He found a small voice. ‘Rachel . . .’

‘Still, lots of those fleeces, I’m sure. And probably lots of people on urbexing websites that might call themselves Metinides. You know how it is though. I’m a stubborn cow. So I listened to the tape of the call that Toshney took, the man who phoned in to say that Remy Feeks was the Molendinar witness. The caller had tried to disguise his voice a bit. Couldn’t hide it from me though. Could you?’

‘No.’

She took in a lungful of air and he recognized the sign. She was composing herself, or trying to, doing her best to keep her temper in check. It was barely working.

‘So you’ll understand then why I’d quite like to know just what exactly is going on. I’d like to know what the fuck you’ve done. And why. And I’d like to hear it right now or I’ll have to walk out of here for good and drive to the station to tell what I know.’

His skin was tingling as if someone had set it on fire and he wasn’t sure his throat was connected to his lungs any longer. He said a prayer to a God he didn’t believe in and began.

‘I’ll tell you but I need to work out how to do it. I need to tell you this properly.’

‘Damn right you do. But first I’m going to ask you a question that you won’t need time to think how to answer. Did you kill Remy Feeks?’

She saw his reaction. It was as if she’d slapped him or punched him in the stomach. His mouth bobbed open in shock and his eyes widened. He couldn’t believe she’d asked. It was written all over his face.

‘No. No, Rach. I didn’t.’

She stared hard at him, looking deep into his eyes and searching for signs of a lie. She didn’t want to see any but nor would she be fooled into just seeing what she wanted. She needed the truth from him, whatever it was.

How long had she known him? Six years. You had to know someone by that length of time. Know their nature and their mannerisms. He was holding her gaze, not trying to look away or dodge her.

‘I didn’t kill Remy Feeks, Rachel. I didn’t - couldn’t - kill anyone. You should know that.’

She did. She was sure she did. Yet she needed more from him than that. Much more.

‘Tell me where you were last night.’

He hesitated and she didn’t like that. She didn’t want him to think, she wanted him to talk. He didn’t get to decide how much of anything he told her. She had to make sure he really knew that.

‘Okay, wait. I’m not sure you’re getting this, Tony, and that’s where we’re going to have a problem. Because you only telling me half a story or some edited version is not going to work for me. And if it doesn’t work for me then you’d better start understanding that it’s not going to work for you either. Do you get what I’m saying, Tony?’

‘You want to know everything. I get that.’

‘No! I need to know everything. And if you and I are going to have any chance of getting through this then that’s what’s going to have to happen. You lie to me here or hold back on me then we are in big trouble. The kind of trouble that means I can’t do my job. The kind of trouble that means I could lose it. The kind of trouble that means we’re done or you go to jail. Do you get that?’

He did. Suddenly and forcefully, she saw that he did. There was a flash of fear in his eyes and that scared her too. He nodded.

‘Okay, where were you last night?’

‘I was in the Gray Dunn factory. I had gone there to meet Remy Feeks. He’d messaged me to be there and I turned up. Someone else was there too though. I don’t know who he was but he murdered Remy. He also called the police and I ran.’

She had done this for a long time and knew truth and lies when she heard them. Sometimes though, the truth was still bad news.

‘Why? Why were you there? What the hell did you think you were doing?’

‘What I had to!’

He knew he probably had no right to shout back at her but he couldn’t help it. Her being right just made him more annoyed for being wrong. More than that, it was all falling on top of him. Euan, Remy, the guy that had attacked him in the factory. All of it.

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Don’t give me any cryptic shit. Tell me. Now!’

‘I wanted to find out what happened to Euan Hepburn. I owed it to him. Yes, I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in but I did. I’ll deal with the fall-out from that. I don’t want any of that fall-out to be me and you.’

He paused, waiting for a response to that, but she didn’t indulge him beyond a hard stare.

‘I knew Euan better than I let you think. He was my friend. For a while, he was my best friend.’

He saw the disappointment in her face and it hurt him. She wasn’t impressed and he knew it was about to get worse.

‘So you lied to me.’

‘It wasn’t so much a lie as not telling you everything.’

‘Sounds like a lie to me. How did you know him?’

‘I didn’t mean not to tell you. When you told me the dead guy was Euan . . . I panicked. And I was shocked. It brought lots of old memories back and I didn’t know what to tell you.’

‘But you knew you should have.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me now.’

So he did. And she didn’t like it.

Knowing someone so well that you are on the point of committing to spending the rest of your life with them. Then finding out something. She wasn’t sure she could take many more surprises for one day and it wasn’t yet noon.

‘Why did you never tell me that you went urbexing?’

‘Because I’d stopped. There didn’t seem much point in telling you, seeing I didn’t do it any more. And it didn’t finish well. Euan and I fell out badly and I hated the idea of urbexing. Hated to think about it, far less talk about it. The longer we were together, the harder it was to mention it. It was much easier not to.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘That and guilt. It was my fault that Euan and I stopped talking but I put it all on him. I hate myself for that. If we hadn’t stopped then he might still be alive.’

She was mad at him but loved him. She was mad at him but felt his pain.

‘You can’t know that.’

‘No. Not for sure. But it doesn’t stop me feeling it, thinking it. That’s why I had to do it. For him. To make up for what I’d done in letting him down.’

He wasn’t getting away with this. Guilt and self-pity couldn’t be an excuse for fucking everything up.

‘You did it for you. You got right in the middle of a police investigation, my investigation, for yourself. Your guilty conscience isn’t a passport to playing at being a policeman. Or to screwing up everything between us.’

‘What if I did? What if I fucking did do it for me? Am I not allowed to do something for myself?’

‘Not if it messes with us. It can’t just be about you. Can’t you see that?’

‘I had to do it, Rachel. And you need to see that. If you can’t understand that I had to help my friend, that I had to get this out of my system before it fucked me up completely, then we are in trouble. Of course it’s not just about me but it is about me too.’

They were nose to nose now, both shouting. They were standing on the same tightrope and if one fell then they both would.

‘I did this for us as much as for me. Look, I couldn’t live with knowing that he’d died and I could have been in a place to have stopped it if I hadn’t been such a prick to him. I had to put that right so that I could be right for us. And because it was the right thing to do.’

‘Right thing? You think you did the right thing? Christ, Tony, that’s crazy talk. I need to know you’re with me. That you understand what can and can’t happen. I need to be able to trust you.’

‘And you need to know me. Euan was murdered. From the minute the body was found in the Odeon, I knew both were connected and both were connected to urbexing. I know that world and I could use that. I could do something about it. What kind of friend, what kind of man would I be if I didn’t want to help make it right for him?’