at the back and were served thick sweet coffee and small diamonds of baklava dripping with honey.
‘You know Lucy,’ Gina said unprompted, ‘she did things no one else would do. She could steal anything that wasn’t tied down. She used to take orders.’ The girl laughed. ‘She got me clothes, all my make-up once. She never wanted any money for them, nothing. If she wanted any stuff for herself, she’d just go and take it. But then other times she just gave things away. She used to rip things off just to give them away. Anything. It was a game, that’s what she was doing all the time. She used to say the whole world is crap so what does it matter what I do. That was her way of letting everyone know it. I don’t really want to see things that way. You don’t have to think like that. You’ve got to hope sometimes. Don’t you think?’
‘I do think that,’ Grace said. ‘Sometimes you just have to hang in there till things get better. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. That is the way it is. That’s how I see it.’
‘What are you hoping for now, Gina?’
‘That things will work out. What else would I want?’
The conversation faltered. The girl looked at her over her cigarette, a challenge in her eye.
‘Did you ever do any sex work?’ she asked. ‘While you were singing maybe? You could have done. You could have made a lot of money.’
Grace shook her head, mindful that everything they said was being listened to and recorded.
‘No, Gina, I’ve never sold sex. Just my voice,’ she replied quietly.
Yes, her voice, that was all she had ever sold of herself. It had still been her though, up there on display on the stage. No, Gina, I don’t sell sex, I never have, I never will. I give it away and sometimes I go out looking for it. That’s my choice. Just so long as I can choose who and when and how, it’s okay.
Gina was still talking.
‘It’s a good way to get money if you need it. But if you work the way I do, you’ve got to be careful about your customers. They could be anybody.’
So can the people you sleep with for nothing, for love or the passing need. It’s all on the finest balance between love and hate and you never know what the man you’re with might do next, no matter how close you get to him or how naked you both are.
There was silence.
‘Are you armed? Have you got a gun?’ the girl asked suddenly, aggressively.
Grace, whose firearm was nestled against her ribcage under her armpit, did not answer.
‘You are, aren’t you?’ Gina said.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Well, if you really want to help me out, you can give it to me.’
Grace shook her head.
‘If you want help, why don’t you just come in, Gina? Talk to someone. Talk to me,’ she said.
The girl laughed softly at her, shaking her head.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
Grace looked at her watch. ‘It’s still early. Half past nine.’
They sat in silence for a little while longer. Grace watched Gina look down into the coffee cup, checking the thick black leavings, and then look up again. The girl’s blank stare meant terror, nothing simpler. She shook back her hair.
‘Time to go. I can’t wait around any more,’ she said but did not immediately move. ‘Thanks for the talk. And the smokes.’
‘Gina, ring me if you’ve got any more to tell me. You can get me on the numbers on that card any time. You remember that. Any time.’
‘Yeah. Why not?’
They went out into the street. It had begun to rain heavily. The roadway was greasy in the wet, shining with the lights of passing cars.
‘Do you want a lift somewhere?’ Grace asked.
‘Nup.’
Standing in the rain, the girl spread out her arms like a dancer about to spin out of a spotlight. She laughed aloud.
‘See you sometime maybe, Gracie.’
‘Gina … ’
‘What?’
‘Remember you can call me.’
The girl laughed once again and then she was gone, half-walking, half-running along the empty street until she disappeared from sight.
Grace called in to say she was on her way back, and then sat in her car where it was parked off the road in another spot that Gina had found for her. She thought, I won’t see that girl alive again. She sat quietening her breathing, letting her hands lie loose in her lap. You have to draw a line. You have to do that now.
She drove away, unable to follow the girl on the one-way street that channelled her car in the opposite direction. So where was Gina going now? Don’t even think about it, because there’s nothing you can do.
Once Grace had called in for the night, Harrigan collected his things and left. Trevor had already gone, leaving the graveyard shift ticking over ready for the next day. Harrigan left instructions for them to call him as soon as they had an address, an identification, anything at all.
Lucy Hurst’s picture was already appearing on late-night news broadcasts and Internet news services.
He did not go straight home but snatched another half hour and went via Cotswold House. Toby was still out of bed, waiting for him.
As he entered the room, Toby signalled to him with his good hand.
‘Hi, Toby,’ Harrigan said, and looked over his shoulder at a website dedicated to mountain climbing in Peru.
‘No, I didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m okay, bit tired maybe. Toby, I’ve got something I’ve got to talk to you about.’
Harrigan had sat down.
‘Mate — I shouldn’t be doing this, okay? I’ve got to ask you this.
Are you going to warn her? If I tell you this.’
‘Yeah.’
Toby turned his wheelchair in a small circle to look at his father.
His good hand rested on the keyboard.
‘Are you going to warn her?’
‘You’re out there looking for her.’
‘Will you?’
‘No, mate. It’s not like that.’ He hunted for an explanation. ‘This way you know where we are. I don’t know what’s going to happen from now on in. I don’t know what she’s going to do, or even if she’s going to walk away from this.’
‘I don’t use guns until I have to. That depends on what she does. If I can avoid it, I will.’
