A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez

acronyms and names skipping by her like station signs through a train window. She knew she’d need to get a handle on some of this material later and kicked herself for falling into the professor’s soothing tones when she was supposed to be interrogating him. ‘And how was her work going?’
    ‘She was having problems these last few months,’ Cummings admitted, looking down at the table. ‘She kept coming to see me, tearing out her hair, wanting to give it all up.’
    ‘What kind of problems?’
    ‘She was a perfectionist. She kept criticising her own work, much more than I ever did. She wanted it to be perfect, to take account of everything. She thought that if she had all the facts about a given subject, the answer would be bound to reveal itself.’
    Geneva nodded, thinking back to her own time at university and to how similar Grace’s ideas were to hers concerning police work.
    ‘But it doesn’t work that way,’ Cummings continued. ‘We can never have all the facts. There’s too much information and it’s constantly changing. And even if in some way you could gather all the information, it wouldn’t necessarily lead to an answer. I tried to explain to her that undergraduate work was about realising this. Finding the limitations of your methodology. It’s more about unlearning than learning‚ but Grace had a hard time with this. To be honest, most of our international students do. They come to London expecting certainty and accuracy and we tell them it’s impossible, a chimera.’
    ‘Did Grace have any arguments? Any falling outs?’ She remembered her own days at university, the heady shuffle of people, late-night discussions fuelled by booze and slogans, the shouting and placard waving. She watched as Cummings took a moment to think it over.
    ‘Most students like to take a bite out of us former colonisers, the white man,’ he replied without a hint of irony. ‘Grace wanted to take modern African leaders, the modern African system, to task. She wasn’t interested in colonialism or its after-effects.’
    ‘Did that get her in trouble?’
    ‘Occasionally. I remember one day at the refectory, I was sitting at a table with Grace and some of her friends. They were having a debate – no, it was an argument really. One of her fellow African students harangued her for going after black men. Said their job wasn’t to attack their own but the white man. It got quite heated for a while until another friend calmed them down. But these are students, Miss Miller, they get heated over which brand of coffee the canteen uses, if there are too many black cleaners in the building. I’m not sure this has anything to do with what happened.’
    ‘Everything has something to do with what happened, Professor, we just don’t know it until we have all the details.’
    Cummings shook his head mournfully. ‘You sound just like Grace, Detective. I’m sure the two of you would have got along very well.’
    Geneva ignored the comment, not sure whether it was intended as rebuke or compliment. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
    Cummings laughed. ‘I have no idea. They don’t tell us these things. She was a very pretty and highly intelligent girl. I would think she had one or maybe several‚ but you’d have to talk to her friends about that.’
    Cummings riffled through his notes again but Geneva could see he wasn’t really looking at them, his eyes clouded as if some debate were raging inside.
    ‘But something changed, right? Something happened?’ She was guessing but she saw him flinch, then shake his head.
    ‘I don’t know how relevant this is but you say you want to know all the details.’ He took a deep breath as if making some kind of inner decision. ‘The last couple of terms she’d been slipping a bit. Grades down, a few essays not handed in on time. It happens to a lot of students but I never thought it would happen to Grace.’
    Geneva felt a blast of heat rushing through her. ‘When was