Chapter 72: The Point Of No Return

As Monday wore on, Troy buried himself in his notes, at last finalizing his reports for the approaching hearing at the tail end of the week. Barnaby, surprisingly, had very little to say through most of the day, and he wasn't about to argue. Once or twice, the chief inspector grumbled about a few words that needed tweaking in this filing or a need for more detail in that one. Mostly, Troy was content to keep his face down, checking and double-checking each sentence, murmuring, "Yes, sir," every now and then. If he didn't glance up, perhaps he wouldn't have to see the disdain on his boss's face. How much did Barnaby know? He wasn't eager to ask.

For his part, Barnaby's stomach still churned from the night before. Arriving at CID a quarter before nine—a little shocked but fuming within to see his sergeant already at his desk, diligently buried in his stack of papers, leafing through them one at a time—he'd already visited the staff room two or three times, pouring himself a bitter mug of coffee each time he retraced his steps. And each time, he ignored the burn, just like he could ignore everything if he just let it alone...it didn't bear thinking. As the end of the day approached, both were more than happy to bid farewell to the heavy silence: Barnaby desperate to return to a life as clear and uncomplicated as it had been such a short time ago, Troy to find relief and happiness in Cully as the hour grew later.

True to her word, he found her at the front door of his building before twilight had died, her bicycle locked to the nearest rail, smiling as he pulled her inside from the unseasonably warm evening. For the first few minutes, again curled next to one another on that settee, they chatted about their days: Cully had nothing much new to say about Midsomer's lesser traveled county roads beyond some unexpected maintenance that made her late on the morning's drive, and Troy only had notes and revision to report, alongside rumors of the superintendent's relief that the end of the thorn in his side approached.

The evening's end wasn't what either of them really intended, though neither minded at all: Cully initially refused to resist teasing him over how many months he needed to finally find the man he wanted as he scowled at her amusement, happy to hear about his day. But as the minutes wound on—the words grew quieter—he drew her closer, pressed his mouth to hers—and the unexpectedly warm air trickling in from the cracks beneath the windows turned newly hot, humid, clammy. And so it wasn't too long before Cully found herself in his bed, naked and gasping beneath him while every stretch of skin burned at his touch, listening to his groans and strangled attempts to hiss her name. By the time they were satisfied by each other, both were glazed with sweat and Troy's breathing had turned rather heavy. What must have been an hour disappeared in minutes, the new easy words between them concerning nothing and everything. But they couldn't quite stay like that, Cully finally whispering she had to go—though neither of them moved for a few more minutes, Troy desperately seeking another deep kiss before she vanished. "I'll see you tomorrow?" he whispered with one last kiss before he began to pry himself from his own bed, unhappily preparing to see her off for the night.

"Of course," she answered, pushing his shoulders down—not resisting his hands and arms around her waist, lifting her atop him like he had so many times over the last days. "I think you like me right here," she added, pressing her face to the hollow of his neck. His pulse throbbed against her cheek, like she could hear his heart itself.

"Don't you?"

Even whispered against his skin, Cully was certain he heard her answer: "Yes."

It was still close to half an hour before they were both tugging on the slightly wrinkled clothes carelessly tossed aside earlier, Troy clutching her hand as they made their way across the flat—except when Cully pulled him against her, desperate for one last taste of him for the night. The thought of seeing him the next day gave her the energy as she pedaled home—having almost forgotten her toothbrush a second time—finding a mercifully darkened house a few minutes after ten. Leaving the possibility of a shower until the next morning, she crawled into her own bed, pulling the chilly sheets over her tacky skin. Just as the night before, it was so quiet—nigh on silent—without his breaths against her cheek or his faint snores in her ear. She didn't like it as she clutched at the last hours, still remembering him and everything she wanted, so stark and bright in the last days.

Tuesday at CID was rather the same, though Troy and Barnaby found themselves with a new burglary case slapped on their desks. Over another mug of acrid coffee while he reviewed the meager notes in this new file, Barnaby muttered, "You'd think we didn't have anything better to do."

"Well, it's not all bad, sir," Troy said, not really thinking as he read over the sparse notes they had before actually setting their own eyes on the crime scene.

"Is that so?"

