Steve says, quietly and very clearly, ‘Let go of me.’
After a moment I let go of his wrist. I was holding it so hard my fingers are cramped into position. They leave white marks on his skin.
Steve pulls his sleeve down. Then he puts on his coat, picks up his mug books and walks out.
A couple of the floaters lift their heads to watch him go and glance across at me, half curious. I give them a blank stare back and listen to the blood banging at my eardrums. As far as I can tell, I don’t have a partner any more. It feels like everything in the room is jumping and jabbering and mocking me, tiny tinny chants of ha ha ha, because I should have seen this coming all along.
I put my head down and flip paper without seeing it. Words pop out of the blur at random – inconsistent, sample, between – and vanish back into it before I can figure out what they’re for. The room reeks of cleaning fluid, rancid cigarette smoke off someone’s coat, half-eaten apple left to rot overnight.
It doesn’t hit me all at once. It comes like the slow cold of an IV crawling up a vein.
Steve, pushing from the start for us to gallop off chasing a nonexistent gang angle that could have cost me the case and turned me into a laughing-stock. Steve, who loves to be liked and is longing to belong in Murder, and who could have both in a heartbeat if only I was out of the way. Steve, in the car on the way to the scene, asking if I was going to take up my mate on the offer of the security job.
Steve, wandering off on his own into Aislinn Murray’s kitchen, where he could have texted Creepy Crowley anything he wanted to.
There are stories about Steve. Small stuff, from years back, but people remember. Way back when we were in training college, I heard things: Steve writing half the essays for some inspector’s kid, brown-nosing for good postings down the line. I put most of it down to the farm boys pouting about being beaten by a Dub one step from a skanger, and I didn’t know Steve well enough to care either way. But then, when we were working that first case together, I heard more. Steve screwing over the lead D on a case so he could put some shiny stuff on his own CV, earn himself a payback favour or two, haul himself out of the floater pool into a squad. The guy who told me had an agenda of his own; I took a chance, ignored him and trusted Steve. I was right, that time.
That time, Steve had plenty to gain by sticking with me. He was looking for a way into Murder, starting to panic he was never going to find one. One day of working together, and I found it for him.
We felt right together, I thought. I liked the way, when one of us knocked down the other’s idea, it always led into a new one, not a dead end. I liked how we were starting to know, without thinking, how to balance each other: what angle the other one would take in an interview, when I needed to ease back and let Steve do the work, when to come in and change the note. I liked the way he called me on my crap, not because his ego was tangled in his undies but because the crap was getting in our way. I liked the laughs. Once or twice – more – I caught myself daydreaming like a sappy teenager about our future together: about someday when we would get the decent cases, the genius plans we’d dream up to trap the cunning psychos, the interrogations that would go down in squad history. Big tough Conway going all misty-eyed; how the lads would have laughed.
I was a pushover. By the time I met Steve, Murder had already given me a good going-over; all it took was one bite of comfort, one scrap of loyalty, and I turned sloppy with relief, falling over myself to get Steve onto the squad. Of course working with him felt good; he had every reason to make sure it did. I knew Steve was the king of bending himself into whatever shape you want to see, I watched him do it every day, but I somehow convinced myself that this was different. I make myself want to puke.
He’s got nothing left to gain by sticking with me, not now, and plenty to lose. Keyboards yammering, wind banging the window back and forth in its frame. Every pore in my body is prickling. When I run my hands over my head, my hair doesn’t feel like mine.
I can’t think. I can’t tell if this is batshit paranoia or the bleeding obvious slapping me in the face. Two years of watching my back, watching every step and every word, in fight mode all day every day: my instincts are fried to smoking wisps. For a second I actually try to think of someone I could phone, ask what they think; but even if I wanted to do it, which I don’t, the option isn’t there. Sophie, Gary, Fleas: everyone I think of feels slippery and double, a picture flickering faster than my eyes can focus.
Reilly says something, and him and Stanton burst out laughing, big raw shouts like the lead-up to an attack. I can’t stay in this room any longer. I try Lucy’s mobile: switched off. I rake through paper till I find the contact info for two of Aislinn’s exes – no one’s tracked down the Spanish-student summer fling yet – and shove it in my pocket. Then I put on my coat and leave.
Chapter 11