‘I swear that’s what happened.’ Charles was perplexed by the sudden hostility. It was only a story. ‘He shot the sheriff. Mind you, it was only a shoulder wound, but it knocked Sheriff Peety right out of the saddle. Actually, it was quite a clever ruse. You see, when the rustlers thought the old man was dead, they stopped shooting at him.’ Not that there had been much danger of them hitting their target in darkness described as absolute. ‘The rustlers even cheered the Wichita Kid for making this really great shot from a galloping horse.’ In fact, it was an impossible shot, but logic was not the author’s forte.

‘I love that boy.’ The prostitute clapped her hands together.

‘My turn,’ said Charles. ‘Now the last time you saw Sparrow was how long ago?’

‘Four months, maybe longer.’

Charles looked up at the woman behind May’s chair. ‘Madam, you’re next.’

Mallory found it difficult to concentrate on conversations in the next room. A cascade of pictures were dropping into her mind, and she could not block them out. Through the eyes of a child, she watched Sparrow writhing on the floor, losing a river of blood from the knife wound in her side and crying, ‘Jesus! Jesus!’

Kathy knew Jesus, too. He was the King of Pain, crowned with thorns and stabbed with nails. And she had sometimes called on Him in this same way, with no expectation of help -just another ritual like the story hour.

Riker recognized the woman now, but not by her face, not even by her name. The prostitute’s neck scarf dropped to give him a glimpse of a familiar scar, a souvenir from the man who had slit her throat rather than pay for her services. He would tread carefully with this one. She was the hooker who had tied Sparrow to the little girl who died in the fire, and all for three seconds of fame on the evening news.

The whore gave no sign of remembering the detective. All cops and customers must look alike to this aging parody of a dead actress. Marilyn’s red mouth was drawn well outside the lines of her thin lips, but her voice was breathy and sexy, so close to the real thing.

‘Sure I remember,’ said Marilyn. ‘It was maybe fourteen, fifteen years ago. I brought Sparrow’s stuff to the hospital. That was the day after she got stabbed.’

‘Her stuff. You brought her heroin?’

‘Oh, just a taste, a snort. Not enough to mess her up. I had a personal interest in Sparrow’s health. She owed me money. God, she was strung out. What I gave her didn’t help much.’

Riker leaned over to light the woman’s cigarette. ‘Did the little girl ever visit her?’

‘Uh huh. When I came in, she was sittin’ on the edge of the bed. Sparrow was feeding her off the hospital tray. The kid was eating an apple one minute, and then she was dead asleep. Her eyes closed, and the apple just rolled out of her little hand. Ain’t it funny – the things that stay with you for years?’

‘What else happened that day?’

‘Sparrow shook the kid till she woke up. Reminded her she had something to do – and fast. I never found out what that was about.

So the kid climbs down from the bed. So tired. Poor baby. She was weavin’ on her way out the door. And that was the last time I ever saw that child alive.’

Mallory leaned forward, straining to catch the details of her hospital visit. That was the day Sparrow had sent her back to the deserted crackhouse – the day of the fire. This was a memory she did not want to relive, but images broke into her conscious mind against her will – the rats were eating the dead man, and she could hear the sucking sound that Sparrow’s knife made when it was pulled from the body.

‘No, babe,’ said Crystal. ‘Sparrow ain’t worked the tunnel in a while. Last time I saw that whore, she was planning to get her nose fixed. Later, I heard she was working uptown hotels. I’m telling you, that must’ve been one hell of a nose job. I wouldn’t last six seconds in one of those hotels before they threw my ass out the door. So what’s the rest of the story?’

‘First, tell me something,’ said Charles. ‘Why do you care about these books?’

Crystal gave this some careful thought, then smiled with her broken mouth. ‘It’s like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to fall. You know that saying? You do? Good. Well, babe, I’ve been waiting for fifteen years. Now give me the rest of my damn story.’

‘All right. Remember the first cowboy Wichita ever killed?’

Exasperated, she said, ‘Of course I do. All the girls know that story. That was the only one we got paid for.’

‘Pardon?’

‘That first story – the kid paid for it. Well, she paid for the first hour. She’d give a whore something she stole, something real fine. I gotta say, the girl had good taste. Then, after that first time, all her stories were free. All she had to do was say, „Read me a story,“ and some whore would take her home.’

‘And you all read to her – because you had to know how the books ended?’

‘Now you got it. But it was never the same book twice in a row. You’d wind up an hour into a completely different story – and no end. Or maybe you’d get the end, but you wouldn’t know how it started.’

‘Well, in Homecoming, you discover that the first dead cowboy was a murderer. He was part of a gang that killed Wichita’s father and stole his cattle.’

‘So that’s how the kid’s mother wound up as a dancehall girl. I always wondered about that. She was the only church-going slut in Franktown.’

‘Right,’ said Charles. ‘It was either work in a saloon or starve, and she had a child to support. Well, in this book, Wichita’s almost done. He’s tracked down the last gang member, a man hiding out in Franktown. And he kills him in a gunfight.’

‘Does the sheriff arrest the Kid?’

‘No.’

‘So the Kid just left town, right? He got away again?’

‘Well, not in this one.’ Now Charles realized that this woman was unaware that Homecoming was the end of the series.

‘You don’t mean Wichita gave himself up?’ She read a worse fate in Charles’s giveaway face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me he died? Don’t you dare tell me that!’ She shouted, ‘How can the Kid be dead?’’

All around the room, conversations stopped abruptly as ten hookers went into mourning for the Wichita Kid.

Mallory sat in darkness, eyes closed, slowly moving her head from side to side. She could not remember a book called Homecoming.

Riker waited out the silence. Finally, the whores rallied, for they had other unresolved issues.

‘So tell me what happened to the horse,’ said Minnie. ‘OF Blaze rolled off a cliff at the end of one book. At least tell me the horse didn’t die.’

‘Well,’ said Riker, ‘I know it looked like old Blaze was goin’ sour, but the horse came back in the next book. Now this Indian girl – ’

‘Gray Bird? The one who loved the Wichita Kid? He talks about her in most of the stories.’

‘That’s the one, yeah. She nursed the horse back to health with magic and herbs. The girl died, but the horse was good as new.’

‘Ain’t that romantic?’

‘Yeah.’

Mallory left the building and walked past her car, heading for the next block and her office at Butler and Company. It was trash collection night, and the street was rimmed with garbage and a rancid stink. As she passed each metal can, something slithered away in the dark. Eyes shut tight, she pressed her hands over her ears, trying to kill the sound of rats’ feet scrabbling across a rotted wood floor, racing one another to the fallen, bleeding Sparrow. She could not lose the smell of kerosene, smoke and burning skin.

Stopping by a payphone, she fed coins into the slot. Mallory dialed three random numbers and then the four she knew by heart, though she had not performed this ritual since childhood. The phone was ringing, and she felt the same excited anticipation. But why? Was it comfort she expected at the other end of the line?