fine. How’s it going with the Hamilton case?’
‘Oh, there’s a suicide note. Richard’s wrapping it up. You don’t need to be involved.’
I sat up, with some difficulty. My brain chugged. I’d forgotten. Just before I fell. The call from Kate Webster. ‘An email,’ I said hesitantly.
‘Yes, an email. All fairly clear cut.’
No, it wasn’t. I was sure it wasn’t clear cut. ‘What did the email say?’
‘It was the usual stuff. Sorry, sorry, you’re better off without me and all that.’
‘How do we know someone hadn’t hacked his account? It just doesn’t have the feel of a suicide to me.’
‘He’d been behaving strangely, acting depressed, saying he was cursed. Richard’s happy with suicide.’
‘Come on, Jai.’ I could feel my brain clarifying. ‘One, have you ever tried to get cyanide? You can’t pick it up from Asda. Two, cyanide’s not a nice way to die—’
‘I thought they put it in those pills for spies.’
‘It’s quick, not nice. And C—’
‘You were doing one, two, three, not A, B, C.’
‘Give me a break. I’ve had a head injury. Three, have you seen where he lives? He could have just chucked himself off that cliff any time. Why bother with cyanide-infused cake?’
‘Trying to make it look unclear so it’s an open verdict and the wife gets the life insurance?’
‘Why the email then?’
‘You make a persuasive case for a woman recently bashed on the head, but it’s Richard you need to convince, not me. And he’s not expecting you in till Monday.’
I sank back on my pillows. What I hadn’t said to Jai was – four, Mark Hamilton is a nice man with lots of dogs and cats, and he had an argument with his brother who is now dead, and I cannot let him think his brother committed suicide if it’s not true. No one should have to go through that.
‘I’ll go in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And persuade Richard.’
‘Be careful, alright?’ He reached out and touched my arm. I instinctively pulled away and Jai withdrew his hand as if he’d touched a hot stove. I wanted to say sorry, I didn’t mean to pull away, but the moment was gone.
My eyes flipped open. It was brutally dark – no trace of dawn. Something was pressing on my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, and felt something soft touch my face. I smelt fishy breath. I reached and flipped on the bedside light. Hamlet. He looked into my eyes, purred and kneaded my face. I released my breath.
I’d been released late the night before into the caring arms of my Mum. The medical people had confirmed I wasn’t bleeding from my brain or anywhere more vital, but had told me to come back if I experienced any of a long list of symptoms. They’d allowed me out on the basis that Mum stayed with me overnight and checked I was still breathing and at least normally coherent in the morning.
For a few minutes I lay staring at the ceiling, trying to absorb Hamlet’s feline calm. What would have happened if the dog hadn’t turned up at the top of those steps? Had someone been coming for me? Was it something to do with the Hamilton case?
I slid out from under the duvet and eased myself into a sitting position. I reached for the bedside table and grabbed my painkillers, feeling my brain bounce within my skull when I moved. I gulped down two of the super-strength pills the hospital had doled out.
I crept down my sloping floorboards to dig out clean clothes, feeling like I was on the high seas. The lack of right angles in my crumbling, ancient house didn’t help. Bending over was the worst – my sense of balance was gone and my brain was clearly a little too big for my skull.
Mum was asleep in the spare room, but I could do without her fretting and forcing gallons of tea down me. Besides, it was stupidly-early o’clock, so I left her to it and tottered downstairs and into the kitchen. Hamlet followed me and bumbled around while I made tea, then followed me through to the living room at the front of the house. The heating hadn’t come on yet and it was bone-numblingly cold, but by the time I’d sunk onto the sofa, I was too exhausted to get up again and do anything about it. Besides, Hamlet had parked himself on me and it was a life rule of mine not to move when catted.
A lump of plaster was coming away from the wall in the damp corner. I sighed, reached for the remote and stuck the TV on with the sound down low, praying for a programme that didn’t involve educationally challenged people from Essex copulating on a remote island.
I reached into my bag and fished out the magazine Grace had given me what seemed like weeks ago. Her disturbing but gorgeous jewellery would be a good distraction.
‘Ugh.’ I dropped the magazine. It wasn’t about her jewellery – it was a religious thing, the lead article, ‘How to be a Godly Business Woman’. I kicked it aside and closed my eyes. The pavement rushed towards me. My insides felt untethered as if I was in a lift going down too fast. The memory of the flashback shimmered like a distant threat.
I forced myself to think about the Hamilton case. Pressed my fingers to my temples and started mentally sifting through the evidence. I took a deep breath and realised I was feeling better.
My gut told me it wasn’t suicide. Of course I could never admit that to Richard – he’d accuse me of being illogical. I’d argue it was my subconscious pulling together all the threads and seasoning them with years of experience. I could point him to numerous articles in New Scientist about the supremacy of intuition when there were lots of factors to consider, but if I did, he’d throw something at me. Probably a cactus. Cacti were his thing.
I searched my memory for the word Fiona had mentioned from the paper in Kate Webster’s fire. Tithonus. Why would Peter have scrawled that name on a piece of paper which his wife seemed so keen for me not to see? I reached for my laptop, prised open the lid, and googled it. This was what I needed – to focus on work.
I took a slug of tea and scrutinised the search results. According to the Greek myth, Tithonus was a Trojan, who was kidnapped by Eos (clearly a proto-feminist, reversing traditional gender roles) to be her lover. Eos asked the Gods to make Tithonus immortal. But she only asked for immortality and not eternal youth, so poor Tithonus got older and older but never died. I read that, Tithonus indeed lived forever… but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs… she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs. In some accounts, he eventually turned into a cicada, eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him.
I shuddered, put the laptop down and manoeuvred Hamlet onto my knee. I leant and breathed in his subtle, nutty cat smell. What a terrible story. Poor Tithonus, shut away, suffering behind closed doors so nobody had to witness his torment. It was kind of what Mum had admitted wanting to do with Gran. It sickened me, but I knew it was in me too – the desire to shut away anything too painful to confront.
Hamlet, with blatant disregard for my emotional
