7
The rapid chatter of my camera shutter drowns out the traffic as a robin pecks at the crumbs behind my lens. I’ve sacrificed half a bun to keep it there, watching it hop about.
A horn blares. The bird doesn’t even lift its head. It skitters closer to my shoe, steals another crumb and carries on as if two tonnes of metal haven’t just thundered past a few metres away.
Ahead, office blocks loom in alternating greys, their glass panes flickering beneath a dull sky unlike the one over the prison yard yesterday.
Just as the robin flies away, Simon Cromwell chooses to grace the street with his detached elegance and a suit three shades too dark for summer, cut precisely to look severe rather than fashionable. His mirror-polished shoes somehow remain untouched by the grime of the pavement.
I throw the rest of the bun to the flock that has begun to gather around the bus station, absorbing an elderly woman’s reprimand for it, and scurry over the road after him.
The city thrums around me in layers. Engines roar, brakes screech, fragments of conversation blur together.
‘Mr Cromwell!’ I call after him when I’m close enough.
He pivots, sunlight flashing across the immaculate line of his spectacles, almost matching the sheen of his bald head. He’s surprisingly young up close – I’d expected someone closer to Arthur’s age, thinking the pictures online were old.
He takes one look at my plain grey tunic and jeans and turns away as if he can’t be bothered with me.
‘Press appointments go through the office,’ he throws over his shoulder.
‘I’m not press!’ I say, catching up to him. ‘I need a word about Elias Crane!’
He stops abruptly, and I nearly bump into his slender frame.
Turning sharply, he pegs me with a cold set of dark eyes, giving me another once-over.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Elias Crane’s friend. I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
The words barely leave my mouth before he starts walking again, forcing me to match his long, rushed stride.
We pass a brass plaque bolted to the brick at the edge of his building – Cromwell severe enough to make me wonder if he might shove me straight back onto the road.
‘The company is my client. Elias Crane’s ownership stake does not make him one.
’ He shifts the weight to one foot. ‘Elias—killed—his own—father,’ he grits out.
Not a flicker of humanity follows the words.
‘The Crown calls it murder, the people call him a monster, and God would call him a sinner. Not even his mother wanted him. That is the end of it.’ Then he takes a step towards me and dips his head a little.
‘If I were you, I’d walk away from that friend. ’
Glancing to the side, as if to make sure no one is listening, he adds, ‘Elias Crane is a loose cannon. A cracked egg. He’s been under psychiatric care since he could barely walk. You have no idea who you are dealing with.’
My fingers curl into fists.
As if needing help as a child were evidence of what he’d become as a man.
He looks over one shoulder before lowering his voice further – the same solicitor who just lectured me about confidentiality now apparently deciding exactly how much of it applies when frightening me serves him better.
‘When they found Arthur Crane,’ he continues, ‘his face was so badly damaged they needed forensics to identify him. That is who your… friend is.’
I just stand there, cars groaning warningly beside me, the smell of hot tarmac gathering at my throat.
Something ugly shivers beneath the shock, but instead of backing away, I fight the urge to poke at it just to see it writhe.
Cromwell turns and disappears into the crowd as if he hadn’t just tried to nail shut the coffin of someone still breathing.
His words follow me long after his suit blends into the masses – loose cannon, psychiatric care, damaged face…
Each one finds somewhere unpleasant to lodge.
But despite that, during the drive home, the softness of Elias’ lips lingers on mine like heat after lightning. Out of everything said yesterday, and what Cromwell tried to scare me with today, that touch is what I remember most.
Not the brittle confession about never having a birthday cake. Not the talk about his temper.
Not his eyes when I’d mentioned Melody Crane.
What stays is the stillness in him – something too vast to fit the version Cromwell painted. That shine doesn’t belong to such a man, and my heart refuses to absorb it no matter how many times my mind takes a turn around it.
