Page 47

I let Vivian think it over for a minute.

I knew I was throwing Cis in hot water, too, but I had this pretty certain feeling that she would be more than willing to screw both Fran and I over for herself.

After all, what a great career move this had been for her.

It’d surely put her in the good graces of the powers that be.

But she really never should have given me her email login.

I looked back to Vivian. She was still making what looked like bad attempts at breathing exercises, pursing her lips and panting small pumps of air, gulping and swallowing before attempting to push the air back out again.

‘Just wanted to let you know it’s 11.54,’ I remarked.

‘I know what time it is,’ she barked at me, and took a few more breaths before shaking her head, considering her options between the devil and the deep blue sea.

‘Stop the emails,’ she said, hanging her head in defeat.

‘I’ll give you the name of the man, along with his address, and I’ll send you the full unredacted case files of what we have on O’Neill, Clark, and the rest of them.

But I’ll only give them to you in print.

I don’t want any digital footprint leading back to me. ’

I did a small nod, as if that was acceptable terms. Vivian’s eyes widened as she glanced towards the clock, the colour completely drained from her face.

Her stare then focused a few degrees downwards, straight towards the phone nestled in my pocket.

I thought it would be cruel to keep her in suspense any longer.

‘Oh, the email was only scheduled to go to you,’ I said as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed the pause button on the audio recording. ‘It should come through any minute now.’

Vivian looked more baffled than angry as she heard the ring of new email rattle through her antique computer. She squinted, somewhat bemused, somewhat saddened, but absolutely furious with me.

‘Just remember, if at any time you decide to try anything stupid: I have copies,’ I said, with what I hoped was a threatening look.

‘You know, Fran will still probably go to prison. Maybe now you can help her get a few less years, but even with what you have, Fran is still a pretty convincing suspect for a jury,’ said Vivian.

She didn’t sound vengeful, oddly enough.

It almost came across as if she understood why I’d done what I had.

‘Maybe,’ I replied, somewhat coolly. ‘But I still have to try.’

Vivian dragged her hand across her face, stretching her dark bags beneath her eyes as she tilted her head up to the ceiling.

‘Or maybe you’ve just cost us both of our careers,’ she said contemplatively, sounding slightly mad with despair.

‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ I said reassuringly, tucking my phone into my pocket and lifting myself off the chair without Vivian’s permission for the first and last time.

‘You have my word, you won’t see me around here again.

I’ll hand in my resignation in a few days’ time, no matter the verdict, and we can blame it all on the stress of the job and the trial. No one will bat an eyelid.’

I realised that this whole time I hadn’t felt that red-hot scorching need to tell the truth. For years, I hadn’t been able to litter a can on the ground without having a moral crisis. Yet here I was, having just blackmailed a senior member of the police force, and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

‘Thanks,’ I said, smiling through the pain as I strolled out of Vivian’s office. Steve and the security guards looked bemused, unsure whether to lunge at me or let me go as I yanked open the door. ‘I’ll let you know if I need anything else.’

‘You were such a good detective,’ was the last thing I thought I heard Vivian say before I left.

I woke up with a start as I heard yet another series of whacks against my front door. Mep bolted up to locate the noise as I desperately attempted to clamber out from the sofa hole I seemed to have sunk deeper into each night.

‘Shush,’ I said, lightly running my hand along Mep’s arched back, then drowsily stumbling my way into the corridor to place my eye against the peephole.

I groaned, wondering: if I left her out there for long enough, would she go away?

I then remembered that this was somewhat unlikely for a woman with an inhuman amount of drive and determination.

I unlocked the latch and Cis was stomping into the house before I had even fully opened the door, traipsing mud and rain across the floor of our home.

‘You threatened the witness, didn’t you?’

‘What?’ I mumbled, still groggy and disorientated.

‘You did, didn’t you? You threatened the witness.’

‘What makes you say that?’ I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes as I swung the door shut.

‘He pulls out of the trial the day before and suddenly wants to retract his entire testimony. He’s now saying he’s not a hundred per cent sure what he saw, or if it even was Fran throwing body parts into a river. Seems awfully inconvenient for the prosecution, doesn’t it?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said, leaving Cis in the hallway as I strolled back to the living room, closing the lid of my laptop. It was still open on an email from Andrew, thanking me for sending him Vivian’s case files on O’Neill and the rest of the funky bunch.

Technically, I knew this broke my promise to Vivian, but if it helped Fran’s defence, I wasn’t going to deny him evidence that could help her.

‘Maybe he strolled into a large sum of money which made him change his mind? Who’s to say?’ I whispered to myself.

I was going to be paying off that overdraft for years. But there was no way this guy would testify about seeing Fran toss body parts into the river now; that should make her defence stronger.

‘And I can’t believe you used my login to leak information. I mean, do you have any idea how much trouble you could have got me into?’

‘Shouldn’t have given it to me then,’ I said with a vicious laugh.

Cis gave out a small shriek, full to the brim with rage as she threw her hands out in front of her.

‘Gareth, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here. But I know it and I know you know it: your wife murdered someone. Why is that so hard for you to accept?’

‘I don’t know that, and you don’t know that I know that,’ I said, trying to not to confuse myself with the mixture of words in the process. ‘Neither of us saw Fran kill anyone, Fran hasn’t admitted she’s killed anyone, and the last time I checked, the law says innocent until proven guilty.’

‘You really believe what you’re telling yourself right now?’ Cis said, scrunching up her nose and looking at me, disgusted.

