It was dark when Ferreira got to Simon Trent’s house. Half the front windows along the street were lit up with their curtains still open, the bare walls and big televisions exposed.
The blinds were closed at Simon’s house though, only the thinnest hint of light bleeding between the wooden slats, but his car was at the kerb outside and upstairs a figure moved behind a frosted window.
She knocked on the front door, hearing music playing inside, and when Donna answered the smell of food cooking wafted out at her.
‘What do you want?’ Donna asked, the same hard demeanour as at their first encounter, even if she’d worked at softening her appearance.
‘I need to speak to Simon.’
‘He doesn’t want to talk to you.’
‘This is important, Donna,’ she said. ‘And I am going to talk to Simon. I can do it here or I can find him at work tomorrow. Which do you think he’d prefer?’
She considered it for a second. ‘I’ll fetch him.’
The door closed in her face and Ferreira swore softly. She shuffled where she stood and punched her hands into her pockets, skin stinging from the frost in the air and the wind tearing up the narrow street, rattling a gate left improperly tethered and the metal chimes on their neighbour’s porch.
Simon opened the door, damp-haired and flushed, in a white dressing gown he clutched close over his hairless chest; Simone surfacing.
‘I told you, I don’t have anything else to say.’
‘It’s okay, Simon, that’s not why I’m here.’ She stepped towards him but he didn’t move and she realised he wouldn’t let her in either. ‘I just wanted you to know we caught the man who attacked you. He’s been charged, he’s in custody right now, and we think we’ve got a strong case against him. He’s going to be locked up for a very long time.’
She’d expected relief but he only pulled the door up tighter against the side of his body and tucked his chin into the collar of his robe.
‘Simon, this is good news.’ She tried to smile but he didn’t respond. ‘You don’t have to be scared of him any more.’
He let out a gulping sob. ‘Do you seriously think he’s the only person I need to worry about?’
Simon slammed the door before she could answer and Ferreira raised her fist to knock again, but stopped. He was still suppressing Simone, still hiding to keep his wife happy, and nothing she could say would change any of that. He would survive and find an accommodation between the two parts of his life or he wouldn’t.
A numbing dissatisfaction came over her as she climbed into her car. She hadn’t expected him to break into song or even be particularly grateful, but she thought she’d see some glimmer of relief once he knew his attacker was off the street.
It had never been about the assault, she thought, as she drove away from his house. It was his relationship with Donna making him small and timid, the need to be a man for her, all of the time, without compromise.
At the junction with London Road she turned right, away from the city centre, only dimly aware of what she was doing. She followed a route she’d driven every night for six months, down the rat run of narrow streets, Victorian terraces and short strips of shops, more flats now then there had been when she and Liam moved in. Old factory units had been pulled down and the sites redeveloped, the area improved.
She didn’t know if he still lived there. Could have easily checked but once it was over she packed up every memory and feeling and stowed them away and whenever he threatened to push himself forward again she’d find someone else to fill his place. For a few nights or a few hours or sometimes not even that long.
He was easier to replace than she expected and she wondered if that was a failing on his part or hers. If she’d told herself he was ‘the one’ because she wanted out of her parents’ place, a new man to go along with the new route her career was taking as she progressed into CID.
There was a space outside the house and she stopped for a moment, idling in the middle of the road, looking up at the curtained window which had been their bedroom. She remembered waking up with her face buried in his chest, the tangle of sheets and the smell of him she wouldn’t wash off before she went to work, wanting to be marked by his scent.
She remembered tracing the lines of his face while he slept, imagining how he’d age, how good they would always look together, and yet now, she realised, she couldn’t even recall what colour his eyes were.
A van pulled up behind her and the driver leaned on the horn.
The empty parking space was beckoning her but what good would it do to sit here in the dark reminiscing about someone who had long since stopped moving her? Who had maybe never been the man she told herself she was in love with. Six months; it was meaningless.
She pulled away and the van tucked into the space she’d left behind her.
Was that him?
His boyfriend?
Liam had always liked them rough.
