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.