by Val McDermid
He opened the door and Flash was at his side in an instant, weaving round his legs. Not dog-walking, then.
She wasn’t working either. At the far end of the barn, Carol was sitting on a sawhorse, her arms wrapped around her body, her shoulders hunched. Even from that distance, he could see that she was shivering even though a couple of big space heaters made the barn a tolerable temperature. Tony took his time walking towards her, trying not to show the level of his concern. The last thing she needed right now was the emotional complication of his feelings for her spilling out all over the place.
As he drew nearer, he could see a sheen of greasy sweat on her face. She tried visibly to get hold of herself and stop shaking. But her body betrayed her, trembling like a beaten dog. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her. They’d avoided any physical contact for a long time, both nervous of where it might take them. The intimacy that had once been second nature to them had been shattered by Michael and Lucy’s death and since then they’d been like a country riven by a civil war whose opposing sides don’t know how to rebuild diplomatic relations. Feeling her warmth against him after all this time filled him with a nostalgic sadness. He wished the embrace came from wanting, not needing that physical contact.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
‘This’ll pass,’ he said. He could feel the tremors passing from her body through his, smell the sharp acidity of her sweat. ‘Do you feel like going for a walk? The fresh air might help.’
Carol leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘It can’t be any worse than this. Give me a minute.’ She closed her eyes and shuddered. Then she pulled a grimy rag from her pocket and wiped her face. She managed a weak smile. ‘My mother would have a fit if she could see what I’ve become.’
Tony gave a strangled laugh. ‘That’s nothing to what my mother would say.’
Carol squeezed out a weak chuckle. ‘She never liked me.’ She forced herself to her feet, slightly unsteady. ‘Come on, then, if you’re coming. I warn you, though, that moor isn’t for the faint-hearted.’
He gave her a lopsided smile. ‘After this morning, you think I’m faint-hearted?’
15
Stacey bustled back into the bedroom with the coffee, so excited that she was virtually unmoved by Sam’s naked display. ‘You’re never going to believe this,’ she said, putting both coffees down, slipping out of her silk wrap and sliding back into bed alongside him.
‘Are you going off me?’ he teased, reaching over and pulling her into his arms. She could feel him stiffening against her thigh but right then, that wasn’t the only thing on her mind.
‘Don’t be silly. But this is totally shocking.’ She kissed him lightly on the nose. ‘Pay attention for a minute, Sam. Really. You won’t regret it. I’ll still be here.’ She squirmed away from him and reached for the tablet she kept by the bed. Her fingers danced over the screen till she found the alert that had stopped her in her tracks in the kitchen. ‘Look at this.’
Sighing, Sam propped himself up on one elbow. ‘I can’t believe there’s anything more exciting than what my cock has planned for you. OK, let me see it.’ He held out his hand like a banqueting Roman expecting the sweetmeats.
Stacey flicked his shoulder with her fingertips. There was a primness to her that would never enjoy his occasional vulgarity. There was no need, in her world, for crudeness of behaviour or speech. ‘You don’t deserve me.’ He poked his tongue out at her and she passed the tablet to him.
For a moment, he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. It was a computerised custody record from West Yorkshire Police, that much was obvious. Halifax cop shop. Drink driving. Why was Stacey so excited about a drink-driving arrest?
Then he saw the name and whistled softly. ‘Carol fucking Jordan.’ He checked the date and time. ‘This only happened last night. How the fuck do you get this stuff?’
Stacey shrugged, trying to look modest but failing. And why should she try? She was proud of her skills. She was, however, dimly aware that not everyone appreciated her sticky fingers all over their personal stuff. ‘It’s easy. I set up an alert on my system to trawl all my database access for any mentions of people or things I’m interested in.’
‘And Carol Jordan is one of those?’ Sam shuffled up the bed and reached past Stacey for coffee.
‘I put an alert on her when I first started working for the MIT. It seemed… sensible?’
‘To spy on your boss?’ He giggled. ‘That’s brilliant. No wonder you’re always one step ahead of the game. Can you do the same for my boss? I know next to nothing about the bastard. And knowledge is power.’
Stacey pretended to frown. ‘And would you use your power for good or evil, Sam?’
He laughed and kissed her. ‘I’d use it for us, sweetheart.’ He looked back at the tablet. ‘That is fucking amazing. I knew she was drinking. I told Blake about it but he could never nail her.’
Stacey was shocked. ‘You told Blake the boss was drinking? Why would you do that?’
He gave her an innocent look. ‘Because I care about the job, of course. I didn’t want us to lose cases because she’d had one too many vodkas. She was my boss, not my friend, Stacey.’
Stacey was taken aback. ‘But she was a good boss, Sam. The best I’ve ever had. The work was interesting, she treated us fairly and she always fought our corner with Blake. Why would you go behind her back to the very person who was trying to destroy her?’ She desperately wanted him to come up with a valid reason; this early in their relationship, she couldn’t bear the thought that he might be less than she believed him to be.
He handed her back the tablet. ‘You make it sound much more melodramatic than it was. Like I said, justice came first. Plus I wanted to make sure Blake knew which side I was on when the chips were down.’ He reached an arm round Stacey and tried to pull her down on to him.
