Wine Alliance

“In diplomacy, they use flowers. In Berriedale, we use Shiraz.”

Turning my attention to the bedroom, I stepped inside, apprehension knotting in my stomach like a tightening noose. The air was thick with the sour stench of decay. What greeted me was a scene of absolute carnage—every single black garbage bag had been ripped open, their contents vomited across the floor in a grotesque display. It looked like a rubbish tip had exploded in the centre of the room.

Banana peels, grease-stained wrappers, congealed takeaway containers—what hadn’t been shredded had been smeared into the carpet. The detectives had clearly gone through it with the subtlety of a landslide. I paused in the doorway, my breath catching in my throat. The room, always unpleasant, now seemed to recoil from itself—filthy, violated, and somehow even more sinister than before.

Then I saw her.

Detective Lahey was crouched against the side wall, her once-crisp shirt streaked with grime. Her face had lost its cool detachment, replaced with something raw and shaken. Blood dripped steadily from a gash across her palm, the crimson stark and jarring against her pale skin and the dark tones of the room. The sight jolted me—despite everything, a very human pang of concern surged in my chest.

Without thinking, I moved towards her, navigating the sea of refuse like a reluctant pilgrim. "Are you okay?" I asked, my voice uncharacteristically gentle, concern softening the edges of my usual sarcasm.

She looked up, and for a split second, the authority drained from her eyes. She seemed, if only briefly, just a woman caught up in something bigger than she’d anticipated.

In an impulsive act that surprised even me, I offered her my glass of wine.

Yes, I know—a bleeding detective hunched in a heap of bin juice, and I’m handing over shiraz like we’re in some twisted version of Come Dine With Me. But it felt like the right thing. Or at least the only thing I had to give.

Lahey hesitated. Then, as if recognising the absurd comfort in the gesture, she took it. She sipped, the glass trembling in her hand. Her eyes met mine again, softer this time.

"I think I'll have that glass of wine now," she said, and for a moment, we were just two women trying to survive a mad day in a mad world.

She handed the glass back, and I took it gingerly, resisting the urge to drain it myself right there on the spot. I nodded, a smile flickering on my face like a faulty lamp. “Sure. I’ll go and get it for you.” I gestured vaguely back towards the hallway. “Oh, and I’ll meet you in the bathroom. It’s just off the hall down there.”

Just as I turned to leave—hoping to mentally rehearse a hundred ways I could still salvage this absurd mess—Lahey’s voice halted me.

“Hey, Gladys.”

I stopped. There it was again—that particular tone. Not quite accusatory, but close enough to raise every hair on my arms. I turned slowly. “Yes?”

She pointed to the smashed window, where shards of glass still clung to the frame like crooked teeth. “What happened to the window in here?”

Her question was calm, but beneath it was something coiled—intent. Dangerous.

I played it cool. Shrugged, let out a casual breath. “I’m not really sure. It was like that when Luke and I arrived earlier today.”

The moment I said it, time paused.

Her head tilted. A subtle motion, almost delicate, but sharp as a blade. “You mean you and Jamie?”

It hit like a freight train.

Fuck.

The mistake was glaring. I felt it hit me low in the gut, like ice water. “Oh—yes. I meant Jamie. Me and Jamie,” I said quickly, too quickly. My voice cracked at the edge, and I knew she heard it. Anyone with half an ear would.

But I couldn’t stay and try to smooth it over. I needed distance. I needed wine.

I turned and walked away, my footsteps loud in the hallway’s suffocating hush. Each stride a desperate plea for escape from the tangled net I was weaving tighter with every breath. My throat was dry, my pulse thunderous in my ears. My legs carried me like they were on auto-pilot, but my mind was a churning blur.

How many more slips before this whole thing collapses?

I reached the kitchen, flung open the wine bag and grabbed a bottle like it was a defibrillator. If I was going to survive this day, I needed a drink. And if Sarah Lahey really was a potential ally as Luke suggested, I was going to have to start treating this like a courtship. One awkward, bloodstained, wine-soaked courtship at a time.

