by Sophie Lark
“Still, remember what I said. If you need help with rent—”
“I’m fine,” Violet assured him. “I mean, I detest my roommate, but I haven’t murdered her yet.”
“It’s alright if you do,” Black said. “I’m not a cop anymore.”
“You wouldn’t ever go back to the Met?” Violet asked. “Like Emerson said?”
“I don’t know,” Black said. “I don’t know what I want to do at the moment.”
“It’s not because of Lex, is it?” Violet asked tentatively.
“No,” Black assured her. “That’s all over with.”
“Good,” Violet said, taking a sip of her drink. “I know she was gorgeous and all that, but honestly, I never thought she was right for you.”
“Oh yeah?” Black said. “Why is that?”
“I just think you deserve someone who’s head over heels, crazy obsessed, completely in love with you. And isn’t afraid to say it.”
“You watch too many movies,” Black said, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t,” Violet said, stubbornly. “That’s a real thing. You’ll find it eventually.”
“How would you know?” Black teased her. “I’ve never seen you keep a boyfriend longer than a month.”
“Because I’m waiting for the right person,” Violet said, tilting her chin up defiantly. “I’m just having a little fun in the meantime.”
“Great,” Black said. “Well, maybe that’s what I’ll do, too. I haven’t had fun in a while.”
“Wedding receptions are the perfect place for that,” Violet said. “All those depressed, lonely women…I think I saw five or six in the bridal party who couldn’t keep their eyes off you.”
“Oh, come off it.”
“A roll in the hay with the famous detective…what a treat for them. They could text all their girlfriends afterward.”
“Tempting. But I don’t think Andrea would like that.”
“Well, to be fair, she did shag your friend first.”
They finished up their drinks and headed over to the reception center.
Located on the upper floor of a skyscraper, it offered a stunning view of the London Eye, the Thames, and the city lights spread out below. The interior ceiling was likewise strung with soft golden lights, as well as swaths of diaphanous fabric.
Andrea looked like Princess Grace, swirling around the dance floor with Emerson. Even Emerson might have been mistaken for a prince, if he would stop grinning for a moment.
Black recognized a few childhood friends of Andrea’s, but most of the people they’d grown up with hadn’t come to a good end. They’d been raised in council housing, in one of the largest and dreariest estates in south London. It was like its own little city, with ten thousand residents in its five enormous concrete buildings.
Black had lived there during the 80s and 90s, during the peak of crime and general wretchedness in that area. Later, when he’d been about to graduate high school and move out, the estate had been visited by the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair. He had rolled up in his limousine and taken a tour of the place, as if he were concerned about the people. But really, he had wanted to use them as part of his first speech while in office, to push his social agenda.
Some of the residents had been proud and grateful that he’d come out to see them. Black had felt humiliated, like an animal in a zoo. See the poor of London: what should be done about them?
Black had always disliked politicians. He’d seen too much of them in his time trying to climb the ranks of the Metropolitan Police. Scotland Yard worked closely with the mayor’s office, and it had always bothered Black how much their actions were dictated by political expediency. The mayor’s office controlled the police budget, and the police unions represented a large voting bloc. It was all a game, complicated and ugly.
Seeing Andrea’s friends now, twenty years older, was bringing back a flood of memories, which he’d hardly kept at bay since returning to London.
He remembered the smell in their council flat when it would rain, and the water would leak through the roof to soak their dingy carpeting. He remembered the yells of the squatters who moved into the stairwells and the storage unit right outside their flat. He remembered how they had to keep all their food in the fridge, even things like crackers or bread, because of the infestations of cockroaches and rats.
Yet, there had been a strong sense of community there, too. People trading babysitting during alternate shifts, for those who worked days vs nights. Bringing home extra milk for a neighbor’s child. Even barbecues in the open grassy commons sometimes.
It wasn’t all bad. Black knew some of Andrea’s friends remembered the place fondly. Maybe he only hated it because his memories were suffused with such a sense of shame and inferiority.
Anyway, it was a foolish thing to think about at a wedding. He should just enjoy how beautiful his sister looked, and how excited. He listened to the toast Emerson gave, where he recounted how many times he had to beg and nag Andrea before she agreed to go on a date with him. Black cheered at all the appropriate parts, then raised his glass in a toast to the happy couple.
He had always felt highly protective of his sisters—especially Violet, who was so much younger than him. From the first job he got at the age of fourteen, he’d tried to help them any way he could, buying them shoes and school supplies, paying his mother’s bills directly because she couldn’t be trusted with cash.
He was glad to see the girls so safe and secure now. Andrea had a solid career and a loving husband. While Emerson might not be a genius, he was a good man who knew he was marrying up. Violet was a little less settled, but she seemed happy too, as far as Black could tell.
As he thought this, a voice said at his elbow, “I kept hoping you’d ask me to dance, but it seems like I’ll have to be the one to do it.”
Black turned to see who had spoken.
He saw a tall, slim woman with bright auburn hair, sea-green eyes, and a saucy smile.