Stacey was struggling to make sense of her feelings. Carol Jordan had been the perfect boss as far as she was concerned. She hadn’t cared what Stacey did or where she sneaked in, as long as she delivered what the team needed when people’s lives were at stake. Carol had plucked her out of a pretty dull job and offered her the chance to make a difference, and she’d appreciated Stacey’s talent in a way that no other senior officer had before or since. Stacey suspected it was because Carol’s brother had been a geek too, that that had given her an insight into the world Stacey inhabited for most of her waking hours.
But Sam was the man she loved, the man she’d lusted after and longed for since the first day he’d walked into the MIT squad room and looked around with those assessing brown eyes that seemed to see inside her head and her heart. It had taken her a long time to admit even to herself what she felt, and it had been Paula who had finally pushed her into making her feelings known. Stacey still couldn’t quite believe he’d chosen her, and she wasn’t secure enough in his love to challenge him. Part of her despised herself for not sticking up for Carol the way Carol had always stuck up for her officers. ‘But she was always on our side,’ was all she said.
Sam nuzzled her shoulder, his mouth moving down towards her breast. ‘Never mind Carol Jordan,’ he said. ‘We’ve got better things to occupy us now.’
And so Stacey let herself succumb to his seduction, entirely unaware that with part of his mind, her lover was calculating whether there was any way he could use this new information to his advantage. When she’d said he didn’t deserve her, Stacey had been more right than she knew.
16
Metal ground against metal as Tony crashed the gears of the Land Rover. ‘I am going to want to drive this again one day,’ Carol grumbled.
‘It’s been a while since I drove anything so primitive.’
She snorted. ‘You’re not exactly Jeremy Clarkson when it comes to wheels.’
Tony winced. ‘For which we should both be grateful. My Volvo might be close to clapped-out but at least it was built after synchromesh was invented.’ The easy bante
r as they drove up the moor edge towards the Bradfield road was a welcome relief to Tony after the fraught and sometimes tetchy evening they’d spent after their walk up the hill behind the barn. He’d feared she was going to lose her temper, but he’d held back before he pushed her that far.
And this morning, Carol seemed calmer. They’d sat at the kitchen table, Flash at her feet, and managed to talk without scoring too many points or scratching too many scabs. He’d broken the silence with a question he hoped she wouldn’t take as a challenge. ‘What do you normally do in the evenings?’
She’d raised her head and pushed back the thick curtain of silvering blonde hair from her forehead. ‘When I’m too tired to work any longer, I watch TV. Anything except crime dramas, which means I sometimes end up watching very bizarre documentaries on Channel 4.’ This last with a wry smile.
‘Maybe it’s time you started gaming?’
She gave a shout of derision. ‘What? Pretend I’m Lara Croft, like you do? Run about the landscape with improbable tits, killing people?’
‘You know better than to give a cheap answer like that. The kind of games I play involve strategic thinking, quick reactions, forward planning. They’re heuristic. You learn from your mistakes and develop alternative approaches to problems.’
Carol hooted with laughter. ‘And that’s your justification for hours in front of a screen acting like one of the crazies you spend the rest of your waking life treating?’
Tony shook his head. ‘It’s the truth. It takes my conscious mind off the crazies. And it frees up my subconscious mind to solve the problems the crazies set me.’
‘And you think that would help me how?’ Her grey-blue eyes sparkled, blazing a dare at him. She took a defiant swig of the coffee that was the sum total of her breakfast that morning.
Deep breath. Hard talk. ‘I think it might give you space to work out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Sooner or later you’re going to run out of barn to renovate and then you’re going to have to make some choices. I know you, Carol. You’re not going to settle for burying yourself away here in the middle of nowhere, walking the dog and joining the WI and watching bad TV.’
She looked away from his direct gaze. ‘And you think Grand Theft Auto will fill the gap?’
‘It’ll take your mind off the gap till you know what’s going to fill it. I need to go into Bradfield today. I’ve used up the clean pants in my emergency overnight bag and I need to go in to Bradfield Moor to make arrangements for other therapists to pick up the slack for me for the rest of the week. I thought I’d grab my —’
‘The rest of the week?’ Carol cut across him, a mixture of outrage and surprise on her face. ‘Who the fuck asked you to move in?’
This was where he would normally have stepped sideways to avoid a direct confrontation. He’d spent years avoiding head-on collisions with her. Partly because professionally he didn’t believe in warfare as a means to lasting peace. But mostly because he hated the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that came hand in hand with fighting Carol. Today, though, he knew there was no escape. ‘You need me, Carol.’
‘Fuck you, Tony. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.’ She scraped her chair noisily on the floor as she pushed it back. The dog jumped to her feet, ears pricked, sensing trouble. Carol waved an arm expansively around her. ‘Take a look around you. I’m managing fine by myself.’
‘No, you’re not. You keep telling yourself that, but it doesn’t make it true. You’re hurting and you need healing. You need help, Carol. You need help from somebody who believes you deserve to be helped. And I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here for as long as it takes.’
He saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes as she turned away. ‘Christ. Am I to have no peace ever again?’
‘If you genuinely want me to leave, I will. But I won’t come back again.’
‘And then who would you bug the hell out of? Face it, Tony. If I’m Billy No Mates, like you said yesterday, then so are you. You need me so you can feel needed. Well, I’ve been getting along without you very well lately. I can do that again.’
Then, uncharacteristically, he’d raised his voice. ‘Will you stop this? I’m tired of fighting with you. All these years, every time we get close, we let something come between us and one of us lashes out or walks away. I’m sick and tired of it, Carol. I want us to be at peace with each other. You’re right. Neither of us has anyone else who even comes close to the way we understand each other. You can’t manage without me and I can’t manage without you.’ He punched one fist into the other palm. ‘Just. Please. Stop it.’
Carol reached out blindly to Flash, who laid her head on her mistress’s lap. She fondled the dog’s soft ears, buying herself time. When she could trust her voice, she said at last, ‘If we’re going to Bradfield, we’d better go via the builder’s yard and the bed shop, then. I’ve got a spare set of keys for the Landie and we can swing by Halifax nick and pick up the other set if we’ve got time.’
And that was that. As settled as anything could be between them.
As they crested the moor, he took his second gamble of the morning. ‘By the way, I’ve arranged for us to meet Paula for a coffee,’ he said.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Carol muttered. ‘More humiliation.’
‘You don’t have to tell her if you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘But she might already know.’
‘She’ll know. The thin blue grapevine will have been working overtime.’
‘Whether she knows or not, she’s not going to judge you. Not Paula. But that’s not why I want to see her.’
Carol swivelled in her seat, her curiosity piqued. ‘Why, then? What are you up to?’
‘There’s something bugging me about Jasmine Burton’s suicide. And because of that, I want to know more about Kate Rawlins too.’
Carol’s mouth lifted at one corner in a crooked smile. ‘You’re still suborning Paula to do your heavy lifting, then?’
‘I’d do it myself if I could, but she’s the one with her hands on the levers. And she keeps in touch with Stacey, who isn’t averse to doing foreigners for an old friend either.’
‘One of these days you’re going to land her right in the shit. And she won’t have me to pull her out of it next time.’
Tony gave a wry laugh. ‘That’s not fair. Paula and I have been a good team in the past. If it hadn’t been for her going the extra mile and dragging you out from under your stone, I might be languishing in prison right now.’
Carol’s look was sour. ‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’
‘It is from where I’m standing. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to see what she can find out. It might keep us amused, you and me.’
‘What? A fake investigation? You think that’s what I need at this point in my life?’
He’d shrugged. ‘It might not be fake. Depending on what Paula turns up. Come on, Carol. I know you’ve developed lots of new skills lately but you’ve got a bunch of existing ones that need a bit of exercise too.’
She’d groaned. ‘Enough. So before we even spoke this morning, you were expecting me to come into Bradfield with you? What? You don’t trust me alone? You think as soon as you were out the door I’d be calling George Nicholas to fetch me a bottle of vodka?’
Tony tried to look hurt. ‘It never crossed my mind,’ he lied. ‘I merely thought you might appreciate a change of scenery. And somebody else’s company apart from mine.’
Carol muttered something under her breath but let it lie. He was, he thought, making some progress, even if he felt as if his skin was being flayed from his body with every step forward. He kept reminding himself of what he knew in his heart. Nobody was worth it more than Carol Jordan.
17
Paula brushed her teeth in the locker room, trying to rid her mouth of the taste of the office brew. If she was going to a proper coffee shop, she wanted to taste what she was drinking. Back in the days of the MIT, they’d had proper coffee, b
eans freshly ground, sometimes brought back from artisan roasters by whoever had been out on the prowl. Her new team was led by a DCI who was clinging to her job by her French-manicured fingernails and who drank Yorkshire tea so strong it would have defeated builders. DCI Fielding and Paula had got off on the wrong foot when Fielding had arrested Tony on suspicion of murder, only to be proved spectacularly wrong by Paula, with more than a little help from Carol. In spite of the humiliation, Fielding had kept her job. But she’d made sure ever since that Paula’s life was as uncomfortable as it could be. Yet another reason to mourn the passing of the best squad she’d ever worked with.
When Tony had texted her the night before, Paula had startled Elinor by squealing with delight at the prospect of seeing him and Carol at the same table, actually talking to each other. There were few things more painful than watching two people who clearly loved each other tearing that connection apart. For anyone who cared anything for Tony or Carol, the past year had been purgatorial. She couldn’t help wondering what had brought them back to this point.
The question had been answered as soon as she’d walked into the CID office that morning. She hadn’t even got her coat off when DCI Fielding had appeared in her office doorway. ‘Did you hear about Carol Jordan?’ she said, unable to hide the feline smile twitching the corners of her mouth.
‘What about her?’ Paula had turned away under cover of hanging up her jacket. She wasn’t about to give Fielding the satisfaction of seeing her reaction to whatever piece of bad news she was clearly on the point of dishing out.