‘Actually, yes.’ He felt proud at his answer, but when he pulled away a little and wiped his eyes, he saw her looking at him with something like pity. ‘Every time the paper refers to you, they say “crime-busting Edward Temmis, known as Devon’s Rockford”, or something.’
‘Rockford as inThe Rockford Files?’
‘I guess so?’
He hugged her again, more formally this time. ‘I hope you get hugs like that at home.’
‘Don’t …’ she began. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘No, I mean, if the sadness strikes you.’
‘Oh. Well, thank you. I do.’ She stared at him, her big brown eyes piercing. ‘I have to be somewhere. I want to catch up. I’ll always come to his grave for you, always. I’m here all the time. I love that he can hear the water.’
‘Thanks, Tara.’
‘How’s that lady of yours?’
‘Eh?’ He was not aware they had even discussed Kim.
‘What’s her name? Vim?’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said, borrowing her phrase. Tara responded by curling her fingers and placing the heels of her hands together, making a heart.
‘Two hearts,’ he said.
‘Don’t do that either.’ They smiled at each other. Losing a child could break two people apart. But it also bonded them for eternity.
He did not see her leave. He was looking down at Matty’s headstone and his whole body shook with the agony of it.She has other children now, he reminded himself, feeling disloyal to Tara even by having the thought. His body pinged and cracked, as if a loose power cable was swinging left and right inside him. What was this, Matty trying to tell him something? Two hearts?
Two hearts.
He felt those words burst inside him. The letters enlarged and broke, became fragments, dispersed, gathered again and made the words: TWO HEARTS.
‘What are you trying to tell me, Matty?’
He sank to his knees and, for the first time, reached out with his hands and held the top of the gravestone. But the sobs would not come. This time his mind, far from being overwhelmed with emotion, sharpened. He opened his eyes. He was six inches from the bevelled edge of the grey marble, and every tiny indent came into focus. And now, as he let his brain lead him, a single fact took its rightful place.
Hearts.
The referee on the tenancy was a doctor called Hearts.
Hearts did not exist.
But Hurst did.
And because Edward had written ‘Hurst’, he had missed the obviously alternative spelling …
Hearst.
Change one letter …
There was a real doctor somewhere here. He knew now that theremustbe a real doctor, because Lev Malnyk had thousands of pounds’ worth of expensive medical equipment in his flat. So why had the doctor put his name down wrong on the tenancy agreement and why had he not come forward to the police after the crash?
Because he wanted to be untraceable.
Was it possible that Wendy’s doctor friend was the elusive Dr Hearts?
He thought of Stevie: ‘Are you saying these two cases are connected?’
