The Inkwell Murders – Chapter 14
Rain on the Estuary
They drove back to Veldmoor in the rain. Kieran Hartwell was in the back of a constable’s car behind them and the rain came in from the sea in grey curtains and the estuary road was dark and slick and Bryn drove with the careful attention of a man who is thinking about something other than the road.
“He didn’t know Castor would die,” he said.
“No,” Nadia said. “But ignorance of dosage is not innocence.”
“He’s not wrong about his family.”
“No,” she agreed. “He’s not.”
They drove for a while in silence. The rain increased. Somewhere out over the estuary a foghorn sounded once, from a distance that made it seem like a thought rather than a sound.
“The Reckoning,” Bryn said. “What happens to it now?”
Nadia had been thinking about this since the sub-basement room. The document was evidence. It would be entered into the case file. It would be read by lawyers and prosecutors and perhaps by a judge. The confession of G. W. Crome, which he had written a hundred and thirty-seven years ago in the desperate hope of quieting his own conscience, would finally do the thing he had wanted it to do and had not been brave enough to do himself: it would speak.
The four men who had died in the Marsh Street fire were long dead. Their families — whatever remained of them — might be found, might be notified, might receive some acknowledgment that the deaths had been neither accidental nor forgotten. The Hartwell family would face whatever the law decided it was possible to apply to the sins of the long-dead, which was probably very little. The reputation of the family would suffer. The building at the university would be given a different name, or not. The fountain in the north quarter would continue not to work.
Justice, at this distance, was not a clean thing. It was not a revelation with a verdict attached. It was more like what happened when you opened a sealed room and let in air: the contents shifted, adjusted to the new atmosphere. Some things were ruined by the light. Some things were preserved.
“It goes into evidence,” she said. “And then it goes to the historians. And then it goes into the public record.”
“And Vera Crome?”
“She authorized access she shouldn’t have authorized, in a way she knew was technically irregular. But she didn’t kill anyone and she didn’t hide anything.”
She watched the rain on the windscreen. “She wanted to know the truth. In her way, she’s the most honest person in this story.”
Bryn made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite disagreement. It was the sound of a man who had been a detective long enough to know that honesty and goodness were not always the same, and that wanting the truth was not always the same as being willing to bear it.
The estuary road curved toward the city. The lights of Veldmoor appeared through the rain — scattered, amber, the lights of a city going about its evening without any knowledge of what had been found beneath it.