Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ALEX
It was past midnight when I finally made it back to Kit's.
The porch light was on, the replacement bulb for the one Kelvin had smashed a warm beacon cutting through the darkness.
My hands trembled as I turned the key in the lock, exhaustion settling into my bones like lead.
I'd been at the police station for hours, going over the story again and again until it’d almost felt real.
Almost.
Kit was waiting in the living room, curled up on the sofa, his face pale with worry. The moment I stepped through the door, he was on his feet.
“Thank god you’re back.” Relief washed over his features before his eyes widened, taking in the mess I was.
I was in a navy suit, a spare I always kept at Euphoria, not the jeans and the grey jumper I’d been wearing when I’d gone to seek out Kelvin. Those had been covered in blood, both mine and Kelvin’s, and surrendered to the police.
“What the hell’s happened?”
I couldn't speak. The words were trapped somewhere in my chest, buried beneath layers of shock and guilt and a numbness that had settled over me since I'd watched Kelvin bleed out on the office floor.
The reality of it—Kelvin was dead and that I was, maybe, possibly, probably responsible—still hadn't fully penetrated the icy fog in my head.
Kit approached cautiously, as if I were a wounded animal that might bolt, lifting a tentative hand to the bruises and swelling on my face.
“I found him at Euphoria. We fought. It was brutal.” My voice cracked. My legs began to shake, and as I’d caught Kit the night before, now he caught me. Somehow he got me to the living room and onto the sofa.
A bottle of brandy appeared, a supermarket own brand I remembered from what felt like another lifetime ago.
He poured a glass and held it to my lips, urging me to drink.
The alcohol burnt all the way down to my stomach, calming me a little, enough to stop the worst of the shaking as I looked at him and held his gaze.
“Kelvin’s dead.”
“What?
“He pulled a knife on me. Stan. That fucking Stanley knife he carried. It was—”
“Tell me. Tell me everything that happened. From the beginning.”
And I did. In stumbling sentences, between bouts of shaking, between more tots of brandy.
“He died in my arms. There was so much blood. So much fucking blood.” I poured more brandy into my glass, knocking it back in one, needing the sting of the alcohol.
“I don’t know if I killed him. I don’t know if it was an accident.
All I know was that both our hands were on the knife when it went into his leg and hit an artery.
” The shock on Kelvin's face as his blood spilled across the floor would live with me forever.
“When… when he was gone, I called McNally.”
“Who?” Kit frowned in confusion.
“A contact in the police.”
Kit’s frown ironed out as understanding dawned.
I laughed, the sound dark and bitter. The bright, bent copper who was destined to go far.
My mind flashed back to when he'd entered the office.
The quick, sharp assessment in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth as he'd surveyed the carnage, and the blood pooling around Kelvin's body as I held him in my arms.
“What did he do?”
“Everything. He took one look at the scene, at me, and just... took charge. The office was a mess from when… when Kel and I fought, but McNally wrecked it, made it look like it’d been well turned over.” I rubbed at my eyes; I couldn’t remember ever before feeling so tired and empty.
“We agreed a story. Kel and I had arranged to meet at the club to go over business and our plans for the coming year. I’d found the door unlocked, assuming he’d left it open for me.
When I got to the office, Kel was already down, bleeding on the floor, as two guys were ransacking the place.
Masked up, of course, so there was no way I could identify them.
I’d surprised them so they turned on me—it explains my injuries—before they panicked and made a run for it.
He told me exactly what to say, that when I got to Kel he was already dying, stabbed by the intruders.
That I tried to save him, but it was too late. "
I stopped, closing my eyes for a moment before I could carry on. McNally had nailed the story into my head with a sledgehammer. Next to me, Kit sat quietly, not pushing me for more, just waiting.
“McNally left and I had to give him thirty minutes before I called 999. Jesus, that was the longest half hour of my life.” Holding Kelvin in my arms, rocking him gently, telling him how much—despite how everything had gone so fucking wrong—I loved him and always would.
“But what about the security cameras? I mean, you do have them? Won’t they show that there were no intruders?”
I started to laugh, loud and edged with hysteria. “Footage isn’t an issue.”
Thank god for ineffectual security staff.
Our so called head of security, Ewan, had overlooked setting them.
Kelvin had been right, after all, the guy had needed a rocket up his arse.
Now, the man’s sloppiness was probably going to save my neck.
Ewan would be brought in and questioned, McNally had said.
An inside job would be an obvious line of enquiry, that the cameras were deliberately not set, but he’d make sure nothing stuck to Ewan.
“Did the police believe you?”
The worry in Kit’s voice brought me back to myself. I wasn’t the only one who was going to be affected by what had happened.
I took Kit’s hands in mine, my thumbs stroking over his knuckles. “I was..." I swallowed hard. "I was convincingly distraught. It wasn't hard to fake shock.”
“What about the knife?” Kit’s voice wobbled, and I clutched his hands harder.
“Gone. Wiped clean and broken up. McNally took it with him when he left. It’ll be lying in the mud at the bottom of the Thames by now.”
“Can you trust him to have got rid of it? That it can’t be used to get back at you?”
“Yes. He’s implicated in this, he’s up to his neck in it. I’ve got too much on him and he knows it. McNally’s sharp. He’s going places. There’s no way he’ll try and use it against me. This’ll be tucked away and forgotten, another of the Met’s long line of unsolved cases.”
I’d been perched on the edge of the sofa, my muscles hard and tense, as though I’d been on the verge of fleeing; now, I sagged back into the cushions as, finally, exhaustion overwhelmed me.
My skin began to itch and tingle, like a million fleas were crawling over me.
I was contaminated, diseased, filthy, covered in blood I would never be able to wash away no matter how much I scrubbed.
“Come on, let’s get you in the shower.”
I let Kit lead me upstairs. He got the water hot in the shower before stripping me and guiding me into the cubicle, washing me just as I had him. When the water began to cool, he eased me out.
Bundling me in a towel, he sat me on the closed lid of the toilet. Soaking a ball of cotton wool, he dabbed at the cuts on my face. I watched him as he worked, his face tight with concentration.
"You're here now. You're safe.” His hand stilled as he met my gaze, just briefly, before he continued caring for me.
The dam broke. Sobs tore from my throat and Kit held me against his chest, his arms tight around me.
“What he did to you, I hated him for it. I had to stop him. If he’d just let me go, if… But he was my family," I choked out. "The only family I had, until I met you. This didn’t have to happen, it should never have happened like this…”
Kit held me until I had no more tears left. Helping me to my feet, he led me to the bedroom where I crawled into the bed. Stripping off, he slipped in beside me.
I turned into him, burying my face against his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of him. His arms came around me, holding me tight.
"How do I live with this?" I asked, my voice small in the darkness. "How do I wake up tomorrow and just...go on?”
“One breath at a time. That's all any of us can do."
"What if I can't?"
"Then I'll breathe for both of us.” He pressed a kiss to my temple. "Until you remember how."
I closed my eyes as exhaustion claimed me.
Kelvin was gone. McNally had constructed a story that would hold. But the truth would always be there, buried beneath the layers of lies. The question would haunt me forever: accident or intent? I would never know. That was the sentence I would serve for life, living with the not knowing.
Pulling myself in closer to Kit, I felt his heart beat next to mine. Kit, solid and real, keeping me tethered when everything else threatened to slip away.
One breath at a time, he'd said.
Tonight, that would have to be enough.