‘You hit him,’ Connie said. ‘Really goddamn hard. Is that normal police procedure in the land of tea and biscuits?’

‘And you came out late at night with no backup plan, looking – for all your blasé toughness – as if you’d break like a twig in the wrong hands.’

‘Okay, hold on there, are you saying this is my fault? That women walking around looking vulnerable somehow attract trouble?’

Baarda indicated his car. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘How exactly did you plan to deal with that particular situation?’

‘I normally carry a rape alarm,’ she said.

‘Oh, forgive me, then. Obviously, the fact that you normally carry a rape alarm would have kept you completely safe in this instance. I clearly shouldn’t have intervened. Now, we have another crime scene to get to, so perhaps we could argue inside the vehicle.’

‘I just wanted—’

‘I understand precisely what you wanted to do,’ Baarda said. ‘I’d have come with you if you’d asked.’

Connie sighed as she climbed into the car. ‘I don’t need babysitting. Women, in fact, don’t need men to protect them. Men need to stop attacking us. That’s what’ll keep us safe.’

‘I’d never figured out that particular social equation before. Thank you for explaining it to me. Did you get what you wanted from the experience?’ he asked.

‘Maybe not what I wanted, but probably what I needed. Advocate’s Close seems like a safe place, but actually the second a woman goes in there, she’s vulnerable. It’s narrow and dark, no overlooking windows, the proximity to pubs meaning there would be a fair amount of screaming and noise at night, so passersby wouldn’t know what to take seriously. If you wanted to hold a knife to someone’s throat, it’d be a simple manoeuvre.’

‘A good place to locate an easy target then,’ Baarda said.

‘Yeah.’ She ran her hands through her hair and let herself relax. ‘Hey, thank you. Sometimes I try so hard to be unafraid that I step right into the eye of the tornado. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. I’m grateful you came to find me tonight.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said.

‘It was pretty hot watching you punch that bastard. Not a move I was expecting you to pull.’

‘If anyone expected me to pull a move like that, it wouldn’t be terribly effective, would it?’ Baarda smiled.

Connie turned in her seat to look at him. His curly hair was tousled, but otherwise Baarda was completely unaffected by the incident, and entirely in control.

‘You’re incredibly attractive, Detective Inspector Baarda. Do you know that?’

‘I know we have another crime scene to get to,’ he said. ‘Could we talk about that instead?’

‘Sure,’ Connie agreed. ‘But I saw what I saw. You’re a dark horse, Brodie. Women just know.’

Chapter Twenty-Three