Paul had stared at his boss, wondering what kind of man he’d put his trust in. He’d imagined Nathalie thinking the same thing as she’d looked at Paul and realized he was a stranger, a faker, a person with an agenda. The fact of her death would not sink in straightaway. The guilt would come later, would cripple and change him, but in that moment all he’d felt was disgust, aimed at the man in front of him.

Disgust that was replicated now.

“I don’t think you mean that, Paul,” Glover said. “I don’t think you want the truth to come out any more than I do.”

The subtext was as clear as it had been back then: And I have the power to make sure.

But Paul had a new kind of power himself. The unhappy power of someone with little left to lose.

Glover adjusted his collar, eyes hard. “It would’ve made things easier if you’d let Sanderson bleed.”

Paul closed the space between them. “You’d have liked that. Another convenient death on somebody else’s conscience.”

He strode away, suppressing his limp until the hospital’s automatic doors breezed shut behind him.

—

The corridors had become crowded. The jostle of other people’s elbows and bags felt deliberate, personal. Paul could barely stop himself throwing out his arms and shoving blameless strangers out of his path. A roar of emotion was in danger of bursting from him, and a confession was crystallizing in his mind, a sort of statement about Daniel and Nathalie and Billie and everything.

Just as he reached the lifts, a hand grabbed his wrist. He twisted his arm in an instinctive self-defense move, but as he did so, he saw who’d seized him. Yvette kept hold, looking apologetic but determined.

“Yvette? Are you okay?”

She pulled him to one side, out of the current of people. “What did Glover say?”

“He wants me to keep quiet. Not cause any trouble. And he told me Daniel survived.”

“He did?” Yvette rubbed her lips together. “Jesus.” She seemed twitchy and pale, her eyes glassy.

“Yvette? What is it?”

She turned her head and stared into his face. Her fingers grasped his wrists. “I have to tell you something, Paul.”

52.

KATE

Twenty-five years earlier

I’m in an interview room. The two policemen are opposite, their hands folded around huge white coffee mugs with drippy brown stains down the sides. One has very chunky hairy fingers and the other is rocking back on two legs of his chair—my history teacher would be barking at him to stop it if she were here.