Chapter Twelve
I rang Kate while Robbie drove us across the Mersey and back to my far more modest flat in Chester.
‘Hey, Stacy!’ Kate answered warmly. ‘Thanks so much for coming for dinner, even with your scry headache. I really appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome. It was a lovely evening.
’ I hesitated, unsure of how to broach my reason for calling.
I decided to go with blunt honesty whilst holding back the more deadly elements.
‘Look, Kate. I’ve found out Troy is doing some dangerous deals, and I need you to keep away from him for me, just while those go down.
Something is going on with the merpeople, and you need to stay away from him for a bit. It’s too dangerous for you.’
‘Dangerous?’ she asked, alarmed. ‘Dangerous how?’
‘I can’t go into it, but I need you to take me at my word.’
‘But … what’s changed since last night?’
‘Nothing but the fact that I know more. I’m sorry. I know this will be hard for you, but trust me, you have to stay away from Troy. Just for now. Not forever.’ Hopefully.
‘Is he … is he in trouble?’
‘Troy isn’t in any trouble,’ I assured her.
Though Troy surely was in a difficult situation, it was Jingo who was in trouble.
‘But Troy is mixed up with some dangerous people, and I don’t want you to get caught in the crosshairs.
Look, I’ll tell you everything I can when it’s safer, but promise me you won’t meet up with him?
Just … fob him off with being too busy at work or something. For me. Please?’
After a heavy pause, she said, ‘Okay, I won’t meet up with him, but when you can give it, I’d really like to hear that proper explanation.’
‘I promise I’ll give it when I can. Just … stay on your guard, Kate. Stick with Beth and public spaces.’
Her voice was shaky as she said, ‘Stacy, you’re scaring me. How much trouble is he in?’
The worst kind, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
‘I’m working hard at resolving it,’ I said instead. ‘Leave it with me. Everything is going to be okay.’
‘I … I like him, Stacy.’
‘I know you do, Kate. But for now, if you see him, run like hell in the other direction. I promise I’m going to sort this out for you. You have my word.’
I hung up before she could ask more and as I pocketed my phone, Robbie reached out with his free hand to lace his fingers through mine.
‘This situation might not resolve in an okay way, Stacy,’ he warned softly. ‘The odds are not in his favour.’
‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘But I can’t give up on somehow ousting Jingo from his body and freeing him, you know?’
‘I know. You’re a good person.’
‘Thanks, but it’s not my morals here. It’s my professionalism.
This case … it started out as who killed Ash Aspen.
Well, we’re all but certain the answer is Troy Fairglass.
I’ll see what he says when we can speak to him as opposed to Jingo – and I’m certain we will – but as Judge, Jury and Executioner, I’m betting he did it in defence of a third party.
He did it to save Kate from whatever horrors Aspen spewed at him.
Troy hasn’t got a single ding on his record.
Now that could be his daddy dearest bribing people to wipe things clean, but his penthouse suite didn’t show any weird perversions, no weapons, no unusual wads of cash.
No red flags besides the fact that the place is a little cold. ’
‘You’d clear him of killing Aspen.’
‘Yeah, I would. I’ll speak to him first, but if it falls out the way I expect it to, yeah, I would.
So the heart of the case shifts, because we know who did it and almost certainly why.
Now the case is trying to save Troy from Jingo.
And if I can’t get Jingo out and have Troy breathing at the end …
then I’ve failed. And I really hate that. ’
‘It might happen,’ Robbie said grimly. ‘You have to brace yourself for that. You can’t win them all.’
‘No, I can’t, and there are open cases and cold cases that prove that. My dad’s murder, for one. But …’ I shook my head. ‘Kate wouldn’t get over it if we failed. She’d blame me, I think. And our friendship would be over before it got a chance to start.’
Robbie squeezed my hand. ‘I think you underestimate her and your budding relationship, but I understand your fears. I’m just not sure we can save Troy.’
I let out a sigh. That was the crux of the issue. Could he be saved? Or was hosting a doppelganger always a death sentence?
When I entered my flat, the tension was so high it was like slamming into a wall.
I looked between Ji-ho and Channing. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’
Channing looked down at the table, jaw working.
‘Ji-ho?’ I asked.
My friend was unnaturally still. He wasn’t bopping or bouncing, but frozen, his face a rictus of misery so intense that I closed the distance between us and pulled him into a hug.
‘It’s okay,’ I murmured. ‘Whatever it is, it’s okay.’
I was surprised when I felt him shake, when tears started to fall. When he pulled back from me, eyes haunted, my gut clenched.
‘You were so fucking young, Stacy, to go through that.’ Ji-ho’s voice was barely a whisper.
Robbie came up behind me and rested a hand on the small of my back, offering silent support.
With effort, I kept my voice brisk and businesslike. ‘You found my file.’ It was a statement, not a question. I knew that horror. I remembered it in my mum’s eyes when she saw what had been done to me.
‘I – yes,’ Ji-ho admitted. ‘I found a lead. A small one. An addendum, buried in a footnote in a file, stated that someone claimed not to have been responsible for his actions. He claimed to have been controlled by a doppelganger. I dug into it and … well, none of the usual procedural steps were taken. He was shuffled into Wraithmore without a trial.’
I went cold. Everyone who went to Wraithmore got a trial.
That was the deal. The Inspectors were Judge, Jury and Executioner.
When the kill order came in, we followed it.
But some deserved to suffer. Deserved the humiliation of a trial and the constraint of imprisonment.
There was no rehabilitation programme at Wraithmore, no parole for good behaviour.
There was just the damned and locked up, with little to no hope of freedom ever again.
In some ways, it was the crueller fate for the very worst of us. For some, death was too easy.
But everyone there was supposed to get a trial. That’s why we compiled evidence so thoroughly – for those few we confined and chucked away the key.
I swallowed hard, because I was no idiot. There was a reason Ji-ho had brought up my case first.
‘Who?’ I asked tightly. ‘Who claimed they were controlled by a doppelganger?’
‘Vance Broadlake.’
My ears rang as the name of my childhood kidnapper dropped from Ji-ho’s lips.