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I nod. ‘I heard.’

Ernie lets fly a laugh. ‘Course you did. You hear everything.’ Then his face settles, worry working its way through the creases. ‘Missed him, didn’t I? Was way over the other end of the hospital, and with my knee being what it is . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m too old. That’s the truth of it.’

‘You’re not old, Ern.’

‘I’m sixty-eight. I’m old. Truth is, I should have retired before now. My wife’s been on at me, says I need to take it easy.’ He isn’t looking at me, is staring past me at the bank of CCTV monitors. ‘Thing is, if it had been a younger man on – a fitter man – they might have got him.’

I lean forward, pat Ernie on his thick arm. ‘Come on, Ern. Give yourself a break.’

Ernie shrugs, crams another biscuit into his mouth. ‘Anyway,’ he pushes himself upright, an attempt at levity coming into his tone, ‘you didn’t come here to listen to an old man moan. What can I help you with, Charlie?’

I smile, brush a crumb from Ernie’s sleeve. ‘Well, it’s about that, actually. The man with the gun. I was wondering: did you get it on CCTV?’

He frowns. ‘Well, yeah. Kind of. It’s not great. Police went through it yesterday. You can’t see his face.’

‘Um . . .’ I bite my nail.

He fixes me with a look. ‘You want to see it, don’t you?’

I grin.

Ernie sighs heavily, pushing the digestives to one side. ‘You know, you’ll be the death of me. Close the door.’ He works the monitors. ‘You can’t tell anyone, mind. Don’t want to give the buggers an excuse to sack me, before I get the chance to quit.’

I pull my chair closer to the neat little screens. ‘Ernie, you are an angel sent from heaven.’

He shakes his head. ‘You want our boy’s first visit or second?’

‘Let’s start with the first night.’

The left-hand screen fills with a hallway, brightly lit, empty.

‘I’ll forward through it a bit.’

The footage begins to crease, a nurse moving into view and out; a cleaner, then Ernie, coming towards the camera, moving at a faster lick than he could manage in life.

‘Hold it there, Ern.’

Ernie’s pace slows and, as he reaches the camera, he pauses and scratches his crotch. I look at him, can see his face flush, fight back a laugh. Camera Ernie vanishes and then, after long minutes, a figure moves into view, dark-clad, moving quickly.

‘There he is,’ murmurs Ernie.

I study the figure, looking for something – anything. But Ernie’s right, the footage is rubbish. The figure never turns his head, his face hidden within the folds of his hood. I scan the surroundings. He looks to be tall, his head level with the top of the noticeboard on the wall, and has a narrow frame. I will him to turn, even though I know he won’t. He moves quickly across the screen, then is picked up in the lobby, a dark figure cutting through the centre of it, out into the car park.

‘What about the car park? Anything from there?’

‘Nah, the boy was smart. Seemed like he knew where the cameras were positioned out there, kept to the sides, out of view. Guess he couldn’t avoid them inside the hospital, but once he got out there, he managed to disappear. You want to see the next night?’

‘Can we just forward this one a little?’

Ernie nods, speeds up the footage. And there they are, two figures, dark-clad, carrying guns. I try to ignore the little flutter in my stomach. Aden leads the way, gun visible, his head scanning the hallway. Behind him, a little taller, Tony. They walk steadily, towards the camera, then vanish beyond view.

I wait, thinking that Aden will reappear. Then want to slap myself for being such a teenager. The odd figure drifts by, but nothing of note. And then, finally, I see her. Emily Wilson, walking away from the camera, her dark-blonde curls pulled up into a high ponytail. She is walking quickly, her arms folded tight across her chest, her head darting, left to right. She looks afraid. I study her surroundings, the shadows, wonder if someone is waiting for her there, if this is when it happened – if he followed her, caught her. But she keeps walking, arms folded tight, vanishing from one camera into another: hallway, lobby, then out of the front doors.

‘Can I see the car-park footage for this timeframe?’

Ernie looks at me. ‘Yeah, but you can’t see him, mind.’

‘No, I know. But, if it’s all right . . .’

