Page 45 of Dead to Me

It had been when she told him what she’d done that night.

‘Reid, you have to listen,’ she’d said, standing there in her tight black dress, which he’d already known must be for work.Anna didn’t buy clothes like that for herself.‘The whole investigation was inadequate.I got all dressed up tonight and chatted up DC Polwich in the bar the Cambridgeshire detectives goto.And he told me they never even tried to find out where the drugs came from.Never checked CCTV… nothing.It was barely an investigation, like you said in the first place.And we both know that’s not right.’

It had hit him so hard, what she’d said about going and flirting with an officer.He’d always known she used methods like that when she had to, but she’d said they wereGael’smethods.TheEnsign’smethods.

And there she’d been, his girlfriend, willingly flirting with another man, and telling him as though it was totally OK.

He stopped in the middle of the courtyard, next to the brickwork sculpture, and tried to control the adrenaline flooding through him as he remembered it all in full.How he’d erupted.Told her every terrible thing he thought of her.

He remembered the hurt and anger on her face.How she’d told him she’d been trying to help.But her protests had come up against his absolute conviction that she’d been fooling him all along.That the real Anna didn’t care about him, or Tanya, or anyone else, as long as she got her story.

She’d seemed like a different person to the one he’d spent a year with, as if her mask had fallen away.He’d seen her tight, closed-off expression and it had been easy to say, ‘You’re just a cold-hearted, career-hungry bitch, aren’t you?’

He remembered the way she’d made a small sound as he’d said it, and it had felt like a point finally scored against an unassailable opponent.Like a victory.

It didn’t feel like one now, somehow.

In the eighteen months since he’d walked away she’d thrown herself back into finding Tanya’s killer all over again– into finding Holly’s killer, too.She’d ignored what he’d said… but it hadn’t been about her career, had it?

Anna had taken a big risk to do this.She must have lied to her boss, and everyone else at theEnsign.They would neverhave let her go off investigating something related to someone she knew so closely.

She’d been doing this for Tanya.

Maybe for me…

He recalled Seaton telling him that she would have rescued him if he’d needed it.And he tried to remember exactly what had convinced him she was a master manipulator, rather than someone using every possible means she could to help.Exactly why he’d beenso sure.

But somehow, all he could remember was her hurt.And his own.

‘Fuck!’he said, explosively, hearing it echo out into the empty courtyard.He felt like tearing at something with his hands.At this feeling, maybe.

Because he knew it wasn’t the frustration, confusion, doubt or worry that was cutting through him.It was guilt, pure and simple.Guilt, and a feeling of having ripped his own life apart for nothing.

You have to get it together,he thought, after a few minutes of wheeling inactivity.This isn’t helping anyone.

She hadn’t necessarily been right about Tanya.That was the thing he needed to remember.Tanya had been struggling for months.Perhaps for years, really.She’d been his baby sister and yet hadn’t been able to tell him when something was wrong.She had been a perfectionist who was impossibly hard on herself.

It was something he’d had to come to terrible, heart-rending terms with after the coroner’s verdict.Little by little, he’d acknowledged that the flashes of odd behaviour he’d seen in her had been desperation.The way she’d suddenly travelled to Paris on the Eurostar when she should have been in lectures, and then called him, laughing about it.Her abrupt conviction that she needed to move rooms to a higher floorin order to be happy.The change to a vegan diet, and then the absolute rejection of it a week later.

Even the last time he’d seen her: when she’d arrived at Finsbury Park station with no warning a few hours before the end of his shift.

‘Heyyy, big brother,’ she’d said, as one of their DCs had shown her to his desk.‘How goes?’

He’d scanned her face, worried that she’d got into some kind of trouble while in London.Why else would she be here?

But she’d looked bright-eyed and merry, her cheeks flushed pink as usual and her short blonde hair wind-blown.She’d looked healthy and happy and glorious.

‘Everything OK?’he’d asked.‘Did you get mugged?’

She’d given a laugh, one that he’d taken as carefree then but which he’d later remembered as almost out of control.‘Oh, is that the minimum requirement to come and see my brother?’

He’d given her a grin.‘No, but you don’t usually seem so keen.’

At Tanya’s shrug he’d wondered whether there was something she’d wanted to talk about.He’d glanced at his computer clock, acutely aware that he had two and a half hours left of the day’s work and a lot to squeeze in.He and his team had been under pressure, running a big surveillance op, which would hopefully precede the arrest of a string of violent thieves.

‘Can you… hang around a couple of hours?’he’d asked.‘And we’ll go and get dinner?’

‘I… sure,’ Tanya had said, glancing around.

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