key in the lock was hidden by fresh falls of rain. He ascended the stairs in darkness, shedding his clothes on the landing. The bedroom was silent. At least he had delayed an argument until the morning.
Aaron carefully folded back his side of the duvet and slid into bed. Jake was on the far side, a cold shoulder turned against him. The window shone rivulets of rain on to the walls, as if the room was crying. Aaron settled against the pillow, listening. He thought back over the events of the evening, feeling ashamed of himself. Shifting closer, he pressed his hand against the small of his partner’s back, but there was no response.
Disturbed by the shifting weight on the mattress, Jake’s right hand thudded against the side of the bed and his head tipped to face Aaron. Even in the dark, Aaron could see that there was something wrong with Jake’s face. It seemed to reflect the light from the streetlamp, as though it was moulded from slick plastic rather than made of flesh.
Aaron leapt back and groped for the light switch. Jake stared up at him from the bed, his mouth stretched in a shiny concave ellipse, his hair plastered to his head as if he had been swimming. As Aaron finally realized what he was seeing, he screamed long and loud.
Bryant sat on the side of his tall brass bedstead, his feet swinging above the floor like a child’s. Yawning, he scratched his unruly tonsure back into place as he listened.
‘No, of course I’m glad he called you first. It’ll stop the Met teams from taping off the entire street and posing in their paper monkey suits. You know what they’re like, one whiff of this and they’ll be phoning in live interviews and getting their pictures in the Mirror.’
‘We need to play this by the book,’ warned May. ‘It’ll go high profile now, and we’ll be able to reopen Ruth Singh’s file whether there’s a connection or not. Everyone will be watching us. We can’t afford to make a single procedural mistake. Kershaw and Banbury are on their way. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. I’m assuming you hadn’t gone to bed.’
‘You assume wrongly,’ snapped Bryant. ‘Thought I’d have an early night for a change, read over my old case notes.’ He was writing a history of their investigations, but his old reports were out of order and handwritten, as well as being unreliable and libellous to a perverse degree. ‘The good thing is that Raymond Land will get off our backs now and leave us alone.’
‘You’d probably like to know how the poor devil who found his partner’s body is doing,’ May prompted.
‘I’m sure you and Longbright will take care of him,’ said Bryant dismissively. ‘Now kindly get off the phone. I have no intention of attending the crime scene in my Tintin pyjamas.’ Bryant showed little empathy for survivors. Survival was something he expected everyone to do as a matter of course; every life was punctuated with tests.
Less than twenty minutes later, he and May entered the little terraced house. They had hoped to arrive without fuss, but it seemed that the street’s other residents were expecting tragedy. Hall lights glowed. Some stood expectantly in their doorways, trying to understand what had happened.
Sergeant Longbright found Aaron in the kitchen with a dressing-gown pulled over his shoulders, his face hidden by his hands. ‘I don’t know why we always make tea in times of crisis, it seems so stupid,’ she said, filling the kettle. ‘Do you have any brandy in the house?’
‘I can’t go up there again,’ he told her.
‘You don’t have to. There can only be one route in and out of the crime scene, so the stairs are off limits now. Everything must be recorded.’
‘What happens next?’
‘We have to photograph and log everything as you found it. We’ll probably take some items away for analysis. Mr Bryant would like me to get a short statement from you now, though, because there are things you may forget later. The mind has a way of rewriting bad events, taking out details we don’t want to recall.’ She placed a mug of mahogany-shaded tea on the kitchen table and sat beside him. He wiped an eye with the heel of his hand and regarded her. Longbright’s maternal sexiness stood her in good stead during times of stress. She was a warm breast to lean on, an ear to confide in. Aaron felt the need to