He shrugged, pulling his suit coat over his shoulders; fortunately it was still too warm to need a heavier overcoat. "It should be straightforward, that's all I meant."

"And the case the magistrate is hearing this Thursday hasn't taught you differently?"

Standing, Troy said. "Surely that's an outlier."

"Perhaps," Barnaby said quietly, already out the door of the squad room, turning his face back over his shoulder. "Well, come on, Troy!"

Much to Barnaby's ire, Troy was in fact correct: after a couple of hours, they were returning to CID, suspect handcuffed in the back of their car. Too many bits and clues left behind, too many of them recognized by the homeowner, too many twitches and tics when they knocked on their new suspect's front door hardly past the end of the street. His sergeant clearly struggled against the desire to murmur "I told you so" ahead of a day of interviews and even more reports.

But Tuesday evening was delightfully the same, Cully cycling her way to his apartment again. However, everything passing between them melted together even faster—a few minutes of conversation about the day just passed before the heat rose anew. They wound their way back to the dying day sometime later, low words in hoarse voices as they lay crushed together in the afterglow of all that warmth. Peeling herself from him was even more difficult than the night before and the house wasn't quite as dark when she arrived home nearer eleven. Silent, but even as she padded up the stairs, trusting the banister until the faint glow of the small light always plugged into the outlet at the far end of the hall...But there was more, a faint glow beneath the door, like of someone waiting or curious or worried. It's nothing you need to worry over, Dad, Cully thought as she slipped into her own bedroom and winced at a faint, familiar pain taking root beneath her stomach, well remembered and expected—and perhaps this single time appreciated. Please don't worry.

Wednesday, however, took a rather different turn. Troy and Barnaby, chained to their desks to process their latest burglar ahead of a final review of their reports to be entered into evidence the next day, tarried at CID until well into the evening, though the younger man did find a quick moment to step away and ring his girlfriend, unable to completely stifle his smile at that thought. (He certainly said nothing of it to Barnaby, just that he needed a few minutes.) "Sorry, Cully," Troy said quietly, down the other end of the hallway from the squad room and the corner of it he shared with the chief inspector. "Don't know when we'll be done here tonight."

"I understand, Gavin—you know I do."

"Yes, but..." He sighed; it really wasn't the place to say much more.

"It's fine—really. I know you're still at work."

"I'll call you if it's not too late," he said quickly, glancing down the hall. No sign of Barnaby emerging to drag him back to his desk.

"I'd like that."

Between missing him and the continuing happy, twisting cramps of her menstrual cycle newly gripping her abdomen, Cully was lonely as she flipped through another play, waiting for the pain tablets to take effect. You knew this was what you could expect, she thought, not really reading the words on the page. You've seen it your whole life. It didn't change that, even if it was right before she drifted to sleep, Cully just wanted to feel him and know he was so near, to hear his voice whispering...What she wanted to hear took her breath away. Perhaps we'll have some more time to ourselves once this is all done, at least until the next case begins. That last half wasn't a pleasant thought, even if it was likely true.

Though Troy reminded himself several times on his drive home that he wouldn't call her with the evening already drawing on so long as he snapped the front door to his flat closed rather more harshly than he intended, the air was thick, quiet, and empty. How strange to be so troubled by it he knew as he loosened his tie, the silk slipping against itself as he stripped the shorter half through the knot. You shouldn't, Troy told himself, unfastening the top two buttons of his now not-so-crisp dress shirt. It's gone ten.

He couldn't resist, in the end, his mobile pressed to his left cheek after he hung his jacket and tucked his shoes back into the closet, shirt unbuttoned but still draped across his shoulders as he sat on his bed. Everything was quiet and almost empty while the line rang two—three—four times, and Troy was about to snap the thing closed, before—

"Hello?" Her voice was muddled, like he'd roused her from a deep sleep.

"Didn't wake you, did I?" Troy asked quietly.

"Not yet—it's fine. Did you want to talk?"

He shook his head. "No, I think I just wanted to say good night properly."

"Properly?"

"Or as well as I can on a phone call."

She laughed, a sound he loved and missed and hated hearing from such a distance. "Gavin Troy, I think you like me."

