Chapter Three Hundred and Twelve
"Martha, I can't come back to the farm with you," Hugo said unhappily.
His former girlfriend had come visiting early in the morning and, having somehow got over all the pain of the past, seemed desperate to spend time with him.
"Why not?"
"Because whether they've told us on not, the cops will be crawling around here and crawling around the farm," he explained. "Angelo will be watching my every move. He obviously knows I'm here and he'll do whatever it takes to catch me out."
Martha sighed and sank heavily on the sofa. A now clean shaven Hugo came to sit beside her. He tentatively put his arm around her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry for everything."
At the police station, Watson avoided her office, in which Angelo and Charlie were arguing.
"You're going too far!" Charlie yelled.
"Too far to catch a notorious criminal?" Angelo yelled back. "Are you kidding me?"
"You can't hassle his family like this!" Charlie insisted.
"I can do whatever the hell I like," he replied.
"Actually, you can't," Charlie said in a quieter but no less stern tone. "You've been told that you have to reduce the surveillance you've set up and if you don't, I'll have to report it."
"You can take away the team," Angelo said, glaring at her. "But you can't stop me from doing whatever I like. I can stay out there twenty four seven if I choose."
"You're right," Charlie agreed and in a gentler tone. "But do you really think that's a good idea?"
She sat in Watson's vacant chair and looked firmly into Angelo's eyes. He sighed heavily and sat down in his own chair, safely behind his desk. He rubbed his temples and ran his hands through his too short hair.
"I can't let Hugo get away," he said. "He's the key to this case and this case has been my life for a year now. If it wasn't for agreeing to do whatever it took to bring the human trafficking ring down, I'd be rotting in a jail cell now. Please Charlie, you have to be with me on this."
"I understand where you're coming from," Charlie said. "I know how much it means and I know how important it is but I'm worried about you."
"Worried about me?" Angelo queried.
"Don't you think this whole thing is becoming a bit of an obsession?"
"No!" Angelo denied quickly.
"Angelo, you're a good cop and nobody could ever say you weren't devoted to your work," Charlie said. "But you do have this tendency to lose yourself in things."
"Such as?"
"Well, there was the whole development site thing," Charlie reminded him. "And look how that turned out."
His eyes blazed.
"Below the belt, Charlie," he said unhappily.
"Sorry, but it's true. Then there was your original hunt for Hugo..."
"That was valid!" Angelo shouted, losing his temper all over again.
"I know," Charlie said, keeping her voice calm. "But you were obsessed with it. And you still are. And I don't think I need to remind you that you were so obsessed with me that you started stalking me."
"I apologised for that," Angelo said rather sulkily.
"I know," Charlie replied softly. "That's not the issue. The issue is that it happened in the first place. You got so obsessed with one idea that you were blind to everything else around you. As your colleague and your friend, I really don't want that to happen again. I don't want you to lose yourself in this case."
"I wouldn't let Joey hear you refer to me as a friend," Angelo replied sourly, before marching out of the room.
Nicole sat at home in front of the TV with Romeo. Both feeling rather lost about losing their partners, Nicole had managed to convince her housemate that romantic comedies and junk food were the way forward.
"So, this is what girls do every time they get dumped?" he asked.
"Yes," Nicole said. "And we prefer not to use the word 'dumped'."
"Well, you might not have been dumped, but I was," Romeo sighed unhappily.
Nicole put her arm around him.
"It'll get better," she said.
"Will it?" Romeo asked.
"Well, that's what Joey said," Nicole sighed. "And she's usually right about these things."
At home, after a long day, Charlie couldn't get the Hugo situation out of her mind. Ruby had made herself scarce as quickly as possible and the knowledge that she was keeping big secrets from her parents was worrying to say the least. The atmosphere in the house was vastly uncomfortable.
"Do you think I should talk to her again?" Charlie asked.
"I don't know," Joey admitted. "I honestly have no idea what the best next move is."
Charlie moved to the other end of the sofa and cuddled up to her girlfriend.
"That's worrying," she said. "You always know what the best thing to do is."
Joey managed a smile and put her arm around Charlie, who rested comfortably on her chest.
"I think we need a break," Joey decided.
Charlie jerked away, looking completely panicked.
"A break? Why? I thought things were going really well between us..."
She trailed off and blushed.
"You meant you think we need to have a holiday or something, didn't you?" she realised.
"That would be correct," Joey chuckled, opening her arms again and welcoming Charlie back into her embrace. "Why the panic?"
Charlie sighed and closed her eyes. She inhaled Joey's scent. For a woman who worked with bait and fishing equipment all day, she always smelled delicious.
"I don't know," she said. "I just thought..."
"But why would you think that?" Joey wondered. "I don't make you feel insecure, do I?"
"No," Charlie assured her. "It just comes naturally."
Joey frowned, a little concerned.
"It's like that book," Charlie ventured.
"What book?"
"The Lionel Shriver one you love so much and made me read," Charlie said. "The one that says 'the first thing that seems to occur to people high as kites is that any time now, the wind might die and there they'll be, torn in a tree. Exhilaration seems to arrive in tandem with the threat of despair'."
Joey giggled. She had indeed made her girlfriend read A Perfectly Good Family, along with all the rest of Lionel Shriver's novels. Personally, she thought they were all a work a genius.
"You really learned that!" she said.
"It was a vey good point," Charlie said. "I liked it."
Angelo arrived at the farm a little later than he'd planned. He'd had to go home, get changed, eat and sort himself out before he left but, having got held up in traffic, he was worried he might have missed something important.
"He's just arrived," Martha said, peeking through the curtains.
She turned back to Hugo, who had surprised her with a visit. He'd told her that he wouldn't be able to come to the farm and she had very reluctantly expected it. The sheer joy she'd felt when he had actually come to stay had overwhelmed her.
"So, where should we go on this break?" Charlie wondered.
She was still curled up on the couch with Joey and at this point in time, she never wanted to move.
"Well, Aden wants us to visit," Joey ventured. "Maybe we could go into the city and do the rounds – Aden, Ross and Morag... And then perhaps we could spend a few days on our own. Get away from all the stress."
Charlie nodded and kissed Joey's cheek.
"That sounds great to me," she said. "Once I've got on a level with all this Hugo stuff, and preferably caught the bastard, thrown him and jail and thrown away the key, we could really get away and enjoy ourselves."
Joey shifted and kissed Charlie's lips.
"That sounds like heaven," she whispered. "Now, how to catch this pesky murderer..."
On the sofa, late into the night, Romeo and Nicole had given up on their DVD fest. Having spent several hours analysing every aspect of Nicole's relationship with Aden and then every aspect of Romeo's relationship with Annie, they had both decided that aside from each other, everyone of the opposite sex to their own, was rubbish.
"That's really going to be a stumbling block in our dating life," Nicole sighed.
"Maybe we should date each other!" Romeo laughed.
Nicole laughed too but then met Romeo's eye, looking deadly serious. Without warning, they kissed.
Next time… Romeo's mother arrives, the teenagers campaign to save Miles's job and Charlie, Angelo and Joey try to figure out their next move with Hugo…
