Ivo Cask was waiting in the side room at the station when I arrived. Vale had found him at the old tram depot, where Ivo had gone to collect a box of personal papers. Perrin stood in the hall outside the room, his bandage hidden beneath his cap. He had his hands jammed into his coat pockets.
“He’s agreed to answer questions,” Vale told me. “You don’t have to go in.”
“I know.” I held the handbell inside my coat, where its cold handle pressed against my palm. “I want to hear what he says.”
Vale studied my face, then opened the door wider. Ivo sat at a table with a constable beside him. His collar was damp from the snow. He looked smaller without the easy smile he wore at Auden’s funeral, though he still arranged his expression as if he expected to be forgiven for taking up space.
“Tamsin,” he said.
“Don’t.”
His mouth closed. Vale remained by the door. Perrin came in behind me and stood near the wall.
Ivo looked at him, then back at me. “I’m sorry you had to come here for this.”
“You had the photographer watch Auden.” I kept my hands around the bell so I wouldn’t reach for the papers on the table. “You paid him to follow Auden to Rook Street.”
“I paid him to document what was happening.”
“You told him where to look.”
“I gave him a route.” Ivo’s gaze dropped to the table. “I wasn’t trying to hurt Auden.”
The word hurt sounded too small. It was the sort of word people used when they wanted to talk about intention instead of what they had done.
“You took the map section with Rook Street on it,” I said. “You knew he was losing his memory.”
“I thought he’d ask me for help.”
“And when he didn’t?”
Ivo pressed his fingertips together. “I wanted to see how far it had gone. The memory loss. I thought if I could understand it, I could find a way to stop it.”
Perrin pulled one hand from his pocket. “You could have asked him.”
“He wouldn’t have known what I meant.”
“Then you could have told him.”
Ivo’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. I thought of Auden at the depot, trying to find his way to me with pieces of his life falling out of reach. I had asked him to come that night. I still believed that mattered. I had never known someone else was making the road harder to find.
“You watched him struggle,” I said. “You let him leave without the map.”
Next
Tomorrow, Tamsin will tell Vale the complete story of the night Auden died, including the call she has never been able to separate from her guilt.
He looked up then. The apology in his face had gone thin. “I thought he’d turn back. Or ask someone. I didn’t think he’d—”
“Die?”
The constable shifted in his chair. Ivo’s voice lowered. “No.”
No defense followed. The admission sat between us, plain and useless.
I wanted him to say the accident was his fault. I wanted him to say my call had made no difference. I wanted him to give me a sentence I could carry home and set beside the wreckage in my mind. He could offer none of those things. Even if he had, I knew I would have examined each word until it broke.
“What happened after?” Vale asked. His pen rested over the statement form. “After Auden died.”
Ivo looked at the constable, then at the door. “I saw the shadow with Tamsin. I knew it wasn’t the same as the watcher Sallow had described.”
“You kept feeding the watcher names,” I said.
“I was trying to learn whether it could be directed.”
The handbell’s handle bit into my palm. “You put my name on that wall.”
“I thought it would draw the watcher away from the others. I thought the bell might—” He stopped when Perrin moved from the wall.
Perrin’s voice was flat. “You thought you could use her.”
“I thought I could keep it from reaching anyone else.”
“You thought you could control it,” I said. “That isn’t the same thing.”
He lowered his head. I had seen him cry at the funeral, Sella had told us, and she had given him her ribbon because she believed him. I had wondered whether that grief was real. It might have been. His grief did nothing to undo what he had chosen.
Perrin stepped closer. I put out my arm before he could reach Ivo. The movement hurt my shoulder, where I’d caught it against the chapel stair. Perrin stopped, breathing through his nose.
“Don’t make this about what he deserves,” I said. “He has to tell Vale every name.”
Perrin held my gaze for a second, then moved back. I lowered my arm. I hadn’t stopped him to protect Ivo. I needed the truth to remain in the room, and I didn’t want Ivo’s bruises to become the thing people remembered instead.
Vale returned to his notes. “Did you give the photographer the list from Room 42?”
“I gave him names. Some I found in Sallow’s papers. Some came from the room.”
“Who else knew what you were doing?”
Ivo rubbed the crease between his brows. “The photographer. Jonas Sallow, at first. He told me what to watch for. I don’t know where he is now.”
Vale wrote it down. The page had two columns, names and places. I saw my own name at the top of a separate sheet and looked away before I could read the rest.
“I called Auden that night,” I said.
Vale paused his pen.
“I asked him to come to me. I need that in the statement too.” My throat tightened around the next words, but I kept going. “I didn’t know he couldn’t find the way. I asked him anyway. Write both.”
“I will,” Vale said. He didn’t soften the answer or tell me not to blame myself. I was grateful for that, though I couldn’t have said so just then.
Ivo leaned forward. “Tamsin, I—”
“You don’t get to make this easier for yourself by telling me how sorry you are.”
“I wasn’t asking you to forgive me.”
“I know.” I turned toward the door. “You were asking me to hear you.”
For once, he had nothing ready to say.
Vale told Ivo he was being held while they completed the statements and reviewed the evidence. The constable rose and moved to stand beside him. Ivo didn’t resist. Perrin followed Vale into the hall, but I stayed long enough to look at the man who had watched Auden’s memory fail and called it a question worth answering.
I had pictured this confrontation many times. In some versions I shouted until I couldn’t speak. In others, I made him look at me and admit he had killed Auden. The truth was uglier and less useful: he had taken a risk with someone else’s life because he wanted to know what would happen. The crash belonged to its own facts. My call belonged to mine. I couldn’t trade one for the other.
Outside the room, Perrin waited beside the station window. He had taken off his cap and was smoothing its brim with his thumb.
“I’m sorry I nearly hit him,” he said.
“You stopped.”
“I nearly didn’t.”
“I know.” I didn’t touch his arm. He seemed to need the space more than comfort, and I had none to give that wouldn’t be borrowed from grief.
Vale came out with his notebook tucked beneath one arm. “I’ll need your full statement tomorrow. About the call, and what happened before it.”
“I’ll come.”
He nodded once and went back inside. Perrin left to call the station’s contact at the depot. I stood by the window until the room behind me filled with the low sounds of official questions.
The shadow lay close to my shoes. It had followed me from Saint Orra through the city, thin enough that the station lamps passed through its middle. I said Auden’s name under my breath. Nothing in it turned toward me.
I put the bell back in my pocket and went out into the street. Tomorrow I would tell Vale the whole of that night, including the part I had spent years trying to make smaller.