“In Daniel’s back pocket. At least, that’s where he took it out of, when we got home.”

Frank raised one eyebrow, all concern. “He’s lucky he didn’t stab himself with it. All that rolling around, I’d have expected at least a minor puncture wound or two.”

He was right. I should have made it a wrench. “Maybe he did,” I said, shrugging. “You can ask him to show you his arse, if you want.”

“I think I’ll pass, for now.” Frank clicked his pen shut, tucked it away in his pocket and leaned back on the sofa, at ease. “What,” he inquired pleasantly, “were you thinking?”

For a second I actually took it for a straight question about my thought process, instead of the opener for a major bollocking. I expected Sam to be pissed off at me, but Frank: he treats personal safety like a tetherball, he had begun this investigation by breaking every rule he could get his hands on, and I know for a fact that he once head-butted a dealer so hard that the guy had to be taken to the emergency room. It had never occurred to me that he might be in a snot about this. “This guy’s escalated,” I said. “He used to stay well away from people: he never did any damage to Simon March, last time he went out rock-throwing he picked a room that he could see was empty… This time, though, that rock missed me and Abby by inches-for all we know, he could actually have been aiming for one of us. These days he’s more than willing to hurt people, not just property. He’s looking more and more like a suspect.”

“Of course,” Frank said, crossing one ankle leisurely onto the other knee. “A suspect. The very thing we’ve been looking for. So let’s think this through for a moment, will we? Let’s say Sammy and I head down to Glenskehy today and pick up his three bright boys, and let’s say, just for the hell of it, that we manage to get something useful out of one of them-enough for an arrest, maybe even a charge. What do you suggest I say when his solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions and the media ask me, and I think they will, why his face looks like hamburger? In the circumstances, I’ve got absolutely fuck-all choice except to explain that the damage was inflicted by two other suspects and one of my very own undercover officers. And what do you suppose happens next?”

I had never for a moment thought that far ahead. “You’ll find a way round it.”

“I may well,” Frank said, in that same bland, pleasant voice, “but that’s not really the point, is it? I guess what I’m asking is what exactly you went out there to do. It seems to me that, as a detective, your goal would have been to locate the suspect, identify him, and if possible either hold him or keep him under observation until you found a good way to get backup in there. Am I missing something?”

“Yeah, actually. You’re missing the fact that it wasn’t as simple as-”

“Because your actions suggest,” Frank went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that your main goal was to beat the living shite out of this guy. Which would have been just a tad unprofessional of you.”

Out in the kitchen, Doherty said something shaped like a punchline and everyone laughed; the laughter was perfect, unforced and friendly, and it made me edgy as hell. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Frank,” I said. “My goals were to keep hold of my suspect and not to blow my cover. How would you have liked me to do that? By dragging Daniel and Rafe off this guy and lecturing them on the correct treatment of suspects while I got on the phone to you?”

“You didn’t have to throw punches of your own.”

I shrugged. “Sam told me that last time Lexie went after this guy, she wanted to kick his nads into his esophagus. That’s the kind of person she was. If I’d hung back and let the big brave boys protect me from the bad man, it would’ve looked dodgy as all hell. I didn’t have time to consider the deeper implications here; I had to call it fast, and I called it in character. Are you seriously trying to claim you never got into a punch-up, when you were in the field?”

“Oh, God, no,” Frank said easily. “Would I ever say such a thing? I’ve been in many a punch-up; I even won most of them, not to blow my own horn here. Here’s the difference, though. I’ve got into fights because the other guy jumped me first-”

“Just like this guy jumped us.”

“When you deliberately goaded him into it. You think I haven’t heard that tape?”

“We’d lost him, Frank. If we hadn’t made him break cover, he’d have got away clean as a whistle.”

“Let me finish, babe. I’ve got into fights because the other guy started it, or because I couldn’t get out of them without blowing my cover, or just to earn a little respect, bump up my place in the pecking order. But I can safely say that I’ve never got into a fight because I was so emotionally involved that I couldn’t resist beating the holy crap out of someone. Not on the job, anyway. Can you say the same?”

Those wide blue eyes, amiable and mildly interested; that impeccable, disarming combo of openness and just a hint of steel. The edginess was building into a full-on danger signal, the electric warning animals get before thunder. Frank was questioning me the way he would question a suspect. I was one misstep away from being pulled off this case.

I forced myself to take my time: gave an embarrassed little shrug, shifted on the armchair. “It wasn’t emotional involvement,” I said at last, looking down at my fingers twisted in the fringe of a cushion. “Not like you mean, anyway. It’s… Look, Frank, I know you were worried about my nerve, at the beginning of this. I don’t blame you.”

“What can I say,” Frank said. He was slouching back and watching me with nothing at all on his face, but he was listening; I was still in with a chance. “People talk. The subject of Operation Vestal had come up, once or twice.”

I grimaced. “I bet it had. And I bet I can guess what they said, too. Most people had me written off as a burnout before I’d even cleared out my desk. I know you took a chance sending me in here, Frank. I’m not sure how much you heard…”

“This and that.”

“But you’ve got to know we fucked up royally, and there’s someone on the streets right now who should be doing life.” The hard catch in my voice: I didn’t have to fake it. “And that sucks, Frank, it really does. I wasn’t about to let that happen again, and I wasn’t going to have you thinking I’d lost my nerve, because I haven’t. I thought if I could just get this guy-”

Frank shot off the sofa like he’d been spring-loaded. “Get the-Jesus, Mary and Elvis, you’re not here to get bloody anyone! What did I tell you, right from the beginning? The one thing you have to do is point me and O’Neill in the right direction, and we’ll do the rest. What, was I not clear enough? Should I have fucking written it down for you? What?”

If it hadn’t been for the others in the next room, the volume would have been through the roof-when Frank is mad, everyone knows all about it. I did a small quick flinch and got my head at an appropriately humble angle, but inside I was delighted: being bollocked out of it as a disobedient subordinate was a huge improvement on being batted around like a suspect. Getting overenthusiastic, needing to prove yourself after a bad slipup: those were things Frank could understand, things that happen all the time, and they’re venial sins. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Frank, I’m really sorry. I know I got carried away, and it won’t happen again, but I couldn’t stand the thought of blowing my cover and I couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing I let him get away and Jesus, Frank, he was so close I could taste him…”

Frank stared at me for a long moment; then he sighed, collapsed back onto the sofa and cracked his neck. “Look,” he said, “you brought another case with you onto this one. Everyone’s done it. No one with half a brain does it twice. Sorry you caught a bad one, and all that, but if you want to prove something to me or anyone else, you’ll do it by leaving your old cases at home and working this one properly.”