She had better, more important things to do.
She left the letter on the dining room table, poured herself a large measure of wine, and then raised the glass.
“Here’s to you, Pete,” she said quietly. “Safe journey.”
And then, despite herself, she started crying—which was ridiculous. She’d never been prone to tears. Had always taken pride in being calm and dispassionate. But the investigation had changed her. And there was nobody here to see it right now, she supposed, so she decided it was fine to let herself go. It felt good. She wasn’t even crying for Pete, she realized after a while, so much as allowing all the emotion of the past few months to come pouring out. Pete, yes. But also Neil Spencer. Tom and Jake Kennedy. All of it. It was as though she had been holding her breath for weeks, and the sobbing now was a deep exhalation she had desperately needed.
She drank the wine and poured another.
Having spoken to Tom, and knowing what she did now, she imagined getting drunk probably wasn’t what Pete would have wanted. But he would also have understood. In fact, she could imagine the understanding look he would be giving her if he could see her right now—it would be just like some of the others he’d given her. One that said: I’ve been there, and I get it, but it’s not something we can talk about, can we?
He’d understand, all right. The Whisper Man case had taken up the last twenty years of his life. After everything that had happened, she imagined it might end up doing the same to her if she wasn’t careful. Perhaps that was all right, though—maybe that was the way it was even meant to be. Some investigations stayed with you, sinking their claws in and hanging on, so that you would always have to drag them behind you no matter how hard you tried to dislodge them. Before this, she had always imagined she would be impervious to that—that she would be a climber like Lyons, not weighed down the way Pete had been—but she knew herself a little better now. This was something she was going to be carrying for a long time. That was the kind of cop it had turned out she was. Not the sensible kind at all.
So be it.
She downed the wine and poured a third.
There were positives to cling to, of course, and despite everything, it was important to do that. Jake Kennedy had been found in time. Francis Carter was in prison. And she would always be the woman who had caught him. She had worked herself to the bone, doing everything she could, and she had not been found wanting. When the hour had come, she had filled every fucking second of it.
Eventually, she steeled herself and opened the letter. She was drunk enough by then not to care anymore what Frank Carter might have to say. What did he matter? Let the fucker write what he wanted. His words would bounce off her, and he would still be rotting where he was afterward, and she would still be here. It wasn’t like with Pete. Carter had nothing to hold over her. No way of hurting her.
A single sheet of paper, almost entirely empty.
If Peter can still hear, Carter had written, tell him thank you.
Seventy
Francis sat in his cell, waiting.
He had spent these two weeks in prison in a state of anticipation, but something in the world had clicked today, and he had known that it was finally time. Past lights-out, he was sitting patiently on his bunk in the darkness, still fully dressed, his hands resting on his thighs. He listened to the metallic echoes and the catcalls of the other convicts gradually dying away around him. He stared almost blindly at the rough brickwork of the opposite wall.
Waiting.
He was a grown man, and he was not afraid.
They had done their best to make him so, of course. When he’d first been brought to the prison, on remand and still unconvicted, the guards had been professional but also either unable or unwilling to hide their hatred for him. Francis had killed a little boy, after all, and—perhaps even worse in their eyes—a police officer. The body search had been overly robust. He had been allowed to keep his own clothes, but had been confined to a single cell and not allowed to mix with the other prisoners. The latter was allegedly for his own protection, but