‘Is that you or me?’ Ferreira asked, not enough energy to lift her head from the pillow and check the source of the ringing.
A warm hand curled around her middle and cupped her breast. ‘I think it’s you.’
‘It sounds like mine.’
‘It’s on your side.’
‘Must be then.’ She reached out blindly and patted the table, brushing a condom wrapper onto the floor, finding her lip balm and a handful of change, and finally came up with the phone, swiped her thumb across the screen to answer. ‘What?’
‘Sir?’
She swore and rolled over, holding out Adams’s phone, mouthed, ‘Yours.’
He grinned at her, one eye stuck shut and his face sleep-creased, giving him a distinctly untrustworthy look. The stubble didn’t help, or the yellow smear of a healing black eye he’d picked up last week when a suspect kicked off in an interview room.
‘I’m not on today,’ he said, holding her gaze as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone, his thumb brushing circles around her nipple.
Abruptly his hand stopped and his mouth set into a hard line.
‘Where was this?’
He kicked off the duvet and jumped out of bed, fully alert now, already straightening up into detective chief inspector mode as he paced in front of the window.
‘Who found the body?’
Ferreira watched him move, saw the scratch marks she’d left on his buttocks, dug deep through his light tan. The sight of them made her twitch, remembering how he’d grunted as her hips bucked, his fingers in her hair, quickening breaths on her throat, and she wanted him back in bed, could have knocked him down and fucked him where he fell.
‘Any witnesses?’
The corpse wasn’t getting any deader. Maybe she could draw him back between the sheets. She didn’t have to be in for another hour. All quiet in Hate Crimes, just a couple of low-level harassments rumbling on, minor assaults with no suspects, and an attempted murderer they were trying to track down with little expectation of flushing him out.
‘Sounds like our man,’ Adams said wearily, turning and catching her eye, giving a slight shrug of apology or regret. ‘I’ll be there in twenty.’
He tossed his phone down on the windowsill.
‘You’re lucky that wasn’t Murray,’ he said. ‘She’d have recognised your voice for sure.’
‘I said one word.’
‘She’d have made you.’
‘Be more careful where you leave your phone then,’ Ferreira told him.
He leaned across the bed, the smile back in place, wide and hungry. ‘If Riggott finds out about this you’ll be for it.’
‘You’re the superior officer, I’ll say you took advantage of me.’
‘Nah, the old man knows you better than that.’ He kissed her. ‘I’ll tell him you were using me to improve your chances of promotion.’
Ferreira flicked her eyebrow up at him. ‘Climbing the greasy pole?’
He groaned. ‘Let’s find a better name for my boy than that.’
Adams went into the bathroom and switched the shower on, started whistling as he took a piss and Ferreira rolled her eyes. Such an old-man thing to do. There was twelve years between them but it was easy to forget when he made so much effort with his appearance, an almost laughable amount for a copper: the eye cream and the yoga and juicing. Balancing out all the long hours and vices that the job forced on you, the accretion of other people’s suffering which left a mark more persistent than your own ones did.
The thought sent her calves itching and she slipped one leg out from under the duvet, looked at the scars which she’d discovered reacted to cold weather more than hot, irritated when she was tired or run-down or emotional, like they were psychic wounds rather than physical ones now.
Thirty-six individual puncture marks, stabbed into her legs as one of her former colleagues detonated a bomb vest packed with shrapnel, wanting a swift and glorious end to his racially motivated terror campaign.
She still thought about him, but not so often and not so brutally.
At least the scars were finally beginning to fade. Helped by some mossy-smelling oil she’d bought at the Chinese herbalist in Westgate arcade. She knew they’d never heal completely, though, and the prospect of showing her skin still filled her with dread.
Adams didn’t mind. He had scars of his own and when they were together the backs of her legs were the last thing either of them considered.
It wasn’t a good enough excuse to get her out of trouble if Riggott did find out about them. ‘We’re fucking because he’s the only man I trust not to judge the state I’m in.’ The DCS might feel a flicker of sympathy but rules were rules and like most people who broke them he wouldn’t hesitate to punish anyone else who did the same.
Worry about it when it happens, she told herself, burrowing back down under the cover. They’d been careful, she didn’t work directly under him, this was an easily containable situation as long as they kept it casual.
