To Catch A Killer by Emma Kavanagh

Author:Emma Kavanagh [Kavanagh, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Suspense
ISBN: 9781409174998
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2018-12-10T13:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Chapter 1

My eyes swam, exhaustion making the lobby of the NYPD First Precinct buck and shimmy. I pushed myself up in the chair, feigning an alertness that had left me somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, and took a long pull of coffee, stronger than I was used to. But then, that was no bad thing in the grip of wicked jet lag, riding on the back of three hours’ sleep.

I glanced across at Harry, bright-eyed and preternaturally enthusiastic, leaning forward in the hard-backed chair, a runner just desperate for the starter’s gun.

‘How the hell are you so awake?’

He grinned. ‘I love New York. Don’t you just love New York? So much energy here, so much life.’

I grunted, buried my face in my coffee again, my guts twisting around on themselves. Because, the thing is, I had made the decision. On the day that followed the finale of the long drawn-out death of Erin Owens, after a night of endless wakefulness that nonetheless somehow brought with it dreams, of smoke and flame. I couldn’t cope with bed, not on that night, and so I had lain on the sofa, as if that way I could cheat my nightmares, like they couldn’t find me there. It hadn’t worked. Then, at 4 a.m., I had run the shower, turning the dial up so that the heat of the water fell like arrows against my skin, and had cried, in a way I’m not sure I had cried since I was a little girl and the end of the world could be brought about by a skinned knee, or silence from a friend. At 7 a.m. I called my mother. I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come back to work. I’m not ready. A long drawn-out silence on the other end of the line, and I imagined her, standing with bare feet on that always cold kitchen floor, choosing her words with care. What can I do to help, Alice? What do you need? And then crying again, I need to come home, Mum. I need to stop.

What did I feel then, as those words spilled out into my empty Camden apartment? Was it relief, the exquisite forgiveness of finally letting go, admitting to yourself and to the world that you are irretrievably damaged? Looking back now, it’s hard to tell. All that remains to me is the emptiness left behind on the disconnected call, the hollowness. It was set, done. I would go home. Run? No. Not that. A tactical retreat.

I remember the reverberation of my footsteps, echoing in the breeze-blocked hallways of Holborn Police Station. The feel of the cold metal door handle beneath my fingers.

It was an ending, a cessation of all pretence. Detective Sergeant Alice Parr was dead. And I didn’t know who this was that had been left behind. All I knew was that, whoever she was, she couldn’t do this job. All her instincts, everything she had thought she knew, all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

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