A Lovely Way to Burn Read Free Page B

place at work.’
    ‘When I got the job I wanted to see what kind of shows they made and then I got hooked.’ He grinned, revealing a gold tooth behind his left incisor. ‘You’re my favourite.’
    Jirí squatted down and put his fingertips on the edge of the car window, as if settling in for a long conversation. His nails were broad and slightly ridged.
    ‘Thanks.’ Stevie pulled her seat belt across her body, but didn’t fasten it. ‘I’d better go or my boyfriend will wonder what’s happened to me.’
    The security guard slid his hands from the window and rocked gently on his heels.
    ‘You never mention him.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘On the programme, the other woman talks about her husband, but you never mention your boyfriend.’
    ‘No, I don’t, do I.’ She put her hands on the steering wheel. ‘It’s been a long night. I really must go.’
    Jirí rose slowly to his full height. He was tall, Stevie noticed, six two, or thereabouts. She put the Mini into gear and he stepped to one side as she guided it from the space. Stevie raised a hand in farewell and the guard said something, which was lost in the throb of the engine. He might merely have been telling her to have a good day, but Stevie thought she heard him mutter, ‘Bloody bitch,’ as the car pulled away. She glanced in the rear-view mirror before she turned out of the gate and saw him standing in the empty parking space, watching her go, a long, black shadow stretched out behind him.
     
    Stevie pulled the car over, a mile down the road. She used her iPhone to find the number of St Thomas’s Hospital, dialled the switchboard, asked to be put through to the surgical department and then, after waiting for a long time, asked to speak to Dr Simon Sharkey.
    ‘Dr Sharkey’s on holiday until the end of the week.’ Stevie sensed the business of the hospital going on in the background, and heard the impatience in the woman’s voice. ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘No,’ she reassured the voice, it was nothing anyone could help her with.
    Stevie forgot about the bed she had craved for the past three hours, executed a swift U-turn and drove through the early-morning traffic to Simon’s flat.

Three
    Simon lived in an ex-council high-rise in Poplar which had been sold to private developers and upgraded into luxury apartments. There were things the new architects had been powerless to convert, and traces of the social housing it had once been lingered on. The building’s lifts and doorways had been designed with the proportions of the 1960s working classes in mind, and they remained on the economical side for the Übermensch who had displaced them. The covered walkways, that had been calculated to encourage social exchange, were vaguely embarrassing to the new occupants, who were forced to avert their gaze when they passed each other, in order to avoid eye contact.
    Stevie ducked her head as she went past the CCTV cameras in the entrance lobby and took the elevator to the twentieth floor. Her intention was to put her keys through Simon’s letter box, no note, no nothing; the keys themselves would tell him all he needed to know. But she hesitated when she reached his front door.
    Simon’s toiletries had been assuredly male and so Stevie had brought her own lotions, shampoos and cosmetics, all of them expensive. She had also left a dress in his closet, a red-and-purple silk sheath that she had bought in New York. She rang the doorbell and when there was no response, turned the key in the lock and let herself in.
    Her first thought was that it was even hotter inside than it had been out in the sunshine and that Simon had forgotten to empty the wastebin. She closed the door gently behind her but the lock refused to catch and it slid open. Stevie swore softly under her breath. Simon had been reminding himself to get the warped door jamb fixed ever since she had met him. That was the kind of girlfriend he needed, one who dealt with domestic hassles, leaving him free to