Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(103)

‘I picked up the signal again two minutes ago,’ says Gary, ‘but it only lasted a few seconds. It came from the northern end of the building. Maybe he passed close to a window.’

The nearest door is marked as a fire exit but has been barricaded or screwed shut. The next one is also locked. Cassie follows me as I walk along the western wall of the factory, pushing through waist-high weeds, nettles and blackberry bushes. Thorny branches tug at my coat and trousers.

Without warning, the ground opens beneath me. As I pitch forward, Cassie grabs my coat, hauling me back from the edge. Breathless, heart thumping, I stare into a brick pit overgrown with weeds.

‘Don’t do that again,’ she says.

‘Noted.’

She points into the shadows. ‘There’s a door.’

The stone steps are slick with moss. I pull aside planks and fallen branches, before wading into knee-deep water the colour of sump oil. A door is propped open by a broken beam. Ducking underneath, I squeeze inside, emerging into a large room with a ceiling criss-crossed by pipes. The broken concrete floor is covered in puddles and wooden pallets and rusting pieces of machinery. A chair. A pile of sand. Empty paint tins. Plasterboard. Tiles.

Cassie follows me, as I navigate through the rubbish, using my phone as a torch. We head towards the only other light, which is coming from a lift shaft that reaches to the upper floors. The lift cage has gone, but a rusty metal ladder, dripping with water, is fixed against one wall.

I can hear voices coming from above me. Male. Female. I test the ladder, pulling myself up and dropping again, making sure it can hold my weight. It creaks. The noise echoes up the shaft.

‘I don’t think it could take both of us,’ I say to Cassie. ‘You should go back. Tell DSU Parvel where I’ve gone.’

She glances at the ladder and reluctantly agrees. ‘Tell Patrice …’ She searches for the words. ‘Tell Patrice that I’m here and I understand him, but he has to stop this. Tell him that I loved Jolene too and this isn’t what she would have wanted.’

I begin to climb towards the voices.





72


Evie


The red light on the camera is still blinking. Rennie checks to make sure that it’s recording and adjusts the angle. He steps closer and crouches to meet me at eye level.

‘You have heard their confessions. They have admitted their guilt.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Which they covered up.’

‘I don’t want to judge them. This is wrong.’

‘They killed my son.’

‘He was dying anyway.’

His hands are so low that I don’t see his fist. He strikes me across the face, and I topple sideways, still attached to the chair, tasting blood in my mouth, sickly and coppery and warm.

Rennie seems to realise that he’s been caught on camera. He picks up the chair with me still attached to it, setting it upright, apologising.

‘You promised to be fair,’ he sulks.

I blow hair out of my eyes and stretch out my lower jaw, moving it back and forth to make sure it’s not broken. ‘I didn’t promise you anything,’ I say, spitting blood onto the floor.

‘My son was defenceless. He was an innocent. He deserved a chance. They were supposed to heal him, to keep him safe, but they gave up and covered up. They killed him.’

‘No,’ says Lilah, shaking her head. ‘It was an accident.’

‘You turned off his incubator.’

‘He was already dead.’

‘No! He was still alive!’ He smashes his fist on the table. The camera topples. He curses and checks to make sure it isn’t damaged. He adjusts the tripod and frames the two women in the viewfinder ‘He didn’t suffer,’ says Lilah. ‘It was quick.’

‘Oh, that makes it OK,’ says Rennie, sarcastically.

He has moved back in front of the camera.

‘I didn’t get to hold my son before he died. I didn’t get to say goodbye. We didn’t just lose a new-born – we lost the one-year-old he would have become. We lost the toddler and the three-year-old. He would have gone to school. He would have woken us every Christmas morning and birthday. He would have dressed up at Hallowe’en and had Easter egg hunts and written notes to the tooth fairy.

‘Every year, on the anniversary of Oliver’s birthday, we would try to do something unusual to take our minds off what happened. One year we went skydiving in Spain. Another year it was indoor climbing. Then, three days later, we’d visit his grave. We would talk about him and imagine what he’d look like now. Eight years old. Everything ahead of him. When I picture him, I see his mother – caring, clever, funny, good at practical things, hot-headed sometimes, passionate.

‘We kept Oliver’s memory alive, but the pain never diminished. And with every failed round of IVF, every miscarriage, every scalding disappointment, it grew worse. Do you understand what that’s like?’

He looks again at Lilah and Daniela but doesn’t expect them to answer.

‘And yet we almost made it out of the vortex. Jolene had come to terms with never having a baby of our own. We were going to adopt. We were on the list. But then the cancer came. I have never seen such bravery. She fought to her last breath. She gave herself a chance, which is something you denied Oliver.’