When Mark spoke he was plainly fighting hard to restrain his anger.
‘What makes you think that I would do that?’
‘Because there’s no one else, Mark.’
‘You had access, Whittaker, Charlie, the techies…’
‘Only Charlie and you were in the station when it was taken. The techies were on strike, Whittaker was on leave and I was out in the field.’
‘So it has to be me? What about Charlie? Have you ever thought that it might be -’
‘It’s not her.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she has an alibi. And because she looked me in the eye and told me it wasn’t her. Why haven’t you done that, Mark? Instead of wriggling on the line, why don’t you look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t do it?’
A brief pause, then:
‘Because you wouldn’t believe me.’
The sadness in his voice was crushing. Inexplicably, Helen wanted to get up and comfort him – she fought the urge, digging her nails into her wounded hand. The pain flowed through her, calming her.
When she looked up, Mark was pouring himself a large glass of wine.
‘Why the fuck not, eh?’ and he drained his glass, slamming it back down on the table in front of her. Staring at her, he slammed the glass down again. And again, and again, until finally the stem snapped and the glass shattered. He tossed the remainder away across the room, then ran his bleeding hands through his hair. His anger had flared, and now seemed to dissipate.
‘Why couldn’t you have asked me first, before setting this in motion?’
‘You know why. If there was any hint that I’d given you preferential treatment because I… because we’d…’
‘Looking after number one, eh?’
‘It’s not like that. And you know it.’
‘You know, for a long time, I genuinely thought I’d done something wrong. Offended you. Committed some terrible romantic faux pas. Then I wondered if it was the difference in rank. That you’d had second thoughts. But I didn’t really believe that, so I thought maybe you were just a headcase. A beautiful, unpredictable headcase. And you know what? I would have been happy with that. I could have worked with that.’
To Helen’s surprise, he laughed. But it was brief and tinged with bitterness. She was about to respond, but he talked over her:
‘But I never, ever thought that it would be this. That this was why you’d frozen me out. What makes you so convinced, so very sure that I would throw away my job, my future, my chances of being a good dad, of – fuck it – falling in love again for a backhander?’
‘Who said anything about a backhander?’
‘Don’t be obtuse.’
‘I never mentioned payment.’
Mark exhaled loudly. Then lowered his eyes to look at his bleeding hand.