Like you? he thought, his stomach tightening again. "Maybe more, Cully."

He heard her breath catch, even across the line. "More?"

What are you doing? Troy asked himself, curling his right hand into a fist. You thought before...But this isn't anything like that, you know it. "But, sorry—I know it's late."

"There's no need, there really isn't."

But there was, he wanted to say. "It—" His voice caught in his throat, and he had to start again, almost hearing his pulse in his ears. "I can almost think you're here."

"I know," Cully said softly; it was almost like feeling her voice against his ear. "Tomorrow, then?"

"If we survive court."

And I guess that's that, Barnaby thought, standing in tandem with the rest of the gallery as the judge made his way down from the bench, Huhes offering his solicitor a swift embrace ahead of a smirk thrown towards them. The last two or so hours of the preliminary hearing had sped past, the crown prosecutor offering up the months of investigation and evidence he and Troy had scratched out of the dust and soil of Midsomer. SOCO's innumerable reports—though the prosecutor only cited the strongest—the depositions of their interviews with Huhes, even Troy's meticulous cross-referencing of the Causton train station's reservation lists. "Not that it matters," he muttered, tugging his overcoat closer as the throng of observers funneled through the narrow doorway.

Next to him, Barnaby could feel Troy fuming. "That can't be the end of it, sir!"

"And why not?" he asked.

The younger man was keeping pace through the mess of crown attorneys, solicitors, and barristers. "He didn't even listen—at least to us."

"Sometimes, they don't."

"So we just spend all our time on a wild goose chase, do we?"

"It does happen, and not just with the things we investigate for the county." So much more than just that, Barnaby knew: but for once, his words failed him, all the ire he was desperate to lob at his sergeant.

"I don't follow, sir."

"You don't?" Barnaby asked. "I'd expect more after the last few months." Truth will out. The last months had been his own blind blundering down a black winding road, struggling to tease the truth out of the darkness. Now, there was no denying what lay at its end. Cully Barnaby and Gavin Troy, he thought, his footsteps quick and quicker, more eager than ever to leave his sergeant behind. A lover's quarrel. He shuddered at the thought, still remembering that last farewell between them Sunday evening—and all these recent evenings, his daughter simply vanishing at the end of each day to see him. Him.

"But—"

"Come now, Troy," Barnaby said loudly, the far end of the hall and the outside world now rising at the edge of his vision, "we have better things to do than complain about court." Perhaps it wouldn't be for the best, leaving behind the disappointment and frustration of the court case, opening his mind for disappointment of a more visceral type. These past few days, even as he wanted to believe what Joyce had told him time and again—that he only knew his sergeant, not the man Cully did—there was something deeper he couldn't ignore, something echoing so deep in his mind.

"Investigate a case and have the magistrate ignore all the evidence?"

"Hopefully not too often."

Troy sighed, shoving his hands into his coat pockets as he so often did. "Didn't think Huhes would be one to break out that sort of sob story—or have his solicitor do."

"And why wouldn't you?"

"Well," Troy muttered, "every time we asked him if it was for his grandmother, sir—or that rickety house—he laughed it off."

"What's that to do with anything?"

"Sir?"

"Court is different," Barnaby went on. All around them, the crowd thinned: casework assistants back to their research and files; prosecutors eager for a break ahead of an afternoon filled with questions and objections; men and women and families ecstatic or disappointed by the proclamations of judges and juries. But that's the end for Mr. Huhes, Barnaby thought, a grey breeze of chilly air whipping along the foyer from the late morning outside. I wonder what his grandmother thinks? "It's his chance to get off our hook, back into the stream, back down the current."

Troy snorted. "Back to his break-ins, you mean?"

"Not if the judge is to be believed," Barnaby said, shaking his head. Even after all these years presenting evidence in Causton Crown Court, he was truly baffled by the judge's ruling this morning. No question that Huhes had been involved with at least a handful of the burglaries they'd investigated over the last several months—fingerprints didn't lie, or at least not very often—but now, there was nothing left to do, no questions left to ask or answer. And not that he intended to admit it aloud, but Troy was most likely correct. If it had taken an arrest to really pause those break-ins this time, why should either of them expect anything different now?

"And why should he be?" Troy asked.

