‘The police investigation will take time and I think it best that you go home until they have completed their inquiries.’

  ‘Go home?’ I said. Go home? Was it all over?

  ‘We’re not formally suspending you as such, nor will you be going before a student fitness-to-practise panel, but it’s important that the college – and the Medical School – are seen to act in the wake of such tragic circumstances. And, unfortunately, you were the last person to see this poor fellow alive. I have no doubt you will be cleared by the police, and indeed in the subsequent coroner’s inquest. My guess is that the death will be recorded as a drug-related misadventure. They often are. But until that happens you should continue your studies at home. Your place is heavily subsidised by the college and I will do all in my power to ensure that we fund an extra year, should you fail to pass your end-of-year exams. But it’s not going to be easy. For any of us.’

  Professor Beale’s words continued to ring in my ears for a long while afterwards. I went for a walk in town as I mulled them over. What was I going to say to Mum? I kept telling myself that I was innocent until proved guilty as I set off down King’s Parade and headed towards St John’s and Magdalene. It was university politics; my college being seen to do the right thing, nothing more. Louis’ departure felt more serious. He had been formally suspended and would most likely never return. Would that spell the end of his film career? It would probably do the opposite, the whiff of scandal serving only to bolster his reputation. Was I barking up the wrong tree with him and Aldous?

  Before I knew it, I was standing outside Clio’s college room in Magdalene First Court. I wanted to see her before I left. To say goodbye and to ask her again about Aldous. I was still haunted by her reaction in the punt, when we drifted past King’s College Chapel and it became clear what had happened. I knocked on her door and waited. After a bit, I assumed she wasn’t in and was about to walk away when the door opened a fraction and Clio’s bloodshot eyes peered back at me.

  ‘Can I come in?’ I said, disappointed that she hadn’t immediately opened the door wider.

  ‘Didn’t you get my card?’ she asked, still partially hidden by the door. Her voice was faint, weary.

  I nodded. The card that said we should not see each other again. ‘I’ve been sent home – from college,’ I said.

  She closed her eyes, but she still didn’t let me in. Was there someone else in the room with her? Louis?

  ‘I’m going away too,’ she said, her long eyelashes lifting again, like butterfly wings.

  ‘You’ve been suspended as well?’

  She shook her head. ‘Revising at home. With my mother in France. As far away from this place as possible.’

  ‘From Louis?’ I didn’t care if he was in there, if he could hear me.

  She stared back at me. What was it between them?

  ‘He’s been suspended,’ I added, filling the silence, but I was sure she already knew.

  ‘You should never have come to the party,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Bit late now.’ I tried a smile, but it failed to lift the mood. She clearly wasn’t going to let me in, so I changed tack. I had nothing to lose.

  ‘Aldous, that student who fell from the chapel…’ I began. If Louis was in the room, listening from behind the door, so be it. ‘I know Louis made a film about him, his life here.’

  Clio’s eyes seemed to widen a fraction. Maybe I was imagining it.

  ‘At least his parents will have a nice memento,’ she said, smiling for the first time.

  She was either acting – she was good at that, of course – or knew nothing of what Louis had really filmed. The drug-fuelled sex. Or I was wrong and it wasn’t anything to do with Louis?

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I said.

  She didn’t reply and I didn’t expect her to. ‘Did Louis film me in the bathroom? At the party?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she said, without missing a beat. ‘You were both in there long enough together.’ I began to believe that Louis wasn’t listening, that there was no one else with her. ‘Wouldn’t you have noticed if he had? It’s quite a big camera.’

  Again I wondered if I was mistaken about Louis. He might have secretly filmed us at Grantchester, but that didn’t mean he had hidden cameras in his bathroom.

  We stared at each other. If she had more to tell me, now was the moment, but she stayed silent.

  ‘Will you come back from France?’ I asked, hit by a sudden wave of sadness. I was worried that this might be the last time I’d see Clio. ‘To sit your finals?’

  She nodded. ‘I promised my mother.’

  It was as much as I was going to get out of her. I was a fool, wasting my time.

