A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez Page A

this?’
    Cummings thought it over. ‘When she came back from the Christmas break. There was something . . . something different about her.’
    ‘Different how?’
    ‘She seemed less communicative, more fervent, I don’t know – maybe I’m just imagining it.’
    It was probably nothing, a break-up with a boyfriend, the pressures of work. ‘Did you ever meet her parents?’
    ‘No. We rarely do. Even with domestic students. She hardly ever talked about Uganda or her childhood. Not to me, anyhow. She was a member of the East African Association but that’s normal for students from her part of the world. Most of them stop going after a year, they start making friends because of shared interests and hobbies rather than history and genealogy.’
    ‘Drugs?’ Geneva stared at the professor.
    ‘What, Grace? I very much doubt it. She didn’t even drink. As I said, she was a serious student.’
    ‘Until the start of this year.’
    Cummings nodded. ‘I can only tell you my impressions; I’m afraid they’re probably not worth much at all to you, Detective.’
    Geneva stood up and shoved the notebook back in her pocket. ‘They’ve been of more use than you can imagine, Professor,’ she said, watching Cummings stare at the files on his desk. He looked smaller, encased in his chair, buttressed by paper, and despondent too, as if now that the interview was over his last link to Grace had been severed and all that remained would be memories.
    She was reaching for the door when he spoke.
    ‘I’ve just had a thought . . . I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything but Grace’s friend, Cecilia . . .’ He tapped another cigarette on the table, sighing almost silently. ‘Well, we were supposed to have a meeting yesterday to discuss her dissertation but she never turned up.’

8
    Grace Okello had not been a hoarder. For someone who’d spent two years in the same tiny flat, she had amassed very little.
    Carrigan flicked through the inventory, lining up words and phrases with the objects they described. He glanced up at a poster advertising safaris in Uganda. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he stared at the family of lions in the bottom left-hand corner. He could almost taste the jungle, that deep wet sour stench that was always present. People saw jungles and thought they were places of life, an uncontrollable spurt of growth, but he’d been there and knew that jungles were only about death. Murder was an every minute occurrence. The ground was made of the rotten mulch of leaves and dead insects. The plants had sharp spikes and devious poisons. The animals spent all night either killing or hiding.
    He got up and crossed the room, still a little out of breath from his confrontation with Monroe. His hand was throbbing, the flesh swelling around his wedding ring. The ring was too tight against his finger, sized for a younger man, but he liked the constant pressure, the close proximity of the metal which never allowed him to forget.
    He stared at the bed, stripped of sheets and mattress, and thought about the nights Grace had slept on it, the lying-awake nights wondering about life, about boyfriends and grades and money. He turned to see Jennings staring at the wall. He followed the DC’s eyes to a small circular pattern of dried blood. The specialists would tell them angles, height, trajectories – but there was no mistaking the stain for anything else. Blood was always blood, but it was also so much more. Blood was evidence of a life interrupted. And blood announced itself. The heart sent it crashing through the veins and arteries and even when those were ripped or violated the heart continued sending fine sprays of blood everywhere, on the wall, clothes, weapons, as if it were the body’s last utterance, a final attempt to point from the grave and avenge its own death.
    ‘I keep looking at it,’ Jennings mumbled. ‘I can’t stop.’
    Carrigan put a hand on his shoulder, felt it buckle under