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“Of course.” I found my heart was beating fast. Had they found something important? “Have you got any leads?”
“We’ve got a number of lines of inquiry and we’re hoping you might be able to help us with some of them, but I’d prefer to talk it through at the station.”
“Of course, what time would suit?”
“Say…” There was a pause, and I heard Malik leafing through a notebook, or perhaps a diary. “Say eleven a.m.?”
“Sure. Thank you. See you then.”
I hung up and handed the phone back to Helena.
“Have they found anything?”
“I don’t know.” I looked down at the unicorn phone in my other hand. It had finished the reset process and was asking me to log in as a new user and enter Hel’s Wi-Fi password. “I think possibly… yes? They’ve asked if I can come in at eleven. But they clearly didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”
“God, I hope they’ve got a lead.”
“Me too.” I felt my throat close up as I said the words. The idea that whoever had done this to Gabe was still out there… I still couldn’t fully process that realization.
“Have you eaten anything?” Hel asked now.
I shook my head. “I’m not really hungry.”
Hel gave me a look that was pure mother hen, and I sighed.
“I know, I know, I have to eat, blah, blah. The truth is I feel a bit sick. I’ve got to—” I looked down at the phone in my hand. It had connected to my Google account, and the notifications were pinging onto the home screen. Unread email. Unread email. Unread email. “I’ve got to start telling people. I can’t leave clients hanging, and Gabe’s parents…”
I broke off. I couldn’t even say the words.
“I can do it,” Hel said urgently. “Honestly, Jack, no one would expect you to be ringing round, not twenty-four hours after Gabe—” She stopped, not wanting to say the unspeakable, and waved her hand as if to indicate, after all this.
But I shook my head. She was probably right—and there were definitely people I could let her deal with. But not Gabe’s parents, and not his best friend, Cole. They deserved to hear from me, and they deserved to hear before the police got in contact, which they might be doing right now, for all I knew. I couldn’t let the first they learned of Gabe’s death be a call from Scotland Yard.
“No, I have to do at least a handful of people myself. I need to, Hel. I promise I’ll lean on you for the work stuff, but John and Verity, and probably Cole, I have to call them myself.”
“Okay,” Hel said resignedly. “If you really feel you have to. But first you’re going to call your lawyer, yes?”
“Not now,” I said, and then seeing her expression, I held up a hand. “Hel, I will call her, I promise, but please stop bugging me. I just—I have to get this out of the way first. I can’t let Gabe’s parents hear about this through the grapevine.”
Even Hel could see the justice in that one, and she nodded, albeit a little reluctantly.
“Can I borrow a laptop?” I asked, as much to change the subject as anything. “For the work stuff, I mean.”
Hel nodded again and picked up a battered MacBook from the sideboard.
“Knock yourself out. Password is powerpets, same as the Wi-Fi. All lowercase. Safari is logged into my Gmail, but you can open up an incognito tab or use Chrome. And the phone should be working now, I’ve activated the SIM. The number’s on there if you need to give it to anyone.” She pointed at the cardboard sleeve that had contained the SIM.
“Thanks,” I said, and then, impulsively, I moved across the kitchen and hugged her. She smelled like home, our home, our childhood home, the smell I remembered from walking through my parents’ front door after staying with friends and inhaling like it was oxygen. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Her arms tightened around me, and I could feel everything she wanted to say. How unfair this was. How eagerly she would have taken this grief away from me if she could. But neither of us were the kind for big emotional speeches, and at last she let go, coughed, and moved towards the stairs.
“Okay, well, I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Shout, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll drive you down to the station. If we leave at ten thirty, that should be fine.”
“Ten thirty. Sure.” I looked at the phone in my hand. It was just after nine. I had ninety minutes to destroy Gabe’s parents’ world.
