‘I didn’t know you were coming in! Are you back?’ Liv perched on the edge of my desk and looked at me dubiously. ‘Should you be back?’
‘I’m not officially here. I’m still on sick leave but I wanted to see Gley’s face when we knocked on his door.’
‘Was it worth it? Doesn’t look as if it was to me.’ She was scanning my face, which I knew was deathly pale.
‘I got in the way during the arrest. I’m fine.’
‘You always say you’re fine.’
‘Leave it,’ I said through gritted teeth, and because she knew me well, she did.
In a low-key way I had been dreading the return to work. I knew my colleagues would have discussed what had happened to me; there was nothing worse than a room full of detectives for sheer gossip. But in the end, it had been easy to slip in behind Derwent and make my way to my desk, and by the time Liv noticed I was there I was already working. That meant I was legitimately able to brush off a big welcome, had one been on offer.
‘I would have come to see you but Josh said you weren’t in the mood for visitors.’
‘Did he? He’s not completely wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘I still feel stupid,’ I muttered, and Liv leaned in so she could whisper.
‘That’s ridiculous. You couldn’t have known what Seth was going to do.’
‘So you say, but you never liked him.’
‘No, but he’s not my type.’
‘Josh didn’t like him either.’
‘Firstly, he doesn’t like anyone. And secondly, he doesn’t like anyone you go out with.’
‘That’s a grand total of two men in the time I’ve known him.’
‘So maybe it will be third time lucky.’
I shook my head. ‘Never again. I’m celibate from now on.’
‘Shame. Cup of tea?’ Liv asked, straightening up again.
‘I would really love one,’ I said, and went back to reading through my inbox. I had to catch up on what I’d missed, but the words were dancing in front of my eyes.
‘If it’s not something that’ll help me question Gley, forget it.’ Derwent leaned over my shoulder to look at my screen, then reached around me to start closing windows.
‘There are things I want to see. Reports,’ I protested. ‘People are waiting for answers.’
‘Unless they need them today, they’re not getting anything. You have to go home.’
‘Not yet.’ I turned to look up at him. ‘One, I have work to do—’
‘Which I’ve already addressed.’
‘—and two, I don’t feel up to dealing with public transport.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘You can’t. You have to be here to question Gley.’
‘He’s locked up with his lawyer.’ Derwent checked the time. ‘We’ve got two or three hours before we’ll get anything more from the PoLSA team and I want to keep him waiting a while anyway. I don’t have to charge him until tomorrow morning and unless he decides to plead guilty to manslaughter when he sees the video, I doubt I’m going to get a confession out of him. So I’ll drive you.’
‘Someone else could do it.’ I looked at the screen where the contents of my inbox were scrolling past. ‘Hold on a second. That’s from the officer in Roddy Asquith’s murder. It might be important.’
‘You’ve got five minutes. Then we’re leaving. I’m going to see if there’s any cake left.’ He straightened up and walked off, sidestepping Liv who had returned with the tea.
‘He’s so bossy. You must hate it,’ she said, as if she thought the opposite. ‘But this time I think he’s right.’
‘So do I.’ The email from Frank Steele was brief and had a report attached: pages of forensic detail from the car crash, complete with pictures. I gave up on reading it, secretly glad I had a reason not to plough through it immediately, and forwarded it to Liv, who had taken over the case in my absence. My head was aching and I felt exhausted. Maybe there was a point to sick leave after all.
‘This isn’t the way to my parents’ house.’ We were heading east, not south.
‘Yeah, I said I was taking you home. Your home.’
A metallic taste filled my mouth along with a rush of saliva that I swallowed. Please God, don’t let me be sick in the car. Derwent would never forgive me, even if he deserved it.
‘I’m not ready. It’s only been a week.’
‘Eight days. And you need to go back or you never will.’
‘I don’t want to.’
No answer. He kept driving, his attention fixed on the road.
The anger that poured through me pushed the nausea and weakness out of its way. ‘Are you listening? I don’t want to go there, and you can’t make me.’
‘No, I can’t.’ His jaw had tightened but his voice was calm and level. ‘If it helps, I do know how you feel.’
‘I really doubt that.’
‘You never want to see the flat or anything in it again. You find yourself thinking about it when you least expect or want to. You remember every detail of how it looked when you left it. How it smelled. The food you’d bought that day. The blood on the walls. Every morning when you wake up there’s a second where you think you might be there on the floor, with no way out.’
‘You shit,’ I said softly.
He glanced across at me, his eyes very bright. They saw too much, I thought. ‘Too accurate?’
