Adam winces, his nightmare confirmed. His nurse friend at the Treliske had been right to have a go at him. As an aspiring medic, he should have known that head injuries were serious, made sure that the guy was brought in for a check-up.

  ‘He was my best friend, despite our differences,’ Louis continues. ‘Despite my parents telling me one day that they wished I’d been the one to have the brain injury. They didn’t like me or my life choices – the feeling was mutual. The consultant said early on that Gabe’s poor quality of life was unlikely to improve. He even hinted at a shorter life expectancy. And he was right. Gabe soon had full-blown epilepsy, suffering regular seizures that were resistant to treatment. And he was depressed or angry most of the time, no longer himself.’

  Louis’ voice is low, slow, weighed down with sadness. Adam wonders if there are tears behind his mask.

  ‘What upset me most was that he’d lost his spirit, the spark that made him my cheeky younger brother,’ he continues. ‘He was the one who used to do handstands on his surfboard, be the first to somersault off the harbour wall, pull all the prettiest girls at the Mariners with his irresistible smile and foppish blonde hair. I was the older brother, but it was me who was the weak one. Always sickly, allergic to everything. Gabe was the fit and sporty type. I thought he was invincible – he once walked away from a horrific motorbike crash – but that night in Newlyn he lost what made him Gabe.’ Louis swallows, struggling with his emotions. ‘He lost his soul. And I vowed to find the person who had taken it. Going to the police was out of the question, given what his friends had done to your mate. And my parents thought that he’d just slipped on wet cobbles. So I took matters into my own hands.’

  ‘He did slip,’ Adam says.

  Louis holds up his other hand to silence him. ‘At the time, I was trying to decide between Oxford and Cambridge for my PhD. First World problem, I know, but the choice was made for me when I discovered where the bright boy from Newlyn was going to study medicine. And when I heard about a student production of Doctor Faustus, a play that had always intrigued me, it became clear what I needed to do. I wouldn’t blackmail you for money, as I’d done with all the others. I’d take away your soul, just like you’d taken my brother’s. Just like Lucifer took Faustus’s. I told Gabe what I was planning and he didn’t disapprove. It gave him something to live for, you see, the thought of you dying in twenty-four years’ time.’

  Adam thinks he might be sick.

  ‘I wavered in the early days. I even tried to take my own life once – at this very spot, as you might recall – but I owed it to Gabe to see it through,’ Louis continues. ‘And then he succeeded where I’d failed and killed himself a couple of months ago, unable to cope with the seizures or the depression any more. He’d lost the ability to speak but I took the timing of his suicide as his way of telling me to go through with the plan, stick to our Doctor Faustus script.’

  Adam sits there stunned by what he’s just heard, the guilt washing through him as he tries to keep the gun pointing at Louis. A man he once pushed in a brawl went on to suffer post-traumatic epilepsy and depression and eventually killed himself. Never mind that he slipped, or that Adam’s friend Tom has also never been quite the same since. At least Tom’s still alive. It’s the calculated nature of Louis’ plan, like a complex game of 3D chess, that’s so unsettling, the realisation that Adam was a marked man, his fate predetermined, from the day he arrived at Cambridge. That nothing in his first year of being a medical student was down to chance or free will. He only auditioned for Doctor Faustus because Clio persuaded him to. The altercation with Lecter at the party must have been a set-up as well, Louis knowing that Adam had lost control once before, on a harbour wall in Cornwall, and would readily lose control again…

  ‘Were you there?’ Adam asks. ‘In Newlyn that night?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. I might have been able to keep my little brother out of trouble. And sadly there was no CCTV footage. But I heard all about it. According to Gabe’s friends, you were like a firework that just needed to be lit, a temper primed to explode. It wasn’t difficult to trigger you again at the party – and to make sure it was captured on film this time. Clio knew what to do, who to flirt with on the dance floor, which buttons of yours to press. She’s a pro, had done it all before. I just had to make sure the bathroom window was open and the hidden cameras were rolling.’

