“Fuck me.” I say. Stunned doesn’t adequately express the level of surprise I experience when she enters the room.
“You couldn’t afford it,” she says, and stares hard before turning to give Jack a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. She removes her peaked hat and drops it on the small table in the living area, such as it is.
I look her up and down, the blonde from the train, but dressed very differently. Gone are the classy clothes and subtle make-up, replaced with a rather starched Special Police Constable’s uniform.
“It was you I saw in the hospital,” I say, sure now.
“Uh-huh,” she replies, all cool. Her expression says she’s uninterested in satisfying my curiosity because it makes no difference to her. “I attended the scene of your little fight so I had to follow up with a sick note visit.”
“And on the train.”
She shrugs, her lip turns up a notch. She neither remembers nor cares.
“Emily’s with the police,” Jack says.
“I worked that out for myself,” I say with heavy sarcasm.
“Do you want me to help you out of your little predicament or not?” She fixes me with a glare again.
“Yes. Please.”
“Then stop being such a prick to Jack,” she says.
“Okay, sorry. I’m just fucking stressed,” I raise my hands in surrender. “I’m not used to finding dead bodies.”
But before she can tell me (literally, her beautiful mouth is open for the words to exit) the doorbell rattles again.
“That’s for me,” I say. “Could you get it please, Jack? In case it isn’t.”
“Let the lazy shit get it for himself, Jack,” Emily says.
“No, I don’t mind,” Jack says. “He’s been through a lot.”
“What happened to helping the public?” I ask.
He dutifully trots off. Emily turns her back on me, casting her Medusa’s gaze on anything in Jack’s tiny flat other than me. Her radio squawks a blast of static followed by a tinny voice. She grabs it and twists a small knob on the top so the volume drops right back to a barely audible chatter.
I can’t believe it; here she finally is, in the flesh, in the same location as me. All those weeks of chasing a shadow only for her to turn up now, called by Jack of all people. However, I’m experiencing one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ moments because I can hardly claim that my hopes are being met so far. My initial impression is that Emily’s as hard as fucking nails, beauty with knuckles in the teeth.
My observations are interrupted by the door to Jack’s little flat opening. Konstantin literally fills the room. His familiar odour enters alongside him, a malevolent companion that assaults my nostrils as effectively as pepper spray. Emily seems entirely unaffected by the olfactory mugging meted out by the tramp with dubious origins.
“Hallo, funny man!” Konstantin booms. He crosses the room and slaps me on the shoulder, sending me staggering as his ham-sized hand thuds down. He catches sight of Emily and his grip strengthens. “Who this beautiful lady?” he asks in mock reverence, like a priest confronted with a manifestation of his God.
“The police,” she says in an icy tone meant to intimidate. It works on me but not on Konstantin, who simply booms with laughter again.
“She funny like you!” Konstantin says, obviously full of mirth today. He finally takes his hand off my shoulder and I can stand upright again.
“Can we just get on with this?” Emily directs this at Jack. “I’ve far better shit to do.”
“Sorry Em, go on.”
Emily looks down at her polished shoes for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “The top brass are all over this like herpes, even Davis turned up and took a look around apparently. I’ll be in the shit up to my ears if anyone finds out I’ve told you anything so not a fucking word, okay?” She waits for each of us to nod in agreement, takes a deep breath and dives in. “Currently the senior officer in charge of the Valentine investigation has no reason to believe the cause of death to be anything other than suicide.”
“Thank fuck,” I say with relief.
Emily continues as if I haven’t spoken. “The crime scene’s been thoroughly swept and there’s no evidence of anyone else’s involvement, no fingerprints, nothing. There was a gun found at the scene but it only had the victim’s dabs on. The wound and splatter pattern also indicates a self-inflicted fatality.”
I remember the gore and involuntarily shudder. “So that’s it, I’m in the clear.”
“The evidence points to suicide as I said, not murder, so unless you know something I don’t?” Emily says.
I back-pedal fucking quickly. “No. Why would I?”
“If we’re finished here I have to go. My superiors think I’m helping an old granny across a street.”
“Thanks Emily,” I say.
She softens for the briefest of moments. “You’re welcome,” she says and then is out the door and gone.
“She’s a hard one,” I say to Jack.
“So would you be if you lead the life she does.”
“What? Money, house, cars, holidays, marriage? Give me a break, Jack. That’s pretty much what everyone wants.”
“Her husband, my brother, doesn’t give a shit about Emily. In fact I suspect he’s gay. Em’s just an asset to further his career. She’s been hooked on alcohol and drugs and beaten both. She sleeps with any man that crosses her path and she lives this double life as Serena. First she was a strippergram, then a pole dancer, then an escort and the latest is branching out into porn, although she says she hasn’t filmed anything yet.”
“Christ.”
“She’s really the nicest person you could ever meet.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m the only person she says anything to. My git of a brother isn’t interested.”
Konstantin sighs. “I bored of this shit,” he says. “Now funny man, I have thing for you.”
I’ve a hundred more questions for Jack, but I guess they’ll have to wait. The train of conversation has been derailed.
“What thing?” I ask.
“Man who follow, the spy. Have photo.”
Konstantin holds up his phone, a picture on the tiny screen. Of someone I thought I knew well, but clearly not at all.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“He at American’s house.”
“Are you sure?”
“Da, I there too,” Konstantin grins.
“And me,” Jack says, looking downcast.
“Perhaps you’d better tell me what the fuck’s been going on,” I say.
So Jack does.