Reckoning Point, стр. 81

Erik, his top half hanging off the end of the pier, holding onto something – someone? – hanging below him. And Elian, Alex’s heart leaps in his chest as he sees her, for the first time in what seems like forever, even though it has only been a matter of weeks since she vanished. He calls to her first, but his words are whipped away by a sudden gust of wind.

“Stay there,” he calls, uselessly, for she hasn’t even seen him. Instead she is looking down, watching Erik and …

Alex moves closer, holds onto the top of the fence, through which Erik has wriggled his body in a jagged, narrow hole.

It is a man. And Alex looks past him to the sea that crashes below him. If he drops …

“Hold on, Erik, I’m here.” Alex drops to his knees in front of the hole. “I can’t get through, can you move?”

But Erik seems not to even hear him, and Alex watches, his fingers wound tightly around the metal of the fence.

“You did all this, you hurt all those girls?” Erik is shouting over the sound of the sea, and at his words Alex does a double take. Is this guy hanging off Erik’s hand the doctor?

“You were supposed to look after them, you’re their doctor, they trusted you!”

Alex hears his own intake of breath, so this is the doctor.

The doctor grins or grimaces, it’s hard to tell. And then he opens his mouth to speak.

“I clean up the filth, I always clean up, always have done. And still they come, still the filth comes, them, her,” the doctor flings his head back to gesture towards Elian, and the anger flares sudden and hot in Alex’s chest.

But the doctor hasn’t finished, and now it is definitely a smile that peels his lips back as he speaks again. “Your woman, your filthy, unclean Naomi, pregnant with some one-nighter, just the same as all the nasty girls she looks after.” The doctor uttered a laugh, and in the darkness his eyes shone clear and bright. “Maybe that’s why she chose that profession, it was close to her heart.”

“You stupid … FUCK,” Erik screams into the man’s face. “You stupid, stupid fuck, don’t you know? She’s still alive!”

At Erik’s words the doctor’s face changes to an expression of alarm. Startled, perhaps by Erik’s words about Naomi surviving his attack, or perhaps at the realisation of the predicament he is in, Alex can’t tell.

Alex darts a look at Erik’s face, sees Erik’s shoulders heaving now as he tries to bring the doctor up onto the pier. But as Erik writhes and struggles on the ground, the doctor’s expression changes again, and Alex draws a sharp breath as he realises that Erik isn’t trying to haul the man up, actually, Erik is twisting to get his hand out of the doctor’s grasp.

Alex knows he should step in, knows that in the professional world of policing you can’t let your emotions rule. But he doesn’t move. Somehow, in this twisted moment of time they have found themselves in, Erik’s intended fate for the doctor seems … just.

Erik yanks his hand free with a growl, the doctor’s eyes are wide with disbelief, anger, and then, black coat flapping and arms and legs flailing, the doctor falls into the crashing waves below.

There is a moment of stillness before Alex jumps to his feet to look over the fence at where Elian still crouches on the old concrete plinth. She doesn’t seem to see him, instead she is peering over the edge, staring down into the waves where the doctor disappeared. Alex swallows as he recalls the doctor including Elian in his list of those deemed ‘unclean’. Had she heard him? Of course she had, all three of them heard him. Did she believe him?

Probably.

And Elian stands now, her left leg raised, her arms wrapped around herself. Still she doesn’t look at the pier, still she looks down into the sea, and to Alex it seems that she is contemplating–

“NO!” he shouts, the volume carrying easily to her, and startling Erik beside him. “Elian, stay there!”

Now she looks at him, and his throat closes off as he stares into her face. There is nothing there, no relief, no pleasure at escaping the murderers clutches.

No hope.

“I got the DNA done, I got the results, Klim is your dad, Elian, it’s Klim!” he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts at her, babbling, his words running into themselves with the speed of his speech, so desperate is he to keep her upright on the plinth, and not plummeting deliberately to her death into the sea. “It is Klim, he’s your dad,” he shouts again, louder this time. “Klim, not Niko!”

The world stills around them again, fading away, even Erik has disappeared from Alex’s vision. Now it’s just the two of them, how it is supposed to be.

Her eyes widen a little, and to Alex, just that tiny movement in expression is enough. He smiles at her, holds out his hands towards her. And slowly, still keeping her eyes on his, she lifts her arms towards him too.

They can’t reach each other, but Erik is shuttling back and forth now, dragging old bits of the discarded old pier to bridge the gap between the boardwalk and the plinth.

“It’s okay, I can jump, how do you think I got here?” she calls to them.

There is amusement in her tone, and for that Alex is grateful. She is admonishing him and Erik, and her words suggest that she can take care of herself, because she’s been doing that for a really long time.

Erik pauses and Alex looks doubtfully down over the edge where the doctor has vanished into the black sea.

“No, wait there,” he says, and taking one end of the long wooden