The tide was out. I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans and walked out onto the sand till the water was ankle-deep. One moment from the day before fell through my head, over and over: Rafe’s voice, soft and dangerous as snow, saying to Justin, You bastard fuck.

This is what I could have done, in that last second before it all exploded: I could have said, “Justin? You stabbed me?” He would have answered. It would have been there on the tape, and sooner or later Frank or Sam would have found a way to make him say it again, under caution this time.

Probably I’ll never know why I didn’t do it. Mercy, maybe; one drop of it, too little and too late. Or-this is the one Frank would have picked-too much emotional involvement, even then: Whitethorn House and the five of them still dusted over me like pollen, still turning me glittering and defiant, us against the world. Or maybe, and I like to hope it was this one, because the truth is more intricate and less attainable than I used to understand, a bright illusive place reached by twisting back roads as often as by straight avenues, and this was the closest I could come.

When I got home Frank was sitting on my front steps with one leg stretched out, teasing the next-door cat with an untied shoelace and whistling “Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her” through his front teeth. He looked terrible, crumpled and bleary-eyed and in serious need of a shave. When he saw me he folded his leg back under him and stood up, sending the cat whisking off into the bushes.

“Detective Maddox,” he said. “You didn’t show for work today. Is there a problem?”

“I wasn’t sure who I work for right now,” I said. “If anyone. Plus I slept it out. I’m owed a few days’ holiday; I’ll take one of those.”

Frank sighed. “Never mind. I’ll sort something out-you can count as one of mine for another day. Starting tomorrow, though, you’re DV again.” He stood aside to let me open the door. “It’s been very.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That it has.”

He followed me up the stairs into my flat and headed straight for the cooker-there was still half a pot of coffee left over from my unidentified meal earlier on. “That’s what I like to see,” he said, finding a mug on the draining board. “A detective who’s always prepared. You having some?”

“I’ve had loads,” I said. “Go for it.” I couldn’t work out what he was there for: to debrief me, kick my arse, kiss and make up, what. I hung up my jacket and started pulling the sheets off the futon, so we could both sit down without having to get too close.

“So,” Frank said, shoving his mug into the microwave and hitting buttons. “You hear about the house?”

“Sam told me.”

I felt his head turn; I kept my back to him, hauling the futon into its sofa version. After a moment he started the microwave whirring. “Well,” he said. “Easy come, easy go. It was probably insured. You talk to IA yet?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “They’re thorough.”

“They come down hard on you?”

I shrugged. “No more than you’d expect. How about you?”

“We’ve got history,” Frank said, without elaborating. The microwave beeped; he got the sugar bowl out of its cupboard and dumped three spoons in his coffee. Frank doesn’t take sugar; he was fighting hard to stay awake. “The shoot’ll come back good. I had a listen to the tapes: three shots, the first two a fair distance from you-the computer lads will be able to work out exactly how far-and then the third right by the mike, nearly blew my ear-drums. And I had a little chat with my mate in the Bureau, too, once they’d finished with the scene. Apparently the trajectory of one of Daniel’s bullets came up almost a perfect mirror image of yours. No question: you only fired after he’d shot directly at you.”

“I know,” I said. I folded the sheets and threw them in the wardrobe. “I was there.”

He leaned back against the counter, took a mouthful of coffee and watched me. “Don’t let the IA boys rattle you.”

“This was a mess, Frank,” I said. “The media are going to be all over it, and the brass are going to want someone to take the fall.”

“For what? The shoot was textbook. The house is on Byrne: he was warned to look after it, he didn’t follow through. Everything else along the way, we’ve got the ultimate defense: it worked. We got our man, even if we didn’t get a chance to arrest him. Just as long as you don’t do anything stupid-anything else stupid-we should all be able to walk away from this.”

I sat down on the futon and found my smokes. I couldn’t tell whether he was reassuring me or threatening me, or maybe a little of both. “What about you?” I asked, carefully. “If you’ve got history with IA…”

Flick of an eyebrow. “Nice to know you care. I’ve also got leverage, if it comes down to that.”

That tape-me disobeying a direct order, telling him I wasn’t coming in-flashed between us, solid as if he had tossed it onto the table. It wouldn’t get him off the hook-you’re supposed to be able to control your squad-but it would drag me in there with him, and it might muddy the waters enough to let him wriggle away. In that moment I knew that if Frank wanted to pin this whole mess on me, blast me right out of my career, he could do it; and that he probably had every right.

I saw the tiny flash of amusement, in those bloodshot eyes: he knew what I was thinking. “Leverage,” I said.

“Don’t I always,” said Frank, and just for a second he sounded tired and old. “Listen, IA need to throw their weight around, makes them feel like they can get it up, but as of now, they’re not out to get you-or your Sammy, come to that. They’ll give me a fun few weeks, but we’ll all be fine in the end.”

The shot of anger startled me. Whether or not Frank decided to throw me to the wolves-and I knew nothing I could say would sway him one way or the other-fine was not the word I personally would have picked for anything about this situation. “Right,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”

“Then why the long face? As the bartender said to the horse.”

I almost threw the lighter at his head. “Jesus Christ, Frank! I killed Daniel. I lived under his roof, I sat next to him at his table, I ate his food”-I didn’t say, I kissed him-“and then I killed him. Every day for what should have been the rest of his life, he won’t be here, and it’ll be because of me. I went in there to catch a murderer, I spent years throwing my heart and soul into doing that, and now I’m-” I shut up because my voice was shaking.

“You know something?” Frank said, after a moment. “You’ve got a bad habit of taking too much credit for the stuff other people do around you.” He brought his mug over to the sofa and collapsed, legs spread wide. “Daniel March was no idiot. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he deliberately forced you into a position where you had absolutely no choice except to take him down. That wasn’t homicide, Cassie. It wasn’t even self-defense. That right there was suicide by cop.”

“I know,” I said. “I know that.”

“He knew he was cornered, he had no intention of going to prison-and I don’t blame him; can you see him making friends with the boys on the cell block? So he picked his way out and he went for it. I’ll give the guy this: he had guts. I underestimated him.”

“Frank,” I said. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

He reached for my smoke packet, watched the flame as he lit his cigarette one-handed. “Yesterday was a good shoot,” he said, when he’d put his lighter away. “It happened, it was no fun, in a few weeks it’ll be over. The end.”

I didn’t answer. Frank blew a long trail of smoke at the ceiling. “Look, you closed the case. If you had to shoot someone along the way, it might as well have been Daniel. I never liked the little fucker.”

I was in no mood to keep a lid on my temper, not with him. “Yeah, Frankie, I spotted that. Everyone within a mile of this case spotted that. And you know why you didn’t like him? Because he was exactly like you.”