They emerged, blinking, into an artificially lit night and a rain-drenched garden. The hum of traffic and the piercing birdsong of what he was guessing was a robin. Plug stood with Fang. A gaggle of rough sleepers, some of them slumped on wooden benches, peered blearily at North and the bedraggled, barefoot Esme as they clambered up from the sewers – and, with a clang, Plug dropped the cover back down over the entrance. His ugly face was sombre as he turned to drape a heavy overcoat over Esme’s shoulders.
North sucked in the fresh clean air and tried to get his bearings. The garden was surrounded by lit-up windows of empty offices. They were in Postman’s Park in the City of London. Under a wooden cloister, North could make out the rows of glazed tablets commemorating the individuals who’d given their lives attempting to save others. It had to be a good omen that they’d emerged in one of his favourite spots in London – the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. Created by a Victorian artist, each of the tablets told a tragic story of bravery. Surrounded by the selfish and violent, as a kid he’d come here and read them in wonder that there were people out there willing to lay down their lives for others. Even today, he had them by heart. The nineteen-year-old who died trying to save her sister from their burning house; the inspector who ‘saved a lunatic woman from suicide’ but was himself run over by the train; the twelve-year-old who ‘supported his drowning playfellow and sank with him clasped in his arms’.
Fang’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘Esme, I’m really sorry,’ Fang was saying. Her voice held a quiet note of tenderness. Across the garden, Hone was striding towards them, his one eye fixed on his niece, his long riding coat snapping and flapping around his legs. In the distance, an abrupt silence as a siren wail cut off, the swirl of the blue flashing lights of a waiting police car, and on the horizon the dome of St Paul’s.
‘No!’ Esme said. ‘Please, No!’
She’d figured it out before North did, her breath coming faster and faster as if with the effort of willing time to stop. Tobias was dead. Fang didn’t have to say the words because they all knew the truth of it. North had been so sure he had to get Esme clear of the museum, that Tobias was already dead or already out of there. That his immediate priority was Esme’s survival. Had he called it right? Should he have stayed and found Tobias, defended him against the shooters? Tobias probably died alone, defending Syd from the Thinkers. If North had left Esme to navigate the sewers alone, he could have doubled back for Hawke. But then she wouldn’t have made it. And could he trust his own motivations? Tobias was an arrogant bastard he’d found it all too easy to dislike. Esme reminded him of the woman he’d loved and lost, and he had no intention of allowing another innocent to die on his watch. Hone must have known that. He must have made that calculation before he approached North. That North was vulnerable to vulnerable women. That if he had to make a tough call – to protect Tobias or Esme – it was always going to be Esme.
But Esme’s desolation told him he’d got it wrong. Her guilt almost killed him where he stood. Esme was brave and true and knew right from wrong, and she had run away. Or rather, she had let herself be torn away, and by him. With barely a sigh, her violet eyes open but unseeing, her knees folded under her and North caught her in his arms. She was never going to forgive herself and – most likely – she was never going to forgive the violent stranger who made her leave her husband to die.