Mark thought for a moment then shook his head. ‘Not that I can think of, no. Most of Nick’s friends – all of them – dropped him when he was arrested. I’m not sure you’d really have called them friends, anyway – more like acolytes, hangers-on. Users – in both senses. My office, though – DataPro. I mean, I don’t think he’d come up, not now, but he might try and wait for me outside.’
‘Right. And where is that?’
Mark gave them the address.
‘Okay,’ the detective said. ‘We’ll have a car there, too. Just ignore it – both of them. Act like you don’t know they’re there – if he comes, we don’t want him to cotton on. Hopefully, it’ll make you feel a bit safer, too,’ he nodded his head in Hannah’s direction, ‘but don’t take any risks. If you’re out, stay in busy places, don’t go anywhere on your own after dark. Be careful – I don’t need to tell you. And if you think of anything else, however trivial, let us know.’
‘We will.’ Mark got to his feet slowly, as if he’d been badly beaten. In the hallway, he opened the door and they stepped outside.
Just as they were turning to go, the policewoman stopped and looked back at Hannah. ‘Mrs Reilly, in his message your husband said he thought you’d met Hermione, and yet just now he said he hadn’t seen her since the two of you,’ she waved her hand between them, ‘had been together.’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said. ‘Actually, it’s embarrassing. I went to the hospital on Monday. Mark was away in America longer than I’d expected and when I spoke to his assistant she told me a woman had been calling him.’ She looked at Mark apologetically. ‘I was being ridiculous – I accused Hermione of having an affair with him.’
The policewoman frowned slightly. ‘You didn’t know she was a friend of your husband’s?’
‘Like he said, we’d never met.’
‘Hermione and I weren’t in touch often,’ Mark explained. ‘It was too painful. If we saw each other, the memory of Nick was always there, this . . . nightmare hanging over us. We tried to go back to how things had been before, at college, but we couldn’t. We could never get away from him.’
Chapter Twenty-one
Mark closed the door and Hannah put her arms around him, feeling him shake. Tremors were running through his body. At the sound of approaching footsteps outside he stiffened but they continued on, pace unchanged, past the door and on towards the bottom of the street. He pressed his cheek against the top of Hannah’s head, and in the parting of her hair she felt tears fall, one warm drop, then another.
‘It’s my fault, Han,’ he said. ‘I should have done something.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, fiercely. ‘Stop saying that. You can’t blame yourself, I won’t let you. For God’s sake, Nick’s a killer.’
Mark said nothing and the word hung in the air. A killer. Yes, he was. It was no accident this time. Head injuries, blunt-force trauma to the skull – with Hermione, Nick had set out to kill.
Hannah led Mark back to the sitting room and they sat pressed together on the sofa. He made no effort to stop crying and the tears fell one after another, making dark rings on his T-shirt. ‘She should have gone away,’ he said. ‘I told her to, I tried to make her promise me she would, but she said no, she was tied in at work, she had a conference coming up and . . .’ He took a long shuddering breath.
‘Mark.’ Hannah put her hand on his cheek and turned his head so that he was looking at her. ‘Hermione was an adult. She knew the situation and she made her own choice. You are not to blame.’
‘But . . .’
‘No. No. You tried to help and she took a chance and . . .’ Her voice trailed off and Mark turned away from her and stared at his hands, which were clenched in his lap. The clock on the DVD player clicked from 8.13 to 8.14.
‘We should leave,’ said Hannah.
‘Leave? What do you mean?’
‘Get out of London. We should go away now – right now. That holiday you were talking about . . .’
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘?“She was tied in at work.”?’
‘I know, I know, but I just can’t. The first meeting with Systema is on Tuesday and—’
‘Mark.’
‘No,’ he said, adamant. When he turned to her, his face was set. ‘No, Hannah. I’ve got to be here – I’ve got to. I’ve worked for seventeen years to build DataPro and I will not – I will not – let Nick screw it up for me. This might be the biggest deal I ever do – I am not going to let anything jeopardise it.’