TWENTY-FIVE
Sorcha leant back in her chair, her shoulders resting on the stone of the fireplace. She looked as though she was about to put her feet on the table, but stopped at a scowl from Calum. “Did you talk to Lewis?”
Calum froze, one hand on the window latch. “I did.” His fractured reflection was pale in the dark diamond panes of the window.
“And?”
“Have you made the tea yet?” Calum opened the window, banishing his splintered reflection, and retrieved the bottle of milk from the windowsill, where the heat of the kitchen wouldn’t sour it before it was used up.
He could practically hear Sorcha’s eyeroll. “Aye, I made the tea. And don’t change the subject.”
Calum poured milk into a jug and set the bottle back on the windowsill, snapping the window shut and turning away from it. He dished two bowls of porridge from the pot over the fire and set them on the table with the steaming pot of tea.
Sorcha poured milk into her bowl but didn’t start eating. “Well? What did he say?”
Calum picked at his breakfast, a stone settling in his stomach. “He accused me of making it all up to scare him off.”
Sorcha sucked her teeth. “I’ll talk to him.”
“He said something else.” Nausea twisted Calum’s gut. He dropped his spoon, letting it clatter against the side of the bowl, and looked up at Sorcha. Her back was straight, but her grasp was tight around her teacup. “He said that”—he swallowed, his mouth dry—“he said that I’m possessive.”
There was a screech of wood against stone as Sorcha shoved her chair back. “Well, now I am definitely going to talk to him.” She strode over to the door. “The bloody cheek of it.”
Calum stood. “Wait.” Sorcha turned to look at him. “He also said you agreed.”
Sorcha’s face dipped to the floor. Calum pressed his hands into the scrubbed wood table. “Do you?” he asked quietly.
Sorcha’s gaze flicked towards him and back down, the silence stretching between them before she spoke. “I wouldn’t say possessive, exactly.” She lifted her hands, adding hurriedly, “And you’re a lot better than you used to be.”
Calum stiffened. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Sorcha lowered herself into her chair, gesturing for Calum to do likewise.
He settled himself back in his chair as she said, “You’re a worrier.
You always have been, even before”—she tilted her head and winced—“you know. You got a lot worse when you came home and you tried to control things—and people—so you didn’t have to worry about them. ”
The blood rose to Calum’s cheeks. He leant his elbows on the table, resting his face in his hands.
Everything she said was true, and he’d never even noticed before, just as he hadn’t noticed what Lewis was saying until he heard it.
But now that she said it he remembered how he would panic if she tried to leave the house without him, terrified she’d disappear into Faerie, but equally afraid to leave the safety of the house himself.
“I must have been awful to live with.” He looked up at his sister. “I’m sorry.”
Sorcha shrugged. “You’re a lot better than you used to be.
Lewis never knew you like that, and even since you met him, you’ve got so much better.
” She thrust her chin out. “And if you’re wondering why he said that I agree, it’s because I told him as much once.
” She set the tea strainer over her cup with enough force that the sound echoed off the walls of the kitchen.
“And Lewis knows that even at your worst—well, the worst he saw you at, at least, but I know that even at the very worst—you never lied or made anything up. You were always honest about it.” She shovelled porridge into her mouth with more fury than Calum would have thought possible.
“That doesn’t make it okay,” Calum said. His throat stung, and his voice came out as a rasp. It made him like Caoimhe. Like Grant.
Sorcha gave him a level look. “No, it doesn’t. But there’s a difference between being possessive because you view the person as an object and being scared, and you were always scared.” Her teacup clanged into its saucer. “And, frankly, you were never that bad.”
Calum’s gut squirmed. “Not even when I didn’t let you leave the house for weeks?”
“All right, fine, you were bad when you first got home. Anyone would be. But by the time Lewis met you? You weren’t any worse than Mum by that point. Or anyone’s mum, really.” She stood abruptly. “And I intend to tell him as much.”
“You’ll remember the important part, right?” Calum pushed himself to his feet.
“The important part being that he broke my brother’s heart and then levelled spurious accusations against you when you tried to protect him, right?” Sorcha jerked the kitchen door open.
Calum winced. “You do realise that the exact same thing could be said of the way I’ve behaved towards him, don’t you?”
Sorcha waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter.”
“The important part here is making sure Lewis is safe from Grant.”
“I know. And I will. I promise.” She grinned at Calum. “I just might do that by breaking his legs so he can’t leave his flat.” And with that she was gone before Calum could make sure she was joking.
Calum arrived at his office after his conversation with Sorcha to find Graham waiting within. He’d lit the fire and lamps and stood by a window, hands clasped behind his back, watching the waterbuses in the canal outside.
“We’ve had a complaint.” Graham’s voice was filled with shards of glass.
