One thing was certain. While she dithered, he would be planning his next murder. Fiona refilled her glass and made her decision.
Fiona was halfway downstairs with the Rough Guide to Spain when she heard the front door opening. ‘Hello,’ she called out.
‘I brought Steve home with me,’ Kit replied, his voice relaxed into broad Mancunian by alcohol.
Fiona was too tired to welcome the prospect of late-night drinking and chat. But at least it was only Steve. He was part of the family, too well-rooted in their company to mind if she took herself off to bed and left them to it. She rounded the final turn in the stairs and looked down at them. The most important men in her life, they were an oddly contrasting pair. Steve, tall, wirily thin and dark; Kit, with his broad, heavily muscled torso making him look shorter than he was, his shaved head gleaming in the light. It was Steve, with his darting eyes and long fingers, who looked like the intellectual, while Kit looked more like a beat bobby who worked as a nightclub bouncer on the side. Now, they looked up at her, identical sheepish small-boy grins on their flushed faces.
‘Good dinner, I see,’ Fiona said dryly, running down the rest of the stairs. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Steve’s cheek, then allowed Kit to engulf her in a hug.
He gave her a smacking kiss on the lips. ‘Missed you,’ he said, releasing her and crossing to the kitchen.
‘No you didn’t,’ Fiona contradicted him. ‘You’ve had a great boys’ night out, eaten lots of unspeakable bits of dead animals, drunk’—she paused and cocked her head, assessing them both—‘three bottles of red wine…’
‘She’s never wrong,’ Kit interjected.
‘…and put the world to rights,’ Fiona concluded. ‘You were much better off without me.’
Steve folded himself into a kitchen chair and accepted the brandy glass Kit proffered. He had the air of a man embattled who warily senses he might finally have arrived in a place of safety. He raised his glass in a sardonic toast. ‘Confusion to our enemies. You’re right, Fi, but for the wrong reasons,’ he said.
Fiona sat down opposite him and pulled her wine glass towards her, intrigued. ‘I find that hard to believe,’ she said, a tease in her voice.
‘Fi, I was only glad you weren’t there because you’re big-headed enough without listening to me ranting on about how I’d never have had to endure today’s humiliations if I’d been working with you instead of that arsehole Horsforth.’ Steve held up a hand to indicate to Kit that an inch of brandy was more than enough.
Kit leaned against the kitchen units, cupping his glass in both his broad hands to warm the spirit. ‘You’re right about the big-headed bit,’ he chuckled, his pride in her obvious in his affectionate grin.
‘Takes one to know one,’ Fiona said. ‘I’m sorry you had a shit day, Steve.’
Before Steve could reply, Kit cut in. ‘It was bound to happen. That operation was doomed from day one. Apart from anything else, you were never going to get away with a sting like that in a trial, even if Blake had swallowed the honey-trap and coughed chapter and verse. British juries just can’t get their heads round entrapment. Your average man in the pub thinks it’s cheating to set people up when you haven’t got your evidence the straight way.’
‘Don’t mince your words, Kit, tell us what you really think,’ Steve said sarcastically.
‘I’d hoped you two would already have had the postmortem,’ Fiona protested mildly.
‘Oh, we have,’ Steve said. ‘I feel like I’ve been wearing a hair shirt all day.’
‘Hey, I’ve not been saying it was your fault,’ Kit reminded him. ‘We all know you got stamped on from above. If anyone should be flagellating himself, it’s your commander. But you can bet your pension that Teflon Telford will be washing his hands like Pontius Pilate with a tin of Swarfega tonight. It’ll be, “Well, of course, you have to let your junior officers have their head sometimes, but I thought Steve Preston would have handled matters better than this,”’ he said, dropping his voice to the basso profundo of Steve’s boss.
Steve stared into his brandy. Kit wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but hearing it from someone else didn’t make failure taste any less sour. And tomorrow, he’d have to face his colleagues knowing that he was the one appointed to carry the can. Some of them would have sufficient grasp of the politics to understand he was nothing more than the designated scapegoat, but there were plenty of others who would relish the chance to snigger behind their hands at him. That was the price of his past successes. And in the competitive environment of the higher echelons of the Met, you were only ever as good as your last success.
‘Are you really not looking for anyone else?’ Fiona asked, registering Steve’s depression and trying to move the conversation in a more positive direction.
Steve looked mutinous. ‘That’s the official line. To say anything else makes us look even bigger dickheads than we do already. But I’m not happy with that. Somebody murdered Susan Blanchard and you know better than I do that this kind of killer probably won’t stop at one.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Fiona asked.
Kit gave her a speculative look. ‘I think the question might be what are you going to do about it?’
Fiona shook her head, trying not to show her irritation. ‘Oh no, you don’t guilt-trip me like that. I said I’d never work for the Met again after this debacle, and I meant it.’
Steve spread his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Hey, even if I had the budget, I wouldn’t insult you like that.’
Kit grabbed one of the chairs and straddled it. ‘Yeah, but she loves me. I get to insult her. Come on, Fiona, it wouldn’t hurt if you took a look at the entrapment material, would it? Purely as an academic exercise.’
Fiona groaned. ‘You just want it lying round the house so you can poke your nose in,’ she said, trying another diversionary tactic. ‘It’s all grist to your grisly little mill, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not fair! You know I never read confidential case material,’ Kit said, his expression outraged.
Fiona grinned. ‘Gotcha.’
Kit laughed. ‘It’s a fair cop, guv.’
Steve leaned back in his chair and looked pensive. ‘On the other hand…’
‘Oh, grow up, the pair of you,’ Fiona grumbled. ‘I have better things to do with my life than pawing over Andrew Horsforth’s grubby little operation.’
Steve studied Fiona. He knew her well enough to understand the kind of challenge that might overcome her stubborn resistance, and he was desperate enough to try it. ‘The trouble is, Fi, the trail’s really cold. It’s over a year since Susan Blanchard was butchered, and it’s getting on for ten months since we were paying attention to anybody other than Francis Blake. I don’t want to leave things unresolved. I don’t want her kids growing up with their lives full of unanswered questions. You know the kind of emotional pain the absence of knowledge brings. Now, I really want the bastard who did this. But we need fresh leads,’ he said. ‘And like Kit says, at the very least it might be a useful resource for you professionally.’
Fiona shut the fridge door with more than necessary force. ‘You really are a manipulative sod,’ she complained. But knowing he was deliberately pushing her buttons didn’t shield her from the stab of recognition. Stung, she tried a final line of defence. ‘Steve, I’m not a clinician. I don’t spend my days listening to people droning on about their sad little lives. I’m a number-cruncher. I deal in facts,