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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

F orty missed calls and a hundred texts. That’s how many times Cheryl and Joshua had tried to reach out to him, until he’d shut his phone off. Now Robert sat in his flat, ignoring the buzzer. He’d made up his mind.

It had been three days since Dickheadson had led Nina away in handcuffs. Enough time for him to create an incident board of sorts.

He’d torn pieces of paper and stuck them up on the TV and the wall around it. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it conventional. But placing it all out like this had its benefits.

He now knew everyone involved in the case – Nina, Shah, Anne and Jonas, the camera guy. His board also listed that at first Dickheadson had informed Robert that Anne had been the only casualty, but Nina had been accused of killing two people – Jonas and Anne.

Somehow, all the people on his board were connected. But how?

Robert kept coming back to his questions:

What was the motive for the murder? Why was Anne there at all? Why was Shah interested in Nina?

And that’s how far he’d got. In three fucking days.

A knock sounded at his door – probably Cheryl or Joshua again. After ten minutes, they’d give up and leave.

Robert reached for his noise-cancelling earphones when Joshua called out from the other side, ‘I have important news. Open up.’ After a pause he said, ‘I’m alone.’

No Cheryl to nag at him.

Having closeted himself in the flat, and unsure when he’d last showered, he didn’t want Mama Cheryl to find him in a state. There’d be hell to pay.

Robert got up from his seat, his muscles sore from having sat in one position for too long, then hobbled his way to the door and peeped outside.

Joshua stood there, hands in his pockets, rolling his eyes. The man didn’t take himself seriously at the worst of times, but he stuck with you no matter what. Who else would keep pestering their arsehole of a pal until they opened the damned door?

Taking pity on Joshua, Robert unhooked the latch.

‘Ah, so you are alive and not an exploded corpse we’d have to peel off the floor,’ Joshua said, pushing past Robert. ‘You just reek like one.’

Robert smacked the door closed, instead of smacking Joshua on the head. ‘What news have you got? And you’ve got a fucking key to this place. Use it.’

Joshua slid a bag to the floor and raised his arms. ‘The key’s in the house. Apparently, I’m a cop who spends all his time working, thinking about work or talking about his work pals, so Beth has left me… or rather locked me out.’

Beth, Joshua’s wife of two years.

‘Oh fuck, that’s shite.’ Robert reached for Joshua, but the man backed away.

‘Let’s not. The fact that I’ve moved in with my mum – I’ll be damned if I disappoint her any more than I already have – is the only reason I’m not joining you with a six-pack of Tennent’s and a bottle of new-make spirit.’

Robert pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Hell, not even proper whisky, eh?’

Joshua shrugged. ‘A small bottle of seventy per cent alcohol should poison me or take me under, shouldn’t it?’

New-make spirit was a clear liquid created in the process of whisky distillation. While single malts contained forty to fifty per cent alcohol, a new make held seventy per cent. Clear and lethal.

Robert turned and headed into the kitchen. ‘I don’t know, but I have an endless supply of beer… and Tunnock’s teacakes.’

Joshua found one of the yellow beer cans littering the kitchen counter and snapped the top open. ‘Two years. Somewhere along the line I knew this would happen. We’d only been dating six months. I jumped the gun. We thought it was a great idea. But hell, she wasn’t prepared for my work schedule, and I wasn’t prepared for…’

‘Spa-day bills and Botox appointments?’ Robert winced at his words.

Joshua groaned. ‘You ain’t wrong. And I thought I could make this work. Bastard.’

Robert nodded towards the living room. ‘You need time. Counselling might help.’

By the look on Joshua’s face, the thought had crossed his mind and his wife had killed it. Not that Robert and Anne had even considered counselling, despite knowing, somewhere in their minds, that their marriage wasn’t working out.

‘I thought I could join you in your… dump.’ Joshua clomped into the living room, then saw Robert’s handiwork on the wall. ‘Ah.’

‘That’s all I’ve got,’ Robert said, before heading back into the kitchen. After leaving Cheryl and Joshua behind, Robert had stormed off, not in a mood to investigate. He’d instead raided the alcohol section in two shops – the first shop had refused to sell him a dozen six-packs of beer. Now the entire kitchen counter looked like it belonged in a student hall. Beer cans – used and unused – littered the entire space. In the centre of the counter, Robert had dumped several large multi-packs of crisps, the selection ranging from ready salted to salt and vinegar, enough for a party of two.

Robert scooped up a few crisp packets from each bag, then took them with him to the coffee table in the living room. Joshua plucked a salt and vinegar packet and groaned. ‘You were all prepared to drink yourself away.’

‘First instinct, aye. Then I remembered what Nina told me – that I’m wasting my life away.’ Robert got himself a can and plopped on the sofa beside Joshua.

‘Wasting your life?’

‘I thought it was the only way,’ Robert muttered. ‘I had two goals in life: become a police officer and build a family. Look where I am right now.’

Joshua reached out to clank their cans together. ‘Touché. Two grown men felled by love.’

Robert snorted. ‘According to Nina, people always leave. So what’s the point in getting attached to someone?’

The two of them stared into the middle distance, Robert mulling over the conversation he’d had with Nina, Joshua probably lost in his own world.

