Chapter Eight

 

“Sam?” Keirnan woke late on Sunday morning and his first thought was for the person he’d been expecting to find sharing his bed for the second day in a row. He’d ducked out on Sam yesterday, so it was only turnabout that his bed was empty and cold when he patted either side of him, and Sam gone.

“Here.”

It came from the window overlooking the back of the property, and Keirnan sat up, stretching his body and licking around the inside of his mouth and the backs and fronts of his teeth. He didn’t like either the soreness in his muscles or the funky taste in his mouth. God, I’m feeling my age. Then the silence and stillness beat at him. He rolled from the bed, tugged on sweatpants and made his slow way to Sam, keeping a slight distance. “Is everything okay?”

“Not really.” Sam turned from where he was perched on the wooden frame, looking out. “I’d like to get back to London. I stayed until you woke because I didn’t want to just leave a note.”

“You…” Keirnan swallowed the morning thickness from his throat. This was a lot to unpack.

“I’m not suggesting you go back to London, obviously. And you don’t even have to take me to the station.”

“I want to ask what’s brought all this on, but may I get a coffee first?” Keirnan asked.

Sam shrugged. “Do what you like. I’ll call a cab. They must have them, even out here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Keirnan stepped back for Sam to jump down and grab his bag. He caught the T-shirt Sam lobbed at him. One of his? Oh. In answer to Sam’s raised eyebrow, he pulled it on. “If you need to go, of course, I’ll take you. But I’d rather talk about why, what’s brought this on. I mean, yesterday…” We had amazing sex in the woods. That wouldn’t help.

“Yesterday.” Sam nodded.

“All your troubles seemed so far away?”

“Don’t try and do cute. Just—don’t.”

“I was aiming for sassy,” Keirnan mumbled. Like you. “Please, wait a minute. I need…” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom, and Sam blew an exaggerated breath down his nostrils but nodded. When Keirnan emerged, Sam was downstairs, in the long room there, still not speaking. He wore his jacket and his wayward hair was combed, lying mostly flat. He looked as though he were already back in trendy east London.

“If you had left a note, what would it have said?” Kerinan tried, upending a bottle of water from the fridge down his throat.

“I don’t know, Keir! I don’t have all the answers! I don’t even have questions,” he added, pre-empting Keirnan. “Look, do you remember what I replied when you told me you’d like to see me again and what should you do?”

“Just be honest,” Keirnan replied at once. “Wait, so you think I’ve not been honest with you? When have I lied or deceived you?”

“Let’s see. Perhaps when you didn’t tell me you father was the pack Alpha. Or that you’d be the next Alpha. Or that there’s be challengers. And challenges. Challenges, as in to the fucking death, Keir! And that along with an Alpha, there’s a beta, of course. A beta with benefits, it seems. And…” He shook his head.

“That’s…” Keiran ran his hands through his hair, lacing them behind his head after. If the action made his T-shirt stretch and pull away from his pants, revealing his belly fuzz, well. Bonus. “I didn’t know about my father standing down.”

“How come? Seems it’s a pretty big deal, one he should have kept you informed about?”

“I…haven’t been around.” Been too focussed on my career. Been away, as that wanker Euan pointed out, used against me. The guilt Keirnan felt for not having been there for Lorcan kicked hard. He fought back. “I didn’t lie to you about any of that. I just didn’t mention it.”

“And that’s honest? Inviting me here, this weekend, without telling me any of the pertinent facts about what would be happening, what I’d be facing?”

Keirnan didn’t answer that. He asked another question instead, one that hurt. “And if you had known all those facts, would you have come?”

It was Sam’s turn not to answer, and Keirnan felt he could interpret that, read the silence and Sam’s pallor for himself. That witnessing the pack meeting, the challenge, the transformation, had disgusted Sam. Oh, that cut deep. “I’m sorry. I wanted you to be there,” he whispered. “That was selfish.”

“Yes, it damn well was.” Seemed his apology didn’t mollify Sam. “You shouldn’t have taken my choices away. Oh, I know that’s not fair, not accurate.” His raised hand silenced Keirnan’s incipient protest. “But I’m finding it hard to put it all into words.”

“And that must hurt. You being a journalist.” Keirnan instantly berated himself for that.

Sam glared. “It fucking does, actually. Look, I’m calling a taxi.”

Keirnan insisted on driving him to the station in Market Norford and on waiting with him until the London train came. They sat on the platform in a heavy, uncomfortable silence.

“Look, I won’t be writing about any of that. Obviously,” Sam said, springing to his feet when the train drew in. “So that’s one thing.”