When I pull up to my house, my old Ford wheezes its final breath beside a sleek, black Mercedes that shimmers like oil under a streetlamp.
My brain begins the methodical process of working out who its owner might be – but the list of suspects is short.
Apart from Ron, I don’t know anyone with pockets deep enough to own something that glossy.
Halfway to the teal-painted front door, I’ve threaded the same key between my fingers three times. Each step feels like wading through water thick with implications.
It’s not Ron.
Why would he be here?
Why now?
Questions clamour between my temples whilst I try to focus on my house keys jangling too loudly in my hand. By the time I slide the right one into the lock, anxiety has curled into my throat and dug its claws into the soft flesh.
Breath held tight, I push the door open and step into the silence – pulse already counting the shadows.
Rounding the small corner that separates the hallway and the open-plan sitting room with the kitchen, I zero in on Anna and a tall stranger sitting at the table. Papers and files are scattered across it, and each sheet kindles the angst that still holds a firm grip on my nerves.
He’s a slender man in his forties, dark hair kept neatly back from a pale, thoughtful face.
Thick black frames sit squarely on his aristocratic nose, lending him a seriousness that softens the moment he clears his throat.
He doesn’t interrupt Anna when she speaks. Doesn’t fidget through the silence afterwards either. He merely waits, pen resting between his fingers, until she is finished.
There’s a certainty to him I’m not quite sure where to place.
‘Afternoon,’ I murmur warily.
Anna looks up with the hollow gaze of a woman flayed. My fingers close around the coal poker beside the archway before good sense has time to ask what exactly I intend to do with it.
‘Who’s this?’ I ask, skipping pleasantries as though I’ve long forgotten the taste of them.
The man sitting in my kitchen glances up and adjusts the spectacles before taking me in with a contemplative frown.
One flick of his gaze to the poker in my hand, and his spine straightens.
He glances at Anna, then back at me as he rises from the edge of the chair like someone facing down a feral dog.
Or a woman on the brink.
Unfortunately for him, I am at a point where my nerves are no longer wires but torn threads. And I’m not entirely sure I won’t use the poker.
‘Leah, this is Mr Conall Byrne. Conall, my sister Leandra Nottingham. She owns this house.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Ms Nottingham,’ he says, a polished Irish lilt threading through the clipped elegance of his voice, each syllable shaped like something crafted and inspected under a jeweller’s loupe.
I narrow my eyes at my sister, her brown hair diligently gathered in a braid, and—
Is that mascara?
‘He’s a lawyer,’ she adds. ‘Marina’s friend.’
My gaze drifts from the dark crescents beneath her eyes to the papers spread between them.
It takes me a moment – three, in fact.
Divorce. Right.
I lift the business end of the poker an inch. That has Anna slapping a hand over her mouth to smother a laugh, and her eyes squeeze shut in mortification.
‘Whose lawyer?’ I ask quietly, keeping the sharpness of my voice – ready to evict him at the point of the chosen weapon if the name of that client begins with an H and ends in orrendous bastard.
‘I—’ he stammers, eyes glancing from the iron in my hand to my sister, then back to me. ‘Mrs Kensington’s, of course.’
‘Former Mrs Kensington,’ I correct.
He clears his throat at that. But the poker remains hanging where it is.
A beat. Two.
In my head, a gear finally clicks into place.
‘Do you take on murder cases?’ I ask.
Anna groans, collapsing back into the chair as if I’d taken five years off her. ‘Put that thing down, Leah.’
He adjusts the cuffs of his shirt – too smooth for someone stepping into this particular chaos – and loosens them slightly. ‘I’ve been known to, yes.’
‘Are you still known to?’
‘Leah…’ Anna rises, walks over, and plucks the poker from my hand like I’m a child with a kitchen knife. She slots it neatly back beside the fireplace, pretending to rearrange it while using the standstill to pinch me mercilessly in the hip.
I swallow the yelp, sliding away from the witch.