Calum froze, his muscles tensing for violence before his brain caught up with them. He swiped his clammy palms over his coat, tilting his chin to look Graham in the eye.
“From whom?” he asked, his voice barely shaking.
“Joyce Crawford.”
Calum winced. “Ah. That. I may have been a bit accusatory in our last interview.”
Graham’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline. “A bit? She’s complaining of police harassment. That’s not a minor offence.”
Calum bit back the retort on his lips. Police harassment, it seemed, was only considered a severe offence when the victim was wealthy and influential; for people like Aly it was only to be expected. Instead, he said, “I did nothing of the sort.”
“You all but accused her of murdering her own husband!” Graham’s cheeks flushed.
“And she told me herself she was glad he was dead. She said—”
Graham cut him off. “Do you think she’d have said all of that if she’d done it?”
Calum hesitated, his hand clenching and unclenching in his pocket as he thought.
Crawford herself had admitted she was upset with her husband for his profligacy, and that there was no love lost between the pair of them.
And he was quite certain she knew Gibson was having an affair, even if she hadn’t necessarily known with whom.
“Because she has an alibi,” he said finally. “And she knows it.”
Graham threw his hands in the air. “Of course she knows it! She was in Ardstede, with witnesses confirming it—including, I might point out, the captain of a ship—and only found out her husband was dead when she got back to Mossburgh.”
Calum let out a breath, trying to order his scattered thoughts. “Don’t you find it a little too convenient that her husband was killed on a night when a reliable witness can attest she was abroad?”
Graham’s face was impassive. “Go on.”
“She’s got the strongest motive.” Calum laid out his suspicion that Crawford had known of her husband’s affair. “She also admitted to being miserable with him but unable to divorce him out of fear he’d take the children.”
“And what about whoever he was having an affair with?” Graham folded his arms, leaning against the mantel. “Do they not also have a motive?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And have they got a solid alibi?” Graham continued.
“Only that she seems to have been unaware that he’d died.” Calum explained how Edzan had been ostensibly ill, off work all week, until news of Gibson’s death had reached her.
“She seems a more likely candidate for actually managing to kill Gibson, wouldn’t you agree? Though, really, arresting a burgess is hardly going to improve your reputation. At least she’s an unpopular one.” Unlike Gibson, was the implication.
Calum leant against his desk, ignoring the jab. “Well, no, not really. Neither of them could have killed him the way the pathologist describes. They’re both too short.”
“Then why in Méabh’s name are you so bloody adamant that Crawford did it?” Graham spluttered.
Calum inhaled through his nose, fighting the urge to flinch in anticipation of Graham’s anger. There was no reason to believe Graham would attack him—the very idea was absurd—but it had long been ingrained in Calum’s mind that provoking frustration led to violence. “I think she hired an assassin.”
Graham went very still. “Do you have any evidence?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Well, find some,” Graham snapped. “And don’t speak to her again until you have it.
” He crossed to the door, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.
“If you solve this murder, even if you arrest a burgess or the man’s widow, as long as you present plenty of proof, then everyone will be happy to forget what happened at Station House Six and you’ll be back on track to becoming a DCI.
If you keep accusing Crawford—the victim’s widow and a respected merchant in her own right—without evidence, well, between that and the accusations you levelled at DC Morrison, that’s it for your career. ”
Calum watched his boss leave, a knot settling in his stomach.
The prospect of promotion to DCI didn’t hold as much appeal as it had even a month ago.
He’d spent nearly a decade of his life working to further his career as a detective, always certain that despite its flaws the police service did more good than harm.
Until he’d met Aly, and she’d upended his understanding of the world and his place in it.
Now, he wasn’t at all certain he wanted to be promoted to DCI.
He just didn’t know what else he’d do with himself if he wasn’t a police detective.
A knock at the door dragged him from his thoughts. Clare entered at his summons, her expression grave. “There’s been another missing person report,” she said, holding a piece of paper out to Calum. “Graham sent me to look into it, but I thought you’d like to know what I found.”
Calum took the paper. “Thank you.”
Clare left, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click, and Calum looked down at the page before him.
A young lad this time, a sailor who’d signed on for a journey on the Green Lady but had never appeared for the sailing five weeks prior.
It was only after the ship’s return, delayed by storms, that the boy’s friend, who’d signed up with him, had sought him out and found his younger siblings alone in the one-room flat they’d shared, waiting for their brother’s return from sea.
Clare had spoken to the friend and the siblings and learnt the boy had been a hard worker, orphaned at seventeen and doing everything he could to care for his family.
Calum rolled the edge of the paper between his thumb and forefinger. It fit the pattern. Desperate for money, few friends; he could certainly have been salching to make up the shortfall, particularly as winter set in and there were fewer opportunities to earn money at sea.
And he’d last been seen days before Samhain, just like Flora.