Despite heading out early, McNab found the council had been true to their word and had removed his car. He called the appropriate number, but his excuse that he’d abandoned the car to chase the perpetrator of a crime didn’t wash with the man on the other end. In fact, he sounded delighted to have shafted a police officer.
‘You’ll have to pick it up from the pound, like everyone else, Detective Sergeant. But maybe you can claim the fee on expenses and make the good citizens of Glasgow pay for it,’ he added for good measure.
Normally McNab would have given him a mouthful in return, but not this morning. He headed back upstairs to say a proper goodbye to Freya.
‘You can stay for coffee, then?’ she said in response to his announcement.
McNab didn’t see why not, and besides, he’d decided to broach the subject of the stick figure. He didn’t want to frighten Freya, just encourage her to be vigilant and to report any unexpected visitors or deliveries.
When he’d finished his brief description, Freya immediately asked if the figure had been given a name. That threw McNab a little and he contemplated saying no, then decided against it. If Freya was being honest with him, he had to be honest with her.
‘There were runes scratched on it. When translated, we think they said Freya.’
‘So that’s why you came by last night? Because the runes said Freya? You were worried for my safety?’
‘That, and to see you again.’
She looked touched by this, then glanced down and studied her coffee for a moment.
‘I did have a visitor last night, just before you arrived,’ she said.
Now McNab was the surprised one. ‘Can I ask who?’ he said cautiously.
‘Leila’s brother, Danny.’
It was the last name McNab had expected to hear. ‘Danny Hardy?’
In flashback, McNab remembered turning into the street and glimpsing the man emerging confidently from her main door, then the sensation that he recognized something about the guy, despite not seeing his face. He now knew what it had been – the bloody swagger of the man.
‘Why was Danny here?’ he said, striving to keep his voice calm.
In an instant McNab suspected Freya was about to lie to him, and he desperately didn’t want her to. As she avoided eye contact, a terrible series of thoughts hit McNab. She’d asked him on the phone how long he’d been outside, because she wanted to know if he’d seen Danny. When she’d met him in the hall, she was already naked. And the worst thought of all – the red cingulum below her pillow hadn’t been there for him, but for Danny.
McNab recalled the way Danny had looked at him in the interview room, as though he was revelling in some secret McNab didn’t know about. Maybe the secret was that he was shafting him?
Jealousy and suspicion bloomed, then grew exponentially. The detective in McNab took over and with it the belief that everyone is a liar until proved otherwise. Including Freya.
‘You’re sleeping with him.’ The words were out before he could stop them.
She flinched as they hit home. McNab found himself interpreting her non-answer as guilt and convinced himself he was right. When she didn’t respond to his accusation he tried again.
‘Are you sleeping with Danny Hardy?’
‘I’m sleeping with you,’ she said quietly.
McNab ignored her response because the thoughts were coming too rapidly, and all of them were bad. ‘You were telling the truth when you said you didn’t know Leila that well, but what you didn’t say was that you knew her brother. Intimately.’
‘Michael,’ she tried.
His look as she uttered his name silenced her.
‘I’ll have to ask you to come down to the station and give a statement regarding the deaths of Leila Hardy and Shannon Jones, and your relationship with the deceased’s brother Daniel Hardy.’
The face he’d watched in sleep last night, drained of colour. Freya looked as though she might protest, or try and explain, then chose not to.
Now McNab saw sadness in Freya’s eyes, rather than guilt, and knew that whether he was right or wrong, what had happened in the last few moments was irreparable.
‘I am not having sex with Daniel Hardy. He came here last night to talk to me about Leila. What he told me, I want to tell you.’
Seconds had elapsed since McNab’s outburst, but it felt like hours. He’d messed up. Big time. He hadn’t given her a chance to speak. He’d failed to trust her, because he didn’t trust himself.
They sat on either side of the kitchen table, the warm coffee pot between them. McNab could still smell its aroma and with it his feelings about having breakfast with her. But the man who’d shared her bed and looked so tenderly on her sleeping face was no more. He knew it and she knew it. Whatever she said now wouldn’t change that. He’d screwed up whatever had been possible between them, just as he’d feared he would.
She waited for him to acknowledge what she’d said before she continued. McNab took refuge in his detective demeanour. It was a shabby thing to do, but once he thought of her as a suspect or a liar, he found himself incapable of moving away from that premise. This, he decided, is why I cannot sustain a relationship in this job.
‘Leila was performing sex magick, according to her brother, almost exclusively for a group of men who occupy positions of power,’ Freya said. ‘She had been sworn to secrecy about this. One night when high or drunk she told Danny. He was worried, so he decided to film what was happening, to safeguard his sister.’ She paused to let the words sink in. ‘Barry knew about it.’
Her words drifted over McNab, not really registering, because he couldn’t draw his emotions away from what had just happened between them. Eventually his brain engaged and analysed what she’d been saying. ‘There’s footage of her meetings with the Nine?’ he said.
‘According to Danny, there’s some footage, but not of all the men in the group.’
‘Why did he tell you?’ McNab said.
‘Danny wants to find his sister’s killer. He thinks you . . . the police aren’t doing enough. He asked what I knew about the covens and Leila’s place in them. And did I know anything about the Nine.’
‘And do you?’ McNab said.
‘No. What I told you is true. Leila, Shannon and I were work colleagues who shared a similar interest. That’s all. It was a coincidence that we were all at the Edinburgh coven that night.’
McNab wished she hadn’t used that word. One thing the boss had taught him was not to believe in coincidence.
‘Why didn’t Danny tell me about the video footage in his interview?’
‘He said you didn’t like or trust him, and you didn’t want to listen.’
Both could be said to be true, but McNab didn’t buy it. Danny Hardy had a mission and McNab wasn’t convinced it was the one he’d assigned to Freya.
‘What’s he planning?’
‘I don’t know. He had a call, probably around the time you arrived downstairs. He said he had to go. That’s when I called you.’
McNab recalled Danny’s swift exit from the building, plus the fact that he’d avoided looking in the direction of the arriving car. McNab’s detective heart told him that Danny had been warned of his imminent arrival, and not by an external call. That heart shattered as he formed the words, but he said them anyway.
‘I don’t believe you were at the library. I don’t think you forgot your mobile. I think you didn’t answer because you and Danny were fucking. When you got the second message, you knew I was on my way, so Danny had to leave, and fast. That’s why you were naked when you opened the door to me.’
Freya stood up, that lovely face white, sad and furious.
‘I want you to go. Now,’ she said.
McNab deliberately drank down the remains of his coffee before standing up.
‘Be at the station sometime this morning. Detective Sergeant Clark will take down your statement.’
He waited a moment on the landing after she’d shut the door on him, listening to the sound of her weeping, knowing if he was wrong, then he’d just fucked up the best thing that had ever happened to him.