Chapter 18: The Name Edmund Said

The piece of paper was on the kitchen table at 4:17 a.m.

Callum had written the name in his own handwriting — not his assumed one, the careful architectural print he used for morgue forms and utility bills — but the real one, the cramped left-leaning script he had never entirely corrected. One name. Six letters. He had found it in Nessa's notebook between two entries he had already read, written smaller than everything else, as though she had been trying to hide it on the page.

He had not known he was going to knock on Vera's door until he was already knocking.