I shrugged my shoulders and embarked back onto the sofa, hoping that the me-shaped indentation was still there to sink into. Cis paced around my living room, thoroughly incandescent with anger.

‘You’re throwing your career away. You’re throwing my career away. You’re purposely disrupting the course of justice. Do you know what that could mean for you?’

‘Cis, I’m going to be honest with you,’ I groaned as I pulled the sofa throw over my chest. ‘I can’t tell you how little I care about what you’re saying right now. But if you really do want to talk about this more, just give me your phone and then we can talk.’

She almost instantly froze up.

‘What? Why?’ she asked, immediately defensive.

‘Because I know your tricks, and I know what you’re like. If you want to talk about this more, then give me your phone,’ I said, outstretching my hand.

Cis tried to hide a grimace as she red-handedly pulled her phone out of her pocket, cupping it away from me as she pressed a few buttons before passing it over. I wasn’t going to be fooled by my own trick.

I held it in my hand and watched her eyes fixed on me handling the device.

‘Are we live on air right now?’ I asked with a sly grin, lifting the phone’s microphone to my mouth. She reached across and snatched it away from me. ‘What are you trying to gain here, Cis? What’s your goal?’ I called after her as she walked out of the living room. ‘Is it justice or what?’

Cis exhaled in the hallway before strolling back across our living room to glance at the photos of Fran and me from our wedding day. The first ones we’d put up in our new home.

‘Y’know, for a little while, I thought there was a chance you might actually testify against her,’ Cis mumbled, mostly to herself.

That was enough to wake me up a little from my drowsiness.

‘What, why?’ I said, bewildered.

‘Because I thought that you were Detective Whistle-blower. You’ve always been so rigid, I thought even this wouldn’t make you change your ways. Even if she is your wife.’

I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Surely even the most rational person would pervert all the courses of justice in the world if it meant saving someone they loved, right? It had just taken me a minute – or a few months – to realise that.

‘I can see you haven’t been married, Cis,’ I stated. ‘Or, of course, been in a relationship that’s lasted longer than a few months.’

I should have taken more care with what I said, a recurring theme for me over the past few days. Cis – like many police officers – found it difficult to establish a work-life balance, with new relationships often fizzling out swiftly.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Cis whispered, lacking any anger that I thought she would have in her voice.

She pulled up a seat. The rage of her poor cyber security skills inside her seemed to be slowly dissipating as Mep strutted towards her.

The cat did his usual knife-stuck-in-a-lawnmower meow before twisting his way around her leg.

I watched Cis as her face sagged. For the second time today, I had made someone look morbidly depressed.

‘Just humour me, Gareth,’ Cis said, her eyes still looking lifelessly at the ground.

‘So, let’s say, whatever game you’re playing, whatever plan you’re concocting, works, and somehow Fran is released from prison.

What then? You live and spend the rest of your life with a murderer?

I may not have been married, but I have a feeling that it’s not a great sign if your spouse makes you give up on your dream career.

And has also – y’know – killed someone.’

She made a good point, but I couldn’t say I was particularly sad to see people like Macleod and O’Neill removed from the world.

‘We’ll see,’ I said, not letting her detect the doubt in my voice. ‘But whatever happens, Cis, I want you to know that I’m not going to regret it, any of it. I’ll confess to the damn murder myself before I let Fran go to prison.’

‘Well, that may be difficult. We’ve got her pinned dead to rights, Gareth, and I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m saying this as a friend. I don’t want you getting any hope that she can get out of this.’

‘Cis, what more can we say to each other? We’re not going to forgive one another, and neither of us is sorry for what we did, so what’s the point in even talking? Neither of us is going to change.’

‘I’m not here because I’m angry at what you’ve done Gareth, I’m angry because of why you’ve done it. Everything you’ve worked so hard for is being thrown out the window for…her.’

I had no idea any more if Cis was lying or not, or if she still saw me as one of her chess pieces.

I tried analysing her, watching her face shift and her body language change like we’d done back when we’d first sat next to each other in the classroom at training.

I couldn’t tell any more; she just looked void of anything, really.

‘I just wanted to stop you from making a mistake. A big one,’ Cis continued, her tone now resigned.

‘I feel like, deep down, you’ve succumbed to this idea that I did this to get one over on you, to advance my career and become Commissioner by fifty or something.

But that’s really not what I wanted. I didn’t want Fran to be the killer, Gareth.

I want you to know that. But don’t think I’m an arsehole because I want to see a murderer behind bars. ’

‘But you’re testifying tomorrow, right? Against her?’

Cis scowled, infuriated that she wasn’t getting through to me. It made me wonder if she was actually being sincere, so I decided to tone down the animosity. ‘I appreciate that,’ I said, as authentically as I could. ‘I do, but this is my decision. No one else is forcing me to make it.’

Cis gently patted Mep as she rose to her feet, not even looking in my general direction as she readied herself to leave.

‘Ten years from now, wherever you’re working – and maybe you’re still married to Fran and maybe you have kids – just remember that there were people who tried to stop you from living that life. I just think…’

I almost could hear her hesitate over what to say next.

‘I just think someone who loves you wouldn’t make you do this.’

I heard the door slam shut before I even realised that Cis had left the living room.

I couldn’t bring myself to fully digest what Cis had said.

It felt as though my brain couldn’t handle any more heavy feelings of guilt, confusion and/or remorse.

I distracted myself by grabbing Mep, who was looking stronger by the day, and flicking back onto teleshopping, wondering which wares would be offered to me tonight.