Slowly, with extravagant care, she lowered herself back down against the damp pillow, damp and rank from her own sweat. Seven minutes past five. Traffic sounds were already beginning to build up two streets away on the Essex Road. In a little over twenty minutes more, the boiler would kick in, and she would push back the sheets with her long legs and swing them to the floor. For now, she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the painful reverberations inside her head, which felt as if it were being bounced against a hardwood floor.
It had started harmlessly enough, as many of such evenings do: a couple of drinks with colleagues after work; a couple which had somehow, almost without noticing, become a couple more. Someone had suggested moving on to this club she knew, down at the opposite end of Upper Street from where they were, not really a club, more of a bar, but with a members' policy at the door. Karen well into it by now, cocktails and beer, that good buzzy feeling you get when you're with mates and the pavements are crowded with people out having a good time and every other place you pass is a busy restaurant or bar; sharing a laugh and a joke and letting the tension of the job, the day, float off in a haze of flashing lights and loud voices, the music from a dozen open doorways mingling with the strident sounds of car horns and sirens and amongst the laughter, the occasional scream or angry shout, the sharpened sound of breaking glass.
He had been watching her, she knew, almost from the minute they entered the bar, the place already full to the gills, each trip to the bar the equivalent of a full body search or more; Karen's thong-the fashionable undergarment redesigned as medieval torture instrument-already cutting into her where it hurt.
'Hi.' His voice was just the honeyed brown of his skin. 'What happened to your friends?'
'You mean you weren't watching them, too?'
'Uh-uh.' And then the smile.
Too practised, Karen thought, too smooth by half.
'Taylor,' he said.
'Karen.'
'Hi, Karen.'
'Hi, yourself.'
'What're you drinking?'
'Too much?'
He laughed and ran his hand lightly down her arm as he passed through to the bar. 'Don't go 'way.'
Outside on the street, he took hold of her hand. 'You're what? Six foot, right?'
'Five-ten.'
'That's all?'
'Uh-hum.'
'Bare feet?'
'Bare feet.'
'I'd like to see that.'
He kissed her then and she leaned into it, kissing him back, her head already a blur, his hand, clear and strong, on her hip.
It took her three attempts to locate the key in the door to her flat.
'Here,' he said, 'let me.' But she shook her head and pushed his hand away.
There were books on the floor, magazines and newspapers on one of the chairs, the new Amerie CD resting up against the stereo; the top she was planning to wear next day was hanging from the doorframe between there and the bathroom.
'You want coffee?' she asked.
'You got anything else?'
There was a third of a bottle of workaday Scotch and they drank it on the settee, her feet, bare, in his lap, his arm stretched between her thighs.
'You picked me out early,' he said with a grin-cat not far short of the cream-'That what it was?'
'You were the one, staring at me,' Karen said.
He laughed. 'Hell, girl. Six-foot-high black woman walks into a bar this side of the river, ain't Hackney, ain't Dalston, what d'you expect?'
What was that Bessie Smith song her mother used to play? A cracked old vinyl album of Bessie's greatest hits that was forever on the record player at home when she'd been growing up.
'Do Your Duty'?
Well, he did his duty that night, Taylor, Karen would say that for him.
Taylor Coombes.
'You're throwing me out?' he asked, sweat still making his body shine in the dim light from the lamp beside the bed. 'After that?'
Karen raised her head. 'You can usually pick up a cab from the end of the street.'
'Why not let me stay?' He edged into a sly smile. 'Who knows? Come morning…'
'Come morning I have to be up early.'
'That's okay.'
'No, I mean really early.'
'Yeah? What d'you do, anyway?'
'Come on, Taylor. We've had a nice time. Don't piss me off, okay?'
'Okay, okay.' An elaborate sigh. 'Can I take a shower first, at least?'
'Help yourself.'
She was dozing, half-asleep, when he bent, fully dressed and smelling of her deodorant, and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
'Will I be seeing you again?' he asked.
'Not if I see you first.'
The door clicked back into place with a satisfactory snap and Karen rolled onto her side and closed her eyes.
Too many bad movies, he'd written his mobile number with one of her lipsticks on the bathroom mirror and, stepping out of the shower, she took a damp washcloth and wiped it away. One-night stand number whatever. Counting didn't make her feel any better. Nor worse.
'When you goin' to settle down, girl?' her grandmother habitually asked, when she made her Christmas visits home to Spanish Town in Jamaica. 'Have some babies of your own?'
'You not gettin' any younger,' she had added lately.
Karen looked at herself in the mirror, breasts still high and firm enough for their size, and her belly, considering all she'd had to drink last night, all but disappeared when she stood straight and sucked in her breath.
Even so, Grandma was right; thirty seemed a long time ago.
She dried herself with the towel, rubbing as briskly as she dared, then used the dryer on her hair, more manageable since she'd had it cut short a few years back and had the sense to keep it that way. Clean underwear, coffee on the stove. No bread for toast and the empty cereal packet had found its way into the recycling box three days before. As her sister said-the one in Southend with the twins-'It's a good job you're a sight more organised at work than you are at home, girl. At least, I hope you are.'
So did she.
Just a dribble of milk left for the coffee and this morning, faced with drinking it virtually black, she needed sugar, too. She'd pick up a muffin at the Caffe Nero on Camden Parkway on her way in. SCD1. Homicide and Serious Crime Command.
Two days ago they'd wrapped up a murder investigation with pleasing speed. An argument that had started in a Euston pub had spilled out onto the road outside and from there into the forecourt of the neighbouring mainline station. A chance remark about the Sunderland football team in general and its manager, Roy Keane, in particular, had been overheard by a trio of supporters from Wearside, who had taken exception. Fists, bottles, boots, and shattered glass. The man who'd voiced his opinions less than wisely had legged it across the street and into the station, Wearsiders in pursuit, scattering passengers in all directions as they chased and harried. Trapped against the wall between Burger King and Upper Crust, the man had pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, levered open the longest blade and stuck it high in the chest of one of his attackers. Despite the best efforts of station staff
