‘I’ve got to go and work,’ Ira said, shaking Jo out of her thoughts and returning her to the kitchen, to the stifling air of the house, the locked doors and windows, the perpetual hum of the fans. She squeezed his hand, telling him that was fine, and watched him disappear through to his den. Ira had got the job he’d pitched for on his trip to New York a couple of weeks back, and he’d been right: it was worth a lot of money, and it would definitely pay for a nice vacation for the three of them next year. But the deadline was at the end of September. It was going to be tight, and although he played it down, she could tell already that he was stressing. He was waking up with headaches every day. He was panicky and restless. She didn’t say anything, but Jo was worried as well about how they’d make it work when she was having to do such long days, when – just to keep her head above water – she was having to leave before Ethan was awake and was getting home after he was asleep. And it wasn’t because of her caseload: she was overloaded, being dragged in a thousand different directions, but that wasn’t the reason she was pulling fourteen-hour days. Or, at least, not the main one. Instead, it was because she was still having to prove herself, even after seven years in homicide. She was still having to bite her tongue and ignore the jibes. She was still having to try to predict how the department – and the men in it – might come at her. They were able to talk about things like instinct on cases, about knowing something intuitively, whereas she had to deliver the facts, or evidence, or both, if she didn’t want to be dismissed out of hand. She was still having to contend with two different rule sets – one for them, one for her – and it was grinding her down. She didn’t want it grinding Ira down too.

She didn’t want him to forget what it was like to have a wife.

She didn’t want her son to grow up without seeing her around.

44

By the time I got back to the car, I was soaked through.

I switched the ignition on, turned the heaters to full blast and then checked that I hadn’t been followed. I’d left the Audi in the corner of a near-empty multistorey so it should have been easy enough to spot a tail – but there wasn’t one. There was only one other car on the floor, at the far end, close to the down ramp, and it had clearly long overstayed its welcome because its windscreen had a yellow parking ticket on it and the left front wheel was clamped.

As mine began to warm up, I shrugged off my coat and went through the pockets.