Except he didn’t, because though he felt the surge of his muscles, something had clamped round him, holding arms and legs as though they were glued down, giving his limbs the leaden feel of a nightmare. He strained uselessly, with a rising sense of terrified helplessness, but his efforts made no difference at all.
“No, you stay there, Constable Marshall.” Day walked round the desk. “Well, I say Marshall. Joss was quite startled when he found this picture, so we sent someone down to Hertfordshire with it. Is this Constable Marshall, she asked them. In fact, she asked Constable Marshall himself, it turned out. That didn’t go down well. I don’t think he was very happy to learn you were using his name.” He hopped up to perch on the edge of the desk. “You’re Benedict Spenser. There’s a name to conjure with, having read Pastern’s file.”
Ben pushed back against the invisible bonds, to no effect. He couldn’t move and, he realised, he couldn’t speak. He was trapped like a fly on flypaper. His heart was pounding with a hollow thump, lungs tight with fear.
Day went on, thoughtfully. “Benedict Spenser. Constable Spenser, before your dismissal from the force. The man who was living with Jonah Pastern.”
“As man and wife,” Janossi put in derisively.
“I’m speaking, Joss.” Day’s voice was quite calm, but Janossi’s mouth clamped shut. “The man who helped Pastern escape arrest. The man Pastern left behind to suffer in his place. How was that for you?” He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Jonah Pastern’s lover, abandoned to his own cost, then preserved at the cost of four other lives. Lives of actual policemen, Mr. Spenser, not corrupt, dishonourably discharged ones who associate with felons. And here you are now, wasting our time, making a mock of us. I don’t like any of those things.” He leaned forward. “I’m not inclined to like you.”
It was quite mutual. Ben stared at the glowing gold eyes of the frightening little man opposite him. He couldn’t move, and he could barely think for all he’d been told.
Jonah. Him. His picture.
Dear God, had he truly meant it? If Jonah had loved him, if he had done all these terrible things to protect him…
If Jonah had let four men die for him. Oh, sweet Jesus, no.
Day was looking at him, expression quizzical. “It’s an odd thing, you turning up here. We couldn’t decide if you were trying to pick up your partner in crime after you’d got out, or if you were the spurned lover coming for revenge. That became more obvious after the other night. You may not know this, and Pastern certainly doesn’t, but we expect practitioners to behave with a certain discretion in public. A little restraint. Not windwalking out of a whorehouse window. Really, ex-Constable? The joys of reunion, and you have to make a spectacle of yourselves and rub the Met’s noses in Jonah blasted Pastern’s existence, again?”
“Typical mary-anns,” Janossi said, coming in hard and scornful. “No self-control.”
Day paused, just a fraction of a second. “Am I keeping you from your work, Joss?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m sure you must have some paperwork to do.”
“Well, yes, but this is my office,” Janossi pointed out with a grin. “It’s all in here.”
“So go and do something that isn’t paperwork, somewhere else.” Day’s tone remained pleasant, but Janossi opened his mouth, shut it, and left without a word.
Day looked after him until the door shut, and turned back to Ben. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do now, Mr. Spenser?”
Ben stared back at him, unable to respond. Day raised a brow, then said, “Oh, yes, I beg your pardon,” and quite suddenly the force that clamped Ben’s jaw and throat was no longer there.
He took a gasping breath and a moment to steady himself before replying, “I have no idea.”
“You’re well out of your depth, aren’t you? I don’t suppose your last time in gaol was very pleasant, and believe me, it will be a great deal worse in London. Bad enough if it’s for gross indecency, but if you’re also there for aiding and abetting a murderer—”
“I knew nothing of the murders before you told me,” Ben said urgently. “Nothing.”
Day sighed. “I’m inclined to believe you, as it happens. But the Met may not. They need a scapegoat of some kind, and everyone else is dead. And you did let him go.”
“He got away,” Ben insisted. “He tricked me.”
Day made a face. “He used you, fooled you, left you to face the music, you did the hard time, and now you’re chasing after him. Why is that?”
“I…” Ben didn’t know, couldn’t say any more. That brief, vengeful fuck, and the rooftop escape, and the picture that stared up at him from the desk…
“He’s not an evil man, unfortunately,” Day observed.