CHAPTER 43

 

Grose sat with his head in his hands. His life was over. Finished. He hadn’t killed Jenny but that didn’t matter. There was a chance that a jury might believe he was innocent, but that didn’t matter either. Even if he could convince a jury that he hadn’t killer her, she had been his lover and she had been carrying his baby. They were facts, and they were facts that Karen would never forgive. Neither would the university. And neither would his readers, the few that he had left. The tabloids would have a field day. Lecturer murders pregnant student lover.

He’d need a top legal team and that would cost money. Serious money. Probably every penny that he had. And Karen wouldn’t forgive his infidelity, especially when she discovered that Jenny had been carrying his baby. She’d never forgive him for that, not after all the years that she’d tried so hard to bear a child. She’d divorce him, he was sure of that. He’d lose the house, and she’d take whatever money he had left after paying his lawyers. Guilty or innocent he’d lose his job. The University had a zero tolerance policy when it came to staff getting involved with students. And no other educational establishment in the country would hire him.

Grose groaned like an animal in pain. He’d never be published again, no matter what the result of the trial. Even if he managed to avoid the murder charge, no one was going to publish a book by a lecturer who got a student pregnant, a student who was then brutally killed and her body dismembered. No one would remember his Pulitzer nomination, or the glowing reviews of Snow Birds, the awards that he’d won and the lectures that he’d given. All anyone would care about is that he was Dudley Grose, the dirty old man. The pervert. He began to sob and tears rolled down his cheeks. His life was over. No matter what happened, he was finished. Worst possible scenario he’d spend the rest of his life behind bars. Best possible scenario he’d be penniless, homeless and alone. He wasn’t sure which was worse, but he knew one thing for sure – he couldn’t face either scenario. He would be better off dead.

He sat up straight and wiped the tears from his eyes. He didn’t have long, they still hadn’t charged him so they hadn’t searched him and taken away his belongings. He patted his pockets down and smiled to himself when he felt the hardness of the pen in the top inside pocket of his jacket. He took it out slowly. It was his black Mont Blanc, a gift from his wife. He held the pen in his right hand and brushed it against his cheek. She’d given it to him on their wedding day. He’d replaced the nib countless times over the years and had fitted a new one only three weeks earlier.

He took a deep breath, and then wiped his nose with the back of his left hand. He wanted to leave a note, but he knew that there wasn’t time. To say what he wanted to say would take too long, require too much thought. There was so much he had to say. Regret, of course. Regret for betraying his wife. Regret for not spending more time writing and less time fooling around with a girl young enough to be his daughter. Grose felt his cheeks redden with shame. What had he been thinking? When he first started talking to Jenny as anything more than a teacher addressing his student, what the hell had been going through his mind? There was anger too, and he’d need time to express that anger properly, time that he didn’t have. He wanted to blame Slater, because he was sure that it was Slater who had killed Jenny, killed her and framed Grose for the murder. But even more he wanted to blame Dean Martin and the Head of Faculty. They had forced the course on to him, and they had refused to back him up once it became clear that Slater was becoming a problem. If they had simply shown Slater the door when Grose had first raised the matter then none of this would have happened. Jenny wouldn’t have been murdered and Grose wouldn’t have been…. He shuddered. There was no point in thinking about what might have been. The past was the past, dwelling on it wouldn’t achieve anything. All that mattered now was the situation that he was in, and how he dealt with it.

He slowly unscrewed the cap off the pen and placed it on the bunk beside him. The gold nib glinted under the fluorescent light overhead. He stared at the pen and smiled at the irony of it. He’d lived to write, his whole life that was the only thing that he’d wanted to do, and so it was only fitting that it should be a pen that ended it. He took another deep breath and exhaled slowly as he prepared himself to do what had to be done. It would hurt, he knew that, but it wouldn’t hurt for long. He gripped the pen tightly with his right hand, so tightly that his knuckles whitened. He pressed the nib against the flesh, about two inches below the wrist, close to where a thick blue vein branched into two. He looked up at the ceiling and then closed his eyes. He gasped as he pushed the pen hard and then twisted so that the gold nib tore through the skin. He bit down on his lower lip, twisted the pen and pushed harder as blood gushed over his hand.