Author Note: on to Beyond Good and Evil, where I speculate on what we missed leading up to the scene of Laura and Robbie's row in the mortuary… (This chapter now includes two new paragraphs for extra angst near the end.)
Dr. Laura Hobson faked a smile as she left her home and walked to her car. The forced pleasantry was on behalf of uniformed PC Arthur Jones who was standing sentinel in her front yard.
"I don't like it, Robbie," she'd said when he'd rung to explain to her the latest development in the Graham Lawrie debacle. Not only had the forensic laboratory bungled the evidence, but somehow Lawrie had smuggled a mobile phone past the staff at Thamesmarsh mental institution.
"I know, love, but it's procedure. Innocent thought it best after Lawrie sent me that text." See you soon. "Besides, having a copper outside should make you feel safer."
"Oh really? I hope it makes you feel safer, because it seems to have the opposite effect on me!"
Lewis chose his words delicately. "Laura, love, it could be that you're upset because…"
Hobson did not allow him to respond and instead turned the tables back on Lewis. "Because Lawrie is playing a game with you and you are walking right into it! Let's say Lawrie is in cahoots with another killer. You are practically luring him or her to our doorstep by leaving PC Jones there as a tasty little snack."
Lewis sighed. Maybe she was right, but he knew that wasn't the real reason she was so upset about having a police presence at their house. It's because the last time I had uniform positioned outside your home, it didn't do any good. You were kidnapped and buried alive. He thought it, but he didn't dare speak it. "Look, I'll try to get over to see you when I can. We'll talk about it then," he ventured instead.
One of the things that Lewis loved most about Hobson was her resilience. Lewis himself had been known to wallow in the past, but Hobson always moved on. Lewis was beginning to realise, however, that it wasn't merely resilience that drove Hobson; it was denial. Her coping mechanism, as it were, was to pretend that the attack didn't happen, that Ligeia's twins never even existed.
After her Halloween ordeal, she packed her things, sold the house on Valdemar Court and started again. She exuded confidence and never showed Lewis any weakness; she was actually glad that it had been Hathaway who'd held her through the screams and sweats and shakes. She wouldn't want Lewis to see her like that- not so much as a matter of pride, but rather that she didn't want to see his reaction. She'd always been his anchor since Val died, and an anchor must not fail lest a ship- Lewis- might crash headlong at full speed into the harbour or worse- against the rocky coast.
The day of Ligeia's funeral Lewis had taken her to the Trout to 'blow off the cobwebs' but that day had been about mending their friendship rather than lovers bearing their souls. And of course, Hathaway had been along to chaperone.
When they finally became lovers, Lewis and Hobson vowed to cherish each other from that day forward, never looking back at the past. Lewis always thought that had been for his own benefit- to ease the constant reminders of his late wife- but in truth Hobson was just as happy to not dwell on days gone by.
So Lewis never told Hobson how he came to her hospital room and watched over her as she slept, ducking out when the nurse came to check her vital signs for fear that she might awake and be angry to find him there. And Hobson, who had given the inspector a factual account of the events, never let Lewis into her private emotional hell. But the latent trauma was there, nonetheless, and it manifested itself sometimes in odd ways- such as an off-handed remark over a shooting victim.
'You, me, James, a hole in the ground- it's what weekends were made for.'
Whatever he'd done or not done on that Halloween night, Lewis needed Hobson now, and needed to keep her safe. With a heavy heart, Lewis headed off to the mortuary to suggest that Hobson take some time off and hide away for a while. He followed her with his pathetic eyes as she darted from room to room. Hobson was not the damsel in distress and quite resented Lewis coming to her mortuary like an overprotective lover rather than her partner. Though if it seemed that her reaction was exceedingly harsh, it was her compulsive behaviour to deny the very real danger that Lewis sensed around her.
Would it have been different if instead of trying to send her away, he had offered to go with her? Come away with me, Robbie! She wanted to cry out to him, but she knew he would never go. So she too would stay, bringing him coffee at the hospital and checking in on Sergeant Maddox with him. And when it was at last Graham Lawrie's turn to meet his maker, it was all she could do to ask if Lewis was all right.
"I don't know what to feel," he replied before leaving Hobson to attend Lawrie's corpse. Lawrie's own murder with the same weapon did suggest that Lewis had been wrong all along, yet he knew in the depths of his gut that Lawrie was the inciting agent for all this brutality.
In time, Lewis would be proven right. Champagne with Innocent and pints with Hathaway were all very friendly celebrations of a good result. But Lewis always did have a hard time letting go. Though he'd lectured Hathaway many a time about not letting work get to him, this case had been particularly tough on Lewis. He came home late that night and plopped onto the sofa, still mired in the senseless tragedy. Three coppers dead by Lawrie's hand thirteen years ago. Another PC felled by Pamela Carson, and bloody hell, she almost killed Lizzie too. He'd grown rather fond of the sergeant from Leeds.
But there was something more weighing on him- a lugubrious empathy for Nietzsche scholar Brendan Ward, who had been a suspect in the case. Ward's boyfriend was one of the coppers killed by Lawrie, unbeknownst to Dr. Rook, who was Lawrie's psychologist and Ward's colleague. When Rook asked Ward to go to Thamesmarsh, Ward accepted. He would have liked to lash out, to avenge the love of his life, but he was barely able to look Lawrie in the eye.
Lewis remembered himself wanting to beat Simon Monkford to a bloody pulp for driving the car that killed Val. He wanted to give himself over to his wilder demons, to hell with the consequences. Just let go, he thought. Unleash, man. Hathaway will stop me if I go too far… But Simon Monkford was a far cry from the serial killer that was Graham Lawrie. In the end, Lewis did confront Monkford, but he simply told the pathetic weasel that Val deserved better. Alone on the couch, Lewis shivered again.
He would not be alone much longer for Hobson came downstairs, bathrobe tied over her pyjamas. "I thought I heard you come in a half hour ago. Aren't you coming up?" She called from the stairs, but as she approached the couch, she found him with that vacant expression on his face- the one she'd seen all too often over the years. She sighed and sat next to him on the couch, rubbing her hand up and down his leg supportively.
"Night cap? Or as a bed time story I could re-read you some of the more gruesome passages from Graham Lawrie's post-mortem report."
"No. I need to put Graham Lawrie behind me. Help me forget, Laura."
She kissed him on the cheek. "I can do that." She went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of Lewis' favourite biscuits. She set the plate in front of him on the coffee table. As he leaned forward to take one, sprightly Laura wedged herself behind him on the couch and began to massage his shoulders. "While you're gobbling down your biscuits, I shall tell you all about the carrot greens we have sprouting in the garden. And soon we'll need to think about digging up the potatoes too."
He smiled. "Now you're talking. I'm more of a meat and potatoes man, meself."
"We'll have a good crop this year, Robbie." She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, as tightly as she could in a life-affirming embrace.
If Lewis and Hobson were adrift between the two extremes of stubborn memory and oblivion, they found in each other a beacon of hope that reconciled their past, present, and future.