  ‘See you then,’ I said and started to walk away. I hoped she would call after me, but she didn’t. Not until I was almost out of sight.

  ‘Adam?’

  I stopped, hesitated. Should I keep walking? I turned around.

  ‘I have something for you,’ she said and disappeared into her room.

  I went back over to her doorway. She wasn’t good for me, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Please, take this.’ She handed me a brown-patterned feather.

  ‘OK,’ I said, surprised. It was a beautiful thing, light coloured with darker bands.

  ‘My mother used to leave ones like this on my pillow when I was younger. It’s from a barn owl. Symbol of protection. Owls will do anything to protect their young. She gave me one when I came here too. It’s something her own mother used to give her when she was younger. Silly, I know. But maybe one day it will protect you. Those you love.’

  I smiled and took the feather.

  ‘Thank you.’ I lifted my eyes to hers. ‘Protect me from what?’

  It was a few seconds before she spoke. ‘The past,’ she said, glancing at the feather in my hand. ‘Be careful, Adam.’

  She leant forward and kissed me softly on the lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. And then the door was closed and she was gone.

  37

  A low buzzing sound builds in Adam’s ears as he walks back across the park to Maze Hill. It’s a stress reaction from his junior doctor days that he thought he’d left behind. Stephen told him to contact the governance team at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who offer advice to members in the event of complaints, but he’s minded to hire his own lawyer as well. The only crumb of comfort that he can take from their conversation is a perverse one. If photos of him were sent to the patient, his innocence can be easily proved.

  He and Tania started dating long before sexting became a thing and neither of them, to his knowledge, has ever traded intimate photos with anyone. It’s not exactly a consoling thought. Jesus, the whole thing doesn’t bear thinking about. He hasn’t called Tania yet, doesn’t know where to start. She was just beginning to get over the photo of Clio and now this. She knows him well enough to realise that he’s being set up, but it still won’t be an easy conversation. A part of her will wonder if there’s a shred of truth to the allegations, the thought gnawing away at their marriage like a rat beneath the floorboards. And what about those who don’t know him so well? Other staff at the hospital. Neighbours. Lynda will spontaneously combust with excitement when she hears. And the tabloids? ‘Consultant Caught in Teenage Sexting Scandal’ might even make the front page.

  Once he’s home, he jumps on his bike and sets off for his office at University College Hospital in Lewisham. He will ring Tania later. First he needs to find out what he can about his accuser. It’s a twenty-minute ride, maybe quicker on a Sunday, up Royal Hill and onto Lewisham Road. The hospital’s at the Catford end of the high street and his office is on the ground floor, beside the Children’s Outpatients Unit. After locking his bike, he walks past reception, nodding at the familiar faces behind a glass screen, and heads over to Paediatrics. It’s as he approaches the double doors and pulls out his security pass that he senses people might be giving him odd looks. Maybe he’s just imagining it. Stephen wouldn’t have told anyone. His complaint will be dealt with confidentially – unless the parents have already gone to the press with their allegations.

  He touches his pass, swinging from a lanyard around his neck, against the security pad and drops his shoulder into the doors, as he’s done a thousand times before, but the doors don’t open. He tries his pass again. Nothing. He glances up at the dark dome of a security camera, staring down at him from above the door, and tents his hands against the glass to shield the light. The department’s quiet, but an unfamiliar nurse is heading along the corridor towards the doors. He steps back as she comes through and smiles at her. She smiles back, glancing at his lanyard, and he slips inside before the door closes.

  He walks swiftly over to his office, which he shares with another consultant, currently away on holiday. His head is in turmoil, thoughts flying past like spinning knives. The fact that his pass doesn’t work suggests that he might not have long. He needs to keep calm, focus on what he has to do. Waking up his computer, he opens a file of recent patients. He can access some of this from his laptop at home, but not all of it. Scanning down the names, he keeps an eye on age and sex. A sudden thought occurs to him. Whoever’s trying to destroy his career might have scanned through the same list of names, looking for a teenage girl who would fit the bill. He’s seen a sharp rise in recent years in adolescents with mental-health problems. The highest prevalence – one in four – is in girls aged between seventeen and nineteen.