He frowns slightly, fingers moving ponderously across the keyboard. The car park appears in the right-hand monitor. It is quiet, few cars there at that time of night. A police car, parked by the lobby doors. The floodlights pour puddles of orange light, somehow making the surrounding darkness darker. I wait. Emily appears into view. She is walking more quickly now, seems like she’s almost running. My heart beats faster. I watch her, watch the shadows, the few cars there are, looking for a figure, a face, thinking that at any moment I will see him and my hunch will have played itself out. Emily hurries to her car, a little red Peugeot, slipping quickly inside. I scan the surroundings. Where are you? But there is nothing. Just darkness. The headlights of the Peugeot spring to life and the car slips steadily out of its space. I can’t see Emily now. I try, looking for her face through the windscreen, but the angle is wrong and she is gone. The car drives carefully out of the car park. Now I’m waiting for someone to follow her, for a second car to spring to life, falling in behind her. But long minutes pass and there is nothing.

Emily is gone.

I lean back in my chair. ‘Dammit!’

‘What?’

I bite my lip. Unsure how to put it into words. That I can’t accept the Emily’s-death-as-an-accident theory. That coincidences – like calling the police to report a gunman, and then showing up dead twenty-four hours later – give me heartburn. That I need there to be answers beyond the obvious: that sometimes life just sucks.

‘Nothing. Just a hunch.’

THE MUMBLES STREET
is still, the world holding its breath. The sun has begun its ascent, the heat of the day beginning to climb, turning my car into a greenhouse. I could open the window, make myself more comfortable, but I don’t. The road in front of me curls down the hill, and beyond that you can see the sea, sparkling blue today. But the sea is irrelevant. All that matters to me is Mara.

I study the house. It sits on a generous plot, an over-wide drive, the front porch supported by Doric columns. The white light of the early sun has bleached the front windows so that they are blind, and I stare at them, even though it hurts my eyes, watching for movement. I wonder if Mara knows that I am here, if she senses that her time has come. I look down at my phone, at the text message I sent.
Meet me at your house. It’s urgent.

Does she think about me, I wonder? When she lies asleep in her bed at night, do her eyelids flutter with dreams of me? Does she toss, turn, thinking of what she has done?

The gun is on my lap. I’m not looking at it, am not taking my eyes off the house, but my thumb caresses it, rolling across the cool metal. It is loaded. Ready.

It seems that my heart is no longer beating, has stilled. I glance down, look at my hands, as steady as I have ever seen them. I have lived for this day, the relief of it, an ending at last. I know how it will go, it feels like I have done it a thousand times before. I will walk down the tarmac drive, keeping my steps light. Will jam my thumb onto the round of the doorbell, will hear the distant ringing. I will wait. As long as it takes. After one minute or five, there will be the creaking of footsteps. A murky silhouette through the warped glass of the front door. And there Mara will be. She will stand there for a moment, a flood of emotions will cross her face. Perhaps one of them – before she realises what is to come – will be pleasure at seeing me. Then she will look down, she will see the gun. And she will know that she is going to die.

Will she beg, I wonder? Will she apologise for what she has done?

I will lift up the gun, watch her beautiful, big green eyes go round with horror. I will pull the trigger.

My breathing is steady, easy.

A bird, a magpie, lands on the bonnet of my car. It stares at me through the windscreen. One for sorrow. I lift the gun. I’m ready.

But then I see something, a movement from the quiet house. I pause, stare. But there is nothing. My eyes playing tricks on me. I wait, though. Just in case. Then I see it again, a flutter of motion behind the glass. My heart beginning to beat a little faster.

I pull the door handle. Quiet. Careful. I push the car door open, slip out, keeping low behind the hedge, hugging the gun close to my side. I peer through the leaves, the world turned green. Can make out the front door, sunlight catching on the letter box.

There is a creak. The door beginning to open. I move, adjust, lift up the gun. Take aim through the leaves.

Then I see Mara. She is framed in the doorway, the sunlight catching on her red hair, dousing it in flames. It is pulled back, tied in a rough bun. She is wearing jeans, ones that I have never seen on her before, and the barest slick of make-up. She has something in her hands, although I can’t see what it is; is looking at it, is shaking her head. She hasn’t seen me.

I stare at her. The gun is shaking. She is more beautiful than I remembered.

I stand up, make the gun steady, step out from behind the hedge. I want her to see me before she dies.

She freezes. Stares at me. Her mouth falls open.