“Do I know you?” he said.
“Byron!” she cried. “You can’t be serious.”
He looked closer, at the pert nose, the slightly crooked smile.
“Holly Summers,” he said in astonishment.
When he’d seen her last, she’d been skinny and gangly in the extreme, with thick glasses and braces. He couldn’t believe that this sleek goddess standing before him could be the same woman.
Holly had lived across the hallway in the council flats. She was just a little younger than Andrea and had attended the same primary school as the rest of them.
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that you didn’t recognize me,” she laughed.
“Oh, I didn’t—you’re not—it’s just been a long time,” Black stammered.
“I know I’ve changed a lot,” Holly said, looking him up and down in his dark suit, “but so have you.”
Black laughed, uncomfortably. It had been a long time since he’d felt nervous around a woman. He didn’t know why it was happening now. Maybe because it was so odd to see someone so unrecognizable.
“So, will you?” Holly asked.
“Will I what?”
“Dance with me?”
“All right,” Black said.
She took his arm and pulled him out onto the dance floor. It was a slow song, thankfully, so Black didn’t have to do much besides take her hand and rest his other hand on her waist.
She was wearing a dark green dress that made her hair look bright as beaten copper in the warm light. He liked how tall she was, so he could look into her face, instead of down on the top of her head. That didn’t happen very often, except with his sisters.
“I saw you. In the news,” Holly said.
“Oh, that,” Black said, not particularly excited to talk about it.
He’d become mildly famous for a time, recovering all that stolen art. It had only taken him a couple of weeks to become heartily sick of hearing about it.
He expected her to ask a hundred questi
ons or make a joke. “Did you keep anything for yourself?” was the one he heard most often.
However, Holly only said, “Your sisters must be so happy to have you back.”
“For now,” Black said. “I’m sure they’ll be sick of me again before long. What are you doing these days?”
“I’m working on a political campaign, actually,” Holly said, “for Tom Morris.”
Black felt a little clench in his stomach.
“He’s quite the rising star,” he said.
“It’s very exciting working with him. He’s ambitious and idealistic. I think there’s no ceiling to how far he could go.”
Black nodded.
It wasn’t hyperbole. Morris was popular on an unprecedented scale. Though he was only twenty-six years old, he had over twelve million Twitter followers, and was one of the most recognizable faces in British politics. He was a master of social media, live-blogging nearly every part of his day on a constant basis. Black supposed that was the new wave of politics, but he wasn’t sure if it was an improvement.
“You know him,” Holly said.
“I wouldn’t say I know him, exactly,” Black replied.
More memories flashed though his mind. A boy’s skinny white arms, frantically reaching back for his mother. A pale face, coated with gray dust.
“He hasn’t forgotten you,” Holly said.
Black had stopped dancing. He stood still on the floor, looking down at Holly.
“Why do I get the feeling you came here tonight for a reason?” Black said.
“It’s nothing nefarious,” Holly assured him. “We just want to offer you a job.”
Black sighed. Why was everyone so concerned with his employment situation?
“What kind of job?” he said.
“Security. Tom’s politics are progressive. He’s been targeted by a variety of groups.”
“That’s not really what I do,” Black said.
“He asked for you, specifically. I told him we were old friends.”
“I’m not interested,” Black said, bluntly.
Holly shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “You should at least come meet with him, though. He’s very persuasive.”
She gave Black her card, with her office number, and her personal cell.
“Or, you could just call me for an actual date,” she said.
Smiling back over her shoulder at him, she left him standing alone on the dance floor.
2
Black woke early the next morning, in the clean, empty flat he’d recently purchased in Covent Garden. He hadn’t gotten any furniture yet, so he’d been drinking his coffee while sitting on an overturned crate at a wobbly table he’d found abandoned out on the curb.
It was an arrangement that had horrified Andrea and delighted Violet when they came to see his place.
“Why do you two always insist on living like starving artists?” Andrea said.
“I am a starving artist,” Violet said. “He’s just doing it for fun.”
“I’m busy,” Black said, “and I don’t like shopping.”
“You’re not busy,” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. “You’re unemployed. You probably don’t have a single thing you have to do today.”
She opened his kitchen cabinets one after another, in disgust.
“Look, you don’t even have plates.”
“Amazingly enough, when you order your food at the hundreds of restaurants around here, it comes on its very own plate,” Black said.
Andrea had embraced order and stability, as a reaction to their chaotic upbringing. She had always been that way, even as a child—doing her best to keep her one, tiny corner of their apartment clean and organized, always hand-washing and drying her own school clothes, which were always in plain shades of navy, gray, and tan so it wouldn’t be as obvious how few outfits she actually owned.
Violet, by contrast, had always been a dreamer. She used to say to Black, “Imagine if we won the lottery! Imagine if we found out our real dad was a billionaire! Imagine if we all started a band and became more famous than the Beatles.”
Black had been more like Andrea, at first—practical, ambitious. He had joined the police force because it had been a place where he could climb the ranks of a regimented ladder. If he did everything right, his progress seemed assured.
