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“Nothing in this stack, sir.”
Lewis glances across at the younger man, now sitting cross-legged on the floor, shirt-sleeves rolled up and tie askew. He’s put in a long day on the job – as has Lewis himself – and yet he’s been here for the past three hours, unasked and voluntarily.
“Robbie,” he says. Should’ve said it hours ago, actually. He’s already told the bloke to drop the sir off-duty.
“Eh?”
“This isn’t Oxfordshire police work, James. And we both know you’re not here as my sergeant.”
James doesn’t immediately reply. Is he that reluctant to acknowledge aloud what they both know, that their relationship has been more than professional for some time – even though Robbie himself has made it clear he considers James a friend? Or is he respecting Lewis’s own reluctance to confide in him about the link to Val in the Cooper case, starting with the Never stop looking letter?
Then he nods. “No, I’m not.”
“Well, then.” Robbie exhales. Yes, he does owe his friend more of an explanation. It’s funny; he’s fine talking to the man about all sorts of... well, intimate stuff, like how he felt about throwing away the old mattress he slept on with Val. How it felt to have yet more pieces of his marriage discarded; that it seems like he’s throwing her away along with each little bit of their shared past that’s gone. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to mention the letter and the newspaper clipping, or how it had affected him. How he’d brooded over it.
“It’s not just an obsession, James. I know you believe there’s nothing here, and in any other situation I’d agree with you. But it doesn’t add up. Cooper might’ve been a creepy bastard and a rapist, but the other letters he sent were accurate. Frank Spiretti, Belinda Ashton, remember?”
James looks back at him, his gaze level. And, yes, unaffected by emotion, he does have a clearer perspective, one that’s worth listening to, Robbie supposes. “Looked at another way, though, s- Robbie, the letters were designed to cause trouble. And I don’t mean just trouble for Lord Adebayou, Simon Ashton and Gavin Maxwell. Finding out the truth – or the apparent truth – didn’t make Spiretti or Mrs Ashton’s lives any better, did it?”
For a moment, Robbie can’t breathe. There’s an icy fist clamped around his heart. When he finally speaks, he can hear the ragged pain in his voice, but it doesn’t seem to matter that James can hear it too. “You mean he was messin’ with me head?”
“Not by sending you over here, no.” Robbie recognises that tone of James’s: it’s the one he uses when he’s speaking to victims, and to the newly bereaved. “He wanted his one-time friends exposed. But enclosing that newspaper article? I’d say very likely.”
“Yeah.” Bile’s rising in his gut to match the choke in his voice. James is very probably right. There’s nothing here to explain Val’s death. Nothing at all. He’s never going to get the answer he wants, needs, to be able to let her rest in peace. If Oswald Cooper hadn’t already been murdered and his corpse brutalised, Robbie’d be risking arrest for GBH tonight.
“You know what I think?” James says, breaking the silence that’s fallen.
“What?”
“I think we should go back to yours and pick up a change of clothes, then head to mine and get stinking drunk.”
Hell, yes. Twenty minutes ago, he was fully prepared to stay here all night if he had to, but now he wants nothing more than to get as far away from this bloody room as he possibly can. And James, at his intuitive best, understands completely.
How can the lad be this mature, this insightful now, and yet have been so stupidly immature a few weeks back? He’ll never understand James, and that’s ironic as well as being unfair, because his partner seems to have him all sussed out.
“Make it mine and you’re on.” He starts to get to his feet, but his muscles are stiff and his back’s aching after so long sitting on the floor. James reaches down a hand and helps him up, then hands him his jacket. “Supposed to be usin’ that orthopaedic mattress, after all.” Though his couch isn’t as long as James’s, which means Hathaway’ll be uncomfortable.
“You know a website for sofa-beds an’ all?” he asks as they exit the room, locking the door securely behind them. “Decent ones?”
“I’m sure I can find one.” James raises an eyebrow quizzically.
Robbie shrugs. “Need to sort something if we’re gonna be doing this again, an’ at this rate I can’t see us not. Can’t move to a bigger flat until my lease is up, but at least I can give you something better to sleep on in future than that couch I have now.”
James appears to stumble, before he regains his balance and moves ahead to open the door. “That’s unnecessary, but very thoughtful of you.”
“Don’t want you getting a bad back too, do I?” Even now, it’s easy to banter with James, and that’s almost the only thing that’s making this bearable. No, it’s James himself, isn’t it? His supportive, undemanding company, the way he’s bringing Robbie gently, subtly back to normality while discreetly ignoring the fact that Robbie practically fell apart in front of him. “Still need you to fetch an’ carry for me.”
“The lot of a sergeant,” James murmurs, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
“Yeah, you’re not blind, mate, so you can cut out the fake humility.” At James’s surprised look, Robbie adds, “What, you think I don’t recognise Milton? I’m not a complete Philistine. Just ‘cause I don’t have a degree from a fancy university doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a few things over the years.”
“Would never dream of assuming such a thing, sir.”
Together, arms brushing as they walk, they cross the road to their cars.
- end