‘You mean…?’

  Adam feels a huge weight lifting, as if he’s floating up from his bed. All the years of worry, the nightmares – Lecter’s terrified eyes staring back at him – start to slip away like melting ice. For so long he’s carried the burden of not knowing, alternating between a gut feeling of innocence and the most profound sense of guilt. What if he had been too drunk to check his anger in the bathroom, to remember his actions afterwards?

  Ji glances around the room in case a nurse or doctor has walked in. ‘I mean that you didn’t push anyone out of a second-floor window,’ he says.

  Tania stifles a sob. Adam can feel tears welling too, but something still troubles him. If Adam didn’t push Lecter out of the window, who did? Or did Lecter jump, fuelled by LSD and MDMA, as the coroner concluded? I just had to leave the bathroom window open. It sounds too random, too unpredictable to be a part of Louis’ carefully crafted plan. He couldn’t have known for certain that Lecter would jump.

  Adam thinks back to the party, trying to picture those seconds after he left Lecter in the locked bathroom and before his broken body was discovered in the courtyard. Louis strode past him on the stairs when the screaming started. Where had he been? In the bathroom? Did he slip in and push Lecter out of the window after Adam had locked the door and gone back downstairs? It’s the only explanation. Adam had left the bathroom key in the door. He adds it to his growing list of things he must tell the police.

  ‘Thank you,’ Adam manages to call out after Ji, as he heads for the door.

  ‘Thank you, Ji,’ Tania adds. ‘For everything.’

  ‘Someone better come and get the puppy,’ Ji says, pausing in the doorway. His driver has been looking after it in the car park. ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.’

  ‘I’ll be down in a sec,’ Tania says, smiling through her tears.

  ‘It’s going to be OK.’ Adam smiles back, squeezing her hand. He feels stronger already.

  ‘I know it is,’ she says. ‘But I just can’t help feeling that if you’d gone to the police at the time—’

  ‘Please,’ he says, interrupting her. He knows justice might have been served for Aldous, and God knows how many other lives would have been spared. ‘But the film… You heard Ji. It was well made. Any jury would have been convinced by it. It was too much of a risk. I’d been seen by everyone at that party manhandling the guy up the stairs. Pushing him out of a window would have seemed very plausible.’

  Adam’s thought it through so many times, every possible permutation. Now he can let go, see Aldous right, and all the other victims of Louis’ blackmail too – he’s sure there are many.

  ‘Will you show Louis’ film to the police?’ Tania asks.

  Adam nods. He doesn’t want to carry any other secrets through his life.

  ‘She kissed me,’ he says, remembering how Clio had slipped a shot of whisky from her mouth into his. ‘At the Minack. Just before she gave me the knife.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Tania says. ‘I don’t need to know the details. Ji told me what he was doing by bidding, that he sensed Clio might want to get a message to you.’

  ‘The kiss was for the cameras. For Louis.’

  Tania goes over to the pram. Freddie is on the floor, happily pushing his car around. ‘Are you going to come down with me to get the puppy?’ she asks him.

  ‘Louis!’ Freddie says, jumping up.

  ‘Say goodbye to Daddy. We’ll be back soon.’

  They’re staying with Adam’s mum at the Nook in Newlyn. She’s eighty-five now, but more mobile than she used to be, and plans to visit Adam this evening. It will be good to catch up. When he’s out of here, he’ll join them over in Newlyn, treat them to a meal at Mackerel Sky, a delicious fish tapas bar on the bridge.

  ‘Bye-bye, Daddy,’ Freddie says, driving his car over Adam’s legs.

  Tania keeps the door open with one foot as she holds Freddie’s hand and manoeuvres the pram.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Adam says. ‘You seem to manage perfectly well without me.’

  Tania smiles wryly. ‘Bye,’ she says, blowing him a kiss. And then she hesitates in the doorway. ‘Who do you think he was – Louis?’

  ‘Louis!’ Freddie repeats from outside in the corridor. The driver has come up to find Freddie, take him back down to retrieve the puppy.

  ‘There’s something else I need to tell you.’ Adam can’t put it off any longer.

  ‘That sounds ominously familiar.’

  It’s true. He’s had a lot to get off his chest. He takes a deep breath.

  ‘You remember I told you about what happened on the pier in Newlyn once, with Tom and that group of posh students?’

  She nods.

  ‘The one who slipped when I pushed him…’ He hesitates, composing himself. ‘It turns out that he was called Gabe and he was Louis’ younger brother.’

  Tania’s eyes widen in shock. They widen even more when Adam tells her what happened to Gabe, the seizures and depression, how he took his own life almost twenty-four years later, prompting Louis to go through with his Faustian plan. Tania leaves the pram in the corridor and comes back over to the bed, where she sits down and takes Adam’s hand. It’s a while before she speaks.

  ‘You need to tell the police.’ Her voice is quiet, measured. Without anger.

  ‘I know – I’ll tell them everything. When I give my full statement.’

  ‘It’s the only way you’ll ever get any peace of mind, Adam. The only way any of us will.’

  ‘Tom’s never fully recovered. It doesn’t make it any better, but—’

  ‘You should have gone to the police at the time,’ Tania interrupts. It’s become something of a refrain of hers.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You were trying to save Tom. On your own. He might have drowned. It was a brave thing you did, given how many of them there were. The police would have believed you, understood how Gabe slipped when you tried to break free and get to Tom. The courts would have believed you too, if it had come to that. And the police will now. I’m sure they will.’ She sighs. ‘God, what a twisted bastard Louis was. He gave me the creeps. What you’ve told me about him.’

