“Do you think it was because of April?” she manages at last. “The stroke, I mean? I’ve always wondered.”
“What, the…” Ryan pauses as if he’s searching for a word. “The stress, you mean?”
Hannah nods. Ryan shrugs lopsidedly, one shoulder rising more than the other.
“Maybe that contributed, but only in terms of my own behavior. Bottom line, I was drinking too much, smoking too much, eating shit—my blood pressure was bad… all of that was my choice. Well, not the blood pressure.” He laughs. “That’s genetic. But I should have got it treated instead of burying me head.”
Hannah bites her lip. She doesn’t want to think about that.
“So what brings you down here?” Ryan asks again, this time with the air of changing the conversation. Hannah takes a gulp of tea—remembering how much she hates PG Tips—and then a deep breath.
“Do you know a reporter called Geraint Williams?”
“Ger?” His face is a little surprised. “Yes, course I do. He’s a good bloke. We worked together at the Herald. How come?”
“He came to see me, at the bookshop. You probably heard John Neville died?”
“I did. Hard to miss it, to be honest. It was all over the news.”
Hannah nods.
“Well, Geraint came to see me afterwards. He’d been working on a podcast, with Neville’s cooperation, or at least that’s what he said. And he wanted my side of things.”
“Right,” Ryan says. He’s frowning slightly, but not like he’s contradicting her, just like he’s trying to see where this is going.
“We had coffee, and he… well, he thinks Neville is—” She swallows a gulp of scalding tea, trying to force herself to say the words. “He thinks Neville might have been innocent.”
To her surprise, Ryan doesn’t recoil. He only nods slowly.
“Aye, well, he’s not the only one. With a defense like that, there’s bound to be questions.”
“What do you mean?” Hannah asks, and now it’s her turn to frown.
Ryan gives a sigh and lifts himself slightly in his chair, as if the pressure of the seat hurts him. He can only really use one hand, Hannah’s noticed. He picks up his cup with that hand, operates his chair, now he lifts himself sideways on one arm, and then slumps back down with a squeak from the wheelchair’s brakes.
“Look, you’re not part of that circuit, you wouldn’t have known. But journalists—we talk to lawyers a fair bit and, well, there’s a fairly widespread—a fairly—” He stops, his expression frustrated.
“A what?”
“A—oh shit, what do you call it.” His face is twisted in annoyance. “When everyone agrees on the same thing. An acceptance, that’s the word I was looking for. Sorry—since the stroke, it’s like things have fallen through the gaps. Words, names, faces. It’s getting better, but it comes back when I’m tired. What was I saying?”
“A widespread acceptance,” Hannah prods, and Ryan nods.
“That’s it. An acceptance that his defense didn’t do a very good job. I mean basically what did it boil down to? You saw him coming down the stairs. That was it. Not much to lock a bloke up for life.”
“But the stalking,” Hannah says. She feels suddenly nettled, as if Ryan is accusing her of something. “All the stuff that came out at the trial about the other girls he’d spied on. It was part of a pattern of escalating behavior, isn’t that what the judge said?”
“He did, and there’s an argument that half of that shouldn’t have been ad—” He stops, pounds his hand down on his knee in frustration. “Fuck it, it’s gone as well.”
“Admissible?” Hannah ventures, unsure of the etiquette of filling in for him, but Ryan nods in relief.
“Yes! Thank you. Admissible. It prejudiced the jury and none of it spoke to him being a murderer, did it?”
“Ryan, he attacked me!”
“Or he did his job and stopped someone he’d seen breaking into college,” Ryan says, and then holds up his hand as he sees her begin to protest. “Look, I’m not saying you were in the wrong—you said what happened, and the rest was down to the jury. It wasn’t up to you to make Neville’s defense. I’m just telling you why some people have a problem with the verdict. But it’s too late now.”
She nods, thinking. It is too late now, that’s true. She can’t bring Neville back. But at the same time, she knows that she can’t let this rest either. Not if there’s even the slightest chance that Geraint is right.