And it had worked, for a while. He had networked and put in the hours. He had been promoted again and again. His future had been bright.
Then Lex Moore had blown into his life like a hurricane. He’d thought he was dating a gorgeous and educated woman who was out of his league. He had no idea he was falling in love with an international art thief.
When Lex stole a clutch of diamonds from the Home Secretary, after Black walked her right into the house, he’d lost his job and his entire sense of himself. Playing by the rules hadn’t kept him safe. And he wasn’t much of a detective, either, failing to notice that women he slept next to every night had been lying to him for months.
So then, he’d swung in the polar opposite direction: he gave up everything he knew to chase Lex across the continent. He allowed himself to become completely fixated on her.
But once he found her, that brought him no happiness either. She was already in love with someone else.
So, it seemed the life of the irresponsible romantic wasn’t for him, either.
Now he was back in London, perhaps to pursue some kind of middle ground between the ideologies of his two sisters.
He had chosen Covent Gardens as his neighborhood, perhaps hoping that the cheerful, crowded, bohemian atmosphere would help lighten his mood. He hadn’t wanted a stuffy and refined neighborhood, but neither had he wanted to live in seedy squalor.
Covent Gardens seemed a blend of all things—boutique and craft stores, narrow streets and large, open markets, dozens of cafes and restaurants so he never had to cook. Grim old warehouses transformed into trendy flats and shops. The old Royal Opera House, now modernized.
Black didn’t have the budget for a view of the Thames, but he could jog down to the riverside walkway easily enough. That’s what he did now, after putting on shorts and trainers.
He ran along the walkway, all the way down to Blackfriars Bridge. There he crossed the bridge into Southwark, his old neighborhood.
Southwark was as unrecognizable as Holly Summers these days. Black knew it was considered a neighborhood for foodies now, including the famous Borough Market, as well as dozens of fancy restaurants. What had been a ghostland during the urban flight of the 60s and 70s, and then a hotbed of drug crime in the 80s, was now one of the fastest gentrifying parts of London.
He didn’t bother looking around for the old council estate where he had spent his childhood and teen years—he knew it had been torn down in 2005, making space for “urban redevelopment” projects.
His mother had been one of the thousands of people displaced by the loss of the council housing. She’d been given a temporary apartment, in a far-flung suburb, but she hated it there. She died two years later of a hepatitis infection. She was only fifty-four.
She had always looked much older than her actual age. Black remembered finding a photograph in her room of a beautiful blonde teenager and thinking it must be Violet. But it had been his mother, only a few years before she fell pregnant with Black himself.
She’d been sitting on a railing, eating an ice cream cone, the sun shining down through her hair. It had sickened Black, seeing how bright and open her expression was, so very like Violet’s. The idea that Violet might ever turn out to be a wretched old woman with a smoker’s rasp, thinning hair, and half her teeth missing, made Black feel panicked and rageful.
Anyway, she was gone now, and they assumed their father was dead as well. At least, their mother had never been able to find him to get any child support out of him.
They had only their mother’s word that he actually was the father to all three children. There had certainly been other boyfriends between Andrea an
d Violet. None of the Black children had ever wanted to test, to be certain. They didn’t care if they were full or half-siblings.
Black kept running, allowing all these thoughts to cycle through his head. It was a way of exorcising the negative emotions attached to his memories. By sweating and sprinting through the worst of them, he made himself too exhausted to feel the stress and bitterness associated with his childhood.
After a good hour’s run, Black looped back toward his flat, where he could take a hot shower, change his clothes, and then find somewhere to eat his lunch.
It was such a sunny day that Black sat down at one of the open-air cafes, ordering a steak sandwich and chips, along with a pint of dark stout. The Germans had it right, drinking beer outdoors instead of in dingy pubs.
As he ate, Black scrolled through the news alerts on his phone.
Oil Spill in the Bahamas.
‘Joker’ Wins Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Four Missing on Capsized Cargo Ship.
Amber Rudd Resigns over Boris Johnson’s Brexit Plan.
And then, this caught his eye:
Staffer Loses Three Fingers from Package Bomb Addressed to Tom Morris.
Black scanned down the article.
A receptionist is in hospital after opening a suspicious package addressed to MP Tom Morris. The package contained a pipe bomb, which exploded upon opening. It bore no return address or postage mark, having been placed in a stack of parcels and mail at Westminster Palace. The staffer, Melanie Hodgkins, had only been working for Morris’ office for two months. Hodgkins suffered burns to her face and arms, and surgeons were unable to save three fingers on her right hand.
Black put down his pint.
The description of the package bomb was eerily similar to those that had been sent to The Telegraph by the domestic terrorists known as the Citizens, in the early days of his career with the police force.
Black had thought, at the time, that The Telegraph had been targeted because they were one of the first papers to make the switch to a digital model for news, as traditional printed newspapers were beginning to wane in popularity.
Holly had said that Tom Morris was receiving threats—not uncommon for a politician. She hadn’t mentioned who those threats had been from.