McCabe felt the calming, comforting buzz of the alcohol kick in. He thought again about what had happened and wondered if he should give therapy another try. He’d gone through a few sessions last year. The therapist, a psychiatrist named Richard Wolfe, was smart and sympathetic and told McCabe he felt they were making progress. But McCabe had backed off. He was uncomfortable opening up to a stranger. He knew that was his fault and not the therapist’s, so maybe he should try again. He’d never told anybody in the department about the sessions, hadn’t even put in for them on his medical insurance. Dumb, he supposed, but he didn’t want his detectives looking at him like he couldn’t handle the stress. Or his boss, Lieutenant Bill Fortier. Or worse, Portland police chief Tom Shockley. Shockley was such a political animal that McCabe knew he wouldn’t hesitate to somehow use the knowledge as a lever to bend McCabe to his will. McCabe finished the whisky, got up, poured a second, and returned to his perch. He watched a jogger, ignoring the cold, run by in the dark.

Today began as a nothing kind of day at the end of a nothing kind of week, and McCabe was bored. No rapes. No assaults. No murders. Not even a garden-variety case of domestic abuse he could sink his teeth into. It was as if everybody in Portland suddenly started taking nice pills. It was making him cranky.

Around ten thirty he went downstairs to the firing range on the ground floor of police headquarters and spent an hour putting tight clusters of holes in man-shaped targets. He thought about going to the gym, putting on the gloves, and continuing to work out the angst he was feeling by banging away at the heavy bag. Instead he went back to his desk and made a show of doing paperwork. Around one in the afternoon, Kyra called.

‘Congratulate me,’ she said.

‘Okay, congratulations,’ he replied. ‘Now tell me what for.’

‘Well, we finished hanging the show this morning and guess what? Gloria’s put three of my pieces right in the middle of the front wall.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Wait. It gets even better. There’s me right out front, and meanwhile, she’s relegated Marta Einhorn and a couple of the other so-called major Maine artists’ – Kyra’s voice underlined the words with a dose of sarcasm – ‘to the back room.’

‘So they’re pissed?’

‘Not yet, but they sure as hell will be when they see it.’

‘You said three pieces. What about the fourth?’

‘In the window.’

‘Well, alright! Congratulations again. How about I buy a major Maine artist a fancy lunch?’

‘That your idea of a good time?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘I’ve got a better one,’ she said.

‘Okay. Like what?’

‘Like why don’t you meet me at the apartment and find out.’

‘What and skip a wholesome lunch?’

‘Oh, you never know,’ she said, her voice getting low and growly, ‘I just might decide to nibble at a little something.’ If this was Kyra’s idea of phone sex, it was sure as hell working.

He glanced around the room to see if anyone was looking. Or listening. Nobody was. Less than a minute later, McCabe had his desk cleared, his coat on, and was heading for the door. He wondered what he’d say if Bill Fortier asked where he was going. Following a lead on an ongoing investigation? No way. Bill’d want to know what investigation. Going down to the gym for a workout? Possible. That wouldn’t elicit anything more than a grunt and a nod. Of course, it might be fun just telling the truth. Well, actually, Bill, I’m going home to get laid. That’d turn the old puritan fart a couple of shades redder. McCabe grinned at the idea. He glanced over at Maggie Savage, his number two in the Portland PD’s Crimes Against People unit. She was on the phone, probably for a while. He hand-signaled that he was taking off. She nodded and mouthed ‘Okay.’ Today even Casey wouldn’t be a problem. McCabe’s fourteen-year-old daughter was leaving right from school with her friend Sarah Palfrey. Sarah’s parents owned a condo at Sunday River and had invited Casey up for a weekend of snowboarding. He’d call from the car to make sure that she had everything she needed and that there’d be no unexpected drop-ins.

An hour later, McCabe and Kyra were lying side by side in the afterglow of lovemaking, Kyra on her back, eyes closed, McCabe on his side, idly tracing figure eights with two of his fingers around her damp and naked body. He thought about how different Kyra was from Sandy, his first wife. He leaned over and found her lips with his. ‘Ummm,’ she said, her eyes still closed, her arms reaching up to circle his neck. ‘Wanna go again?’

‘Only if you ask very nicely.’

She opened those liquid blue eyes he loved, looked right at him, and smiled. ‘Please, sir, I want some more,’ she said, her voice a passable imitation of young John Howard Davies as Oliver Twist in David Lean’s 1948 film version. They’d watched it on TMC, together with Casey, just last night.

And so, in the fading half-light of a cold January afternoon, they made love again. And when they finished, he looked at her gravely and asked her again if she was ready to marry.

She didn’t move, but he could feel her body stiffen. She lay there for a minute or two. ‘No,’ she said finally.

‘When you say no, do you mean “No, not now” or “No, not ever”?’

‘No, not now.’

‘Why not?’ he persisted. ‘We’ve been together two years. That ought to be long enough.’

‘Do we have to talk about this now?’

‘You’re thirty-one years old. I’m thirty-eight. I don’t want to get too Irish on you, but it’s time we got married.’

She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. His hand slipped from her chest. She studied him for a minute. ‘Up until this instant this has been a perfectly lovely day. Please, don’t fuck it up.’

McCabe pressed on anyway. He wasn’t sure why. ‘You’ve said you’d like to have kids of your own. Our own. Hell, with Casey turning fifteen next spring, we’d even have a built-in babysitter. At least until she goes off to college.’

‘I told you. I’m not ready.’

‘Is it because I’m a cop?’

‘That’s part of it. But not all.’

‘What’s the rest of it? That maybe you’ve got a problem with commitment?’

‘I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.’

He felt a surge of anger. ‘Well, dammit, I do.’ He swung out of the bed and found the sweats that were lying in a heap in the corner. He put them on. ‘If it’s about me being a cop, being a cop is what I do. What I am. You knew that when we started seeing each other.’

She studied him for a minute. ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. Then she rolled off her side of the bed and began walking around the room, picking up her clothes from where they’d fallen on the way in.

‘So why’d you get involved with me?’

She looked back at him, and suddenly there was an edge to her voice. ‘Because you were a good fuck.’

‘Oh, really? So that’s the headline? WASP princess from Yale School of Art gets her rocks off playing house with Irish stud from the Bronx? Is that what this is all about? Is that all this is?’

‘McCabe, you can be such an asshole. You know damned well that’s not what this is about, and, by the way, that was a really shitty thing to say.’

‘Oh, really? And “You were a good fuck” wasn’t?’

‘Yes. It was. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. Listen, can we stop this and maybe start over?’

‘Okay. I’m sorry, too. Yes, let’s start over. If being a cop is such a terrible thing, why did you get involved with me?’

She started getting dressed. ‘A, being a cop is not a terrible thing. And B, as for why, I suppose it was for all the obvious reasons. Because you were fun. And smart. And good-looking. And yes, you were good in bed. Anyway, at the time, I didn’t really plan on falling in love with you. I wasn’t planning on falling in love with anybody.’