  ‘Chuck some salt over your shoulder and you’ll be fine,’ Adam says, trying to lighten the mood.

  They smile at each other. He’s glad he’s told her about Gabe.

  She leans over the bed and kisses him. ‘I love you,’ she whispers.

  ‘I love you too, more than you know,’ he whispers back, ‘but you’re hurting my ribs.’

  Adam lies there in the empty hospital room, already looking forward to Tania’s next visit. It was a room like this where he visited Louis, twenty-four years earlier. Slowly, he reaches over to the drawer and pulls it open. A copy of the Bible is inside. He closes the drawer again and lies back, staring at the ceiling. And then he sits up, very gingerly, and slides his legs out of bed.

  He stands at the window, looking down on the car park. There’s Ji and his driver, handing over the puppy to Freddie. Tania has Tilly in her arms now, the pram next to her. He’ll never be able to thank Ji enough for his help. Without his intervention – @SunTzu544’s intervention – he’d never have survived. And to think he mistrusted him.

  He watches as Ji kisses Tania goodbye, squeezes Tilly’s foot and shakes Freddie’s hand with an exaggerated bow. He would have made a good father. Adam’s about to turn away when he notices a security camera overlooking the car park. He waits for the surge of anxiety as the camera angles its gaze down on his precious family. But the camera doesn’t move. Instead, its gaze remains averted, as if it’s looking the other way.

  A knock on his door. He turns to see a nurse.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out of your bed, Doctor Pound,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘Just waving goodbye to the family.’ Adam nods at the window.

  ‘Special delivery,’ she says, holding out an envelope. She turns to leave. ‘Best to rest as much as you can.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Adam looks at the typed address on the envelope: ‘Doctor Adam Pound, Treliske Hospital, Truro, Cornwall, UK’. Maybe they will move back to Cornwall one day and he’ll work here. And then he sees the French stamp and postmark. Swallowing hard, he opens the envelope and stares.

  No letter or documents. Just a single feather, brown and striped.

  He takes it out and looks at the envelope again, opens the door, but the nurse has gone, the corridor deserted.

  Is it from Clio? Is there any possible way she could still be alive? The storm was raging at the Minack that night, the chances minimal of anyone surviving a fall into such a violent sea. Who else could have sent the feather? Clio’s mother? She used to give feathers to Clio. But how would she know what had happened or where to send it?

  He turns to the window just in time to see Tania and Freddie wave Ji’s car off, the dog at Freddie’s side. Instinctively, Adam raises his hand too, waving the feather. Whoever it’s from, the feather did its job. He and his family were protected. They are all safe. And maybe Clio is too, having finally outwitted Louis to live her own life of freedom. Of liberté.And she wanted to let him know. He hopes so, with all his heart.

  He will need a debrief with Ji about everything, feather included, when he’s feeling better. Maybe Adam will take him to dinner at Hakkasan as a thank you. He looks again at the dog as it tugs on its lead, almost pulling Freddie over. Why did Clio tell Freddie it was called Louis? And then something strange happens. The dog appears to look up at Adam’s window. Adam stares back at the black creature. It’s only a puppy, but it seems to have stepped out of its boisterous world and continues to look up at him.

  Adam blinks, his mouth drying. Something glints in the dog’s eyes, catching the afternoon sun. He remembers the tap on his shoulder at the fancy-dress party, spinning round to see Louis and his horrific orange irises. Are the dog’s eyes glowing up at him now? Adam peers closer, cupping his hand against the window. He shakes his head. Of course they’re not. Such things are the stuff of movies, Louis’ films. And he’s not in one of those any more. It’s time for the credits to roll, for the epilogue, for the chorus to speak a final time.

  Faustus is gone.

  Acknowledgements

  Dr Andy Beale; Conor Beale; The Boathouse, Portscatho; Dark Salt Clear by Lamorna Ash; Peter and Sue Evans; The General Medical Council & Medical Schools Council (Professional Behaviour and Fitness to Practise: Guidance for Medical Schools and Their Students); Alex Goldsmith; Dr Faustus, adapted and directed for BBC Radio 3 by Emma Harding; Mark and Susanne Hatwood; Laura Palmer, Peyton Stableford, Lucy Ridout, Bethan Jones, Anne Rieley and all at Head of Zeus; Mick and Jo; Immerse Education (Why Become a Doctor?); The Infographics Show (Worst Ways to Die); Will Francis, Kirsty Gordon and the team at Janklow & Nesbit; Ji Ma in Shenzhen; Mansfield College, Oxford; Marlborough LitFest; Lana Mawlood; Cameron Mclennan; The Minack Theatre, Porthcurno; Rob Pender; The Royal Literary Fund; J.P.Sheerin; Felix, Maya, Jago and, most of all, Hilary.

  About the Author

  J.S. MONROE read English at Cambridge, worked as a foreign correspondent in Delhi, and was Weekend editor of the Daily Telegraph in London before becoming a full-time writer. His psychological thriller Find Me became a bestseller in 2017, and has since been translated into 14 languages. Writing under the name Jon Stock, he is also the author of five spy thrillers. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, and lives in Wiltshire with his wife, Hilary Stock, a fine art photographer. They have three children.

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