Stan sat backbone rigid on a hospital chair, his face bloodless – but shaved, shaved and groomed. Troy had never seen him turned out any other way, whatever the crisis, and he could not count the crises in the best part of thirty years. His hair and his mac glistened with early-morning rain, and his shining black boots sat squarely on the lino, as unmistakably police as a helmet.
He heard Troy out in silence. When Troy handed him Jackie’s letter, emotion betrayed him for the first time. He stretched out his hand and it seemed that he could not make himself grasp it. The hand withdrew, dived into his pocket. Out came his glasses. Like grandfather like granddaughter – he was rarely caught wearing his glasses in public.
Troy waited till his eyes left the page and his fingers refolded it. He half expected Stan to return the letter, but he didn’t. He put it, almost delicately, back into its envelope and slipped it into his pocket with his glasses. It occurred to Troy that few letters so private in intent were ever quite so public as suicide notes. It was evidence.
‘If there’s anything . . .’
Stan read his mind. Cut him short.
‘There isn’t. Just asks me to forgive her and to explain to her mother. Explain what, I ask you?’
‘Then it can be between you and her. No need for Jack to read it.’
‘Jack?’
‘Jack Wildeve. He’ll be here any minute.’
‘You don’t believe it was suicide?’
‘I don’t know what I believe.’
Stan stared right through him for almost a minute, then thrust the chair back with an ear-splitting scrape.
‘Her mother. I must see her mother.’
‘Stan!’ Troy called to his back. But he was up and lurching down the ward. At the doors he ran into Jack. Troy saw Jack put a hand out to Stan’s shoulder, heard softly spoken condolences and saw Stan blunder on, speechless in his rage and confusion.
Jack looked as bad as Troy. ‘Been up all night,’ he said simply. ‘Got your message around four o’clock. Saw no reason why we should both lose a night’s sleep. You don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cuppa, do you?’
‘They don’t do room service. You can drink mine when they bring it.’
Jack rubbed at his eyes with his fists and said, ‘Fire away.’
And when Troy had finished – how he spent the evening with Fitz, how he found Clover in a coma, where the damn pills came from – Jack said exactly what Stan had said.
‘You don’t think it’s suicide, do you?’
‘Inside pocket of my jacket,’ Troy said. ‘Just behind you.’
Jack read Clover’s letter.
A nurse appeared with Troy’s morning tea. Jack slurped at it greedily, sat with the letter in one hand, the teacup in the other and Troy used the distraction to wonder what he really did think.
‘Ordinarily,’ Jack said, ‘I’d say it was pretty conclusive. You’re certain it’s her handwriting?’
‘I’ve never seen her handwriting. You’ll have to check with Stan.’
If Stan chose to show Jack his own note from Clover, so be it, but it seemed beyond the pale to Troy to mention it now.
‘I’m sure it’s genuine. It’s her turn of phrase. And it’s clearly the half-formed hand of a teenager. But since you ask, the note notwithstanding, I can’t think of any reason why she should kill herself.’
‘Cheerful, was she?’
‘Cheerful enough. A damn sight more cheerful than me most of the time.’
‘And Fitz?’
‘Oh, he was fine, cocky – stupidly so.’
Troy had just enough warning of what was coming. Jack had slipped the question in as neatly as he would have done himself.
‘Fitz shot himself last night. About an hour and a half after he said goodnight to you at Leoni’s. Put the barrel of his revolver to his ear and blew his brains out.’