KIRSTY PUT THE brandy snifter down on a small table that she had placed next to my couch.
The sofa itself was positioned under the window that looked down on Dean Street below, and across to Meard Street—which had once been a favored haunt of drug addicts and prostitutes but had gone downmarket now and was favored by media types.
The room was small and contained a three-seater sofa that converted into a double-sprung bed, a thirty-two-inch Sony Bravia HD television which I very rarely watched, and an original Victorian fireplace which, though unused, was stacked with wooden logs. An art deco drinks cabinet which Kirsty had raided. A Moroccan rug on the floor and a bookcase by the television housing most of the books I was supposed to have read when I’d been studying English at Reading University—Dickens, Hardy, Shakespeare, lots of poetry—and which had hardly been glanced at since. When I did read anything nowadays it was most likely in paperback form, and the kind of book that once read you gave away to a friend or dropped off in a charity shop.
So that’s my lounge, bijou but comfortable and with everything just as I liked it—apart from the dark-haired woman with dangerously come-to-bed eyes that was sitting on the sofa.
“I’ve applied for a job in Manchester,” she said.
I nodded, although I had absolutely no idea where she was going with this.
“I figured, get out of town,” she continued. “You and me won’t keep bumping into each other. Take a spade and bury the past where it belongs.”
“You always were the romantic one.”
“Yeah—it wasn’t me taking text messages from your girlfriend when you were supposed to be marrying me.”
I took another slug of beer. Kept me from talking, at least, and this was one argument I was never going to win. I swallowed and said, “So you’re going to move to Manchester. What do you want me to do, help you pack?” I was being a regular Jack Benny that night.
“It’s a new position. They’re setting up a serial-killers unit. Worldwide coordination. Profiling. The whole shebang. Bit like the FBI have out at Quantico.”
I gestured with the beer bottle for her to continue.
“I’m in with a chance, but there’s a lot of competition.”
“So why do you need my help, Kirsty?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I need Private’s.”