He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Okay,” she said. “I admit, that’s a level of responsibility I’m probably not up to. I actually had another reason too.”
She reached down and took a thin file out of her bag.
“The story you told Dean Price that night,” she said. “About Hague’s brother being responsible for killing Charlie Crabtree.”
“I made that up.”
“Yeah, you said. And honestly, no offense intended, but we checked. His brother was called Liam, and he was still in prison at the time.”
“I was just trying to think of anything I could.”
“And I believe you.”
Amanda put the file on the table between them and slid it across to him.
“What’s this?” he said.
“I got it yesterday. Go on. Knock yourself out.”
He looked at her for a moment, then down at the file. When he opened it, she saw the single photograph inside. It was upside down from her perspective, but she had already stared at it enough to make sense of it from any angle. The tattered clothes; the spread of old bones half wrapped in undergrowth; the bare skull that had rolled to one side.
The photograph had been taken on the same morning Dean Price’s body was found, only a short distance from where he was lying. The official identification had been confirmed late yesterday, and Dwyer had sent it to her as a courtesy. Amanda, in turn, had texted Paul to arrange to meet today for the exact same reason.
He was still looking at the photo.
“Is this…?”
“Charlie Crabtree,” she said. “Yes.”
He continued staring down, and she wondered what he was thinking. How must it feel, to see that after all this time? To know a nightmare that had lasted for a quarter of a century was finally over? It was difficult to imagine what must be going through his head.
“I shouldn’t be showing you that, by the way,” she said. “But I figured you might want to know. That you deserved to know.”
Finally, he looked up at her, and she saw so many emotions on his face that it was impossible to untangle most of them.
All except one.
The relief she saw there reminded her of how she’d felt at the cemetery first thing that morning.
“Thank you,” he said.
FORTY-FOUR
It was my mother who took me to the train station.
It was actually my father who drove, but he had become little more than a distant presence in my life by then, and this last journey was undertaken on my behalf almost begrudgingly. He stayed in the car when we got there. It was supposedly because he wanted to watch for traffic cops, but we both knew the real reason was that we had nothing to say to each other, and it was easier to forget a goodbye at a car than on a train station platform. It was my mother who accompanied me inside and waited with me, and so it’s her I always think of as taking me there that day.
I had a crammed duffel bag and a heavy suitcase. The latter was on wheels that made a tricking noise on the concourse as we made our way through the crowds of commuters. I remember the departures boards whirring and flickering as they updated overhead, and the loudspeaker blaring out intermittent garbled messages. Everywhere, the mingled thrum of conversation echoed off the tiled walls. At that point in my life, I had never been on a train before, and I found the sensations almost overwhelming. I remember being nervous. Scared, even.
Which I didn’t say.
My mother and I didn’t speak until we reached the platform. The train was due in a few minutes, and we found a place in the shade to wait.
“Do you have your ticket?” she said.
I wanted to give her a look that conveyed I was eighteen years old now and not an idiot. But in that moment, I found myself remembering a different journey we had made together, when I was starting at a new school and she had asked me something similar. The question had not been for my benefit back then, and a part of me understood it wasn’t now either—that she was asking the question to reassure herself.
“Yes,” I said.
“Of course you have,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She sounded genuinely apologetic, but I could tell she was also distracted: full of nervous energy. It was the way people get when they’re fretting about something important that’s outside their control.
You don’t need to be sorry, I thought.
And did not say.
I remember being scared, yes, but the honest truth is that I was also excited. The last couple of years had been very difficult for me. It’s important not to overplay that, of course, and on the few occasions I’ve thought about Gritten over the years—in those brief moments when I forgot to forget—it’s always been in these very specific terms: what happened, never what happened to me. Because I knew then, and know better now, that other people suffered far worse than I did, and the tragedy belongs more appropriately to them. And most of all, of course, to Jenny Chambers.
Nevertheless, like so many of us, I was part of that story, and I was haunted by the role I played, however unwittingly, in what happened. The knowledge of the things I had and had not done had overshadowed my life ever since. Waiting on the platform that day, I had no idea what lay in store for me in the future, only that I was leaving far more behind me than Gritten itself.
“It will be Christmas before you know it,” my mother said.
“I know.”
I had spent the last couple of years saving up. I worked at the bookshop, and took whatever odd jobs in the area I could fit in between my studies. My focus, barely acknowledged even to myself, had been laser-like. And while it would indeed be Christmas before I knew it, I also knew that I had no intention of coming home when it was.
Which I did not say.
I looked up to see the train arriving: two rickety train cars rolling slowly toward us, blue at the top, stained with black muck at the bottom, as though they had trudged here through muddy fields. Farther up the platform, people were already shouldering their bags. I moved forward, feeling as though I needed to get on immediately or else I might miss my chance and the train would leave without me. But then my mother put her hand on my arm. When I looked at her, I could tell from the expression on her face she already knew what I hadn’t said out loud. That she wasn’t going to see me again for a long time. And that she had reconciled herself to that.
“I love you, Paul,” she said quietly. “Look after yourself.”
“I will.”
“And for God’s sake, give your mom a hug.”
I shrugged my bag off and did. I don’t know how many years it had been since I had embraced my mother by that point, but I remember being surprised by how small and fragile she felt. When we separated again, she put both her hands on the sides of my arms and appraised me.
“You’ve got so tall.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Behind me, the train chuffed, and my mother patted my arms and then let go.
“Just promise me you’ll take care,” she said.
“I’ll be fine, Mom.”
She smiled.
“I know you will.”
Once on the train, I found my seat, and she waited on the platform to wave goodbye. I didn’t understand at the time what was going through her head, and obviously I still don’t know for certain, but at least now I have an idea.