Private London

Chapter 62

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 favoured haunt of drug addicts and prostitutes but had gone downmarket now and was favoured by media types.

The lounge 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.’