The shower went silent and a few minutes later he returned to the bedroom, snagged his jeans off the floor and stepped into them.
‘You need to get a cleaner,’ he said. ‘There’s so much limescale on that shower door it looks frosted.’
‘I don’t want someone going through my stuff.’
‘Mel, if you don’t get a cleaner in here soon it won’t be safe for someone to touch your stuff. You’ll need a fucking decontamination company.’
It wasn’t like the place was actually dirty. A bit messy, maybe. She knew she could do with picking some of the clothes up, putting a wash in. But the floors were laminate and she was sure you didn’t need to vacuum that or anything.
‘I’ll give you my cleaner’s number.’ He pulled on his shirt. ‘You’ll have to tidy up before she comes round though.’
‘Might as well do it myself then.’
He sat down on the bed to put his shoes on. ‘Or you could call your mum, I’m sure she’d love to keep tidying up after you. Give her a key, she can come round whenever she wants. She might even do your washing.’
‘Shut up.’ Ferreira aimed a lazy kick at his shoulder. ‘What’s the rush, anyway?’
‘Dead jogger in Ferry Meadows,’ he said, retrieving his phone. ‘Strangled.’
‘This your serial rapist?’
‘It’s his stamping ground.’ A look of contempt twisted Adams’s face. ‘Early morning, lone woman with her earphones in … yeah, I reckon. Can’t say we weren’t expecting the bastard to escalate but I thought we had more time. Fuck, it’s only been a couple of weeks since the last one.’
Ferreira frowned, seeing how edgy he was. ‘They get sloppy when they escalate. Might be you find something this time.’
‘Maybe.’ He started out of the bedroom, stopped on the threshold. ‘I’ll call you later, okay?’
‘Sure.’
The front door slammed and she lay back staring up at the ceiling. He was going to be raging tonight. They’d discussed the case already, spent hours talking it around, and part of her thought it was unhealthy how quickly they’d settled into a routine of venting at each other, something slightly sick that minutes after the sex was over their minds turned to crime. The other, less moral, part of her had already realised the sex was better when it came off the back of a bad day. All of that anger and frustration looking for an outlet.
Ferreira climbed out of bed and twisted her hair up into a ponytail, kicking the dumped clothes into a rough pile she would deal with when she got home. There was a single pair of knickers in the drawer so she guessed the situation was approaching crisis point.
She stood under the shower for a long time, the heat lifting the smell of him out of her pores, idly wondering how much messier the flat could get before he refused to step foot in it. Much worse, she decided. All he really needed was a clear channel between the front door and the bed.
Once she was dried off and dressed she shoved a load of whites into the washing machine, thinking how much easier it had been living back at her parents’ pub. There, clothes miraculously disappeared from her bedroom floor and returned neatly ironed and folded, a cleaner came in twice a week and there was never an empty coffee packet in the cupboard like the one she found now.
They couldn’t understand why she’d wanted to move out. Between them her parents came up with endless arguments, mostly centred on the cost, which she could easily cover, and the isolation, which is what she wanted more than anything else.
Not isolation: privacy.
Quiet.
The first few nights in the flat she’d found herself missing the babble and thrum she’d grown used to. Music and voices coming through the floor, lulling her to sleep. But not any more, now she luxuriated in the silence and the knowledge that when she closed the front door nobody would wander in unannounced.
Standing at the fake-wood counter in the kitchen she ate an almost black banana, looking down at the road three storeys beneath her, where a few people with briefcases and satchels were heading into the offices along Priestgate.
She’d need to go shopping after work. Put something in the cupboards besides that bag of pasta and the cereal she didn’t have milk for. She kept meaning to set up a regular delivery but with work so unpredictable it was impossible to arrange a time she’d definitely be home.
All that could wait; right now she needed coffee.
There were five cafes within a minute’s walk – one of the factors which swung the place for her – and she was in Caffè Nero paying for her triple shot Americano when her mobile rang.
‘Mel, you up?’
‘Can’t you hear the jazz?’ she asked, speaking loud enough to be heard above the music pumping out of the speakers overhead. ‘Do you think I’d have that on at home?’
‘I need you to get to Ferry Meadows.’ Zigic’s voice was strained, the sound of engine noise under it. ‘We’ve got a body.’
She almost slipped, told him it was Adams’s case, but caught herself in time.
‘On my way.’