Conall watches the whole exchange with a damned kind of composure.
‘That depends on the case,’ he says evenly.
I grin.
I try not to.
But I fail.
This Irishman has just become my favourite person.
I walk over to shake his hand. ‘Delighted to meet you, Mr Byrne.’
He leans as far back from me as possible, his feet still planted firmly in place.
‘Ah, yes—delighted,’ he mutters unconvincingly.
‘Don’t go anywhere when you’re done. I have materials I want to give you.’
My phone vibrates in my pocket just as I realise I’m still wearing my Converse, and I turn back towards the hall to kick them off.
‘I haven’t agreed—’ he starts, but Anna waves at him subtly as she drags him back into the shitshow of her failed marriage.
Strutting back to the shoe rack, I pluck out the restless device and glare at the foreign number before I answer.
‘Good afternoon, this is Aila from the Sámediggi.’ Her accent is unfamiliar, her English careful. ‘I hope I’m not calling at a bad time?’
Sáme…what?
‘No—uh—not at all. Good afternoon. Sorry… you’re calling from where?’
A soft chuckle bubbles up on the other end of the line as I head upstairs.
‘The Sámi Parliament of Norway. I’m calling on behalf of the Sámi Cultural Centre in regard to the cultural photography initiative you applied for a few months back.
We’ve sent you an official response and accompanying documents, but we’ve yet to receive your signed letter of acceptance.
They’re due next month. Have you received the papers? ’
I freeze as I reach my bedroom and glance at the blue folder still on my desk.
Within three heavy steps, I approach and flip it open.
Elias’ sad eyes stare back at me.
‘Yes. Right… I did receive it. I apologise, I’ve just been… swamped. With work. And other things. I’ve been meaning to send the documents.’
‘That’s quite alright. We just wanted to confirm if you’ve received the papers and that you’re still interested, since we haven’t heard back from you. The schedule will be finalised come September and we need to secure the participants by then.’
I nod to myself, chewing my lip as my eyes trace the contours of Elias’ beard.
‘I apologise for the delay – truly. I’ll get my response and the documents to you before September.’
The call ends on a warm, slightly meandering goodbye, and I’m left staring at the portrait of my… friend as though he might step out of the frame if I looked hard enough and make the world stop turning for a breath.
Across the desk, the large envelope at the top of the pile catches my eye, sitting quietly and patiently – though, clearly, not for long.
For a moment, I pull on my proverbial big-girl trousers and face the choices I’ve been avoiding: the cold lights of the north or the fluorescent glare of Stonebrook; my life moving forwards or my life circling a man in chains, bound up in complications that may never untangle.
A familiar sludge of guilt trickles down my neck – leaving now would make me exactly what his file says everyone else has been to him: another person who didn’t stay. But beneath it, something smaller and harder knocks at my breastbone, wanting out.
I can’t keep putting myself in storage. Not for one prisoner with sad eyes, a temper and a ruined past. I can’t keep waiting in visiting rooms and tugging at court updates like that’s all I am now.
I can’t be living like a ghost the way I have all this time.
Dragging my thumb over the Cupid’s bow of Elias’ upper lip, I let out a heavy sigh.
Then I push the flap of the folder a little too quickly, and it closes with a dull kind of finality. The envelope with the Norwegian address scribbled in the corner glares accusingly at me from upside-down.
‘I still have time,’ I murmur to myself.
Byrne is downstairs. An opportunity that just might get Elias back into the land of the living and fix the injustice that he’d been wallowing in.
I’m not a lawyer. Hell, I’m not even a good researcher – I hated it in uni.
Lifting my gaze, I find my face in the mirror.
The woman from the other end looks back expectantly. As I tighten my ponytail, I decide right then and there: once I’m certain Conall Byrne can give Crane’s case an independent pair of eyes, and actually fight it, I’ll move on with my own life.
I have to.
I scowl at the stranger in the mirror.
I don’t like her sneer.