THIRTY-FOUR
Calum’s chest constricted as he stared at the unvarnished wooden door, recalling the last time he had been here and Lewis had accused him of being overly controlling.
Sorcha had told him Lewis was contrite, but there had been something in her expression he hadn’t trusted.
She’d looked a little too pleased with herself.
Straightening his shoulders, he knocked. Muffled footsteps sounded on the other side and then the door opened wide enough for Lewis to peer round. “Sorcha hasn’t sent you to apologise, has she?” The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, betraying a hint of amusement.
The tension in Calum’s nerves unspooled and he gave a theatrical groan. “Méabh’s eyes, what did she do?”
Lewis leant on the doorframe, his arms folded and his eyes twinkling. “Threatened to hang me out of the window by the ankles.”
“Is that it?”
“It is an eighth-floor flat.”
“Fair.”
Lewis smiled, then his expression sobered. “She also told me to apologise to you.” He took a deep breath. “She’s right. I shouldn’t have accused you of lying. I’m sorry.”
Calum gave a jerky nod, feeling awkward.
He didn’t know where the apology left them.
Back where they’d started, he supposed—two people who loved each other and could never seem to make it work.
The air between them felt thick and oppressive, and he cast about for something to say.
“Did you see the results of the by-election?” It had been in the paper that morning, the victor, a woman Calum hadn’t heard of, winning by a hair’s breadth.
And now that she was in the council, it was only a matter of time before Grant pushed through a vote on his bill.
“Aye, I’m hoping to meet her tomorrow, see what I can find out about her.” His lips curved into a smile that tugged at Calum’s heart. “But you didn’t come here to ask me about that, did you?”
“No. I could actually use your help.”
Lewis stepped aside to let Calum into his flat. They settled on the rug in front of the fire, legs stretched out towards the crackling flames, while Calum told Lewis about his suspicions.
“So, your informant thinks someone in the City Guard alerted Mercer before you got there?” Lewis leant back on his elbows and turned his head to look at Calum, the firelight casting half his face in deep shadow while the other side gleamed russet.
“Aye.” The fireplace was small enough that they sat close together, their legs and shoulders nearly touching. Calum was surprised to find he was at ease, their closeness companionable rather than uncomfortable.
Lewis gave a snort. “Good luck with that. It’d be easier to make a list of coppers who aren’t corrupt.” He tilted his gaze to Calum. “It would be a very short list.”
Calum swallowed. He and Lewis had never seen eye to eye on the police, but the more time he spent with Aly the more he realised how wilfully ignorant he was to the harms he was complicit in as a copper.
It wasn’t just that he had colleagues who would turn a blind eye if they were paid enough—he’d always known there were corrupt coppers, and he reported them when he could—but the number of crimes that only existed because they offended the sensibilities of the wealthy.
He wasn’t the first copper to have tamped down his ethics to charge a person with loitering when they had nowhere else to go, but he had done it.
He’d offered Aly a deal when he’d first arrested her because he needed her help, it was true, but there had also been a part of him that had done so because it was a way to avoid charging her for the crime of trying to stay alive.
Working outwith guild control was exactly the kind of crime that oughtn’t to be a crime, but it was because those with money and influence wished it to be, and every time he charged someone with it, he was perpetuating that same injustice.
“That’s why I’ve come to you,” he said. “I can’t trust anyone at work, obviously. Any one of them could be the one passing information on to Grant.”
Lewis frowned, his expression pensive. “I’ve not seen anyone I’d recognise as police with him, but I have been keeping a close eye on him lately and I’ve taken sketches of everyone I’ve seen him with.
” He stood and crossed to the table scattered with papers.
“You can have a look and see if anyone jumps out at you.”
“Thank you,” Calum said. “And be careful if you’re watching him. He’s dangerous.”
Lewis looked as though he was resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Aye, Sorcha said. That’s why I’ve been watching him.” He picked up a pile of paper and brought it over, handing it to Calum.
Calum took the papers and summoned a light, flicking through the papers while Lewis organised his notes next to him.
Lewis’s sketches were clear and well-drawn; if any of the faces were familiar, he’d recognise them immediately.
The notes and descriptions, too, were concise and informative, in that precise manner that made Lewis so good at his work.
The hand was chaotic as always, but so familiar that Calum had no difficulty reading it.
They sat in silence for a while before Lewis spoke, his words soft and hesitant. “I understand now, I think, why you’ve always been secretive about your past and your weapons. It’s the fae, isn’t it? Something happened to you.”
Calum’s skin felt hot all over. His first urge was to snipe at Lewis, that now he believed in the fae after Sorcha had told him. But Lewis was staring at him with an expression of such earnestness that the sight of it made Calum’s heart ache.
Calum turned his face to the fire, watching the flames as they crackled in the grate.
He could do this. He could state the simple facts.
“When I was fifteen, I was abducted by a fae.” His pulse fluttered in his throat.
“I escaped a few years later. That’s why I sleep with the bandolier by my bed.
” And there it had remained, since he’d realised how much danger he put Aly in by carrying it.
“Because I’m scared she’ll come back.” He turned to face Lewis then, both afraid and desperate to see the other man’s reaction.
