Tana French - The Likeness

My phone beeped about ten seconds later: 7 sharp, see you there. He had had his mobile ready to hand, waiting for me to say yes.

That evening Sam and I had our first fight. This was probably overdue, given that we had been going out for three months without even a mild disagreement, but the timing sucked all round.

Sam and I got together a few months after I left Murder. I’m not sure exactly how that happened. I don’t remember a whole lot about that period; I appear to have bought a couple of truly depressing sweaters, the kind you only wear when all you really want is to curl up under the bed for several years, which occasionally made me wonder about the wisdom of any relationship I had acquired around the same time. Sam and I had got close on Operation Vestal, stayed that way after the walls came tumbling down-the nightmare cases do that to you, that or the opposite-and long before the case ended I had decided he was pure gold, but a relationship, with anyone, was the last thing I had in mind.

He got to my place around nine. “Hi, you,” he said, giving me a kiss and a full-on hug. His cheek was cold from the wind outside. “Something smells good.”

The flat smelled of tomatoes and garlic and herbs. I had a complicated sauce simmering and water boiling and a huge packet of ravioli at the ready, going by the same principle women have followed since the dawn of time: if you have something to tell him that he doesn’t want to hear, make sure there is food. “I’m being domesticated,” I told him. “I cleaned and everything. Hi, honey, how was your day?”

“Ah, sure,” Sam said vaguely. “We’ll get there in the end.” As he pulled off his coat, his eyes went to the coffee table: wine bottles, corks, glasses. “Have you been seeing fancy men behind my back?”

“Frank,” I said. “Not very fancy.”

The laughter went out of Sam’s face. “Oh,” he said. “What did he want?”

I had been hoping to save this for after dinner. For a detective, my crime-scene cleanup skills suck. “He wanted me to come to your case meeting tomorrow night,” I said, as casually as I could, heading over to the kitchenette to check the garlic bread. “He went at it sideways, but that’s what he was after.”

Slowly Sam folded his coat, draped it over the back of the sofa. “What did you say?”

“I thought about it a lot,” I said. “I want to go.”

“He’d no right,” Sam said, quietly. A red flush was starting high on his cheekbones. “Coming here behind my back, putting pressure on you when I wasn’t there to-”

“I would’ve decided exactly the same way if you’d been standing right here,” I said. “I’m a big girl, Sam. I don’t need protecting.”

“I don’t like that fella,” Sam said sharply. “I don’t like the way he thinks and I don’t like the way he works.”

I slammed the oven door. “He’s trying to solve this case. Maybe you don’t agree with the way he’s doing it-”

Sam shoved hair out of his eyes, hard, with his forearm. “No,” he said. “No, he’s not. It’s not about solving the case. That fella Mackey-this case has bugger-all to do with him, no more than any other murder I’ve worked, and I didn’t see him showing up on those ones pulling strings right and left to get in on the action. He’s here for the crack, so he is. He thinks it’ll be a great laugh-throwing you into the middle of a bunch of murder suspects, just because he can, and then waiting to see what happens. The man’s bloody mad.”

I pulled plates out of the cupboard. “So what if he is? All I’m doing is going to a meeting. What’s the huge big deal?”

“That mentaller’s using you, is the big deal. You’ve not been yourself since that business last year-”

The words sent something straight through me, a swift vicious jolt like the shock from an electric fence. I whipped round on him, forgetting all about dinner; all I wanted to do with the plates was throw them at Sam’s head. “Oh, no. Don’t, Sam. Don’t bring that into this.”

“It’s already in it. Your man Mackey took one look at you and he knew something was up, figured he’d have no problem pushing you into going along with his mad idea-”

The possessiveness of him, standing in the middle of my floor with his feet planted and his fists jammed furiously in his pockets: my case, my woman. I banged the plates down on the counter. “I don’t give a flying fuck what he figured, he’s not pushing me into anything. This has nothing to do with what Frank wants-it’s got nothing to do with Frank, full stop. Sure, he tried to bulldoze me. I told him to fuck off.”

“You’re doing exactly what he asks you to. How the hell is that telling him to fuck off?”

For a crazy second I wondered if he could actually be jealous of Frank and, if he was, what the hell I was supposed to do about it. “And if I don’t go to the meeting, I’ll be doing exactly what you ask me to. Would that mean I’m letting you push me around? I decided I wanted to go tomorrow. You think I’m not able to do that all by myself? Jesus Christ, Sam, last year didn’t lobotomize me!”

“That’s not what I said. I’m just saying you haven’t been yourself since-”

“This is myself, Sam. Take a good look: this is my fucking self. I did undercover years before Operation Vestal ever came along. So leave that out of it.”

We stared at each other. After a moment Sam said, quietly, “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you did.”

He dropped down on the sofa and ran his hands over his face. All of a sudden he looked wrecked, and the thought of what his day had been like sent a pang through me. “Sorry,” he said. “For bringing that up.”

“I’m not trying to get into an argument,” I said. My knees were shaking and I had no idea how we had ended up fighting about this, when we were basically on the same side. “Just… leave it, OK? Please, Sam. I’m asking you.”

“Cassie,” Sam said. His round, pleasant face had a look of anguish that didn’t belong there. “I can’t do this. What if… God. What if something happens to you? On my case, that had nothing to do with you. Because I couldn’t bloody well get my man. I can’t live with that. I can’t.”

He sounded breathless, winded. I didn’t know whether to hold him tight or kick him. “What makes you think this has nothing to do with me?” I demanded. “This girl is my double, Sam. This girl was going around wearing my fucking face. How do you know your guy got the right one? Think about it. A postgrad who spends her time reading Charlotte bloody Brontë, or a detective who’s put dozens of people away: who’s more likely to have someone out to kill her?”

There was a silence. Sam had worked on Operation Vestal, too. Both of us knew at least one person who would happily have had me killed without a second thought, and who was well able to get the job done. I could feel my heart banging, hard and high under my ribs.

Sam said, “Are you thinking-”

“Specific cases aren’t the point,” I said, too curtly. “The point is, for all we know I could be involved up to my tits already. And I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I can’t live with that.”

He flinched. “It wouldn’t be for the rest of your life,” he said, quietly. “I hope I can promise you that much, at least. I do plan to get this fella, you know.”

I leaned back against the counter and took a breath. “I know, Sam,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“If, God forbid, he was after you, then all the more reason to stay out of the way and let me find him.”

The cheerful cooking smell had grown an acrid, dangerous edge: something was starting to burn. I switched off the cooker, shoved the pans to the back-neither of us was going to feel like eating for a while-and sat down cross-legged on the sofa, facing Sam.