It takes a long time to get off to sleep in Adam’s cramped little bedroom.
Along with the furniture, there’s an exercise bike in there with a couple of T-shirts hanging over it and a pile of paperback books in one corner that are clearly waiting for a proper home. She’d idly glanced at the titles as she painstakingly changed into her pyjamas. Lots of popular science books, mainly, including ones by Bill Bryson and Richard Dawkins. A couple seem to be on the supernatural, such as one called The Psychology of Superstition and Why People Believe Weird Things. Rose wonders anew how someone like Adam ended up at UCIT.
The intimacy of lying in the space where he sleeps is distracting, to say the least. She runs a hand across the cool sheet and pictures his body warming the space. Pointless, and inappropriate, but at least the fantasy takes her mind off the memory of being thrown against a wall by an angry ghost.
It’s around 2 a.m. when she becomes aware of a shape in the room, a dark presence. Her sleepy brain is instantly electrified with panic.
Oakley. He’s back.
Fuzzy from the mix of alcohol and pills, it’s hard to surface. As panic mounts, she fights the thick, muffling sensation dragging her down until she is sitting upright, properly awake, heart pounding so hard she can feel it in her throat.
‘Rose, Rose, it’s okay, it’s only me!’
At the door, Adam is dressed in a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, his face stricken, hands up in supplication.
With a gasp of pain, Rose leans back against the headboard. ‘Oh God,’ she says, ‘I thought, I thought …’
It’s impossible to resist them and the tears finally fall, hotly, down her cheeks. She buries her head in her hands.
‘Oh shit!’ says Adam. ‘I’m so bloody thoughtless. After what happened before … I didn’t think. I’m so sorry. But you were moaning in your sleep and I wanted to check you were only dreaming and not in any pain. I never meant to scare you!’
Rose can’t stop crying. It’s literally impossible right now. The memory of what happened last year is like a massive rucksack filled with stones she carries all the time, every minute of the day and the night too. It has become her version of normal. But right now she’s aware of how very heavy it is, lying here in pain and in her lovely colleague’s bed.
Adam hovers near the door and then disappears, coming back a moment later with a box of tissues.
‘God, I’m so sorry,’ says Rose, gathering herself, her voice so thick it’s almost unrecognizable. ‘I didn’t wake your girls, did I?’
‘No, it’s fine, don’t worry about that,’ says Adam. ‘They’re sound asleep. Look, is it okay if I come over there and give you a tissue?’
‘Yes, please,’ says Rose.
Adam approaches and hands her the tissue box at arm’s length. She takes one gratefully.
‘You must think I’m such a fruitcake. Please,’ she says, then: ‘Sit down for a minute. It was so kind of you to check on me.’
Adam sits, but so far away on the bed, he practically has one buttock and leg hanging off it.
The room is quite well lit, thanks to a streetlight outside. Rose doesn’t really know where to put her eyes but she doesn’t want him to go either.
‘Look,’ he says after a moment. ‘It’s not my business but can I tell you something?’
‘Of course.’ She dabs gently at her sore nose.
‘When I worked in Vice,’ he says, ‘back at the start of my career, I was stabbed by a man who was running a brothel of trafficked Eastern European women. A right piece of work he was. It wasn’t that serious, only in my bicep, and we disarmed him pretty quickly. It could have been so much worse. I’ve got a nice little scar to show for it now. But I tell you, for months after, I kept reliving when that knife came at me. I would replay the moment over and over again. For all that he was a nasty little man, it came as a shock. This fat little bloke of fifty-odd in his cheap suit, suddenly whipping out a bloody great hunting knife.’
Rose doesn’t say anything.
‘What I’m trying to say is, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be assaulted in your own bed like you were,’ he goes on. ‘I felt a bit embarrassed at the time that I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened to me. I mean, it’s not like that sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time in our job.’ His voice is quiet and low. ‘A big bloke of six foot two, a copper? I mean, I should be able to shrug that stuff off, shouldn’t I? But I couldn’t.’ He pauses. ‘And that’s the thing, Rose,’ he says. ‘Just because we are coppers, it doesn’t mean we’re any more able to cope with threats on our life than the next person. They’re still bloody scary when they happen. And what happened to you with Oakley was so goddamned creepy and unusual, well …’ He trails off.
There is a long silence where their eyes are locked together, the distance between them very close yet somehow very far too.
‘Thank you,’ says Rose softly, after a moment.
‘Ask for proper help if you need it, is what I’m saying,’ he says and his voice is so gentle, Rose can barely hear the words.
Adam lifts a hand, then hesitates and puts it back down. Rose thinks he was going to pat her reassuringly on her leg, but felt it wouldn’t be appropriate, even in these circumstances. She wishes he would touch her. What she really wishes is that he would wrap her up in his arms and hold her until she sleeps. Nothing else, just that.
In the morning, her face looks awful with a new darker purpling around her eye, and her bruised ribs seem to stab her with every breath.
It’s awkward, seeing the two bright, curious faces of the girls eating breakfast in their school uniforms as she finally enters the kitchen. Thankfully, Adam hurries them out of the door not long after.
Forty-five minutes later, Rose has gingerly driven herself to Cobalt Square, Adam following behind, when her phone rings. She answers via Bluetooth.
It is Gwen Fuller, crying hysterically and saying something about letters.
She is almost incoherent and after a moment, Anton takes over. He too sounds shaken for once.
‘Your lot have found a bunch of letters,’ he says. ‘They’ve taken them away. I want to know what’s happening. Whether that woman has my son.’
‘Mr Fuller,’ says Rose, pulling into the car park. ‘Please speak slowly and tell me what you mean. What letters?’
‘The ones that Heather Doyle woman, that multiple murderer, has been writing to my son.’
They go in Adam’s car, lights and siren on, to Heather’s flat in Archway. Officers from Kentish Town station are already on their way there.
She and Adam meet a young PC called Nasreen and a slightly older man called Rob, who was responsible for breaking down the door.
‘This room is a potential crime scene,’ she says to the two uniformed officers, ‘so can you please not touch anything and secure the scene accordingly.’
Rose dons a pair of gloves before stepping properly into the room, which is much tidier than when she was last here. Checking a cheap chest of drawers by the bed, it’s clear the clothes have been cleared out.
‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?’ says Adam grimly.
‘Adam,’ says Rose and the alarm in her voice makes him look up sharply.
‘Look at this …’ She’s staring down at the side of one of the cracked kitchen cabinets, which is spotted with what looks like hardened grease. But that isn’t the only stain.
There’s a small dark patch of something.
Something that looks very much like blood.