towel twisted around her head.
‘I thought you should eat,’ Resnick said.
‘I doubt if I can.’
But, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, she wolfed it down, folding a piece of the bread in half and wiping the last of the egg from her plate.
Uncertain, Pepper and Miles miaowed from a distance.
‘Don’t you feed them, Charlie?’
‘Sometimes.’
Eileen pushed away her plate. ‘You know what I need after that?’
‘A cup of coffee?’
‘A cigarette.’
She stood in the rear doorway, looking out across the garden, a few stunted trees in silhouette and, beyond the wall, the land falling away into darkness.
Resnick rinsed dishes at the sink.
When she came back inside and closed the door behind her, her skin shone from the cold. ‘He’s one of yours,’ she said.
Resnick felt the breath stop inside his body.
‘Vice, at least I suppose that’s what he is. The sauna, that’s where I saw him, just the once. With one of the girls. Knocked her around. Split her lip. It wasn’t till tonight I was sure.’
‘You scarcely saw him in the van. You said so yourself.’
‘Charlie, I’m sure.’
‘So the description you gave before…’
‘It was accurate, far as it went.’
‘And now?’
‘He’s got — I don’t know what you’d call it — a lazy eye, the left. It sort of droops. Just a little. Maybe you’d never notice at first, but then, when you do… The way he looks at you.’
Resnick nodded. ‘The driver, did you see him there tonight as well?’
Eileen shook her head. I don’t know. No. I don’t think so. I mean, he could’ve been, but no, I’m sorry, I couldn’t say.’
‘It’s okay.’ Now that the shock had faded, Resnick caught himself wondering why the allegation was less of a surprise than it was.
‘You don’t know him?’ Eileen asked. ‘Know who he is?’
Resnick shook his head. ‘It won’t take long to find out.’
In the front room he sat in his usual chair and Eileen rested her back against one corner of the settee, legs pulled up beneath her, glass of Scotch balancing on the arm.
‘You’ll go after him?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘On my word?’
‘Yes.’
She picked up her drink. ‘You’ll need more than that, Charlie. In court. The word of a whore.’
‘Yes. Agreed.’
The heating had clicked off and the room was slowly getting colder. He wondered why it didn’t seem stranger, her sitting there. Refilling both their glasses, he switched on the stereo and, after a passage of piano, there was Billie’s voice, half-broken, singing of pain and grieving, the pain of living, the loving kiss of a man’s hard hand.
‘Sounds like,’ Eileen said, ‘she knows what she’s talking about.’
Less than ten minutes later, she was stretching her arms and yawning. ‘I think I’ll just curl up on here, if that’s the same to you.’
‘No need. There’s a spare room upstairs. Two.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘Suit yourself. And if any of the cats jump up on you, push them off.’
Eileen shook her head. ‘I might like the company.’
It was a little after two when she climbed in with him, the dressing gown discarded somewhere between the door and the bed. Startled awake, Resnick thrashed out with his arm and only succeeded in sending the youngest cat skittering across the floor.
‘Budge up, Charlie.’
‘Christ, Eileen!’
Her limbs were strong and smooth and cold.
‘Eileen, you can’t-’
‘Shush.’
She lay with one leg angled over his knee, an arm across his midriff holding him close, her head to his chest. Within minutes the rhythm of her breathing changed and she was asleep, her breath faint and regular on his skin.
How long, Resnick wondered, since he had lain with a woman like this, in this bed? When his fingers touched the place between her shoulder and her neck, she stirred slightly, murmuring a name that wasn’t his.
It was a little while later before the cat felt bold enough to resume its place on the bed.
‘Is there anywhere you can go?’ Resnick asked. ‘Till all this blows over.’
‘You mean, apart from here.’
‘Apart from here.’
They were in the kitchen, drinking coffee, eating toast.
‘Look, if it’s last night…’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘I mean, it’s not as if-’
‘It’s what you said yourself, at the moment everything’s hanging on your word. It just needs someone to make the wrong connection between you and me…’
‘Okay, you don’t have to spell it out. I understand.’
The radio was still playing, muffled, in the bathroom. Politics: the same evasions, the same lies. As yet the outside temperature had scarcely risen above freezing, the sky several shades of grey.
‘I’ve got a friend,’ Eileen said, ‘in Sheffield. I can go there.’ She glanced down at what she was now wearing, one of his shirts. A morning-after cliche. ‘Only I shall need some clothes.’
‘I’ll drive you round to your place after breakfast, wait while you pack.’
‘Thanks.’
Resnick drank the last of his coffee, pushed himself to his feet. ‘You’ll let me have a number, in case I need to get in touch?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
She took one more mouthful of toast and left the rest.
They were gathered together in Resnick’s office, the clamour of the everyday going on behind its closed door: Graham Millington, Anil Khan and Sharon Garnett. Sharon had been a member of the Vice Squad before being reassigned to Resnick’s team and had maintained her contacts.
‘Burford,’ Sharon said once Resnick had relayed the description. ‘Jack Burford, it’s got to be.’
Millington whistled, a malicious glint in his eye. ‘Jack Burford — honest as the day is long.’
It wasn’t so far from the shortest day of the year.
‘How well do you know him?’ Resnick asked.
‘Well enough,’ Sharon said. ‘We’d have a drink together once in a while.’ She laughed. ‘Never too comfortable in my company, Jack. A woman who speaks her mind and black to boot, more than he could comfortably handle. No, a bunch of the lads, prize fights, lock-ins and lap dancers, that was more Jack’s mark. Gambling, too. In and out of Ladbroke’s most afternoons.’
‘These lads, anyone closer to him than the rest?’