  He writes down the names of five seventeen-year-old girls he’s seen in the past six months. Some he can remember, some he can’t. Most he referred on to CAMHS, the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services. His profession hasn’t been great at spotting mental illness in the past, but he’s always been mindful of emotional disorders in his patients. He has even helped shape paediatric training within the NHS to promote mental wellbeing in children. But none of that counts for anything now.

  ‘Didn’t think you were in today?’ a voice says behind him.

  Adam spins round. It’s Joanna, one of his fellow consultants, leaning against the doorway. She works in Neonatal and is a friend of Tania’s, which makes her habit of flirting with him all the more awkward. There’s a lot of innocent banter in the office, but Joanna sometimes pushes it too far.

  ‘I had to pick up something,’ he says, blushing. He would be a rubbish spy.

  ‘How’s Tania?’ she asks. At least she doesn’t seem to know about the complaint that’s been made against him.

  ‘Down with her parents this weekend.’

  ‘Not joining them?’ she asks, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Heading there later,’ he says.

  ‘She seemed very tired last time I saw her.’

  ‘That’s young kids for you. Why we work with them too is a mystery.’

  ‘Learning the alphabet?’ she asks, nodding at his desk.

  ‘What?’

  He turns round to see what she’s looking at. It’s another card, propped up beside a photo of Tania and the kids. He was too preoccupied to notice it before, when he first jumped on the computer. He looks at it now and leans over to pick it up. His fingers are shaking. The card is similar to the ‘S’ he found on the dresser in the kitchen, only this one is the letter ‘O’.

  Adam stares at it.

  ‘I could use that when I’m trying to demonstrate a difficult cannulation,’ Joanna says. ‘Just need another one with “shit” written on it.’

  Adam would normally laugh, but all he can do is shake his head. How did it get here? On his desk? It’s been placed there deliberately by someone.

  ‘You OK?’ Joanna asks.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, studying the card for clues as he slips it into his pocket. ‘Do you know how this got here?’

  ‘It must be from the Day Care Unit,’ she says.

  Adam hopes she’s right.

  ‘Seen anyone strange around today? Unusual?’ he asks.

  ‘Apart from the parents, you mean?’

  Adam thinks again of the nurse he passed earlier, the one who inadvertently let him in through the doors. And then he hears a familiar voice from down the corridor. It’s his boss, Stephen. He must have authorised Adam’s security pass to be cancelled, doesn’t want him in the building. If he sees Adam, suspicions will only grow.

  ‘Got to go,’ he says, sending his computer to sleep. ‘You haven’t seen me.’

  Joanna breathes in to let him pass through the narrow doorway, a suggestive expression on her face. She could have stepped away, but instead they brush past each other. ‘Don’t want Big Daddy to know you’re in on a Sunday?’ she asks, their faces close.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Adam walks down the corridor, away from Joanna and Stephen, as fast as he can without attracting attention. He glances over his shoulder as he exits the building by a side door. No one saw him leave – apart from the solitary CCTV camera above the door. He looks at it for a second, the inscrutable dome of glass, and heads off in search of his bike.

  38

  May 1998

  Ji watched from the doorway of my room as I stuffed my medical books and clothes into the suitcase on the bed. ‘You sure you’re coming back?’ he asked, an unmistakeable note of sadness in his voice.

  I fastened the case and hauled another one off the top of the dresser.

  ‘Looks like you’re packing for good,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away, Ji,’ I said, not looking up at him.

  The second case was for the rest of my medical books, which I’d gathered up from the windowsill. It’s going to be difficult to continue my studies, but I’m determined to try. Professor Beale has given me a sheaf of lecture notes to read through, and my other tutors have done the same.

  ‘Who’s going to play Quake with me?’ Ji said. ‘Or watch rotten.com?’

  I dropped Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology into the suitcase with the other books.

  ‘Are you busy right now?’ I asked, unnecessarily rearranging the books in the case. I’d already been to visit Clio, but I had one more thing to do before taking the long train journey down to Cornwall.