Keirnan tried to smile. “It would be hard, wouldn’t it, when you didn’t even stick around for the end of the story?” Sam walking onto the train, away from him, pulled, somehow, stretched something in him, or from him, attenuated it until it snapped. It hurt.

Sam sat at the window and opened it. “You’re acting as though this is goodbye,” he said.

Keirnan blinked. “It isn’t?” His heart leapt.

“I don’t know. See? That’s what honesty looks like.” Sam got in the last word as the train pulled out.

“You smug prick!” Keirnan yelled after the departing train, scowling at the tutts and I says and This is the Sabbaths, he received. “Came to the rural backwoods for some furfucking, and now it’s back to the metropolis, right?” he shouted for good measure.

He knew that wasn’t fair, that Sam didn’t deserve to be the target of Keirnan’s anger, that the real target was Keirnan himself. Equally, Sam had never made any remarks about Keirnan being from the depths of the country. Any chips on his shoulders were of his own making. Fuck. Keirnan straightened his shoulders and made for his car. He had commitments in London next week, and before he had to go back, he had some quality time to spend with his father.

 

The train hadn’t even reached Norford before Sam was busy doing the research he should have done—would have done, had he known—before going to Loopwood or indeed, the Channon Forest area. He had to do something that would take his mind off more than the anger and hurt he felt at Keirnan’s behaviour. He’d been expecting those. What he hadn’t been prepared for was the ache. Somewhere in his stomach? A bit higher? He rubbed his chest. God, how old had Ted been when his angina started? He blamed that on the stress of the job. Sam would have to ask him how it felt, if it was a gnawing…emptiness. A hollow hurt. A bit like missing a limb, or an organ. Or a thought lurking just of mental reach, or something glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Whatever it was, it was strange and like nothing he’d felt before. Maybe a little like the feeling he’d experienced after having met Keirnan at the press junket then walking away. But much worse.

To distract himself, he read about Hugo the White Wolf and his bequeathing in perpetuity of the land—the richest in the county—to the pack, and how that was passed down. Oh, the manor house, whose ruins they’d cycled to, was traditionally handed down to the Alpha, with that practice discontinued a century or so back, when the manor upkeep proved too much. It was weird to think that if wolves were more into property, like, say, dragons were, they’d have maintained the stone and mortar as well as the earth and load and Sam might have been a guest there.

He got a soda from the drinks trolley as it passed and the server’s name badge got him recalling some of the unusual names in Loopwood. Lorcan, for instance. Little fierce one, he discovered it meant. And Keirnan? Son of a lord. Huh. Sam could think of another epithet beginning with son of a— to call Keir at that moment. Oh, and Thane? Someone holding land granted by a king or military nobleman, ranking between a freeman and a hereditary noble. Sam guessed subtlety wasn’t wolves’ strong suit.

The other surnames he recalled hearing were all rural—Brook, Mead, Wells, so it seemed it was just the ruling family. Plus everyone else’s given names had been standard enough—Oscar, Chris, Daniella… Sam wrenched his mind from her and their little encounter. He couldn’t process everything. He bit his lip, fighting the anger he felt at Keir for having dropped him into the middle of that with no road map, no defence.

Yes, okay, Sam was mad at himself too. For an investigative journalist, he’d not been as cool and collected as he’d always imagined he’d been when finding himself caught up in some new, and perhaps dangerous situation. What would he be like if undercover, on a sting operation, flushing out a criminal they’d spent months investigating, for instance? Maybe the Chronicle had been right to sideline him. “But in that situation, I’d have done my prep work!” he muttered, only realising he’d uttered the words out loud when the man opposite stared at him. Damn. With a resolute deep breath, Sam shut down those websites and returned to his own ongoing research.

Sam had been kicked off from the investigative reporting team…but he hadn’t given up on the matter that had got him booted. He was still looking into it in secret, still burning up inside that Simon Oliver, bank worker at Allied Alliance bank, who’d accepted well over a million pounds in bribes for approving large loans to unsound companies, wasn’t being prosecuted. Oh, he’d been charged, following complaints, but the case had been dropped. Not by Sam, though. He burned more for Richard and for everyone who’d suffered when the luxury apartment block along the Thames purchased with the loan, had reneged on all the contracts it had entered into for design and decorating and landscaping, leaving the firms and suppliers out of pocket or bust. He fumed on behalf of anyone suffering from the stress that had caused.

