57
Four miles away, Jo Soulsby began her Monday morning by scanning the shelves of her local library trying to find a novel she hadn’t yet read. Despite working within a related field, crime fiction was her thing. Opting for Karin Slaughter’s Faithless, a book she’d missed in the Grant County series, she got it stamped and made her way outside into the sunshine. Despite the lovely weather, her mood was grim. Kate Daniels had been on her mind all morning and she wondered what her reaction would be when she confirmed that she was leaving the Murder Investigation Team to take up the job at HMP Northumberland.
Who was she kidding?
Jo knew perfectly well what Kate’s reaction would be: disappointment, frustration, regret – all three.
Take your pick.
As if on cue, her mobile rang.
It wasn’t Kate.
‘Have you told her yet?’ Emily McCann said. ‘Assuming you’ve made up your mind.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Jo said.
‘Told her or made up your mind?’
‘Don’t push it, Em.’ The doors to Jo’s Land Rover clunked open. Climbing in, she placed her book on the passenger seat, steeling herself for an earache from her friend. ‘I’ve been really busy and never got the chance.’
Emily McCann was too astute to buy such a pathetic excuse. ‘You must. You know how she feels about you. If she finds out from someone else, she’ll be completely devastated!’
Jo started the engine. ‘She’s tough. She’ll cope.’
‘You owe her—’
‘I owe her nothing!’
‘OK, OK.’ Emily sighed. ‘But you’re in the wrong and you know it. Why can’t you two kiss and make up and put the past behind you? Life’s too bloody short. I’d give my right arm to have Robert back—’
‘That’s different!’
‘How?’ Emily asked.
‘You were married, for years. He was—’
‘The most amazing person in the world, my soul mate? I seem to remember you describing Kate in exactly those terms not so very long ago. You only get to meet the one once, Jo. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience. Isn’t it time you started acting like grown-ups?’
‘Isn’t it time you stopped pretending it’ll work?’
Jo didn’t mean that. She knew it could work. One word from her and Kate Daniels would succumb to whatever demands she made, including coming out to the whole wide world if she really pushed it, despite what she’d said yesterday. But Jo wasn’t about to ask her to sacrifice her police career, a job she was good at, a job that meant everything to her. It’d always been – and still was – Jo’s contention that Kate would rise through the ranks no matter what her sexual orientation. But she’d got it into her head that the opposite was true. And every time a high-up closet gay was outed by the press and felt compelled to resign from his or her job, it only served to reinforce her perception that ambition and homosexuality were a disastrous combination.
Jo suddenly had that aching feeling, the one she got every time she thought about Kate, the one that began in her chest and worked its way into the pit of her stomach where it ached some more. She didn’t need reminding how good they were together, by Emily McCann or anyone else.
‘Are you angry with me?’ Emily asked.
‘No, Emily. I’m angry with her! I’ve been angry with her for months, so angry I could punch her lights out. She did this to us, not me!’
‘So bite the bullet and put an end to it.’
Jo sighed. Until Kate came along she’d not had much luck in the love department. She’d been married and divorced from a bully who’d since been murdered – caught up in a sinister psychopath’s game of revenge against his mother. Jo had actually been accused of his murder by the force that employed her as a profiler, spending several weeks in custody on remand, only to have the charges withdrawn by the CPS before the case reached court. She had Kate to thank for that.
Another thing to thank her for.
‘Jesus, Em. Why is life always so fucking complicated?’
‘I don’t know, it just is . . .’ Emily’s voice trailed off. ‘Have you actually made a decision about the research project? I need to know one way or the other.’
‘Yes, no . . . not entirely.’
‘You’d be mad not to take it.’
‘I know I would.’ To Jo’s left, the library door opened. A woman wheeling a shopping trolley with the words These wheels emit no CO2 written large across the front emerged into the sunshine glaring at Jo’s four-by-four. Turning off the ignition, Jo looked away. ‘I need time to think it through, Em.’
‘You did apply?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Good . . . then the job’s all yours.’
Torn both ways, Jo leaned her head in her hands, her elbows on the steering wheel. She loved working with the Murder Investigation Team. Hell, she loved working with Kate Daniels. But maybe the time had come to make a clean break of it. Yesterday morning she’d lied to Kate for the very first time, stalling, pretending to have too much on when she’d asked her to help with her current murder incidents.
Nasty cases they were, too.
Out the front windscreen, an elderly couple with cotton-wool hair and wrinkled skin strolled by hand in hand, a young couple following close behind, their arms wrapped around each other. The whole world appeared to be in love. The question Jo was asking herself was: did she want to join them?
‘I’m not taking the job,’ she said.