The blood had drained from Lewis’s face. He sat there in silence, his eyes wide and jaw slack, before mustering a shocked, “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
Calum’s chest cratered. The sympathy should have been enough. It was sincerely meant, and that was as much as Calum would have imagined he could ever hope for. But he couldn’t help comparing Lewis’s reaction to Aly’s. Lewis cared, but she understood.
Calum knew better than to hope for anything more with Aly.
A relationship with an informant was both unethical and forbidden, and with good reason.
And he didn’t expect her to remain in Mossburgh long after they’d put Grant in prison; it would be safest for her to leave the city and start a new life elsewhere.
Calum’s throat thickened. Lewis was looking at him with concern etched across his features.
It would be so easy to reach for him, to see if now, perhaps, they could start anew.
But it wasn’t fair to Lewis, not when Calum would always wonder if things would be different with someone who could understand his past.
He shrugged, trying to banish the awkwardness clogging the air between them. “It was a long time ago now.”
“Yet still you sleep with knives.” Lewis’s voice was quiet.
Calum ducked his head, turning his attention back to the papers before him. He flipped over to the next page, which featured a sketch of two people. One was Grant, his neat, tailored clothes drawn in sharp lines, a slight smile on his face as his head bowed towards his companion.
Calum’s stomach plummeted as he looked at the second person in the sketch.
It was Clare.
There was a knot in Calum’s chest as he summoned Clare into his office the following day.
He’d spent half the night awake and running through every possible explanation.
Perhaps Grant had threatened her, or perhaps she didn’t even know he was the Wulver and had been interviewing him in his capacity as master of the Guild of Brewsters.
Perhaps she had no idea who he was, and he’d stopped her in the street, drawn in by the crest on her hat like a crow to a carcass.
In the end, he decided to act as though of course there was an innocent explanation and hope he was right. And so, when she stepped into his office and closed the door, he gestured to a chair next to the fire and said, “Is Grant Mercer still a person of interest in the Gibson case?”
Clare’s hand clenched on the back of the chair. “Who?”
“Grant Mercer. We raided his office a few days ago.” Calum leant on his desk, crossing his arms. “Though the warrant was for the Wulver’s premises.”
Clare’s brow furrowed as though in thought, but the colour had drained from her face. “The crime lord?”
“You already knew, didn’t you?” There’d been no surprise in her expression when they’d arrived at Grant’s offices.
He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, had barely registered it over his own storm of emotions at the sight of Aly in Grant’s arms, but he should have realised it the moment he knew Clare was in communication with Grant and, therefore, would have recognised him in his office that day.
“Did you warn him about the warrant?” He spoke quietly, every word crisp as he bit them out.
Clare set her jaw, her grip tightening on the back of the chair. “If not me, he’d have had someone else in this station house.”
Calum’s heart sank. “Why?” The last embers of hope sputtered in his chest. Maybe Grant had threatened her family.
Clare let out a hollow laugh that doused the dying coals in his heart. “Why? Because he paid me.” She released the back of the chair, leaning against it and folding her arms, mimicking Calum’s posture. “Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Disdain dripped from her words like rainwater off a roof.
“Like what?” Calum clenched his jaw.
“Like you’re clean,” Clare scoffed. “I saw you. Snogging his mistress. So you can keep whatever sanctimonious drivel you’ve got in mind to yourself.”
The breath knocked out of Calum as though she’d hit him. “That was you?” Her footsteps they’d heard, her that had told Grant Aly had been with someone—with a copper.
“I didn’t know who she was at the time. I didn’t even know he was the Wulver. I—” She clapped her hand to her mouth, her eyes widening, but it was too late.
“You were following me, weren’t you? Not her.” Calum’s skin was cold. He frowned. “Why would he have you following me? How did he even know who I was?”
“He said he was interested in the investigation into the death that occurred near one of his pubs. I didn’t know he was the Wulver until last week.
” Clare’s knuckles were white, her fists pressing into her crossed arms. “He wanted to know what you were getting up to, so I told him I’d seen you with a ginger lass.
I only found out she was his lover when you served his warrant and she was there. ”
“And you recognised her, having only seen her in the dark street?”
A smirk lifted the corners of Clare’s lips. “No. I knew it was her from the way you looked at each other.”
Calum’s cheeks warmed. “The Wulver’s violent,” he said, trying to wrest back control of the conversation. “He breaks people’s fingers for thieving and lets the salchs who work for him die on the job. You can’t even look at a dead mouse without feeling faint.”
Clare’s face was pale, her nostrils flaring. “All the more reason for me to keep working for him. What do you think he’d do if I quit?”
Nothing good, that much was certain. Even so, he couldn’t have a constable in his station house who was passing information to a crime lord and warning him of warrants out for his arrest. “I’m going to have to report this.” Calum scrubbed a hand over his face.
“To what end? Look what happened last time you reported a colleague’s failings. You’ve already been relegated to Shit House Eight. What do you think happens if you fuck up again?”
“Feeding information to a crime lord is rather more serious,” Calum said, his voice clipped.
“So is shagging a crime lord’s deputy.” Clare pushed off the chair and crossed to the door. “You won’t tell. You have as much to lose as I do.”
Calum’s chest caved in as though she’d hit him. She was right. He needed his position in the police if he stood any chance of finding the missing people or putting Grant in prison. Reporting Clare now would only serve to protect Grant.
But staying silent made him complicit in her actions, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, that was playing into Grant’s plans.