A knock on the door startled her awake. She sat up, hot-faced and bewildered, not knowing where she was for a moment. The officious knock came again, three raps and a pause before the fourth. A man’s voice called out that he was from room service and she was suddenly conscious of being naked and alone in a quiet part of the hotel.
“I didn’t order room service,” she said, sitting up, disoriented and wobbly, dragging her sweater over her head and standing up unsteadily to pull her pencil skirt on.
Someone was breathing behind the door.
There was no spyhole and no chain. She stood behind the door and listened for clues. The knock came again; the same slow rhythm sounded sinister this time. Glancing back into the room her eye fell on the trouser press, on a chair, on the telephone for reception. The phone cord was long enough for her to carry it across the floor to the door and she brought it over, lifting the receiver and pressing “ 0” for reception, holding the handset behind the door as she slipped the lock and opened it an inch, keeping her foot behind it in case the man in the corridor tried to push his way into the room.
Burns was out of uniform, dressed in a shirt and slacks so clean that they looked as if they had just come out of the packet. He gave a penitent little smile and she slammed the door on him.
“Hello, room seven-four-five?” The receptionist’s voice was insistent. “Room seven-four-five, may I help you?”
“No, it’s fine, my mistake.” Paddy hung up the receiver and turned back to the door.
“Paddy,” Burns breathed. “I didn’t tell anyone, honestly.”
Paddy stood panting behind the door. “How did you find out which room I was in? I’m supposed to be in hiding here.”
“I’m a polis.”
So was Tam Gourlay. Lafferty might be on his way up in the lift right now. She was doing his job for him, frightening herself. Paddy rubbed her face and wished she had a mirror. She’d look terrified and pink and sweaty and puffy and didn’t want Burns to see her this vulnerable.
“I heard about Billy,” he said. “I just want to see that you’re all right. Can I come in?”
“I’m fine.” She brushed her hair up at the sides and composed her face.
“Please?”
She hesitated for effect before letting him in. She let the door swing open a couple of inches and backed off into the room. There was nowhere to sit down but on the bed or the single chair. It would seem suggestive to sit on the bed so she took the chair and sat, one arm slung stiffly over the back, mock casual, as Burns stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He looked very tall and broad in the confined space. He stood for a moment, awkward, his hands patting the side of his thighs, looking around the mean little room with a strangely nervous look on his face. “I didn’t tell anyone what happened between us.”
“No, I know. Tam Gourlay did it.”
He frowned. “How would Gourlay know?”
“He’s been following me, trying to warn me off about the inquiry. He was outside my house that night, I think he saw us.”
Burns’s lips thinned, his eyes widened. “Did he indeed? Ye sure?”
“I saw his car outside my house that night.”
“Right, right.” He calmed himself and looked at her. “You think Gourlay’s bent anyway, don’t you? The guys who questioned you yesterday told me.”
“Well,” she said, unsure whether she could trust him. “I dunno. We’ll see. They didn’t seem to be listening to anything else I told them. I said it was Lafferty who firebombed the car but they were hell-bent on not listening.”
“They don’t always seem interested in the stuff that matters. It’s a bit of an act.”
“Those guys weren’t acting.”
Burns tapped his hands on the side of his thighs again, looking unsure. He looked at the bed and a small smile flitted across his face, suppressed as soon as it occurred to him. “Can I…?”
She gestured to him to sit if he wanted. He pushed the blankets back and perched on the side of the small bed, bouncing once and smiling again. It was her first private bed and she didn’t like him colonizing it. “Why are you here, Burns?”
“I was worried about you. You seemed upset the other night… and then the fire. I asked around about Lafferty for you.”
“Why won’t the police listen to me?”
He sighed heavily and stroked the bedsheet. “Look, you have to understand, the police just want this story to go away. Gourlay… guys like him, they’re small-fry, he’ll never get promoted into any position of power.”
“It’s Gourlay and McGregor.”
“Okay, both of them, we know about them. We’re dealing with it.”
“But you don’t want outsiders objecting when a murderer gets away with it?”
He grinned at her and shook his head, looked up at the sky through the small window. The low morning light suited his face, highlighting his large nose and casting a shadow from his black eyelashes over his cheek. “Paddy, murderers get away with it all the time. Lack of evidence, no witnesses, happens every day. We’ll get Lafferty. We might not get him for this, but we’ll get him for something.”
“Like you got Patrick Meehan?”
“Ah, Paddy Meehan. See, now, that wasn’t a police call. MI5 did that. Stupid. It was a fuck-up from start to finish.”
She sat back and glared at him. “So the system works? You set people up all the time?”
“Our job is to make the streets safe for people like you, Paddy. The truth is, the justice system doesn’t work. People get out all the time, bad people, vicious men just like Lafferty. If Lafferty gets done for something and it takes him off the streets so you can go home, would you be as against the way we work then?”
“Principles matter. Doing the right thing matters even if it’s against your own interests.”
He was looking at her neck, distracted, his eyes half-closed.
“Burns, have you been sent here to tell me to back off?”
“You know why I came here.”
“No, I don’t.”
He swung his weight off the bed suddenly and was across the room in one fluid step. He cupped her face in both his hands and lifted her to her feet until her face was tight to his, her nose to his nose, eye to eye, open mouth to open mouth. She felt the stubble on his chin scratch her lips. He hadn’t been home yet, hadn’t shaved after the night shift or had a wash. He smelled delicious.
George Burns stood in his flash shirt and trousers, in his adulterous Protestant shoes and explored her with his dirty, dexterous fingers, peeling her clothes off and letting them drop to the floor.
They fell on the single bed, Paddy underneath him, and they laughed because it was so narrow. They worked their way to the side of the bed and Burns’s hard purple cock stuck out of his trousers as she knelt between his knees. He sighed like a slit tire as she kissed and licked it. Lost in a fog of sensations and smells they slid onto the carpeted floor, gliding noiselessly over one another, fuck-fuck-fucking until they both came in glorious messy Technicolor.
They lay on the floor panting, occasionally flapping hands across to cover up the most damning bits of skin.
Burns caught his breath. “Wait till I tell the guys about this one.”
Paddy grinned and flailed a lethargic slap at him with the back of her hand. She could have slept in the chair. She could have slept on a sack of jaggy sticks, actually, she was so relaxed.
Burns sighed into her hair. “That’s why I came to see you.”
“So you could get your end away?”
He shook his head and pulled her close, still breathless from the exertion. “Don’t be like that with me. Just for a minute, let’s be nice to each other.”
“You haven’t got your ring on today,” she said spikily.
“No, come on.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Give it five minutes.”