Rubbing at my left temple, I felt the familiar drumbeat of a headache setting in—each throb a metronome to the madness of the day. It was the sort of headache that came not just from tension, but from the sheer absurdity of existing in two realities at once. I’d crossed some invisible threshold between the mundane and the surreal, and now I was stuck juggling wine glasses and undercover lies like some off-brand Bond girl in muddy trainers.

With my right hand, I reached into the cupboard and wrapped my fingers around the cool stem of a fresh glass. There was something oddly reassuring in the smooth, reliable weight of it. Unlike people, wine glasses never surprised you. They didn’t ask questions or catch you in contradictions. They simply held what they were meant to and offered silence in return.

I retrieved the bottle and began pouring. The wine flowed like silk—dark, steady, unbothered by the collapse of my afternoon. A glimmering ribbon of burgundy, rich and elegant in its descent. Watching it swirl into the bowl of the glass, I found a strange calm. This—this I could control. This, at least, followed the rules.

Perhaps the detective and I have more in common than I initially judged, I thought, studying the wine as it sloshed gently to rest. Sarah Lahey—sharp, composed, and completely unreadable—had invaded Jamie’s home with suspicion, but bled in his spare room and sipped from his glass like someone who might, possibly, be real beneath the badge.

It was unsettling. The very idea of trusting someone in her position felt dangerous. But also… tempting. Necessary.

"Best pour her a big one," I muttered aloud, the corners of my mouth twitching with the ghost of a smirk. I tipped the bottle further, letting those extra drops fall in with exaggerated generosity. Perhaps it was reckless, but this was diplomacy—Gladys-style. No formal treaties, no declarations of allegiance. Just a large glass of red and the faint hope that shared drinks might translate into shared sympathies.

I paused before turning. Holding the glass up to the kitchen light, I let it catch the brilliance above. The wine flickered like garnet—beautiful, full of promise, but also capable of staining everything it touched. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me.

It was more than just a drink now. It was an offering.

An olive branch in stemware.

A desperate peace treaty drawn in cabernet.

I took a breath, deep and slow, willing my pulse to steady. I wasn’t just walking into another interrogation—I was stepping back into the lion’s den with a bribe, a bluff, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t entirely alone in this farce.

Glass in hand, I stepped out of the kitchen and into whatever came next. Each footfall felt like a small act of defiance—against fear, against guilt, against the growing suspicion that all of this was spiralling beyond my grasp. But if I was going to sink, I’d do it with poise. And a well-poured glass of wine.

As I flicked on the bathroom light, the glare hit me like a slap—brash, sterile, and far too honest. It momentarily threw me off, the harsh contrast jarring against the soft shadows and half-truths we’d just walked through in the rest of the house. I blinked, adjusted, and held out the glass. “Here,” I said, offering the Shiraz to Detective Lahey like it was an olive branch disguised in crystal.

“Sorry about the blood,” she muttered, accepting the wine with a nod towards the faint trail behind her—a breadcrumb path of stress and stifled pain. Her voice was still that no-nonsense tone of someone trained to keep emotion under control, but it cracked just a little. Enough to suggest the edges were fraying, even if only slightly.

I raised my own glass and took a long sip, letting the Shiraz bloom against the back of my tongue. Rich. Peppery. Honest, at least, in ways none of us had been all day. “That’s okay,” I replied, trying to sound breezy. But inwardly, my mind had already left the room, retracing old shadows.

The blood on the walls might not all be hers, I realised, the wine sharpening my thoughts rather than dulling them. I remembered the mess from Beatrix—those panicked handprints, the spatters we’d danced around. Luke had insisted we clean it, and I’d argued, short-sighted as ever. He must have known the storm would find us. He always did.

But we hadn’t even started cleaning, had we? Just talked about it before the next catastrophe swept in and knocked over the plan. So who did the work?

I narrowed my eyes slightly, watching Sarah cradle the wine. Had Luke done it? Or had someone helped him? Someone I didn’t know about? That thought nestled in like a thorn—small, sharp, persistent.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said to Sarah, meaning it more than she probably realised. Not just about the cut, but everything. We were all caught in something bigger now—something with teeth. I rested my glass on the vanity, the sound of it settling against the porcelain echoing just a little too loud. Time to find the First Aid kit.

