Playing nice while he’s lying his head off, just like an old married couple.
‘There’s a film on at the arts cinema in Stamford,’ he said, reaching across to top up her coffee. ‘Some French crime thing. If you fancy it?’
‘What are you doing with Ziggy?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sneaking off together,’ she said. ‘In and out of each other’s offices every two minutes. Since when are the pair of you so matey?’
‘This is embarrassing.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘But I’ve developed a crush on him.’
‘For fu—’
‘Swarthy good looks, those cheekbones … he’s a big, gorgeous bastard and you know it.’
‘This isn’t a joke,’ Ferreira snapped.
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, chastened. ‘How would you feel about inviting him in for a threesome?’
He was smiling but she could see the discomfort in his eyes, the desperation under each attempt at deflection.
‘Billy, do not lie to me,’ she said. ‘What have you dragged him into?’
‘He’s a big boy, Mel. I didn’t have to drag him.’
‘You’re working Walton.’
He looked away, spiked the last piece of French toast on his plate and slowly wiped it through a smear of syrup. ‘The less you know about it the better, believe me; we’re just trying to protect you.’
She felt a hot flare of anger up her face. How dare they do this? Go behind her back and investigate Walton when she was the one he was harassing. She’d been the one to bring his girlfriend in, obliterating the alibis that had kept him on the streets through all the years they’d failed to nail him. He was her case as much as anyone’s. Her mess to clear up.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Right now.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that.’
He still couldn’t look at her and abruptly she realised he was scared.
‘What the hell have you got yourselves into?’ she asked, hearing a tremble in her voice.
He didn’t answer.
Zigic was sensible, she told herself. He was smart and deeply moralistic and wouldn’t dream of venturing into the kinds of dark places Billy might go. He would be a brake on Billy’s worst excesses. This couldn’t be bad. Not really bad.
But the fear was on him, she could smell it now, a sharpness to his sweat that hadn’t been there a minute ago. And she felt it infecting her too, sending a sick ache through her stomach.
‘I’ve got a right to know,’ she said. ‘I’m the one he’s coming after.’
Billy put his fork down very deliberately on the plate.
‘It might be nothing. Can you just, please, give me a couple of days to work out where we are with it?’
‘Is it another case?’ she asked and immediately answered herself. ‘Of course it’s a case. Don’t you think I might actually be of some use in this? I am a detective after all.’
‘Mel, please.’ He slipped off the stool, paced to the far end of the galley kitchen, seemed to need the distance. ‘If we’re wrong this is going to get really, badly, fucking ugly. I’m just trying to protect you.’
‘I don’t need protecting,’ she told him. ‘I need to know what the hell you’re doing.’
He walked out of the kitchen, didn’t seem to know where to go next, and she caught up with him in the living room, standing with the sofa between them like a rampart.
‘If you don’t tell me, Ziggy will,’ she said.
‘He’ll tell you the same thing I did.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Made a sacred pact, did you? Pinky-promised to lie to me?’
‘No one’s lying to you,’ he said, voice rising, hands coming down hard on the back of the sofa. ‘Why can’t you let me take care of this for you?’
He actually believed it, she realised, hearing the petulant edge come into his voice. He thought she needed protecting and that he was the one to do it. After everything she’d gone through, the scars she had, the violence she’d survived.
She went back into the bedroom, stripped off, thinking about this impulse in him that she didn’t appreciate. Thinking of how he’d been before they got together, the copper who found himself inexorably attracted to the family members of victims, vulnerable women on the periphery of terrible crimes. Not the ones you would have expected. Looks didn’t seem to come into it. He gravitated towards fragility, a certain brittleness that required the most careful handling.
As she went to pull on her jeans, she stopped, looking down at the faded scars on the backs of her legs.
That was when it started. A few months out of hospital, still raw and despairing, avoiding mirrors and showering in the dark so she wouldn’t have to confront those dozens of imperfections blasted across her skin.
And out of nowhere he’d called her, asked if she wanted to go for a drink, catch up on the station gossip she was missing while she was out of rotation. It felt natural because they’d slept together a handful of times before and always got on when they found themselves thrown together on a case. It kept feeling natural as the drinks became sex, became more frequent sex, and then something they both had to admit was dating.
But now she was wondering, what exactly about her did he find so irresistible?
Did he seriously think she was one of those fragile women, just waiting for him to come along and save her? Was he such a poor judge of character?
Ferreira grabbed her phone and her bag and stormed out of the flat, slamming the door on his entreaties.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They’d been in the car for twenty minutes before Zigic cracked, unable to bear the negative energy boiling off Ferreira, the freighted silence buzzing between them under the hum of the air conditioning.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
‘We had a fight,’ she said.
He wasn’t going to pursue this line of conversation. It was too fraught. The danger was always lurking that he would tell her exactly what he thought of Adams and then where
