Maloney's Law (23 page)
Authors: Anne Brooke
Tags: #Private Investigators, #Suspense, #General, #Gay, #Private investigators - England - London, #london, #Fiction, #Traditional British, #Mystery & Detective, #Mystery Fiction, #Gay Men, #England
Chapter Twenty
When the papers are gathered, I place them into the metal bin. It’s large enough to take them all if I press them down. Then I lean back against my desk for a moment, wiping both hands upwards over my face and through my hair. Four days, nineteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes have passed since Dominic and I parted, for the final time, I think. I hope, I hope. It’s enough, it’s time.
I remove the battery from the smoke alarm, take up the lighter I’ve brought from home, and flick the flame over the first layer of paper. It catches more easily than I’d imagined, and I watch the papers and photographs and print blacken and burn. After a minute, the fire is fierce, but it’s contained. I’m not afraid.
When it’s over, I replace the alarm battery, pour water over the ashes, take the empty folder that has for so long contained everything I have collected about Dominic, and bury it deep in the cabinet. One day I might use it again for some other case, but not yet. Still I’m glad I’ve done this in the office. Fire has a cleansing property.
The day is not quite finished yet. I have one more duty to perform.
The Bell and Book is quiet tonight. Soon it will be December and then the end of the year, the beginning of the next. With it comes a chance to start again maybe, I don’t know. All I know is the sense of waiting, of marking time, that’s haunted me since Dominic was arrested has gone. All I’m left with is the open space and the possibilities of the journey to come.
I shake my head free of its thoughts. No time for philosophy. I’m here for a purpose and I should fulfil it. It’s Monday night after all. 6.13pm.
At the bar I order two drinks and pay with a fifty pound note. It’s all I’ve got. The barman sighs, shrugs, and scrabbles for change. I pocket the coins but clutch the notes, carrying them and my order across to the table in the corner. Our usual. No, my usual now.
After putting down the drinks, I sit down and open my wallet to put the notes in. As I do so, something drops to the floor. Something small. A white rectangle. I pick it up and see it’s Craig’s card, from my night in Soho one month and ten days ago. It’s crumpled but the print is still clear. Smiling with the memory, I read it for the first time. Craig Robertson, it tells me. Professional Model and Actor. That makes sense, he was a good-looking bastard. Slim enough for it, too. I believe what it says as he didn’t have the style of a hooker. Too straightforward, and he didn’t ask for money. Not much of a job, but then again neither is mine. I turn the card over. On the back is his home address, phone number, and mobile number, and for a moment or two, I think about calling, but it’s probably too late. He won’t remember me; the young move on so quickly. Still I don’t throw it away. Instead, for reasons I can’t explain, I bring the card briefly to my lips before slipping it into my back pocket and feeling the reassurance of its shape against my skin.
Maybe, I think. Maybe. But not today. Not yet.
Right now, in the glittering, changeable present, I reach over the table, raise the glass of Chardonnay and smile.
‘Happy birthday, Jade,’ I say. ‘Dazzle them in heaven.’
Anne Brooke has been writing for 18 years and is the author of six novels, numerous short stories and poems. Previous novels include
A Dangerous Man
(gay crime) and
Thorn in the Flesh
(psychological thriller) and
Pink Champagne and Apple Juice
(romantic comedy). She loves dark-haired men, has never met a chocolate she doesn’t like and once took a dawn balloon flight over the Nile (though she spent most of the time screaming).
Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Novel Award, the Royal Literary fund Award, and the Asham Award for Women Writers, and longlisted for the Betty Bolingbroke Kent Novel Award. In addition, she has twice been the winner of the DSJT Charitable Trust Open Poetry Award.
She lives in the UK and is happily married to the best dark-haired man in the world, who is constantly astonished by her novels.
Find more information at
www.annebrooke.com
or
www.myspace.com/
annebrooke. She also keeps a terrifyingly honest journal at annebrooke.blogspot.com
