have the guts to do that . . . I wanted to tell them to leave, but I was afraid it would look like I was hiding something. They’re very— They make it hard to stand up to them, don’t they? I just kept saying no, no, no, and trying to keep calm, and in the end they gave up. Or at least they left.”
“Well,” I said, coolly enough, when I could talk again. “It sounds like you put them back in their box. If they show up again, tell them to get lost. Or ring me and I’ll tell them.”
“Toby.” Finally, a shake in her voice, and she turned to face me. “They think you killed Dominic.”
I laughed, although even I could hear the harsh edge to it. “No they don’t. They don’t have any reason to. They don’t have even half a reason. All they’ve got is a hoodie cord that anyone could have taken. They’re just trying to steamroller someone into confessing, so they can close their case. That’s why they hassled you: to put pressure on me. Not because they actually think you know anything, or they actually think I was violent—” My voice was rising. I took a breath.
Melissa said, “They do, Toby. Maybe they don’t really think I know anything. But they think you killed him.”
Her face, pale and intent and remote as the ghost in the glass. It hit me, with a stunning thump, that she might think the same thing. I wondered what the detectives had said to her that she wasn’t telling me.
I said, “I didn’t kill Dominic.”
“I know,” Melissa said, instantly and forcefully. “I know that. I never thought you did.”
I believed her. The rush of relief and shame—how could I have thought, even for a second—took some of the tension out of me. “Well,” I said. “I guess now you can see how I need to do something about this.”
Her face shut down. “Like what?”
“Like talk to people. See if I can figure out what the hell actually happened. So we don’t have to put up with any more of this crap.”
“No,” Melissa said sharply. I had heard that iron inflexibility in her voice only once before, when she was talking about her mother. “The only thing you need to do is stay as far as you can from all this awful stuff. Get a solicitor; let him deal with them. It’s not your problem. There’s no reason why you should get all tangled up in it. Leave it alone.”
“Melissa, they straight out accused me of murder. I think that pretty definitely makes it my problem.”
“No it’s not. Like you said, they don’t have any proof, and they’re never going to get any. All you have to do is ignore them, and sooner or later they’ll give up and go away.”
“What if they don’t? What if they decide to double down and arrest me, and hope that makes me crack? I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy sitting here week after week wondering if today’s the day, if they’re going to pick the same moment when Hugo has some crisis—”
“What’s going to happen when they find out you’ve been asking questions? They’ll think you’re trying to find out who knows what because you’re nervous. And then they’ll go after you even harder, and that’ll undo all the good that—”
“Jesus, Melissa!” I didn’t care about keeping my voice down any more, let Hugo wake up, fuck it all— “I thought you’d be pleased. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have given a damn if I got thrown in jail. I thought you’d be delighted that I’ve got my head together enough to want to fight this. Would you rather I was still sitting on my arse trying to work up enough motivation to make toast?”
That got to her, just like I’d known it would. Her voice softening, the iron note gone out of it: “You feeling more like yourself, that’s wonderful. And yes, I’m delighted. But can’t you put that into something else? Ring Richard, see if you can do bits and pieces from here—or you always said you wanted to learn scuba diving—”
“Or basket-weaving, or pottery? I’m not disabled. I’m not a mental patient.” I saw Melissa flinch at my tone, but I kept going. I had never been angry at her before, not once, and it made me even more furious at Rafferty and Kerr and at Leon and even obscurely at Dominic—three years of easy