The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(87)

‘Don’t—’ she starts, but she’s shaking from fear and she bites down to stop her teeth from rattling.

‘It’s okay, the coast is clear.’

Mia lets out a whimper of terror. She tries to tell herself he won’t do anything, not here on his doorstep, with his family two doors down, but now he has a hand on her breast and she tries to move but he’s pressing her against him and the hardness in his trousers is a threat not a promise. He touches her lips and she turns her face, but he forces his fingers into her mouth.

‘Please. I want you to stop.’ The plea is pitifully small, smothered by his fingers. She’s crying, now, so scared and feeling so stupid for letting this happen. Her head is telling her to use her elbows, to smash her head back against his, to twist away, to scream . . .

But her body won’t comply. It won’t do anything. It stays frozen, letting this man’s hands control it, cover it, take what they want. Mia feels as though she’s watching from above, screaming at herself to wake up, to do something, do anything, but—

There’s a sudden jolt. Space, clean air. His hands, leaving her body, and she feels as though she’s breaking through waves, pulled to the surface just as she was drowning. She doesn’t know why he’s stopped, but she isn’t questioning it – she just wants him to go, and for the buzzing in her ears to subside.

‘I should—’ Mia grips the hoover, trying to stop her limbs from shaking. She hears him walk away, saying something under his breath, and then the front door slams, and relief floods out of her in hot, noisy tears.

‘My dear, are you alright?’ Dee’s on the deck, pulling open the doors and picking Mia off the floor with an embrace so tight and safe it makes Mia cry more.

‘Rhys—’

‘I saw.’ Dee’s voice is soothing. ‘He thought he could take what he wanted. But you’re safe now. It’s all okay.’

‘Bastard,’ Mia says. She is slowly feeling normal again, fear morphing to anger. Bobby will go ballistic when he finds out.

‘He certainly is,’ Dee says. She strokes Mia’s hair, like she’s a child. ‘And he’ll get his come-uppance, never fear.’

Mia hopes she’s right. Rhys can’t be allowed to get away with it, and, if he’s done it to her, who knows who else he’s tried it on with?

‘Oh, yes,’ Dee says, a hard edge to her voice. ‘Men like that always get what’s coming to them.’





FORTY-TWO




JANUARY 8TH | LEO


As Leo walks down the corridor towards the briefing room, his stomach tightens. Working with Ffion and spending so much time in and around The Shore has provided Leo with the perfect excuse to miss briefings, and it’s only now he’s back in the office that he realises how much he dreads seeing his DI.

‘You’re early.’ Crouch looks at his watch. ‘Shit the bed, did you?’

Leo sits down. He can feel Ffion’s eyes on him, but really – what can Leo do about it? Sir, sir, I don’t like the way you speak to me. Leo would be laughed out of the job. You don’t hear anyone else complaining. It’s just Crouch’s way. Blunt, coarse. Nothing personal.

‘You know,’ Crouch is saying to the DC nearest to him, ‘I hear Liverpool’s the only place you can be called a paedophile for shagging someone’s mum.’

Except it is personal, isn’t it?

Is he like that to everyone? Ffion had asked, the first time she’d met Crouch, and Leo was forced to admit the truth. No one else in the office bears the brunt of Crouch’s special brand of humour. Even if the jibes are childish – the sort of shit joke Leo heard time and time again when he was growing up – Crouch only makes them to Leo. It is personal.

‘What do you call a Liverpudlian in a suit?’ the DI says now, to no one in particular. Leo hears Ffion’s words in his head. What about the next person he picks on? He thinks about everything she’s been through. She looked so broken yesterday, yet here she is. Still standing.

‘The defendant,’ Leo says, before Crouch can give the punchline. The DI blinks, then opens his mouth to impart yet another ‘joke’. ‘I don’t think you’ve done the one about the Scouser who won’t accept a blow job in case it stops his benefits. Or there’s the one about holding a shell suit to your ear, to hear a Liverpool accent.’ Leo fixes his eyes on Crouch. ‘Shall we just get them all out of the way now, sir?’

Silence falls heavily across the room, as the two men look at each other. The DI’s face is a ruddy red, his jowls wobbling as he moves his mouth to formulate a response. ‘What’s the matter, Brady?’ he says finally. ‘Everyone else finds it funny – what’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how to take a joke?’

Leo’s gaze doesn’t waver. ‘I don’t know, sir. Try me with one that isn’t offensive or discriminatory, and let’s see if I laugh.’

Somewhere in the room, someone moves a chair, the leg scraping against the floor. Crouch clears his throat. Leo is stifled by the silence, by the eyes of more than a dozen officers, not a single one of whom gives enough of a shit to raise a hand and—

‘I don’t find it funny, sir.’ DC Clements speaks quietly but clearly, her unwavering gaze taking in first Leo, then Crouch.