I started pulling open drawers, moving through them with the kind of urgency that wasn’t about bandages at all. The chaos Luke had left behind was visible even here—half-used toothpaste, mismatched razors, a bag of cotton balls stuffed in with loose batteries. Each drawer another silent testament to how much of our reality had frayed. The bathroom had once been a place for face masks and dog videos. Now it was battlefield triage.

When Sarah rose to her feet, the air seemed to shift again. Her body was composed, professional—but not immune. She turned on the taps, the sound of water a sudden, cleansing roar in the small space. I watched the red spiral down her wrist and into the sink. She washed her hand with slow, deliberate movements, and I caught the tiniest flinch, a moment of pain that told me she wasn’t made entirely of stone after all.

I took another sip of wine—slightly cooler now, but still tasting of escape. When Sarah extended her palm to me, I didn't hesitate. Setting my glass aside once more, I dabbed at the wound gently with a folded tissue. Her skin was warm and trembling slightly beneath mine. Butterfly bandages weren’t exactly my forte, but I’d watched enough YouTube tutorials on minor catastrophes to manage.

“There,” I said quietly, pressing down the last one, more to reassure myself than her.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice low. There was something in it—maybe gratitude, maybe fatigue. Or maybe we were both just too tired to keep pretending we weren’t tangled in something bigger than either of us could handle.

She sipped again from the wine, and for a fleeting second, I allowed myself to believe we might actually be on the same side. Or at least standing on the same crumbling edge.

Satisfied that no more blood would end up on Luke’s absurdly white tiles, I offered her a small nod. “Come on,” I said softly, gesturing toward the hallway.

And with that, I led her back through the house—not just with Shiraz and sympathy in hand, but with the fragile hope that one glass of wine might yet steady the ground beneath us both.

We sat at opposite ends of the couch, the distance between us more than physical—it was metaphorical, psychological, loaded. Detective and civilian. Hunter and potential prey. Her posture was casual, but the way she watched me... it was surgical. Clinical. As if each twitch of my fingers, each pause between sips, was being filed away in some invisible ledger.

I shifted slightly, crossing one leg over the other and bringing my wine closer, a makeshift shield I could hide behind if the scrutiny became too much. The Shiraz had warmed slightly now, its edge softened, but I still found a strange reassurance in its presence. One of the few things in the house that hadn’t changed. Or lied.

The silence clung to the room like humidity before a storm, broken only by the slow, rhythmic swallowing of wine. Sarah’s glass occasionally touched her lips, but her mind never left her task. I could feel her mapping me out—testing for fractures, weaknesses.

“So…” she began, letting the syllable stretch into the space between us like a bridge she wasn’t sure she wanted to cross. “What do you know about Jamie and Karl?”

"Karl, nothing," I replied with a careful shrug, keeping my tone deliberately flat. Technically not a lie. My knowledge of Karl was a vague patchwork—Beatrix’s ghosted glances, whispered hints during the aftermath of Brody’s death, and the sense that his presence always meant something more than he let on. “But Jamie and I have been close friends for many years.”

“Really? Karl seemed like he knew rather a lot about Louise yesterday.”

"Jamie's sister, Louise?" The name dropped like a pebble into a still pond, rippling outwards with worry. Louise was poking her head into things, which meant we were already bleeding into the public view.

“Yes,” Sarah confirmed, her voice even, but laced with intent. “She came into the station to report Jamie as a missing person. She reckons she hasn’t seen Jamie or her son, Kain, for several days.”

A chill ran up my spine, and I felt my stomach twist like it knew something my mouth wasn’t ready to say. People were starting to notice. To ask questions. Luke’s clock was ticking, and my part in this whole charade—whatever it truly was—was starting to feel more like complicity than friendship.

“Bit odd,” I offered lightly, taking another sip and swirling the wine gently. “I haven’t seen Kain recently, but Jamie is definitely safe and well.” Truth with a veil of comfort thrown over it. The best kind of lie.

Sarah tilted her head, not buying it completely but filing it away all the same. “And Luke?”

The name hung in the air like smoke, curling into the corners of the room and sticking to everything. My body gave itself away—a visible shiver crept down my spine before I could suppress it. The lights chose that exact moment to flicker again, casting long, uncertain shadows across the living room. It was as if the house itself was reacting to the mention of his name.