  ‘I’ve still got to write up my notes on this morning’s lecture – Lagrange multipliers – but otherwise I’m free. You wanna play some Goldeneye 007 for old times’ sake?’

  The more time I’ve spent with Ji, the more I’ve become convinced that he’s going to be something big in business. He loves his maths, but he loves computer games even more, a combination of interests that will take him far.

  ‘Actually, I could do with your help,’ I said.

  Fifteen minutes later we were hovering outside Louis’ house on Mortimer Road. We’d approached with caution as I wasn’t sure if the police would still be there, but I was relieved to find that they weren’t. It suggested that Louis’ house wasn’t being treated as a crime scene. The only evidence of anything untoward was a small scrap of police tape, flapping on the gatepost.

  I’d confided in Ji on the walk over there that I suspected the film of Aldous might have been recorded covertly in Louis’ bathroom. I also explained that, in the absence of any proof, I wanted to take a look around said bathroom. I’d decided against directly confronting Louis, who I assumed had already left, and was hoping that one of his flatmates would be there to let me in. Ji’s job was to loiter on the street, to keep watch, a role that he seemed to relish. In truth, I just wanted his company. I was nervous about returning to Louis’ house on my own.

  ‘I’m going to try the front door first,’ I said. ‘You stay out here.’

  ‘“Trust in God but tie your camel,”’ Ji said, cracking his knuckles as he looked up and down the road. It was a new one on me. His lexicon of proverbs was expanding.

  ‘And if no one’s at home, we try round the back,’ I added.

  I remembered the wall in the courtyard, where I’d talked to Clio. It might be possible to climb over it from the street that ran parallel to Louis’ road.

  ‘Round the back,’ Ji repeated. He seemed even more nervous than I was.

  I felt Ji’s watchful eyes on me as I approached the front door and rang the bell. A shadow moved behind the frosted glass and the door opened a fraction. For a brief moment, I wondered if it would be Clio again, but it was a man, older than me by a few years. I recognised him as one of Louis’ flatmates. Unshaven, posh, wearing a holey woollen jumper and tartan pyjama trousers that were too short for him.

  ‘Yeah?’ he asked, glancing over at Ji, who was standing by the gate and now wearing a camouflage baseball cap. It was an oddly reassuring sight, in a videogame sort of way.

  ‘I’m a friend of Louis’,’ I said. ‘Came to the party last night. I think I might have left my bag here. Black, small rucksack?’

  He looked at me, contemplating whether to believe my story. It wasn’t great, thought up on the walk over here, but it seemed to do the trick. He ushered me in, glanced up and down the street, and closed the door behind us.

  ‘When did the police leave?’ I asked. He eyed me again with suspicion. ‘I gave a statement,’ I added. ‘Two actually. I was… one of the last to see him alive.’

  There was no need to go into detail, explain that I was, in fact, the last person on earth to see Lecter alive, but I needed to offer up something to reassure him that I was OK, a friend of Louis’.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he said, going back into his room beside the kitchen. His words unnerved me. We’d never met, been formally introduced. ‘The feds left about an hour ago,’ he added, over his shoulder. ‘Take a look around for your bag. Haven’t seen anything.’

  ‘Is Louis still here?’ I asked, but either the man didn’t hear me or had lost interest.

  It was odd to be back at the scene of the party. The scene of Lecter’s death. I peered out of the closed French windows. Someone had left a bunch of flowers, placed on one of the speakers, which were still outside. Not exactly a mass outpouring of grief. Maybe more flowers would follow, now that the police had gone.

  I walked up the stairs, glancing above me. The bathroom door stood open. At least it wasn’t locked. I didn’t know who else was in the house. The place felt deserted, abandoned in a hurry, piles of half-empty beer and wine bottles everywhere, the flotsam and jetsam of a student party that had run aground in the most brutal manner. I walked past Louis’ room on the first floor. The door was closed. Should I knock? In case he was still there? He would have heard my voice, come out to say hello. Besides, Professor Beale had said he’d been suspended with immediate effect. If they’d found traces of class A drugs in his bathroom drawer, he might even have been arrested.