I pull the trigger.

‘STUART.’

‘Hey, Charlie. God, it’s been . . . what, an hour now?’

‘Yeah, I know. I know. I was just wondering if you had anything new on Emily Wilson?’

‘In the past hour?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

I’m flicking my pen against the surface of the desk, flick, flick, flick. Can feel Dave looking at me. I’m annoying him. Flick. Flick. Flick. The sound merges into the low hum of the newsroom’s feeble air-conditioning unit, the distant click-clack of computer keys. ‘Oh.’ I don’t know what I was expecting. Why I thought he would tell me something different. Perhaps I thought it would be the same for everyone else, that the snaking rivulets of their thoughts would all wind their way back to Emily. ‘So, there’s no sign of the—’

‘I told you, Charlie. The PM will take time. They’ve got a backlog down there. You’re looking at a couple of days at least.’

‘And tox—’

‘Toxicology will follow the post-mortem. Patience isn’t one of your virtues, is it?’

I sigh. Cradle the handset of the phone between my shoulder and chin, rub my hand across my eyes. My other hand keeps flicking the damn pen. I’m starting to irritate myself now. My vision has begun to blur at the edges, a dull throbbing headache building from the base of my skull. The air in the office is thick, feels like you could reach up and grab a handful, and I wonder if it is this that is making my head ache. It isn’t. I know that. It’s the fact that I’ve had three hours’ sleep in as many days, but I like to cover all my bases.

‘Sorry, Stu. I know I’m being a pain.’

I can hear the force’s press officer smile. He’s a big guy, around six-foot-four maybe, with these huge round cheeks that put you unavoidably in mind of Santa. ‘Charlie, my day would not be complete without you being a complete pain in my backside.’

I laugh, even though it sounds a little forced. ‘You’re a gem, Stu. I’ll talk to you in an hour.’

‘I know you will, Charlie. I know you will.’

I put the handset down, lean my head back against my chair and stare out of the window. The sky is still that painful blue, a colour that is beginning to seem unimaginative, predictable. Seems like there’s not a breath of air in the whole newsroom. The room is quieter than normal. The morning meeting is over, the reporters spilling out, clattering down the stairs, taking with them a wave of sound. There are few of us left inside, just me, Dave, a couple of others. I glance up at Dave. He’s staring at me, staring at the pen.

Flick, flick, flick.

I stop, smile in what I hope is an apologetic manner.

‘Penny for them?’ Dave leans back in his chair. He’s chewing the end of a blue biro. The plastic cap has broken, has been twisted out of shape with teeth marks, his fingers stained navy. How much damn gel does he use on that hair? It’s blond, veering towards brown, a wave to it, of which Dave is profoundly proud. You’ll catch him sometimes, when he doesn’t know you’re looking, studying himself in the nearest reflection, twisting the waves back out of his face, placing them so that they’re just so. He’s a plain man. That sounds cruel, doesn’t it, but there are few other words I can think of to describe him. His features are irregular, his nose overlarge, hooked at the end, lips vanishingly thin. I blow at a strand of my own hair, which has worked its way free from the rough topknot I threw my hair up into this morning. Wonder if perhaps I should take a leaf out of his book, spend a bit more time in front of the mirror. Probably not.

I’ve never been a girly girl. My mother is a girly girl. She has manicures and spike heels. I have clear lip-gloss, brown/black mascara and, if you’re lucky, a hairbrush. She’s mortified, which of course makes me feel like I have done my job. It occasionally occurs to me that, at thirty, I’m too old to play the rebellious teenager. Then I speak to my mother again. The resolution never lasts long.

‘Just tired.’ I reply. ‘Didn’t get much sleep.’

‘Hot date?’ Dave grins, and I fight back a grimace. He’s been here – what, two years, I guess. Had come into the paper, full of his own capabilities. Had smiled at me that first day, a lingering, up-and-down kind of smile that made me shift in my chair. Oh, you’re the crime reporter? That’s what I want to do. Had looked at me, like he’d expected me to get up. Oh, you want my job? No worries, have a seat. It turned out, though, that his transition to the role of full-time reporter was not as easy as he had anticipated. He struggled; struggled to find the right stories, struggled to write them when they were handed to him, struggled to get people to open up to him. Just struggled.