A Rush of Blood

Eighty-nine

‘Jack,’ said Sauce, ‘it’s a nice thought, by both of you, but I’m OK.

Maybe we’ll go to Indigo on Friday, but I’m not in a boozing mood tonight. I’ll stay in, watch a couple of miserable French movies and cry my eyes out. Failing that, I’ll put on the Motown twenty-fifth anniversary CD and think of you. See you tomorrow.’

He hung up and walked across to his DVD collection. He almost settled on In Bruges but passed it by, because he found the finish heart-rending at the best of times. He looked at his CDs. Motown Twenty-fifth Anniversary was not a starter for the simple reason that he did not possess it, nor was Tom Waits’ The Black Rider because it was so weird that it was positively creepy, nor The Travelling Wilburys because Roy Orbison was dead. Finally he settled for the Foo Fighters’ Skin and Bones, turning the volume to just below neighbour intolerance level, and maybe even a shade beyond.

The sound was so loud that he almost failed to hear the buzzer. When it broke through, he turned the level down and stepped into the hall.

She was standing there when he opened the door, her carefully cut blond hair casually disarranged, her make-up simple but perfect and her lips that soft shade of red that he liked so much. ‘Hi,’ she whispered.

‘Miss McCullough, I presume,’ he replied, coldly.

‘Sauce, I’m sorry,’ she began. ‘I should have told you my real name, but with my grandpa being a wee bit notorious, and you being a cop. .’

‘I didn’t tell you I was a cop until after you’d told me your name. I’m a fucking detective; I can work that out. You also left out the bit about you being a fucking getaway driver.’

‘That was all a misunderstanding. That was my moron mother’s fault. They’ve dropped the charges against me.’

‘Yes, and what I told you, gullible idiot that I was. . God, a woman died.’

She flinched, and he thought he saw real pain in her eyes; for sure he saw tears. She put her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. ‘I didn’t know that would happen,’ she sobbed. ‘My mum asked me, for that bastard of a man of hers. But I never thought. .’

He heard a neighbour’s footsteps on the stair below, and drew her inside. She ran her fingers through his hair, and kissed him lightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘so sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t make it right.’ He looked into her smoky grey eyes. ‘You realise I’ll never be able to believe another fucking thing you tell me?’

She nodded.

He kept on looking. ‘Can I still call you Cheeky?’ he asked.