"Typically we do, Troy—believe them. Whether we later learn they've had a lapse in judgment or not."

Troy sighed, shaking his head again as they finally emerged from Causton's courthouse into the chill and the grey. "But...Where do they get these judges from? The man burgled his way through every village in the county."

"Look, we catch the criminals, we offer up the evidence," he said, half turning to Troy. His sergeant was at last zipping up his coat over his suit, the warmer days of autumn's final gasps today giving way to such a familiar chilly and grey morning. "Not everyone likes what happens in court. Maybe the judge was right: give the boy one more chance." He caught Troy's eye in the grey gloom, his sergeant peering at him rather like he had sprouted another head. "Oh, look," Barnaby went on, "squadron of pigs over Causton."

He saw his sergeant glance up, as though he was wondering if he truly would see them. You really are a fool, Troy. "Doesn't seem a chance he deserves, lying through his teeth like that."

"Oh, you think so?" Barnaby muttered.

"He either lied through his teeth to us or his solicitor just did under oath—"

"And that suddenly bothers you?"

"Sir?"

"It's only a question, Troy. And your answer?" he asked quietly.

"Well, yes?"

It was perhaps unfair, needling Troy with questions the younger man didn't quite comprehend. But Barnaby did, more than Troy or Cully possibly realized: all Sunday afternoon and evening, the pieces of the puzzle became clearer and clearer, the mist over everything fading until there was no pretending he didn't see what was right in front of his eyes...Well, maybe now he could pinpoint just when it was all transformed from friendship and some brief summer romance into something much much more. The afternoons and evenings of reading lines in the back garden—late nights of rehearsals that stretched later and later—phone calls gone unreturned—and a sergeant freshly anxious and more awkward than ever before like he feared the consequences of something he'd just done. "I'm glad to hear. I hope you remember it, too."

This was all somehow so very different, even as he recalled so many of Cully's barely mentioned romances throughout secondary school and university—most of them never met, so many quickly and well forgotten. As Joyce had reminded him earlier this week, their daughter eagerly grew up into a young woman, stubborn, independent, and often harsh—embracing all the desires that came with that growth. That did not trouble him, and it hadn't for ages. But choosing Gavin Troy, in bed with him? It didn't bear—

"What's that supposed to mean?" Troy asked, pulling Barnaby from his own troubled mind.

"Precisely what it sounds like," he muttered. Cully Barnaby and Gavin Troy, he said to himself again, shivering a bit in the cool morning, a few loud voices jarring him from his own darker thoughts.

He and Troy both looked back, a small cluster of men and women hidden beneath umbrellas quietly watching two men brawling on the ground, groans and the sound of fists against other skin echoing across the road. I really am the local bobby, Barnaby thought, rushing through the street with Troy trailing quickly behind. Between the two of them, they had two middle-aged men off the pavement—back on their feet—and sent off in opposite directions, one nursing a split lip as he spat a few last angry words at a rector in the crowd.

The small clutch of people dissipated swiftly into the light drizzle of the late morning, though it already lessened and the first rays of late autumn sunshine broke through the ever more wispy clouds. "What was the point of all that, sir, just now?" Troy asked as they found their way toward the car park again, the keys already clutched in his palm.

"Who can say?" Barnaby said with a shrug. "Haven't seen either of them before—we may never see them again unless they bring things to a new level."

"And the judge ignores the evidence we offer up in court again."

"You'll have to let it go eventually."

"I suppose. Just maybe next time, I won't bother trying to understand everything that's going on if it's about to be ignored in court."

"Not just in court, Troy," Barnaby said quietly. How many weeks had he struggled to pretend that what he was seeing wasn't what he was seeing? More than weeks—it was months since the first signals that something deeper, sharper, and more was evolving, in his own back garden and all those evenings growing later and later as rehearsals wore on. "Perhaps there the least."

Finally at the driver's door, Troy peered up as he turned over the lock. "Sorry, sir?"

"Nothing now. Just get us back to the office, I'm sure we have something new on our desks."

"Right," Troy said quietly.

"Something on your mind?"

"Ah, no, sir."

"I'm glad to hear." And I do hope someday, you'll be able to keep it that way.