“There’s some kind of procedural hold-up apparently.”

“Oh?” That got his partner’s attention. “Problem?”

Lytton shook his head. “As far as I’m aware it’s just a delay.” It better had be.

“Matt, delays mean questions. The wrong kind of questions,” Warwick said with anxiety bleeding through his voice. “We need for this to be put to bed and fast. And if those comedians out there can’t do it—”

The strident buzz of his cellphone cut Warwick off in mid-sentence. He fumbled in an inside pocket, eyes still fixed on Lytton’s and flipped the phone open without checking the incoming number.

“Warwick.”

Lytton saw the way his head ducked sharply and didn’t need telling who was on the other end of the line.

“Darling,” Warwick ground out, the tone as much threat as endearment, “I’ve told you not to bother me while I’m working.”

He whirled away, began to pace. Lytton tuned it out. He’d heard Warwick and his second wife having too many domestics to willingly eavesdrop on another. He turned back to the window and stared down into the courtyard again.

This time the van’s front seats were empty and he saw the two cleaners, re-suited, collecting gear from the back. Whoever it was from, that phone call was good news as far as he was concerned.

Unconsciously his shoulders came down a fraction.

The worst, he thought, might soon be over.

4

“I’ll be home when I damned well please!” Steve Warwick snapped into his cellphone and stabbed a thumb onto the End Call button with triumphant savagery.

“Why did you marry that poor girl if you despise her so much?” Lytton asked over his shoulder, not moving away from that damned window like he was glued to the view.

“Who says I despise Yana?” Warwick said easily, tucking the phone away again. He flung himself down into one of the deep-buttoned burgundy leather Chesterfields, draping an arm along the back.

“Be careful with her, Steve,” Lytton warned. “You can’t afford to pay off another one.”

“Yana and I understand each other perfectly. The advantages of marrying a poor girl from the Eastern Bloc.” He gave a wolfish grin. “She was brought up in a culture that accepts a man has his appetites and believes it’s a wife’s duty to cater to her husband’s every whim. And I mean every whim.”

Lytton didn’t smile in return. “She’s not living in the nineteenth century—she’s here and now,” he said. “In a culture where they have anonymous helplines for abused spouses and muckraking tabloid journalists. So, be careful.”

Prig, Warwick thought, even as he flashed his teeth. You and that cold-hearted bitch you married deserved each other. “You gave Veronica too much free rein my friend,” he said lazily instead. And look where that ended.

“I hardly think you’re in any position to lecture me on how I treated my wife,” Lytton said, glacial. He turned fully into the room so the light was behind him and Warwick couldn’t see his face for shadow. Without expression, his partner’s voice seemed cooler. “Tell me, does Yana know about your mistress—the one you’re planning to visit on your way back to town?”

How the hell do you know that?

But despite his momentary surprise Warwick laughed, automatically smoothing down his green silk tie. “Mistress is such an old-fashioned word don’t you think?” he asked reflectively, crossing his legs and letting his foot swing. “And you’d be surprised. Yana knows everything I get up to without me having to tell her. You may not think it to look at her but she’s a very broad-minded girl.”

Lytton continued to stare at him for a moment without comment then turned back to the window. “Just don’t let it interfere with the job.”

“It won’t,” he assured.

And by the time it does, my friend you won’t be in a position to do a damn thing about it.

5

“You really should get someone in to handle the books for you Ray. Then you wouldn’t have to work late.”

Ray McCarron’s head jerked up from the quarterly accounts to see Kelly Jacks standing in the office doorway with her hands in her pockets.

She was in her civvies—old cargo trousers and a skinny T-shirt that showed a sliver of taut belly between the two. McCarron tried to avoid a wince. His daughter Allison was less than half Kelly’s age and he wouldn’t want her going out at night dressed like that.

Mind you, Allison didn’t have the same kind of self-possession. There was something about Kelly that made trouble step off the kerb and go round her.

“Had a bookkeeper once. Made the mistake of marrying her. When it came to the divorce she knew what I was worth better than I did,” McCarron said sourly. “Of course, it would help if I could read anything off the petty cash chits you lot put in.” He sifted through another sheaf of paperwork. “It’s like working with a bunch of retarded doctors trying to decipher this scrawl. I swear Les writes in Mandarin Chinese half the time.”

“Yeah well,” she mocked, “they weren’t still teaching copperplate when we were at school.”

“More’s the pity.” He leaned back in his chair, letting it rock, and regarded her over the top of his reading glasses as she headed across to the small window. There was a tension in her he saw, a restlessness he recognised of old. “Lytton job put to bed is it?” he asked, his voice casual.

She swung away from the window as if changing her mind at the last moment, hesitated then gave a shrug. “It’s done if that’s what you mean. Whether it should have been or not is another story,” she said. “I tried to call your cellphone when I was on the way back. Leave it in your car again?”

“Aye, probably,” he admitted cheerfully. “It’s the only way to get a bit of peace.” He paused. “But it went all right in the end?”

She fidgeted with the papers on the corner of his desk, her concentration apparently consumed with aligning the edges. “All he has to do now is replace a few busted tiles and no-one will ever know.”

McCarron sighed at the bitterness in her tone. “Look Kel, I had a gander at the pictures you sent over and I made some calls,” he said gently. “Several in fact. And I was told in no uncertain terms that I’m not on the job anymore and to wind me neck in.”

Her lips twisted into a brief smile at that. She looked about to speak but stayed silent, pacing around the room. On the far wall was a line of framed photographs. She began straightening them even though McCarron kept them spirit-levelled anyway.

One showed his younger slimmer self, spit-polished in full dress uniform, frozen in the act of shaking hands with some long-retired long-forgotten chief constable who was presenting him with some equally long-forgotten award. Kelly’s eye seemed drawn there longest.