A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick

I had been dreaming, I had woken into a nightmare.

Chapter 2
     
    At the end of that week of waking, I went to see Hunter.
    It was a beautiful and hot day in early May, and we left his rather stuffy and dark rooms and walked out to the Backs. The trees towered above us, in full bright green leaf, and students and tourists eyed each other on the river.
    We saw none of that, as I told Hunter about the letter. He had all the same questions, and I told him that I’d written to Marian’s mother, asking how she had died, and where exactly she was buried. And about the Estonian.
    ‘When did you send it?’ he asked.
    ‘I haven’t yet. I wrote it last night. I’ll send it later today.’
    ‘Are you sure you want to?’
    He stopped walking for a moment, which I took to be a sign that this was an important question.
    ‘Yes. I think so. Why?’
    ‘Consider the old girl, Charles. There she is, sitting in her big house, sad, but happy in her memory of her daughter, and she gets another letter raking up the past. Are you sure you want to do that to her?’
    I can see now that he had a point. I didn’t then.
    ‘She said herself in her letter that she wanted me to know the truth, so I didn’t have to live not knowing. I’m only doing the same for her.’
    ‘But she does know. Or she thinks she does. She presumably thinks her daughter was run down by a motor car, or drowned in the Seine, or whatever they told her. She’s dealt with that and, from what you’ve said, it sounds like she’s come to a point of peace with it. And you want to tell her the truth, the real truth, but you don’t even know what that is. That some man you saw in a tunnel in the war killed her?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘I don’t know. I . . .’
    I stopped. I found it hard to think, let alone to explain.
    ‘You don’t know what happened any more than she did. Are you sure this Estonian was even the man in the bunker? What makes you think he had anything to do with Marian’s death, however that happened? You have no proof of that.’
    There I had to disagree with Hunter.
    ‘No, on the contrary, I think it highly unlikely that Marian died in an accident when she was also consorting with a murderer. That’s the most likely explanation.’
    ‘The two are not connected,’ Hunter persisted. ‘You’re displaying false logic. It’s just as likely that she died from some other cause as by his hand, and anyway, there is absolutely no evidence to show he had anything to do with her death. Tell me! What would you say if you walked into a French police station? That some man you once saw just once, mark you, dining with the young lady, is a murderer? Why? They’d laugh at you. It was all so long ago, Charles. Why don’t you leave it be? Wouldn’t that be better?’
    ‘It’s not a question of better,’ I snapped at him. I regretted it immediately, but I could see my anger had hurt him.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I stared at the punters on the river as if I was looking straight through them. ‘I’m sorry, Hunter.’
    We parted soon after that, and I was left thinking about what Hunter had said. Why not just let it go?
    He was right, it would probably be better to do so, but it wasn’t a question of what was best. It was a question of what I had to do.
    I’d mourned Sarah when she’d died, of course, but it was only with Marian’s mother’s letter that tears had come, and now it seemed they would not stop.
    I had to find out what had really happened, and though Hunter was right that I had nothing I could ever report to the police, I knew that Verovkin was in some way connected, was responsible.
    How did I know?
    All I had to do was shut my eyes, and think my way back to a hole in the ground in Paris as the city erupted in jubilation, and there, in that hole, was that man.
    Looking at me.
    And it was that look that told me I was right.
    He had killed Marian.

Chapter 3
     
    At the end of May I managed to get away to Paris for a few days. I had in