the Met, interestingly enough.” Which was not a common path. Those who started in the Metropolitan Police usually chose to stay there.
“Wow. City boy.”
“Adopted city boy,” he said. “He grew up in Morestead. Which is why he’s back. Family. Siblings, nieces, and nephews.”
“Wife?” Hanson asked.
Jonah tried not to smile. They always asked, the young women. Some of the young men, too. It didn’t matter that Lightman was reserved and polite rather than warm. The look of him was always enough to drive their interest.
“No, no wife. And no girlfriend, either, as far as I know. He’s all about the job, is Ben.”
He could see her considering that. He wondered if she was interested. She didn’t look as starry-eyed as they usually did. Either way, the interest would wane when she realized that the pretty sergeant’s veneer of cool never rubbed off or broke down. When she realized that flirtation and lingering gazes and striking eye makeup did nothing.
A moment later, Hanson’s phone buzzed where she’d stuffed it into a cup holder. He saw her eyes cut sideways to it and then back, and it didn’t surprise him when she paused at the next junction and picked it up.
“Sorry,” she said as she unlocked it and read.
“No problem,” he answered, wondering if he was keeping her from a boyfriend. Whoever it was, she didn’t answer. She shoved the phone back into its place, and Jonah could see a tension in her that hadn’t been there before.
* * *
—
HE WAS UP until two, eyes going in and out of focus as he went over the Intelligence report. He climbed into bed irritable at the thought of five hours’ sleep, and dreamed off and on about searing hot weather, and a faceless girl being in danger.
His phone rang intrusively at just before seven. His sleep-fuzzy mind went to his ex. His eyes tricked him for a moment into reading Michelle’s name, until he realized that it read Mum.
When was it going to stop, the instinctive assumption that everything was Michelle? When he threw himself into the next doomed relationship? Or would Michelle be the one he could never quite get over, the one he regretted for the rest of his life?
His voice was croaky as he answered. “Everything all right?”
“There’s someone…I recognize them.” Her voice was choked and incoherent, and he felt a familiar wave of depression. “They’ve been outside all night. They’re friends of his. They want me dead.”
“Mum,” he said as patiently as he could. “Nobody wants you dead. You need to take some breaths. It’s a long time ago, Mum. They don’t care about you, or us. Not anymore.”
“Stop it! You always try to say…” She made a choked sound. “Why aren’t you here? You’re supposed to protect me!”
A rush of rage in her that, as always, ended in an equally swift flood of tears.
“Where are you, Jonah?” she sobbed. “I’m so lonely. It’s been days. I’ve seen no one.”
“I’ll be over this evening or tomorrow,” he said. He’d become pretty good at soothing her over the last few years. There were tears almost every time they spoke. “You aren’t on your own. You have Deborah popping in at lunchtime. You can talk to her.”
“No, I can’t.”
She sounded like a toddler. Petulant and tearful.
“But you like her.”
“She never stays anymore. She just does my lunch and then she goes.”
Jonah started to argue, and then realized this might be true. The funding situation had changed, and that might well mean less time. He needed to call up the care company and find out.
“OK. Well, I’ll be over later. And I’ll arrange for Barb to visit, too. OK? She likes coming to see you. We’ll invite her for lunch or something.”
He was always careful when he talked about Barb. He always tried hard to make it sound like she was a friend, and not someone he paid as a companion to keep up the facade that his mother still had friends and a normal life.
“She should have come yesterday. I wanted her to.”
Jonah felt tripped up for a moment. “Did you ask her to? Did you call her up?”
“No. I thought you would.” She was sulky, self-pitying. It was difficult not to find it infuriating. “It’s just the two of us now. I need you to look after me.”
Jonah sighed. He’d been looking after her for decades. Ever since she’d fled from Tommy Sheens and started a new life in Lyndhurst.
Even at ten years old, his relief had been profound.