The Age of Zeus

57. DI PROTHERO

H e came as soon as she rang. Off-duty, enjoying a quiet night in with a DVD of all-time great Welsh rugby victories and a bottle of single malt, but he came straight over without hesitation or qualm.

"Akehurst, Akehurst, Akehurst," he said, sadly, sternly. "What the hell kind of a mess have you got yourself into here?"

He didn't appear to have aged much in the three years since she'd last seen him. A few more speckles of grey in his hair perhaps, and he seemed shorter than she remembered, but essentially no change. If the sight of a body lying in a pool of blood in her hallway shocked him, he didn't let on, and that was no change either. It took a lot to perturb DI Dai Prothero.

"So who is she? Intruder? Stalker? Neighbour complaining about your raucous sex parties? What?"

"She is — was — a friend," Sam said.

"If this is how you treat your friends, Akehurst, maybe I should leave."

You couldn't be a cop and not develop a gallows humour.

She took him into the living room, out of sight of Mahmoud's corpse. She sat him down and offered him a drink, which he declined, saying he'd had a couple of snifters already and he had a feeling he was going to need a clear head from this point on.

"Come on, then," he said. "I'm bracing myself. Out with it. What have you done?"

What had she done? She told him everything. If she couldn't confide in this man, who could she confide in? Everything. The cryptic invitation, Bleaney, Landesman, Titanomachy II, the monsters, Hercules, Hermes, Xander Landesman, Dionysus and Aphrodite, Mahmoud. She unburdened herself of it all to the one person she had faith in to keep his cool and not disbelieve her. For a time, as he sat there listening, it was like it used to be, the old days, the two of them together, master and pupil, her trust in him implicit, his unflappable calm her lodestone, her magnetic north.

She'd loved Prothero like a second father, and known that he loved her back in his own way, and now that love was still strung tightrope-like between them, perhaps a little less taut than it once was, and dusty from disuse, but still there. His presence here confirmed it, as did the fact that he didn't butt in once during Sam's narrative, even though the temptation must have been immense. He didn't query anything she said or mutter a phatic "Yes?" or "Really?" to prove he was paying attention. He simply paid her the respect of letting her talk, uninterrupted.

When she finished, he was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "This American bloke, Rick Ramsay — sounds like a hardboiled private eye in a movie, name like that — where's he now?"

"I packed him off in a cab to St Mary's Paddington. Hopefully they're stitching him up there even as we speak."

"Poor fellow. Submitting himself to the tender mercies of the