I flashed a knowing smile, the kind that says, of course I’m not rattled, even when you very much are. “Luke is definitely safe.”

Sarah glanced at the ceiling, tracking the flicker. “You better have an electrician look into that.”

“Oh, I’ll add it to my ever-growing list,” I replied with a soft smile, sipping my wine as though I didn’t feel like the entire room was slowly closing in around me.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, an almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Well, cheers to that.” She raised her glass towards mine, and though her words sounded light, her gaze remained steady—a challenge disguised as a toast.

“Cheers,” I echoed, my glass clinking gently against hers. The sound rang sharp in the silence. I watched her down the rest of her wine in three large gulps. Efficient. Tactical. A gesture that said this meeting is over.

“I had better be off then,” Sarah said, rising with the grace of someone used to moving quickly without appearing rushed. “I’m not supposed to be drinking while on duty.”

I smirked, my fingers miming a zip across my lips. “My lips are sealed.”

She placed the empty glass on the kitchen bench with deliberate care, not bothering with goodbyes. Just turned, walked to the door, and let herself out. I listened to the sound of it clicking shut behind her. Just like that, she was gone.

And the silence that followed wasn’t peaceful—it was thunderous. The kind of silence that filled every corner, every cavity of thought, amplifying your doubts and cataloguing every misstep.

I was alone. Alone with my thoughts, my secrets, and the rapidly cooling dregs of a glass of wine that was beginning to taste like guilt.

"That was an interesting conversation," Luke's voice cut through the dense quiet of the room. He stood casually in the doorway, half-shadowed by the hall behind him, but there was nothing casual about his eyes. Sharp. Reading me like an open file. His sudden reappearance startled me—not just because I hadn’t heard him return, but because the calm he projected was such a contrast to the chaos still clinging to my nerves.

"You don't say," I replied dryly, the words brittle as cracked porcelain. I raised my glass and drained the last mouthful, the wine now warm and sour on my tongue—more ash than comfort. It had been a companion throughout the afternoon, but in that moment, even it seemed to betray me. The final sip of a day steeped in dread and deception.

"Another?" Luke asked, stepping into the room. The offer was made lightly, but I caught the flicker behind it. He was studying me—every line of tension in my shoulders, every delay in my answer. His hand reached for the empty glass with a smoothness that felt rehearsed, too calm, as though he too was pretending this was just another day in an ordinary life.

"Cheers," I said, though it landed more like a sigh than a sentiment. I didn’t lift my eyes to meet his, letting the word hang in the air between us, diluted by exhaustion. The adrenaline that had earlier propelled me through confrontation, lies, and accidental truths was draining fast, leaving behind a hollow fatigue that felt far too old for my years.

Luke moved to the kitchen bench, the bottle already uncorked. He poured in silence, and I watched him, this man who straddled two worlds—ours and Clivilius’s—like he was born between cracks in reality. His presence here had always felt temporary, but tonight... tonight, the shadows made it feel more like he belonged to the house. Like a ghost who'd grown comfortable haunting a life he could no longer fully live.

The wine glugged steadily into the glass. Red, rich, untroubled by moral dilemmas. I found myself resenting its simplicity. How easy it was, to just be a drink. Not a secret. Not a story. Not a witness.

When he returned and passed me the full glass, his fingertips brushed mine. I didn’t flinch, but I didn’t linger either. I brought the drink to my lips, sipped slowly this time, and let it sit on my tongue as if it might speak some truth if I gave it long enough.

Luke lowered himself into the armchair opposite, but he didn’t speak. That unsettled me more than if he had. Silence with Luke was rarely just silence. It was usually a decision. A calculation.

As I sat there, glass in hand, the warmth of the Shiraz slowly working its way into my bloodstream, I realised just how deep we were now. No exit. No clean version of this story that we could package up and hand to the authorities. The lines between truth and convenience had blurred into obscurity, and with Sarah’s questions still echoing in my head, I wasn’t sure whether we were dodging danger or dancing with it.

The wine helped numb that thought, if only a little.

But even in my stillness, I could feel it—something shifting. A tightening. We were in the middle of a game with pieces missing, rules bent, and a growing certainty that someone was going to lose before it was over.

And I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t going to be Karl Jenkins.