Page 45 of Dead Serious Case 5 Madame Vivienne

“You know, that’s not necessarily a bad idea,” Danny muses. “Let me know what she says later. I may be late home.”

“Danny,” I say in a warning tone. “Please don’t do anything that will get you in trouble. Promise me.”

“I have to go,” he says abruptly.

“Danny, wait–” The sound of him hanging up stops me and I sigh.

Well… Shit.

10

Iam beyond pissed when I hang up the phone.

No, I probably shouldn’t have cut Tris off so abruptly, but I don’t want my mood to spill over onto him, especially not until I have my temper under control. It’s rare that I lose it. Between my siblings and me, I was always the most placid, the most reasonable of us, but the thought of that prick showing up in the mortuary and threatening Tris makes my blood boil. No one threatens my Tris.

No. One.

Angrily I shove my phone in my pocket and stalk through the corridors. Maddie calls my name but I ignore her. Not allowing myself to be distracted, I head straight to the DCI’s office and knock on the door. Although I’m trying to rein it in, I’ll admit the knocking probably does come off as overly aggressive. I really need to calm down but I can’t. I don’t want PatrickfuckingByrnes anywhere near Tristan.

“Enter,” a deep voice booms from the other side, so I reach for the handle and push the door open.

DCI Jim Butler is planted behind his desk, staring at his screen. He’s an older man with a receding hairline and pockmarked skin. One would think that the years hadn’t beenkind to him but honestly, I suspect he has never been much of a looker. He has a permanently dissatisfied expression etched into his thin, tight-lipped mouth.

“What do you want, Hayes?” He barely glances up from his report, as if it’s too much of an inconvenience to spare me his attention.

I may not have been at Scotland Yard more than a year and a half, but there has been a constant revolving door of DCIs just in that short time. A couple of them have been decent guys, but no one seems to have stuck at the job long and I have no idea why. DCI Butler is just the latest and, unfortunately, the worst.

“Sir,” I say, sucking in a breath and reaching for my patience, which seems to be nonexistent today. Butler may be a homophobic wanker but he’s still my superior. “I’d like to speak with you about Detective Inspector Byrnes.”

“What about him?” he murmurs, still not bothering to give me his full attention.

“He’s been harassing my partner, sir,” I reply.

Butler stops reading and places his wire framed reading glasses on his cluttered desk. The disorganised mess is almost enough to make me break out in hives. Expression carefully blank, he focuses his dark, beady eyes on me.

“What’s that you say?”

“He’s been harassing my partner,” I repeat. “Byrnes was just at the Hackney Mortuary, where he had no place being. He gained access to an area that is off-limits without prior approval, which he didn’t have, and took it upon himself to interrupt my partner without sufficient cause. I’m sure you can appreciate the sensitive nature of his job as one of our city’s pathologists. Yet DI Byrnes felt it was acceptable to bypass all the security measures and interrupt a post-mortem to question him.”

“Him?” DCI Butler says slowly even though he damn well knows I’m gay. The whole department does—it’s not something I hide.

In fact, it’s probably why they partnered me and Maddie in the first place. Keep the queers together. The police force might be trying to clean up its image and present the image of a tolerant workplace, but they haven’t come nearly far enough. Although I can’t be too salty about being paired with Maddie; despite their probable reasons behind it, they inadvertently handed me one of my closest friends.

“Him,” I reply, my tone cool. “My fiancé, Tristan Everett. DI Byrnes had no reason to question him, let alone interrupt his work and then use threatening behaviour in an attempt to intimidate him.”

DCI Butler rocks back in his chair, looking almost amused. The smug fucker. If he wasn’t my boss…

“I’m beginning to suspect DI Byrnes has some sort of problem with me, which is now extending to my fiancé.”

“And I understand that you both knew the victim from the Wilson murder case. Lived with you for a while, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” I say flatly. “We did know her. She was a friend, which was exactly why I wasn’t assigned her case.”

“It is also my understanding that you and yourfriendmay have stood to profit from her death.”

“Whatever myfiancé”— I bristle at the shitty inflection in his tone—“and I discussed with Vivienne’s solicitor is private and will remain so. Just so that we are absolutely clear, Tristan and I did not profit from her death, nor were we involved in any way. We weren’t even in London at the time of the murder.”

DCI Butler stares at me in silence and I can already tell he’s not going to do a fucking thing about Byrnes except maybe egg him on.