The sound of a fist slamming against a desk, the sound of it reverberating around the quiet office, caused the constable working late in the neighbouring room to look up. Swivelling in his chair towards the noise he saw only the blond head of DS Hathaway leaning over his computer, the frustrated mutters of someone stuck on a case floating through the open door. It was a familiar sight. Uniform might jest that CID clocked off at five but everyone knew it was just that, a joke. The hours were irregular and the work just as gruelling, both in regards to its tedium and exposure to some pretty awful people. The constable returned to his own work and gave Hathaway's outburst no further thought.
James sighed and clicked on yet another report, the last ten of so having yielded exactly nothing. Franklin was definitely a suspect he'd concluded and he knew Robbie had been inclined to agree. He'd hurt Jessica, his whereabouts at the time of Deborah Mantle couldn't be verified, and it would seem both his daughter and Sandra Smith's son were at the same school. There were too many coincidences and yet proof of absolutely nothing. James had spent the last hour reading anything he could find in the Mantle case files that might link things together a bit more, but it was a fruitless and desperate attempt borne out of his concern for Jessica. Robbie had said as much as he'd run out of the door, shouting over his shoulder for James to go home. But he hadn't listened and was now close to admitting his Inspector was right. They needed a new angle to all of this but he was damned if he knew what it was.
Picking up his phone, he tapped out a message. Jessica's injuries had been minor, at least in the sense they'd been straightforward enough for her to be patched up and discharged. He'd been insistent that she went to stay with a friend and call him the minute Franklin got in touch. They'd lived together about a year, she'd told him through bouts of tears, the physical outbursts a relatively recent development but she'd confessed that he'd always been a bit controlling.
James stared at the short text he'd composed, contemplating how wise it was. Did he really want to get embroiled in all of this, beyond whatever links there were to the case? She'd rejected him before and nothing had really changed. He was still him, just older and even harder to be around.
"Sod it," he said out loud and hit send as he pushed back in his chair to leave.
Robbie slouched out of the restaurant, the taxi long since gone and, along with it, his mood. A week ago everything had been as he thought it should be; a tough case that was quickly and quietly resolving itself and the prospect of a weekend with Laura. And now? Now he was just a fed up old copper in a crumpled suit outside a tacky Indian restaurant, even if it did serve the best Murg saagwala he'd found. And worse than that, he'd messed up. Again. He could justify it, convince himself he was in the right, but essentially he'd done what he always did, let himself be swept along with a case with little consideration of any other aspect of his life. He'd say it was a habit necessitated by grief and loneliness but, had she been looking down on him, Val would be calling him out for what it was, an excuse. He knew he'd used too many times on her, tiptoeing up the stairs, pretending he'd gotten home hours ago and had been enjoying a quiet beer in front of the telly, instead of admitting the truth.
Robbie pulled out his phone to call for a cab and sighed heavily as he remembered it was out of juice, instead turned and headed back inside in hopes they could ring one for him.
James had intended to go home, truly. But somehow the car steered itself to where he and Robbie had been not ten hours previously. The house sat silent, no lamps lit behind badly drawn curtains, no vehicles to indicate anyone was home. If Thomas Franklin was innocent he was doing a poor job of acting like it and that only served to convince James that he was their man.
James sat and kept watch, willing something to happen, anything. He shouldn't be here. No warrant, no senior officer, no permission of any kind. But he couldn't help it. Seeing Jessica hurt had sparked something about himself.
"There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one's sentiments," he muttered under his breath.
Where had he read that, he wondered. Was he mortified? Probably, at the time, he shrugged to himself. But now? Now he wanted to catch a killer, the simple yet clichéd dream of any policeman. He switched on the engine, sitting here was pointless, he concluded. But as pulled away from the curb he could have sworn he saw a shadow cross the driveway of the house he'd just been watching.
The desk lamp focused a pool of light over the stack of reports on the desk, her laptop in half shadow as she tapped her pencil lightly on the page in front of her. Laura often worked this way when she was at home, finding the overhead light was positioned in just the wrong place so that it simply lit the rest of the room but not the space where it was needed most.
There was something off about Sandra Smith's blood test results and she'd not yet had a chance to review it properly, her concentration being taken up with things of a more personal nature. It didn't change the cause of death but it was often the small details that she could bring to the police that either confirmed or denied a theory, or set them off in an entirely different direction. Needing to double check that her calculations were telling her what she suspected, she reached over to the bookcase and selected the reference book that would do just that. As she pulled it out, the slim bound volume that had been nestled up against it was also dislodged and clattered to the floor. The title wasn't particularly interesting, a study undertaken by one of her students a few years back that they had bound and presented to her as a thank you, a heartfelt inscription on the inside cover that she'd appreciated and had therefore kept. She bent down to retrieve it and as she did so saw that something had fallen out, a scrap of paper she'd used a bookmark. About to examine it further, headlights flashed across the window above the desk as a car pulled up at the end of her short, gravel driveway and she looked on as a figure emerged, face unseen, but their mannerisms identifying them easily. Robbie.
Laura watched as he took three steps towards the house and stopped, the car driving away behind him, his hand up to the back of his head indicating that something was bothering him. He was still largely in shadow, the street lamp behind illuminating his shape but little else. She could feel her nerves rising as she anticipated his next move, ringing her bell and offering an excuse of some kind, almost certainly connected to his infernal job. Was she in the mood to hear it, she wondered. If she was honest, she didn't know that she was. Mostly she was tired of feeling this way.
She continued her vigil as his hands plunged into his pockets, the sign of a decision having been made, and resumed his journey to her door. And even though she knew it was coming she jumped as the cheerful chime of the bell echoed across the hall to where she was sat, its peel rescinding she continued to stare out over the driveway.
Just a short chapter but hopefully enough to tempt you back as we approach the final part of this tale of these two finally (finally!) becoming in step with one another. Thank you for sticking with it. I'm so grateful.