She could turn round and know for certain; instead she kept driving. It didn’t matter and hadn’t mattered for years. That stupid song had brought it back but it had been nothing but a phantom pain sharpened by alcohol and the febrile atmosphere of the cases she’d been working.
She was not Donna Trent or Nina Sawyer or Sam Hyde, even if she felt she understood what their men had put them through, forcing them to live half-lives, constantly negotiating and acquiescing because they loved them too much to leave them and too much to risk letting them be who they really were.
Could she have lived like that? Tiptoeing around Liam’s true self, always fearing what he was doing? Becoming suspicious then paranoid then finally, years down the line, when it was too late, realising her life had been wasted on containing someone else’s within safe parameters.
You had a lucky escape, she told herself.
And this time she believed it.
At the top of the road she stopped to buy tobacco. In the corner shop a fresh bundle of newspapers sat on the counter.
Zigic had made a statement earlier this afternoon. He’d named Brynn Moran and a small photo of him sat at the bottom-right corner of the front page, the rest of it dominated by the image of Corinne which Sam Hyde had given them. It showed a woman smiling, content, face turned up into the sunshine, looking forward to her new life.
News of Walton’s arrest wouldn’t hit until tomorrow and she wasn’t sure how that would be received. It would expose Ryan Bhakta’s secret life and she expected his family would find themselves hounded to give their side of events. It would go national, as the press used this new development to reinvigorate the flagging story. She tried not to consider how that was going to affect the investigation into her role in his suicide but the fear was still there.
She called Adams as she pulled into the car park under her building. There was music and a drunken buzz in the background when he answered. Half of CID had decamped to the pub at the end of the shift to celebrate bringing down Walton, patting each other on the backs for work they hadn’t actually done.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Home.’
‘Come down for a few drinks. We’re in the ’Spoons.’
It was a minute’s walk away but she couldn’t face the noise and the enforced bonhomie, or the route which would take her past the place where Simon Trent was attacked.
‘I’ve got drink already.’
A door opened, a bell sounding and then it was quiet his end. ‘Ah, you need company. Admit it.’
She smiled in response to the one she could hear in his voice. ‘I was just going to ask if you’ve eaten yet.’
‘I’ve had a couple of chips.’
‘So, you’re good then?’
‘That depends …’
‘On?’
‘Are you going to cook?’
‘I was thinking about it, yeah.’
He made a mulling sound. ‘I am so curious to see whether you can actually cook.’
‘You know where I am.’
Ferreira ended the call and headed across Cathedral Square towards the M&S in the shopping centre. There were a few stragglers just like her walking the aisles, appraising one another as they stocked up on ready meals and wine. Coming back, juggling the carrier bags between her hands, she looked at the cathedral lit up against the early-evening sky, thinking about Ryan Bhakta and wondering why he had gone down there, a question she would never get an answer to now.
Was it possible Lee Walton was telling the truth? Had Ryan been selling himself? She couldn’t believe it but she knew it was a depressingly common occupation for trans women, although it was usually for economic reasons and Ryan didn’t seem to be short of money. The notion of him doing it for pleasure didn’t ring true either, but there was always the danger it might for a jury arriving with prejudices and preconceptions she didn’t share.
Footsteps came up fast behind her. ‘Hey, Mary Berry’s hot granddaughter.’
‘Mary Berry?’ She handed Adams the carrier bags.
‘You never know, she might have copped off with a swarthy Portuguese fisherman in her youth.’
‘We do have the fittest ones.’
They walked through the cut alongside Barclays bank, onto Priestgate, Adams telling her about Murray doing shots off some poor young PC’s back, that she was threatening them all with karaoke back at her place and you wouldn’t believe the pipes on her.
In the lift he leaned in and kissed her, tasting of beer and whisky and cigarettes. ‘You two owned Walton.’
‘Yeah, I’ve had the managerial approval from Zigic, already.’
The doors slid apart.
‘What and my good opinion doesn’t matter?’ he asked. ‘I’m the senior officer.’
‘You’re not the boss of me.’
‘I am while you’re in CID.’
‘We’re not in CID now.’ She opened the door and shoved him through it. ‘My turn to be boss.’