  Adam thinks again of Lecter dancing with Clio, of the billowing curtain, how easily he had been played by Louis. Had Clio nearly confessed to him, revealed the master plan? Be careful, Adam, she’d said, on the last day they’d talked in Cambridge. She’d known then exactly what Louis had in store for Adam in the future, warned him of the dangers of his past. And she’s just sacrificed her life tonight trying to protect him.

  ‘I’m sorry about your brother, truly I am, but he slipped as I was trying to get to Tom, who couldn’t swim—’

  ‘Please, it’s almost time,’ Louis says, interrupting him. ‘Spare me the bleating.’ He glances across at the clock. ‘Do you know why 3 a.m. is called the witching hour?’

  Adam tries to shake his restricted head, still aiming the gun at Louis’ chest. He feels another wave of sadness for Clio. He owes it to her to survive – to kill Louis.

  ‘Because it’s the exact opposite of 3 p.m.,’ Louis continues, having to shout again. The sea and the wind have resumed their bid to tear down the cliffs of Cornwall. ‘The time they crucified Christ.’

  ‘You’ll never get away with this,’ Adam says, shouting too now.

  ‘Shall we go to hell together, then?’

  Adam remembers there was no redemption for Faustus. It was brutal to the end. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘We’re almost out of time. It’s nearly 3 a.m.’

  His gun is still trained on Louis’ chest, but Adam’s arms are growing weaker by the second.

  ‘You and I will never know, but at least those out there will discover how much your soul weighs,’ Louis says, nodding at the camera and then the industrial scales Adam’s sitting on.

  ‘Why did you shoot Clio if you loved her?’ Adam asks.

  Louis doesn’t answer. His hand is beginning to shake too. The sight of his trembling gun – the first sign of weakness – gives Adam hope. Appear strong when you are weak, weak when you are strong.

  ‘And who else have you destroyed with your wretched films?’ he asks. ‘How many?’

  ‘Three,’ Louis says, holding up three fingers.

  There must be more people than that. Other innocent students like him and Aldous. Didn’t Louis study Classics at Oxford before switching to Cambridge for his PhD? And how many people has he preyed on since then? He glances at the clock and back at Adam. Adam looks too, realises what’s happening. He tightens his finger around the trigger, heart pounding.

  ‘Two.’

  Is there a safety catch? Too late to check. He offers up a prayer, begs that Clio was right about the bullet. His whole body is shaking now. Please God, let there have been only one bullet in Louis’ gun.

  ‘One.’

  Adam closes his eyes as he squeezes the trigger. The crack of the gun is louder than he expects and knocks his body backwards against the chair. Or was it a second bullet from Louis’ gun? He waits for the shock of pain, the agony to spread like ignited petrol, but he feels nothing. Mentally he checks himself from head to toe, and then slowly, very slowly, he opens his eyes. Louis’ body is on the ground in front of him, blood leaching from his head onto the stone stage.

  Adam can barely believe that he is alive, out of danger. He checks his body again, but all he can feel is relief coursing through his tired limbs. He’s survived. Clio had been right. One bullet. He’s going to live, see his family again. And then a phone starts to ring nearby...

  Adam hadn’t noticed that Louis had placed it on the plinth, beside the laptop. He looks around, panic returning. A solitary figure appears at the top of the cliff, a handset to his ear as he zigzags down towards the stage, just as Clio had done. Is it Damon? Adam still has the gun in his hands. Was it only loaded with one bullet too? Damon might not know. Unless he was the one who prepared them. Should Adam sit still, pretend to be dead? Or bluff with the gun? Damon is closer now, six rows from the stage. But then he stops in his tracks. Above the sound of the storm, a police siren. Several sirens, rising and falling on the wind.

  Damon stares at Louis’ body. Glancing at Adam, he turns, runs back up the pathway and disappears. Adam punches out a sigh of relief. His eyes flit from the empty seats, to Louis, to the darkness all around. He starts to cry, slowly at first and then big, heaving sobs, his torso pulling at the duct tape. Clio died to save him, to save Freddie, his family, his marriage. He needs to free himself, ring Tania with the handset on the plinth, tell her he’s OK, that he loves her and always will. Theirs is a relationship tempered to endure. It would never have worked with Clio at Cambridge, no matter what she said. Their time together there was too ephemeral, too fleeting. Clio must have understood that as well, deep down. And later she saw how much he loved Tania, his children. Twice she refused to abduct Freddie. She respected him, the family life he had made, just as she said.

