Chapter 48: After

AFTER

“Coffee?”

Hannah is staring out the window, thinking, when the question comes, and at first she doesn’t hear it.

“Coffee, madam?”

She turns to see a uniformed attendant standing beside her, braced in the narrow aisle, holding out a silver pot. There’s a trolley behind her, rocking as the train goes over a crossing.

“Oh, sorry, I was in a dream. No thank you, I’ve had enough caffeine already today.”

“I’ve got decaf,” the woman offers. “It’s all complimentary.” But Hannah shakes her head. She knows what train coffee will be like—weak instant with powdered milk in little sachets.

“No, thanks, honestly. I’ll—” She racks her brains to try to think of a way to accept this kind woman’s hospitality. “I’ll take a bottle of water, if you have one?”

“Still or sparkling?”

“Still, please.”

She is twisting off the cap when her phone rings, and glancing at the screen she sees it’s Hugh. The name gives her a slight jolt of surprise. What would Hugh be phoning about?

“Hugh!” It seems rude to open with Why are you calling, so she settles for “How are you?”

“Good.” Hugh’s deep, rather drawling voice comes down the line, instantly distinctive. “How are you? How was Oxford?”

Hannah frowns. Did Will tell him about the visit?

“It was… um… confusing,” she says. She doesn’t want to talk about it here, in front of the other passengers, who are mostly attempting to work or sleep. “I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it all. But… I think we can rule Myers out. He wasn’t there. He was at a conference.”

“He wasn’t there? But Will said you and April’s sister had an arrangement to see him?”

“No, I mean he wasn’t there that night—you know—” She glances over her shoulder. “Back then. When it happened. He was out of college.”

“Oh!” Hugh says. He sounds surprised, and a little disappointed. “So… back to Neville, then?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I realized…” She lowers her voice, looks up and down the carriage again. No one is watching her. “I realized something while I was there, Hugh. Someone… someone could have been in the room.” She is almost whispering now, trying not to use any words that would make her fellow passengers’ ears prick up. She doesn’t want to say Pelham or April or murder. “While we were coming up the stairs. They could have shinnied down the drainpipe.”

“What are you saying?” Hugh’s voice is uneasy. Hannah makes up her mind and then stands up.

“Hang on, I’m on a train, I’m going to go out into the corridor. Just a sec.”

There is a pause as she maneuvers out of the narrow gap between the seat and the table, makes her way down the aisle, and opens the door into the little foyer between the carriages. It’s empty, the window slightly open so that the rushing sound of the air covers their conversation.

“Sorry, I wanted to get out of the carriage. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. But Hugh, we always assumed that the fact that you and I were watching the bottom of the stairs meant no one else could be involved. What if that’s not true?”

There is a long silence. Hannah can almost hear Hugh’s brain ticking, realizing what she’s saying, realizing what this means. She’s not sure what she’s expecting him to say, but when he does speak, he sounds… she can’t quite put her finger on it. Alarmed, almost.

“Who have you told about this?”

“Just April’s sister, November. She was there. I—I didn’t tell Emily. I couldn’t. I—”

She can’t bring herself to say the words—I was too afraid.

“I’m going to speak to the police when I get back,” she finishes at last.

“Hannah, please be really, really careful about this,” Hugh says. “I think you should seriously consider—”

There’s a silence, as if he’s trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say, as if he can’t find a way of putting it into words.

“What?” Hannah asks at last. “Are you saying I shouldn’t go to the police? I think it’s the safest thing, don’t you? It’s better to get this knowledge out in the open, surely?”

“I’m just…” Hugh stops. He sounds almost… panicked. It’s very unlike Hugh, who makes a point of being deliberately urbane and unruffled.

“Hugh, what?” Something in his voice has alarmed Hannah, and now she finds herself speaking more sharply than she had intended. “What is it? Just say it.”

“You have to be prepared for what might happen if you keep stirring this. For who might… get hurt.”

“What do you mean who?” Hannah says. She is suddenly uneasy. “You mean me?”

“Not exactly… Jesus—oh fuck, this is hard!” He sounds distraught, Hannah realizes. There’s a catch in his voice, something out of proportion to any worry about her digging around in the past. What on earth is going on?

“Hugh, do you know something I don’t?”

“I don’t know anything but I just—I just—”

“Hugh, just tell me!” Hannah cries. Then she takes a deep breath. “Look, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but please, you’re scaring me, what are you trying to say?”

There is a long, long silence. So long that Hannah looks at her screen to check that they’re still connected, that the train hasn’t swept her into a dead spot. But the line is still open. Hugh is still there. And then he speaks.

“I heard something, that morning, when I got back to my room.”

“What do you mean you heard something? Someone told you something?”

“No, through the wall. I heard something. Someone. Moving around.”

For a minute a surge of irritation flushes through Hannah. It’s like he’s speaking in code, beating around the bush, expecting her to understand what he’s saying when she has no idea. What does he mean he heard someone? And through what wall?

“You mean you heard someone in the room next to yours?”

“Yes,” Hugh says, and his voice is almost vibrating with urgency. It’s as if he’s begging her to understand what he is saying without forcing him to say it. “At two a.m. Through the wall.”

And then she understands. Everything goes cold, a prickling sensation running up and down her spine like ice water. She has to hold on to the grab rail beside the door.

She can hear Hugh saying something on the other end of the phone, but she can’t make out the words through the rushing in her ears.

“Hannah?” she hears, as if from very far away. “Hannah, are you all right? Say something?”

“I’m okay,” she manages, though her voice is cracked and strangled, and she can barely form the words. Her hand holding the phone feels numb and cold, like a mannequin’s, stiff and plastic. “I’m… thank you, Hugh. I have to go.”

And then she hangs up.

She sits there, staring out the window at the rushing countryside, feeling the chill horror trickling through her veins.

She wants to wail. No, no, no, no, no.

But she cannot. She can’t say anything. She knows why Hugh didn’t want to spell this out. She knows what he wanted to say but couldn’t bear to put into words.

She knows why he warned her to be prepared for what might happen.

For that night, the night that April was murdered, when he finally went back to his room in Cloade’s at two in the morning, he heard someone through the wall, his neighbor, walking around.

But Hugh was on the end of the block. He only had one neighbor. And that neighbor… that neighbor was Will.