The more Robert thought about it, the more Nina’s words resonated with his logic. But, hell, his heart did not agree.

Perhaps he’d moulded his heart to believe in love. Raised by a single parent, he’d wanted the quintessential family. He’d watched couples and had craved what they had. Had even been teased for having dreams like a woman.

Yet the idea of a family had been so enticing. A family was yours: the unit you went home to, the one with whom you could be yourself. But family had now become a pipe dream, rendered so by fate.

After gulping down his second can of beer, Joshua finally spoke up. ‘I don’t think you agree with Nina.’

Robert chuckled. ‘I think you’re hammered.’

Joshua swatted a hand in the air. ‘Fuck you. I can drink. It’s you who can’t think straight when you’re drunk on a woman.’

At Robert’s raised eyebrows, Joshua thudded his can on the coffee table and swivelled, so he was facing Robert. ‘When you were with Anne, she told you how she worried you’d get hurt in the line of duty. Robert, you joined the police force to help others. Still, you held yourself back, even took up desk work.’

‘I—’

Joshua cut Robert short with a raised hand. ‘I’m talking. God knows Cheryl and you never let me. Listen to me. I know Anne’s gone and you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but you’ve got to stop this. Anne told you to limit your career, and you did. Anne said you couldn’t hang out with Cheryl and I, so you stopped meeting us after work.’

Robert shook his head, unable to bear it. ‘She was right.’

‘No marriage is perfect. For Beth, I never did anything right. I forgot to buy the coffee, I forgot to get the grout cleaner, I didn’t fix the leaking tap, I needed to send the damned meter readings in and I didn’t… I spent too much time working, too much time with my pals. And lately, too much time being there for you. It’s an endless list. But there is dissatisfaction and there is asphyxiation. I’m sorry to say, but when it comes to love, you suffocate yourself to make the relationship work.

‘Nina says love doesn’t last, so you shouldn’t care. But fuck, Robert, you believe the world goes around because of love, humanity, people caring about each other. Why the fuck would you be there for Daisy, help Billy, turn a blind eye to a kid shoplifting bread to feed his siblings? You’re a cop, and a crime is a crime. Do you believe that?’

Joshua loved his jokes and pranks; the man had never stitched two sentences together that held such heavy sentiment. This tirade had arrived so out of the blue, Joshua had been able to speak without interruption because Robert had been stunned.

And then Joshua’s words sank in.

Anne had told him to refuse promotions, had asked him to turn down opportunities that could increase his responsibilities and expose him to more difficult cases. He hadn’t put up a fight. Being a cop had been his dream, and yet he’d held himself back, taken Dickheadson’s tongue-lashings, helped his colleagues get the promotion.

Anne had refused to let him volunteer at a local soup kitchen because they rarely spent time together. And though she stepped out to meet friends, he’d refused to grab a drink with his.

The only time he hadn’t listened to her was when he’d paid for Daisy’s tuition. It had been difficult, an act of rebellion, but also a way to stop Anne from seeking another round of IVF. He hadn’t wanted her to get pregnant again, and she’d refused to listen, so he’d spent the money.

Fuck. All this, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been happy in his marriage. Yet…

‘Here I am, all alone and broken. Love is a fleeting emotion.’

Joshua smirked. ‘Didn’t you hear a thing I said? You’re almost forty. Have you once found yourself abandoned by love?’ Joshua thumped his chest. ‘Love is inside you. It’s the way you see the world, how you treat the world. It has nothing to do with anyone else. You loved Anne, did everything for her out of love. Hell, you’re investigating her death out of the love you feel for her. Whether you were the man she could love, that choice was hers to make. Love exists even if it isn’t reciprocated. But if you add conditions to it, compare it with someone else’s relationship, that’s jealousy. That isn’t love.’

Robert sat there, mum, his beer long forgotten. His logic agreed with Nina’s definition of love. But Joshua had it right: his heart did not.

His marriage hadn’t been perfect, not for a long time. It had taken meeting Nina for him to realise what it had been – a failing relationship where both parties were absolutely miserable. But Nina had been wrong. The investigation into Anne’s death wasn’t Robert’s way to avenge her and right his wrongs as a husband. It had been his way to grieve for the woman he’d once loved and to apologise for not stepping away sooner.

‘How do I love and not suffocate myself?’ Robert set his beer on the table. ‘Jeez, I sound like a TV character.’

Joshua chuckled. ‘I think you’re asking the wrong question. You should ask: how do I keep from suffocating?’

Robert raised an eyebrow. ‘And what’s the answer to that?’

Joshua smacked a hand on Robert’s chest. ‘I’m no sage, but I’ve worked with you for a few years now. I’ve seen you following your gut and your heart. And I’ve never seen either of those lead you astray – ever. If I were you, I’d start there. Oh and’ – Joshua leaned down and pulled up a backpack – ‘you can start by looking at Nina’s backpack. I nicked it from the flat before Dickheadson’s cronies got their hands on it.’

Robert blinked at Joshua and the broad grin on his face. ‘Th-Thank you?’

Once more Joshua tapped Robert’s chest. ‘I’ve got your back – always.’