‘A slim chance. Medication and diuretics could help with the kidneys and heart to give Mep a good quality of life. But he may just slip away tonight, Mr Donoghue. He’s very weak. Take him home, make him comfy. Maybe he’ll rally, but he may also just be content to take his last breath.’
My first thought was: should I tell Fran? What could she do? As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring a cat to prison for her to see at a reasonable distance. If anything, telling her Mep wasdying – and that there was nothing we could do – might break her heart even more than her husband having been responsible for her being arrested. But would she want to know all the same?
The vet kept looking at me, his fingers interlaced, his eyes showing an understanding only a pet owner could know. A kind of gut-wrenching awfulness that was hard to put into words.
‘Would you like to pay now, or we can invoice you later?’
I just held Mep again in my lap in the driver’s seat, using one hand to stroke him when I could. Occasionally, I rested my hand against his chest, just to make sure his heart was still beating.
‘Please don’t go, my man,’ I whispered to him as we stopped at a red light. ‘Please don’t go.’
When we got home, I wrapped Mep up in blankets and placed him in his favourite spot on the sofa. I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead as I heard the quiet murmur of a contented meow. I then sat next to him, booted up my laptop, and looked at what daytime TV had to offer.
Cis had sent me an email. I did a quick skim, but lacked the mental fortitude to read any more. She had clearly spent some solid time on it, probably with the trial about to begin she knew I’d be struggling with it all. Something along the lines that she was very sorry about what I was going through, and she’d always be my friend, but her job – and justice – had to take precedence. I knew it was all artifice, and I pressed the delete button as soon as I saw the words ‘You know deep down what she did’ flash up on one of the paragraphs, sending the message vanishing into cyberspace.
I was now feeling more and more of a slow-digesting rage. Cis and I had only just scratched the surface of how many lives the Heart of Hope Foundation had indirectly ruined in our initial investigation. Heart of Hope was meant to be acrucial lifeline to so many people, offering key services that the government had outsourced to them. Yet help never arrived to the people who needed it.
Furthermore, the closest I had come to a concrete motive for Fran was that they had been the ones to invest in the same children’s home she had lived at. But it still didn’t explain how that had propelled her to kill them. I had tried to investigate as much as I could under Vivian’s radar, but nothing really explained why Fran had killed O’Neill.
I knew Cis and Isla were sure as hell ready to recruit Clark to position him against Fran, but weren’t even thinking about rummaging through the mountains of dirty laundry of decades-long police cover-ups they had been told to ignore by the mysterious people above Vivian. How had an organisation like that existed for so long without anyone knowing about it? Well, a high-ranking policeman, the Leader of the Opposition and a successful businessman/fraudster made for quite a team, all with the sick façade of actually working on giving back to the community while they installed home hot tubs and went on all-expenses-paid holidays.
Mep and I were right in the middle ofCash in the Atticwhen I heard the doorbell go. I wondered if maybe a reporter had finally found out where I lived. I walked towards the door, ready to slam it shut just as quickly as I opened it. But as the door pulled back, I saw a man there, hair slicked back, and well dressed in an expensive designer suit. He looked as if he was about to ask me about the kingdom of Jehovah.
‘Mr Donoghue? Andrew Shorestone, from Bark & Moore, just wondered if you had a few minutes to chat?’
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised, realising that I had only spoken to the gentleman representing Fran over the phone before. I didn’t really know what I’d expected him to look like, but his general appearance had taken me aback, most notably because the manbarely scratched five foot. He was the result of the several thousand pounds I had withdrawn from the secret fund I had been building to take Fran on a very belated honeymoon. I gestured for him to come in and take a seat in the living room.
‘Can I make anything for you? A tea or a coffee or anything?’ I asked as Andrew placed his briefcase down by the door, trying to ignore the complete tip the house was in.
‘Not for me, thank you. I shan’t be long,’ he said as he took a seat on the very edge of the sofa, glancing to look at the cat next to him. Mep was still staring vacantly at the TV, refusing to acknowledge the new presence in the house.
‘He’s ill,’ I explained as I took a seat on the ottoman opposite Andrew.
‘Oh,’ Andrew said, alarmed, inspecting Mep, seemingly unable to take his eyes off him. Maybe he thought I was harbouring a taxidermised cat in my living room; perhaps he thought I was having a psychotic episode. He seemed to move past it. ‘Well, I just want to give you an update on the trial, with court proceedings starting in two weeks.’
I groaned, feeling my intestinal knot tighten.
‘How is she doing though, Fran?’
‘Urgh…’ he said, considering his answer, trying to hide the grinding of his teeth together. ‘CPS and the police are really pushing this case as hard as they can. They’re dead set on declaring it cold-blooded murder on your wife’s part.’
‘And… you’re certain I won’t be called up to testify?’ I asked nervously – a question that had been lingering in my mind ever since Fran was arrested.
‘No. As I said, we thought about it, but it doesn’t help our defence in any meaningful way. The prosecution will simply claim that you’re biased.’
Andrew took another look at Mep, who must have felt his stare, the cat gradually rotating his head to glare blankly rightback at him. Andrew quickly averted his gaze, pushing his hands through his greasy hair again. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he felt intimidated by the cat.
‘Okay, and how’s the case looking overall?’
‘Well,’ said Andrew, stretching back onto the sofa, ‘I can’t lie, we’re up against the wall. All the evidence points to Fran, and there’s not a whole lot we can outwardly refute or deny. Fran is still denying killing him, point blank, telling the story that she went in, helped him with his shopping bags, cleared up some milk from his carpet and walked out again, but she’s also the only one with any evidence that puts her there at the time of death?—’
‘But if she says she didn’t do it, then maybe she didn’t do it,’ I said, perhaps deluding myself a little.
No, you’re right, I was deluding myself a lot.
‘Yeah, that would be the logical thing to think. But the evidence paints a clear picture,’ Andrew stated, matter-of-factly. ‘An elderly man vanishes suddenly, leaving no trace, yet they discover evidence of fresh blood loss and bone cartilage and organs in his shower drain. And the last person to see him is a woman who was also suspected of the murder of a close friend of his.’ He grimaced, pushing back his hair again. ‘You can see how that sounds, can’t you?’
‘So, what we’re looking for is a miracle?’ I asked.
