I moved forward, towards the stream, knowing that there was no threat from Isaac Mills any more. Leaping from one bank to the other, I passed from the clearing back into the trees, the light closing off instantly above me. But I could see enough.

He’d made makeshift crosses for each of the graves.

My throat trembled with emotion.

I reached out to the nearest tree for support, my legs suddenly weak, tired in my muscles and sinew and bones in a way I couldn’t ever remember being. I’d found them, I’d got to the end – but it didn’t feel like a victory.

Only a loss.

And then I noticed something.

There were ten graves, not nine.

I turned and looked back through the trees towards Mills, across the stream to where he was still standing in the clearing, lopsided, suffering. In his face, though, it was obvious he knew exactly what I was thinking and what I needed to ask.

‘Who else did you bury with them, Isaac?’

He didn’t reply, just wiped his eyes.

‘Isaac? Who is this?’

‘Kader,’ he said. ‘That one was Joline Kader.’

An Ending

2018

London | Two Weeks Ago

In the arrivals hall, she found Kevin Quinn waiting for her. He had a sign with her name on it, and was checking his cellphone with his spare hand.

‘DI Quinn?’

He looked up. ‘Detective Kader?’

‘Ex-Detective Kader,’ she replied, smiling.

Quinn returned the smile and they shook hands.

‘Once a detective, always a detective,’ he said.

‘Well, it’s very kind of you to agree to meet me, anyway.’

‘No problem. I’m as keen as you to find out what’s going on.’

He led her out of the terminal, across to an adjacent parking lot, and they talked politely about her flight, about her career at the LASD and LAPD, about his, in Manchester and then in London at the Met, and then Quinn said, ‘I just want to find out what the hell has happened here. Black Gale, Beatrix Steards, this case you had, it needs some closure.’

She nodded. ‘I agree.’

‘Patrick Perry was an old, uh … colleague.’ He hesitated and looked sideways at her, as if he wasn’t sure whether to reveal the true nature of his relationship with Patrick.

But it didn’t take much in the way of imagination to figure it out.

Quinn was a cop; Patrick Perry had been a journalist.

She held up a hand. ‘It’s okay. I had “colleagues” too.’

Quinn broke into another smile.

‘Thank you for digging me out of that one,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

‘So, after you leave London, you’re heading north?’