Free A Dark Redemption by Stav Sherez Page A

in the late-afternoon sun, their faces filled with exhaustion and wonder. She thought back to Norwich, her time at the University of East Anglia, the shadow of her mother far away and the screaming riotous nights of music and laughter that engulfed her fresher year.
    ‘If only we could . . .’
    She turned from the grease-smeared window and looked up at the man addressing her. Mid-forties, prematurely grey but dressed in a Grateful Dead shirt and sporting a ponytail.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Go back.’ Professor Cummings smiled. ‘Change the past, take the other turning, the one we never took. But we can’t. Just as they . . .’ he pointed out of the window, the nails on his hand long and curved like a guitar player’s, ‘. . . just as they won’t be able to go back to this day. You think they know this? Did we? Do you think it would make us enjoy each day more or less?’
      
    The professor’s office looked as though it had been caught in the maw of a hurricane. She stepped inside and her feet scraped and jostled against the loose papers, photocopies and pamphlets spotting the floor. More piles of paper and spiral-bound dissertations leant and quivered in corner stacks.
    Cummings took his seat, apologised for the mess, but she could tell it was always like this. His T-shirt had blue clouds and yellow skulls against a purple background. His cargo pants were loose and hung asymmetrically, pens and who knows what else weighing down the side pockets. ‘Bloody smoking laws,’ he muttered as Geneva took out her voice recorder. ‘Used to be I could smoke in my own office, didn’t harm anyone. Now I have to go down ten floors and stand outside in the rain. You know how much valuable time I lose every day?’ Cummings let out a deep sigh as if only now realising this wasn’t another student sitting in front of him. ‘No, of course, you don’t want to know about that.’ She watched as he shuffled on the seat, making himself comfortable, slouching one leg over the armrest. ‘You said you wanted to see me in relation to Grace Okello‚ but you didn’t say what she’s done wrong, detective.’
    Geneva took out her notebook, flipped through the pages. ‘Why do you think she’s done anything wrong?’ she asked, looking directly into his eyes.
    ‘I get a call from the police asking to speak about Grace, what else would I think?’
    ‘I’m afraid Grace was killed on Sunday evening,’ Geneva stated flatly.
    Cummings dropped the pen he’d been kneading between his fingers the last few minutes. He stared at Geneva, waiting for a smile, relaxation of facial muscles, any indicator that this was some elaborate practical joke. ‘She’s dead?’
    Geneva nodded, watching Cummings’s eyes turn dark and hooded. He reached into the pocket of his cargo pants and extracted a pack of Gitanes. Without looking at Geneva he took one out, tapped the end on the table several times to let the tobacco settle and lit it with a lighter in the shape of a rhinoceros horn. ‘Jesus,’ he said, taking three deep drags in succession as if he were a dying man sucking oxygen. He coughed into his hand, his eyes turning red and watery.
    ‘What happened?’ he finally asked, the ash on his cigarette now longer than the unsmoked portion. Geneva stared at it, waiting for it to fall. She related the basic facts: Grace found dead in her flat. Said she couldn’t go into details or theories, which was true, though she also wanted to see how much Cummings could fill in.
    ‘You were Grace’s dissertation supervisor?’ She looked down at her notes though she knew the questions off by heart.
    Cummings took another drag and cleared his throat. ‘Yes. It was transferred to me when she proposed it. Anything East African gets parcelled out to me.’ He looked past Geneva, to a point on the wall, a poster of a desert scene, camels trudging through a sea of sand. ‘My accounts of Grace will inevitably be biased, so be forewarned.’
    Geneva watched