Relative Bonds (McNamara Series, #3)

CHAPTER ONE –––––––– * * * * THE RING OF A CELL phone filled the silence of the night and awoke a very pissed-off McNamara. He grunted his frustration and rubbed his eyes. That was the first time he had spent a full night in Bryony’s bed, and he hadn’t counted on being disturbed, although he had welcomed such distractions before. He could rush out of a woman’s bed faster than a fox chased by hounds, but that wasn’t the case then, which surprised him. Things had changed, or maybe he had changed. He didn’t know for sure. However, he didn’t want to dwell on his strange behaviour. He was afraid to find out the truth. Bryony murmured something, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of her words. A grin fluttered on his lips, feeling her warm body flush against his, and he leaned down and kissed the top of her head on the spur of the moment. Bryony was sleeping half on top of him. She had thrown a leg over his. Yet, he didn't feel trapped, as he had in the past during the rare occasions when he shared a bed with a woman over the night. McNamara felt contentment. He stroked the woman’s back with the tips of his fingers and kissed her again. “Answer the damn phone, Artair,” she ordered to him through her clenched teeth and reminded him why he was awake in the first place. The strong impulse to say ‘Aye, ma’am’ almost pushed the words off his lips, but McNamara stopped himself just in time. A wider grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. He suspected that she wouldn’t appreciate his levity, and during the last few days, he had felt the brunt of Bryony’s temper whenever he provoked her. She always spoke her mind, unafraid of riling him, and he had learnt his lesson by then. Not even his famous glowers would intimidate her, and that did raise his eyebrows. He had always counted on a good glower to chastise anyone into submission. He held her close to him with his left arm and stretching, he turned on the light and picked up the cell phone he had left on the night table a few hours earlier. He answered in a harsh voice, good enough to chill his interlocutor to the bones. “McNamara.” A brief glance at his watch told him that he had slept only two hours, and his satisfied grin turned into a scowl. Now, he understood Bryony’s dismay better. He had already kept her awake half the night. “Sorry, boss,” Mike’s apologetic voice came over the line. “We’ve got a bit of a problem here, sir, in Newington, on Salisbury Road. You know, close to The Salisbury Arms,” he continued hesitantly. He never knew how McNamara would react when they called him at night. Most of the time, he would welcome their call, but lately, things seemed to have changed somewhat. He would have preferred that somebody else made that call. However, nobody else was available. He had asked Jo to do it, but she had refused him. “What kind of a problem?” McNamara asked in the same harsh voice. McNamara wasn’t the man to give any quarter to anyone, and Mike wasn’t an exception, although he rated him as one of the best detectives in the Specialist Crime Division. “Well, police were called to something that seemed like a textbook suicide...” Mike started explaining, but then, he stopped once more, reluctant to continue. “And...” McNamara nudged him to go on with his explanation, impatience rolling off his tongue. “The uniforms thought it was a suicide, boss, and they didn’t treat the scene with too much care,” Mike sighed deeply. “In their defence, it does look like suicide, you know. Anyone would have been duped, I suppose... Not that a suicide would have granted them any leeway. They should have known better, after all... Anyway, sir, then, the forensics and the coroner came...” Mike said and stopped again. “Do I need to beg for every single b****y sentence, Mike?” McNamara snapped, sarcasm dripping off his tongue. He was already sick of the detective’s hesitation. Besides, he also felt Bryony’s impatient fingers, drumming on his chest. He just wanted to conclude the discussion. “No, sir. Of course, not, sir,” Mike rushed to reassure him. Immediately, he started speaking as fast as possible. “When the coroner came, he stated that it wasn’t suicide. He seems one hundred per cent confident, and if he says so, then it is so. You know David Stewart. When he stated that it was murder, you know what hit the fan,” Mike said. McNamara sensed Mike's dismay in his tone of voice. “Why?” McNamara inquired in a vexed tone of voice. “As I’ve already said, people didn’t pay too much attention to the scene before the doctor ruled the suicide out. Now, everybody is shouting at everybody... It’s a hell of a fight, back there, sir,” Mike explained. “I tried to calm the waters but... I had to come outside to call. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts inside,” he confessed morosely. “A phone call would have been impossible.” “I see,” McNamara concluded and closed his eyes in resignation. “I’ll have to come to the crime scene, I understand. Send me the coordinates,” he ordered, and then, he hung up rudely, without waiting for Mike’s reply. McNamara didn’t feel the same impatience he used to when called to a crime scene. He would have preferred to remain and share the bed and warmth with Bryony, yet that wasn’t a valid option for him at that moment. His train of thought surprised and astonished him, but McNamara didn’t waste any time to ponder his unusual reaction. He didn’t want to dig too deep into it and see what was there, even though the answer was right under his nose. He preferred not to know some things. His callous palm stroked Bryony’s strawberry-blond hair with tenderness, and Bryony lifted her head off his chest and looked straight into his eyes with understanding. However, he also noticed a twinge of regret swimming in her dark blue eyes. She murmured to him, “Don’t worry about me, Artair. I know you have to go.” When she chose to get involved in a relationship with him, she had made that choice with her eyes wide open. She had known that he was a detective and didn’t have a nine-to-five run of the mill job. Therefore, right from the beginning, she had promised herself not to interfere or become a nuisance for him. He had enough on his mind and didn’t need a girlfriend who would constantly nag him about his leaving or absences and complain about his work. Her fingers brushed over his chest gently, and he immediately stopped the movement of her wandering hand. He knew he had to get dressed and leave her house, and her fingers made that difficult for him. They put unreasonable ideas into his mind. He looked back at her and replied, “Yes, I do. But I’d have liked not to.” His eyes told her that he had just stated the truth, but she already knew that. McNamara wasn’t the man to sugar-coat things, and he always said what he thought. He was anything else but tactful. With a tender kiss on her lips, he got out of bed, gathered the things he had left on the nightstand in the evening, and then, he picked up all his clothes. After he put out the light, he headed to the bathroom to take a shower before leaving. He didn’t want to disturb her sleep on his way out. He had kept her awake long after the hour she used to go to bed, and he knew that she also had to go to work in the morning. “Go back to sleep,” he ordered very matter-of-factly, turning his head to her briefly before getting into the bathroom. The moonlight coming through the slightly parted curtains defined her silhouette lying in bed. “I’ll see you later in the afternoon,” he promised, and then, he closed the bathroom door behind him. ‘Huh! I don’t think so,’ Bryony glowered in the dark, staring at the door he had just closed behind him. Even though she was still half asleep, she got out of bed, as well. She didn’t bother to turn on the light. She remembered that she had left a large t-shirt on the armchair the day before. She stumbled and stubbed her toes in the armchair, which was in the shadow. However, she found the t-shirt and pulled it over her head with quick moves. She didn’t take orders very well, as a rule, especially when those orders went against the grain. ‘Artair should have known me better by now,’ she mumbled with annoyance. Then, she moseyed downstairs towards the kitchen, barefoot, leaning heavily on the handrail. She usually needed a little more than only two hours of sleep to feel human again. She yawned and rubbed her face vigorously to wake up. However, the stubborn drowsiness didn’t give any sign that it wanted to leave her brain. However, she was intent on making some coffee and a sandwich for him. If the man thought she would let him go to work without having a bite for breakfast, he would soon find out how wrong his assumptions were. She was made of a sterner cloth than that. ***