Why had Inspector Davenport not taken the case further? Sam would be lying if he hadn’t imagined the headlines: METROPOLITAN POLICE CORRUPTION EXPOSED—CROOKED COPPER COLLARED and so on. He’d attempted to ask Davenport, of course. His requests for interviews, both of the inspector himself and anyone else who picked up the phone in the Criminal Finance Team of the Specialist, Organised & Economic Crime Command in Scotland Yard had gone unanswered. Well, sort of. Sam wasn’t sure if it was that or his waylaying Davenport to request an audience in person that had occasioned the complaints to the Chronicle and his subsequent demotion—or that he was getting too close to something.

Which all proved to Sam that the inspector, and probably more officers in the division, and God knew where else, had something to hide. And Wednesday, after two days of resolutely not thinking about Keir, not missing him, not feeling what Sam could only describe as heartsick, brought him what he thought might be a break. Several members of the Criminal Finance Team were attending an awareness and steering session in Portcullis House, next to the New Scotland Yard building on the Victoria Embankment. Sam knew this from his obsessive monitoring of their website. Davenport wasn’t scheduled to attend, but his sergeant, Zayn Syal, was. Sam was waiting for him in the lobby of the huge red brick and Portland stone building when the session ended for a break. He bent to get a Styrofoam cup of tea when Zayne did, and jostled him.

“Oh, sorry!” Sam exclaimed. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nah. Take more than that.” The sergeant grinned, looking Sam up and down. Sam had been stalking him on social media and had dressed in the style of the clothes that featured largely in Zayne’s Instagram and Facebook photos. He preened under the interested gaze the detective gave him. “You work here?” Zayne indicated the building. “And saw the snacks, eh? We’re the same next door. Plate of biccies is like a homing beacon.”

“Nah. I’m in the Media.” Sam pointed his thumb vaguely down a corridor and tapped his lanyard. His Chronicle ID badge now clipped to an official-red-looking but anonymous strap and turned so the back faced outwards. “Good meeting? I’d say not, by the quality of the biccies.”

“The training? Bit boring.” Zayne lowered his voice. “Nothing we don’t know. Lots we already do. You know?”

“Umm.” Sam leaned back against a pillar. His claim of an appointment with a junior member of parliament Sam knew to be out of the country would be debunked any minute. He’d been lucky they’d let him stay inside while they tried to find the guy or anyone who could answer for him. Go for broke. “Lots you already do… Like with your gaffer Davenport and that bank geezer Simon Oliver, for instance? What’s the ‘do’ there? Bribery? Blackmail?”

Zayne thudded his cup down, spilling half the tea onto the Formica table top. “Who the hell are you?”

“Does it matter?” Sam forced himself to keep leaning, looking nonchalant.

“Of course it fucking does.” Zayne crowded him and yanked at his lanyard, exposing the ID badge. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re that numpty who’s been snooping around from the Chronic! We’ve been told not to speak to you, but I ain’t got nothing to hide, so I’ll tell you this, you wanker, and you listen up. Tony, Inspector Davenport to you, he’s clean, okay? Not some sort of bent copper you’re wetting your Y-fronts over busting and making your name off off.”

“You would say that. You’re his sergeant.” Sam pushed it, thinking the guy would only get about two good hits in on Sam before staffers pulled them apart.

“Yeah, I am. Worked the case with him.” Zayne poked a hard finger in Sam’s sternum to punctuate each sentence. The jabs hurt. “Which is how I know we recommended throwing the book at the little bank wanker. Yeah, you heard right. Only, the CPS decide not to prosecute.”

“The Crown Prosecution Service?” All Sam knew about them was what anybody did, that they were an independent public authority responsible for prosecuting people in England and Wales who have been charged by the police with a criminal offence. Like the US’s District Attorneys.

“Yeah, took a financial crime case out of the hands of the Yard’s Criminal Finance Team. Go figure. It was CPS that kicked it out, not us. I know there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction, so I guess the case failed the second Code question: is a prosecution required in the public interest?”

“But—”

“So, now you know.” Zayne glared then turned, still so close that Sam stumbled back. Zayne called over his shoulder: “Get your fucking facts straight from now on, yeah?”

“I’m fucking trying to,” Sam yelled in reply to the departing figure.

“I say. Could we have less of the fucking on government premises, please?” demanded a buttoned-up-looking middle-aged man walking past.

Sam glanced at the man’s badge. “And that must be the first time a Member of Parliament’s ever requested that.” He held up his hands as two security staff hurried up. “I’d say I’m here all week, folks, but instead, I’ll show myself out.”

He left, his head whirling. The CPS had dropped what seemed like a watertight case. What did that mean?