Page 105 of The Unforgiven

“Sir, do you mind if I take off? I’ve got a few things to take care of.”

He studied me as if he still couldn’t suss me out. “Vinny told me you were moving out of your flat. Are you sorted with somewhere to go?”

“I am. I need to get the rest of my things though. And I need to see someone.”

He clenched his jaw briefly and I wondered what he really wanted to say. “I took a statement from Daniel Fletcher earlier. I don’t believe he knew what Justine was doing.”

I knew which Daniel he’d spoken to. Emotional, prone to long explanations and theorising. The professor who was on a different plane.

“Maybe not. I do need to see him. She was his assistant – there are going to be questions for the university and I can give him an overview.” That wasn’t entirely true.

“Be careful, Mia. I seem to spend half my life telling you that.”

I just nodded then left.

Chapter Forty-Five

There was a meeting in the seminar room, probably an emergency one about Justine and the impact this was going to have on the university. I could’ve gate-crashed, it probably would’ve been welcomed because I could’ve absolved them from any guilt they thought they should be feeling, but I went directly to Daniel’s office, climbing upstairs I was familiar with once more after being away for so long.

His office door was unlocked, a fire still burning in the hearth, one he must’ve made himself. There were three coffee cups on his desk, the fallout of his assistant being arrested. I resisted the urge to clear them, instead hunting in his desk drawers for the key to the filing cabinet.

He kept two keys: one on his person, and one hidden, always in his desk, always somewhere different. He had the key, he had the secret – it was a way of taunting me when I asked a question, a use of power to make me dependent, or so I’d understood in years later.

It was stuck to the top of a drawer with Sellotape. I pulled it away, fumbling with the tape, my hands cold despite the fact I’d driven here. It slid into the lock and clicked the cabinetopen, and, like a child unwrapping Christmas surprises before Christmas morning, I searched for the two files I wanted to read.

Justine Bellamy and Mia McAllister.

I sat on the couch, thumbing through his notes on Justine. It was written there as clear as day about Aberwyn, the six girls who’d bullied her, Charlie Mason. Daniel had noted that he thought she was a fantasist, that she was confabulating — weaving grief, humiliation, and rage into a narrative so vivid it felt real. He’d seen it before. Patients so convinced of their own lies they could pass polygraphs. A manifestation of guilt, rage, and the need to be witnessed. But then there were the notes he’d made in the margins, when he’d gone back and reviewed what’d been said.

His own explanation, his own theories.

I looked at my file, something I’d never viewed before, never had the need to. It was there, my disclosure, his clinical notes and theories. I refused to accept I’d been a victim because that would make me weak.

I didn’t hear his footsteps as he approached. I was too absorbed in a spectator’s perception of our lives, me and Justine.

“It took you longer than I predicted for you to look at those.”

I jumped, looking up at him, closing the file and pushing it away, a child caught with their hands in the sweetie jar.

“You knew it was her.”

He picked up the files, a couple of the pages falling out. “I suspected. If I’d known for sure, I’d have reported it.”

“Of course.” I didn’t believe him. “Your latest research, it’s on female killers, isn’t it?”

He nodded, not looking at me, watching the flames of the fire glimmer, a pitiful beg to be fed. “Impossibly well-timed, isn’t it? There will be so much interest in it with this. A female serial killer, and look at her motives? Why do women kill? Why aren’t more women killing given how they climb on each otherto rise. You see it on social media, women dragging each other down, criticising how each other looks, making snide, malicious comments, dividing each other rather than lifting. Sabotaging their own sex. It makes it so much easier for your incels, and like this – they nearly took the blame.” He loosened the clip in one of the folders, taking out the paper, crunched one sheet in his hand and dropped it onto the fire.

The flames flickered higher, snake’s heads asking for more, trying to bite the hand.

“Won’t you use those in your book?”

He shook his head. “No need. I’ll speak with Justine once she’s settled in the unit, because you know she won’t serve her sentence in prison. It’ll be somewhere like Lindridge, but the highest level. That’ll suit her. She did well in Lindridge, the routine, the white walls, the light. It settled her. She’ll be able to speak more openly there too than she could here, when she was pretending to be someone she’s not.” More paper hit the fire, a roar as the flame bit and chewed and spat.

“What will you look at, in this study?”

He raised his brows, surprised at my question. “Why some women kill and others don’t, when it’s not to do with sexual motivation. So why did Kelly-Anne take revenge and you didn’t – why haven’t you sought out that gym coach. Why’ve you not hunted down the dealer who supplied your mum with the gear she overdosed on, even though you have the means to do so.”

“You don’t have permission to write about me.”