up the stairs, so they had no choice but to escape through the window.”
“I think so. The only other possibility is that they heard me coming up the stairs as they were finishing the”—she swallows, the word sticking in her throat—“finishing the job.”
“Oh my God.” November closes her eyes. The beam of a streetlamp passes over her face as they drive beneath it, illuminating the shape of her skull with ghostly beauty. In the half-light she looks so like April that Hannah almost cannot bear it. For a moment it is as if April has come back to haunt her with the specter of the mistakes she made—except that April has never left her. The voice in the crowd. The blond head weaving down a busy street. April has always been here, with her, trying to make her see.
I’m sorry, April, she thinks. I’m sorry I failed you.
“So… who then?” November whispers. The driver is not looking round at them, but they are both conscious that in spite of the plexiglass screen, he could be listening. Guess who I had in the back of my cab… “It could have been anyone, then… right?”
“Someone with a motive,” Hannah says, ticking the list off on her fingers. “And someone that April trusted.” The sick feeling is back. “It must have been someone she knew well. That’s always been an unanswerable problem with the case against Neville. April hated him. There’s no way she would have let him come anywhere near her without a struggle. But a friend? That’s different. I mean, not Hugh—because I was with him outside the building. And I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have been Ryan. He was still in the bar when we left, although I guess it’s theoretically possible that he could have pelted it round the long way and got to New Quad before us. But…”
She stops.
“But it could have been Emily,” November says with sudden, dawning comprehension. “That’s why you went so quiet over dinner.”
Hannah feels something twist inside her like a knife. Because it’s true, and hearing it out loud makes it suddenly and sickeningly real. That is what she was thinking. She was sitting there working things out in her head, realizing that Emily’s alibi is the shakiest of them all. Yes, she was in the library. But there was absolutely nothing to stop her from slipping through the turnstile without swiping out, climbing the stairs to April’s room, sitting there with her, talking, laughing, maybe even poking fun at herself over the A-level prank—and then when Neville came up, providing the perfect fall guy, strangling April before sliding down the drainpipe and returning to her seat in the reading room.