The pool of light from the desk lamp anchors the room, pinning a 2007 autopsy report to the mahogany. Delphine smooths the grain of the paper with a thumb, her unvarnished nails catching on a staple. Eighteen years of Manchester winters have passed outside this flat, but inside, the air is thick with the scent of old ink and the stagnant weight of her brother’s silence. Eighteen years. It is a life sentence for her too, served in the margins of case files and late-night paralegal research.
She reaches for a peppermint, the sharp scent cutting through the dust of the archive folders. Samuel’s face stares back from a blurred visiting-room photo, his smile a ghost of the man who went into HMP Manchester. Every appeal has hit a brick wall of procedural finality. DCI Daley’s original conviction remains a fortress of suppressed evidence and tidy lies, a legacy built on Samuel's back. Delphine stands, her knee clicking in the silence, and moves toward the kitchen to quiet her racing thoughts with a glass of water.
A sharp, metallic rattle echoing from the front door stops her mid-step. The hallway is a narrow throat of shadow, illuminated only by the bleed from the lounge. The brass letterbox in the hallway snaps open, and a thick, unfranked brown envelope begins to slide through the bristles.