  Heavy rain starts to streak in from the Channel as he pulls at the duct tape wrapped around his aching ribs. And then he stops, hit by a sudden spasm of agony. Maybe he has been shot. His head begins to throb again too. He looks around the stage, at the carnage of the final act, Louis’ dead body, the camera, the laptop, the clock. Louis tried to kill him, to take his soul, but he failed. And Adam has escaped Faustus’s fate, slipped the noose of twenty-four years.

  ‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,’he whispers, rivulets of water running down his face. ‘That time may cease, and midnight never come.’

  But his voice is lost in the roar of the diabolical sea.

  70

  ‘Go gently,’ Tania says as Freddie climbs up onto Adam’s hospital bed to hug him. ‘Daddy’s a bit sore.’

  It’s weird being back in the Treliske after so many years, this time as a patient, but at least Adam’s being well looked after, like a long-lost friend.

  ‘He’s really naughty, Daddy,’ Freddie says, driving a toy car – not the Ferrari – over Adam’s bandaged head.

  ‘Ow,’ Adam moans, but he manages to grin at his son.

  ‘Freddie!’ Tania says. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Adam smiles at Tania.

  His voice is croaky and he still feels weak, five days on from the dramatic events at the Minack. Today is the first time he’s felt strong enough to entertain Freddie, to talk to Tania. He needs to tell her about Louis, who he really was. Tell her everything.

  ‘Who’s being naughty? Is it Ji?’

  Adam nods towards Ji, who is on his own in the corner of the hospital room, rocking Tilly to sleep in the pram. He has a new job if he wants one. For the past five days, he’s been living and working out of a hotel in Truro, coming into the hospital whenever he can to help Tania, keep an eye on Adam.

  ‘Ji can be very naughty,’ Adam says. But he’s loyal too. He can’t believe he ever doubted his old friend.

  ‘Louis, silly,’ Freddie says.

  Adam closes his eyes, hit by a wave of exhaustion. Now’s not the time for a family argument, but the puppy’s not going to be called Louis. Not in a thousand years.

  ‘Everything alright in here?’ Doctor Pender asks, popping his greying head around the door. He’s to retire soon, spend more time walking the coast path at St Agnes with his grandchildren.

  ‘All good,’ Tania says.

  Adam nods. It’s great to see Doctor Pender again. He feels bad he hasn’t been in touch more.

  ‘Keep an eye on him,’ Doctor Pender says, gesturing at Adam. ‘Doctors make the very worst patients.’

  Adam wasn’t actually shot by Louis, but the car crash had left him more injured than he’d realised at the Minack. Whiplash, deep lacerations on one side of his head, two broken ribs and a bruised and contused spleen. It could have been worse; he could be dead, like poor Clio. There was no sign of her when the police, paramedics and HM Coastguard crew arrived on the Minack’s windswept stage, battling against the rain and wind. He watched as they carried Louis’ body up between the steep rows of seats, already composing the letter he plans to write to Clio’s mother in France. He’ll explain how she turned against Louis and sacrificed herself to save Adam. He won’t mention that he knows how Clio’s father died.

  The doctors say Adam should be out of hospital in a few days. He gave a short statement to the police in the Minack car park, before the ambulance brought him here at dawn, but he’ll give a fuller one as soon as he’s able. The police were baffled, to put it mildly, by the scene they came across on the cliffs. He expects more searching questions in the days ahead about the exact nature of the deal he struck with Louis at university. So far, though, Louis’ obsession with filming has worked in his favour. The police found Adam on the Minack stage with a gun, sitting on a chair next to Louis’ dead body, which didn’t look good, but the live stream, recorded by Ji and subsequently shared with the authorities, clearly showed that Louis had been trying to shoot Adam too. It also captured Louis firing his gun at Clio as she leapt over the cliff edge. Her body has yet to be found.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Tania asks, resting a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’ve felt better,’ he says. It’s suddenly very painful to speak.

