HE OPENED his eyes and found dim sunlight stinging his eyes. Not as much light as he was used to, but any was too much. He blinked heavily, trying to ease the discomfort.
“Morning, sunshine.”
A female voice and that caused him to sit up fast. He wasn’t in bed, he wasn’t in his flat and he wasn’t alone. Darian turned to look through the sleepy blur at the female figure standing a few feet from him. It took a few seconds for his fractured memory to convince him this was Maeve Campbell, but that was as much information as it could compute so quickly. There was no memory of how he had ended up there, not at first.
He said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You came round here to tell me the truth because you were too drunk to lie. I find most people are braver drunk than sober.”
He nodded but that rattled his brain so he stopped. He had struggled to keep up with her comments. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“Ha, I know exactly what got into you, I could smell it the second I opened the front door.”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“You were right to come, although you won’t win any prizes for your timing. But, then, if you’d waited for daylight and sobriety, you probably wouldn’t have made the journey.”
Maeve took a few steps and sat on the other couch opposite him. She was wearing a short skirt, her long hair down. She was amused by his discomfort, smiling her dimpled smile. Darian watched her cross her legs.
He said, “I should go.”
“You know, my neighbors already think I’m a classic example of the moral decay of this city. A young woman on her own, the man I was sleeping with murdered. Then you come banging on my door in the dark and leave a few hours later. You’re not helping me to make a good impression.”
Darian looked across the small room at a woman who had never consciously tried to make a good impression in her life.
“Sorry.”
“You can make it up to me by explaining what you said last night. If Cummins didn’t kill Moses then who did?”
“I was havering; I was wrong, ignore me.”
“No, you want me to ignore you now because you were right last night. All the people I’ve met since Moses was killed, all the people investigating it, there are only two I’ve seen prove they’re intelligent enough to listen to, you and Corey. If Corey told me aliens don’t exist I’d start looking out for little green men. You’re the only smart one I can trust. You were honest last night and I want you to shame the devil and be honest with me this morning as well.”
There was no threat in her voice, but there was the demand of a woman who had a right to know. Darian had sacrificed his right to keep his opinion to himself at the same moment he had abandoned the policy of keeping his big mouth shut late the previous night.
“I don’t know who killed Moses but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Cummins. That guy, he’s not capable of much, murder included. He’s the sort of guy who runs up a debt, not the sort that pays it off.”
“So it’s a hunch?”
“No, not a hunch, it deserves a bigger name than that. You get to understand people when you study them enough, get to know the types. Cummins is a loudmouth but he’s weak. If he had done it there’s no way he would have gone a month and dodged a large police investigation without it being known.”
“When DC MacDuff came here yesterday he said there was more than enough evidence to confirm and convict.”
“There’s evidence. All very neat and just enough of it to be sure Cummins gets a long sentence.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means all that evidence and a man with a brain like DI Corey didn’t spot it, but me and Sholto found it within two bloody days of looking. Not to talk our talent down, but I don’t find that convincing. They’ll put him in a court and they’ll get a conviction and that’ll be that.”
“That’ll be that? If the person who killed Moses is still out there then you don’t get to stop looking for him just because Corey and his mob say so. I’m hiring you and I’m telling you to keep looking.”
Darian looked at her, the magnetic fury on her face, and smiled. Someone willing to fight for the dead, long after the final bell had tolled. He said, “I’ll keep looking, but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to find.”
“You’ll keep looking and you won’t do it alone because I’m going to help you. I know people that were close to Moses, the sort that might know who he was working with around the time he was murdered. A lot of them wouldn’t talk when there was a police investigation going on, didn’t want to be tangled up in that unpleasantness. They won’t talk to you either because they’ll see you as a cop without the credibility.”
“Hold on, no, this is not okay, you would be putting yourself at risk.”
“I’m going to do this, so talking me out of it is a waste of your boozy breath. If I do it without your help I’ll be less effective and at greater risk. So you’ll help me, won’t you?”
When she smiled in triumph she was a woman Darian couldn’t say no to.
He said, “I’ll do what I can.”