“Maybe not,” said Scorcher. He scribbled something on his pad and narrowed his eyes at it. “You didn’t go down to the basement?”
“No. No one ever did: it was dark, it was rickety, it had rats and damp and it stank like hell, we left it alone. I had no reason to think Rosie would be there.”
Scorcher bounced his pen off his teeth and examined his notes. I sank a third of my pint and thought, as briefly as I could, about the possibility that Rosie had in fact been in that basement while I was busy being lovelorn upstairs, a few yards away.
“So instead,” Scorcher said, “in spite of the fact that you’d taken Rose’s note as a Dear John, you went back to the end of the road and kept waiting. Why?”
His voice was mild, casual, but I caught the power rush in his eye. The little shitehawk was loving this. “Hope springs eternal,” I said, shrugging. “And women change their minds. I figured I’d give her a chance to change hers back.”
Scorch gave a manly little snort. “Women, eh? So you gave her three or four hours, and then cut your losses. Where did you go?”
I gave him the rundown on the squat and the smelly rockers and the generous sister, forgetting surnames, just in case he decided to give anyone hassle. Scorcher took notes. When I had finished he asked, “Why didn’t you just go home?”
“Momentum, and pride. I wanted to move out anyway; what Rosie decided didn’t change that. England didn’t sound like as much fun all by myself, but neither did slinking back home like a gobshite with my tail between my legs. I was all geared up to leave, so I kept walking.”
“Mmm,” Scorcher said. “Let’s go back to the approximately six hours-now that’s love, specially in December-the six hours you spent waiting at the top of the road. Do you remember anyone passing by, entering or exiting any of the houses, anything like that?”
I said, “One or two things stick out. Somewhere around midnight, I can’t give you an exact time, I heard what I thought was a couple doing the business nearby. Looking back, though, the noises could have gone either way: a shag or a struggle. And later, maybe between quarter past one and half past, someone went down the back gardens on the even-numbered side of the road. I don’t know how much good it’ll do you, after all this time, but take it for what it’s worth.”
“Anything could come in useful,” Scorcher said neutrally, scribbling. “You know how it goes. And that was it for human contact? All night long, in a neighborhood like this one? Let’s face it, it’s not exactly the leafy suburbs.”
He was starting to piss me off, which presumably was just what he was aiming for, so I kept my shoulders easy and took my time with my pint. “It was a Sunday night. By the time I got out there, everything was closed and just about everyone was in bed, or I’d have held off till later. There was no activity on Faithful Place; some people were still awake and talking, but no one went up or down the road, or in or out of any of the houses. I heard people passing around the corner, up towards New Street, and a couple of times someone got close enough that I moved out of the light so they wouldn’t spot me, but I didn’t recognize anyone.”
Scorch twiddled his pen meditatively, watching the light move on the surface. “So no one would spot you,” he repeated. “Because no one knew the two of you were an item. Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s right.”
“All this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Any particular reason for it?”
“Rosie’s father didn’t like me. He hit the roof when he first found out we were going out-that’s why we’d been keeping the relationship under wraps ever since. If we’d told him I wanted to take his little girl off to London, there would’ve been holy war. I figured it’d be easier to get forgiveness than permission.”
“Some things never change,” Scorch said, a little sourly. “Why didn’t he like you?”
“Because he’s got no taste,” I said, grinning. “How could anyone not love this face?”
He didn’t grin back. “Seriously.”
“You’d have to ask him. He didn’t share his thought process with me.”
“I will. Anyone else know what the two of you were planning?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know, Rosie didn’t either.” Mandy was all mine. Scorcher could talk to her himself, and good luck to him; I would have enjoyed watching that one.
Scorcher looked over his notes, taking his time and sipping his pint. “Right,” he said eventually, clicking his fancy pen shut. “That should just about do it, for now.”
“See what your super thinks,” I said. There wasn’t a chance in hell he would talk to his super, but if I backed off too easily he would start wondering what kind of Plan B I had up my sleeve. “That lot might give him the warm fuzzies about a bit of collaboration.”