  Tania had apparently not been able to watch the live feed that night, but she saw enough to identify the Minack and call the police. Ji watched it all from the front passenger seat, keeping her informed without going into too many details as they were all driven in his car through the night to Cornwall. Miraculously, Tilly, Freddie and the puppy had slept for most of the journey – a testament to the smooth driving skills of Ji’s chauffeur. Tania wasn’t going to let anyone leave her side and Freddie had insisted that the puppy come too.

  ‘Clio died saving your life,’ Tania says. ‘I’ll always be grateful to her for that.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Tania was saddened but not surprised to hear of the hold that Louis had exerted on Clio. In the wake of the pandemic, a lot of women had tried to escape coercive relationships, according to her former GP colleagues. It also seemed to repeat down the generations. Clio’s mother had been drawn to a controlling man. In turn, Clio had been drawn to Louis. As for Clio’s father’s gruesome demise, Tania wasn’t quite so sad. Female solidarity and all that.

  Taking Tania’s hand in his, Adam runs his finger over her wedding ring.

  ‘Nothing happened in Greenwich, you know,’ he says. ‘She was at our house under sufferance. For Louis’ cameras.’

  ‘I just feel so sorry for her, poor woman.’ Tania shudders. ‘And I’m not sure I ever want a sauna again.’

  Adam smiles, drawing strength to continue. ‘She didn’t want to take Freddie either,’ he says. ‘Or ruin my career. Still no word on the sexting story?’

  The Sun hasn’t published anything, according to Doctor Pender. Nor has any other paper. Crispin has been trying to find out what happened.

  ‘I think the story’s been pulled,’ Tania says.

  Adam tries to speak, explain what might have happened, but he’s too tired. If Louis had initially asked Clio to befriend Adam’s teenage patient, give her some money, maybe later she asked the girl to withdraw her allegations too.

  Tania wipes at her eyes and turns to the window.

  ‘You OK?’ he whispers.

  Ji’s mobile phone starts to ring. He checks on Tilly in the pram, gives the thumbs up to Tania and steps outside the room to take the call.

  ‘How many people’s lives do you think Louis destroyed?’ she asks. ‘How many marriages?’

  Adam shakes his head. He dreads to think what Louis’ crude blackmailing of student doctors and lawyers – the means by which he funded himself at university – had morphed into over the years. Deadly NFTs and more bidding in red rooms, presumably. The police will get to the bottom of it, find out what he did, where he went next, after dropping out of Cambridge. They have already arrested Damon, the driver of the red pickup and the only other person who appeared to be working for Louis. No doubt because Louis had blackmailed him too. And they have discovered where Louis lived, in a remote farmhouse on West Penwith’s bleak moorland, near Gurnard’s Head. Clio seems to have stayed there too, in between long periods with her mother in France, coming over to Britain when she was needed for one of Louis’ stings. It didn’t sound like much of a relationship.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I need to get back to London now,’ Ji says, coming into the room.

  OK, no problem, Adam says to himself, mimicking one of his friend’s less literary catchphrases. He smiles at Ji as Tania moves to one side.

  ‘Of course, Ji. And, you know… thank you for everything. For being here, for being such a good friend.’ Another stab of guilt.

  ‘That was my office… about the film Louis made of you at Cambridge. The student party scenes.’

  ‘Any news?’ Adam asks, his body tensing.

  Louis had made it available on the site – for a fee, of course. Thanks to @SunTzu544’s deep pockets, Ji was able to take a look. He recorded it too and sent it to his company’s FX team for analysis. They also managed to take the original film offline. Adam could have lent them his old video copy from home, if he’d known.

  Ji glances at Tania and then at Adam.

  ‘It’s OK, Tania knows everything,’ Adam says.

  Ji smiles nervously. ‘Given it was made almost twenty-five years ago, they said the editing of the bathroom scene was pretty good,’ he says. ‘Good enough to convince a lay person. A jury. It took my team a while, but they eventually found something. It had been edited – heavily, as it turns out.’