‘No. Not at all accurate, in fact.’ I stared out of the windscreen, refusing to look at him again. He didn’t seem to care, driving on in silence. The oldest trick in the book: not saying anything so the other person felt compelled to talk. There weren’t that many people who could bear the sound of silence. It was Derwent’s bad luck that I was one of them, I thought, clamping my mouth shut on the words I wanted to say. He couldn’t force me to talk. And he could take me to the flat but he couldn’t make me go inside.
For once the traffic was light and we made good time. Much sooner than I had expected or wanted, we were pulling into the street. The flat was at the end of the terrace. Of course there was a free parking space right outside, when usually I would have to circle for ages, waiting for someone to leave. I often had to park on the next street over and lug my shopping or work back. I corrected myself: I had often had to do that. Not any more.
‘I’m not going in,’ I said, after he turned the engine off.
‘No.’
‘You don’t know everything.’
‘No.’
I swallowed the knot in my throat. ‘How did you know about what happens when I wake up? I haven’t – I haven’t told anyone about that.’
‘It’s part of recovering from a difficult experience. I’ve had a few of those.’
‘So you’ve felt this way.’
He shrugged instead of answering.
‘And got over it.’
A sidelong look this time.
‘Sort of got over it,’ I amended.
‘Sort of.’
‘I don’t want to go in.’
‘I know.’ He dug in his pocket and took out a set of keys, which he placed carefully on the dashboard in front of me.
More silence: a few seconds of it this time, before I snatched the keys and got out of the car. Better to get it over with and go than sit there full of fear, I told myself, and hated it, and did it anyway.
My damn-it mood got me up the path and through the front door but I stopped once I was in the hall.
‘Problem?’ He was behind me, not too close.
‘It smells different.’
‘Paint.’
I turned to look at him. ‘Paint?’
‘Go on.’ He nodded at the stairs. I made myself walk up them, my feet silent on the carpet, and found myself thinking of Paige making her way into her flat up those narrow, echoing wooden treads. That distracted me all the way to the top, where I stopped again.
‘You painted the hall.’ It was grey now instead of cream. It felt bigger, the ceiling higher.
‘Yep.’
‘The blood wouldn’t come off?’
He shrugged. ‘It needed doing.’
In the living room, a new carpet covered the spot where I’d bled all over the floor. He’d moved the furniture around, changing the feel of the room, and new pale grey-green curtains hung at the windows. The walls were the same shade.
‘It feels like a different flat.’
‘I always meant to redecorate.’
I nodded. ‘I like it.’
‘Good.’ He leaned against the wall and blew out a lungful of air. I realised with a rush of affection that he’d been nervous about what I’d think.
‘Anything else you need to tell me about?’
‘There’s a new bed.’
‘There was nothing wrong with the bed.’ I was genuinely puzzled.
‘I thought you could do with a fresh start.’
A new bed so I hadn’t slept with Seth in it. I hadn’t even thought of returning to a bed I’d shared with him and how that might make me feel. Derwent had been so kind it made me want to cry. To cover it, I gave him a hard stare. ‘I suppose all of this is being added on to my rent.’
‘Every penny,’ he said gravely. ‘Plus I’m charging you danger money.’
‘Why?’
‘I cleaned out the fridge.’ He shook his head. ‘The things I’ve seen.’
‘You didn’t touch the bottom shelf, did you?’
‘Not without gloves.’
‘That could have been a new antibiotic.’
‘It could have killed us all. What was it originally?’
‘Leftover curry.’ I pulled a face, apologetic. ‘The container leaked.’
‘You should have cleaned it up straight away.’
‘I didn’t notice for a couple of days. By the time I realised what had happened, it had settled in.’
‘Yeah, it’s hard to kill something with a personality.’
Only Derwent could have made me laugh standing in the room where I’d been so badly hurt. I looked around again. ‘You didn’t have to do this.’
‘I know.’
‘But I’m glad you did.’
‘Take a few minutes. I’ll wait outside. When you’re ready to move back in, let me know.’
‘It might be a while.’ I followed him into the hall.
‘You can’t stay at your parents’ house forever. They’ll drive you up the wall.’
‘I thought you liked them.’
‘I do.’ He was halfway down the stairs already. ‘They’re not my parents though, and they don’t comment on everything I do.’
‘Not in front of you, maybe.’
‘Oh, is that how it is?’ He looked up from the bottom of the stairs and grinned. ‘I thought I got off lightly.’
‘Compared to some people you do.’
‘Good.’ Two strides took him to the front door and he slammed it behind him. I heard his footsteps receding down the path, and the soft thud of the car door closing.
On my own again, in the flat. It felt strange.
It felt right.
I walked into every room, noticing what had changed and what had stayed the same, and I felt as if I was at home.