32

BEST INTENTIONS OR NOT, THERE WASN’T MUCH BURYING OF hatchets in evidence on the drive home. Joesbury turned on the car stereo as we pulled out of Lewisham car park and cranked up the volume. I sat in the passenger seat, hugging my bag to my chest, listening to a hypnotic blend of house and jazz club music. After a while the bright orange and white lights of south London started to hurt my eyes and I closed them. I was a lot more tired than I’d realized.

The city had quietened down by this time and it didn’t take us long. Joesbury slowed the car as we turned into my road and I opened my eyes.

‘Thank you,’ I said, as he pulled up to the kerb. I made myself blink, wishing my head didn’t feel so fuzzy. The hot, noisy car had acted like a drug. I needed cold air and silence. As I pushed open the door I noticed he’d turned off the engine. Without looking back, I got out and stood up. I heard a door slamming and realized Joesbury, too, was out of the car.

‘You’re not coming in,’ I said, turning to face him.

He didn’t flinch. ‘Wrong,’ he said over the roof of the car. ‘I’m not leaving you until I know there are no bogeymen under the bed and that all your entries and exits are secure. Tully would never let me hear the end of it. Would you like me to go in first?’

I turned and walked slowly down the steps. I took my time finding keys, although I knew exactly where in my bag they’d be. All the while I could feel him, inches away, hear him breathing softly.

Fuck it, nobody came into my flat. Nobody.

‘Would you mind checking the space under the basement steps?’ I asked him as I put the key in the lock. ‘I’ve had some real low-lifes hide under there and spring out at me.’

‘You’re wasting your breath, DC Flint,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible to insult me.’

I turned on the spot, looked him up and down. ‘Maybe I just haven’t seen enough of you yet,’ I replied.

For a second I thought he might laugh. Then both corners of his mouth stretched into a slow smile. He didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that sounds like a bridge we should cross when we come to it.’

I turned back to the door, unlocked it, found the light switch and stepped inside. What the hell was I thinking? That was twice now I’d given this man the come-on. Even if he hadn’t been one of the most obnoxious men I’d met in a long time, there was almost certainly something close and romantic between him and Tulloch. I dropped my bag on a chair and walked over to the fireplace, automatically taking off my glasses and leaving them on the mantelpiece. Just get it over with. Let him do what he had to do and leave.

When I turned back he was standing just inside the doorway, taking in the largest room of my flat, not even trying to hide his surprise at the clean white space, the minimum of furniture and, apart from plants, the complete lack of personal possessions. When I said nothing, he got to work.

First, by checking the front door. It was a Yale lock, ridiculously inadequate by London standards, but it’s not like I have anything to steal. Then he crossed the living room and the small galley kitchen and disappeared. I heard him open the door to the bathroom and pull back the shower curtain. What he was hoping to find in the bathroom cabinet I don’t know, but I heard that open and close too. The sound of wardrobe doors told me he was in the bedroom. Then I heard the creak of the conservatory door. He’d gone outside.

Curious, I followed. I heard the sound of something heavy landing on soft ground, as though he’d jumped from a height. He reappeared just as I arrived at the rear door.

‘Shed key?’ he asked, holding out one hand.

Knowing there was no point arguing, I told him where he’d find it, tucked away on the shed roof. I watched him walk up the path, open the shed and disappear inside. In my head, I was counting, ten, nine. At six he came out again, staring straight at me, his hands raised. The word was hardly necessary, but he said it anyway.

‘What?’

‘Keeps me fit,’ I replied. ‘Davina McCall swears by it.’

I didn’t give him time to point out that Davina McCall probably didn’t dress her punchbag as a man. I turned and walked back through the flat. He’d seen everything. From the living room, I heard him lock the conservatory door. Then he reappeared. He stopped in the archway between living room and bedroom.

‘First of all, I have never seen a woman’s flat like this in my life before,’ he said. ‘Christ, Flint, don’t you even have a teddy?’

He was a senior officer, we were now officially part of the same team and, in his eyes at least, he was doing me a favour. I was going to stay calm. ‘Goodnight, DI Joesbury,’ I replied. ‘Thank you for your help.’ I was standing in front of the hearth. I wasn’t moving till he was out of there.

He wasn’t moving either. ‘Second, you can’t stay here by yourself,’ he said. ‘Tully will have my innards for breakfast.’

Stay calm. ‘I’ve lived here quite safely for five years, the doors will be locked and, in the circumstances, I’d rather you didn’t talk about innards,’ I said.

Joesbury’s lips twitched again. He held up his left hand and with his right started counting off splayed fingers. ‘One, there is a gate leading directly into the alley outside,’ he said. ‘I managed to get over it with a buggered shoulder. Two, the conservatory door has half rotted away and a good push would send it flying. Three, your front door has a Yale lock that I could open with my credit card in ten seconds. You don’t even have a chain on it.’ He stopped, dropped his hands and shook his head at me. ‘This is south London,’ he went on. ‘Even without a maniac on the loose, do you have a death wish?

Probably, was the nearest I could get to an honest answer, but not one I was about to articulate. ‘I’ll put a chair against the door and I’ll sleep with my phone,’ I said. ‘Now, will you please excuse—’

‘I’m going to need that phone,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort you out with a new one tomorrow. Right, have you got a blanket?’

‘What?’

‘I’m sleeping on the sofa.’

‘Over my dead … no, absolutely not, get out of here.’

He crossed to the sofa and began pushing his fists into the cushions to plump them up. ‘Tully can probably have you transferred to a safe house tomorrow,’ he said, picking up two loose cushions and arranging them to act as pillows at one end of the sofa. ‘At least until we can get some decent locks installed here,’ he went on. ‘We can get an alarm rigged up to the station.’

‘Do you not understand the English language?’

‘Any chance of a spare toothbrush?’ he said, pulling off his jacket and sitting down. He was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt and had the faintest vaccination scar just below his right shoulder. Heavily muscled arms.

‘You’re not staying here.’

‘Flint, I’m tired.’ The bastard was actually taking off his shoes. ‘Stop wittering and go to bed.’

‘I can’t sleep if you’re in the next room,’ I snapped back, before I had a second to think about the consequences of admitting something so … oh my God.

Stalemate. Joesbury looked up at me. Then he stood. I took a step back and almost fell over the hearth stones. Oh no. Of all the men in the world, not this one.

‘Any point suggesting I don’t have to be in the next room?’ he asked me in a voice that was barely audible. I wasn’t even going to think about it. I shook my head.

Joesbury continued to stare at me for a moment. Then he looked at his watch and pulled out his mobile phone. ‘Didn’t think so,’ he said.

Fifteen minutes later, a woman police constable was ensconced on my sofa, watching television with the volume turned low and drinking coffee. I was in bed, still wet from the shower and wondering when I’d stop trembling.