Joel could use a cup himself, having spent a miserable couple of hours doing his accounts, trying to persuade his left arm to work with the prosthesis, as though a pencil clamped in a hook was a substitute for the press and shift of fingers. He’d been assured it would become second nature soon enough: why, he’d be able to use a fountain pen one day! You saw pictures of men welding with prosthetics, so a pencil should be nothing. His notepad, covered in scrawls and skids, gave the lie to that.

His arm was uncomfortable, too. The muscles were twinging, which hopefully just meant they were getting stronger, but the end of the stump was a tiny bit sore, and that was never good news. He wanted to take off the prosthetic for relief, but he wasn’t doing that in front of a sodding copper. Instead, he loosened the hook enough to pull the pencil out, and set about getting the kettle on. He had a feeling that behind him Fowler was looking around. Probably at his inept efforts at writing, maybe at his bleak room. There was very little chance he was looking at Joel’s arse.

Which was for the best. He didn’t like or trust police, he really hadn’t liked that hellish hand Thurloe-Fowler had sprung on him last time, and he had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to like whatever Fowler wanted now.

He had rather liked the look of the man, at least before he’d learned he was a copper. Fowler was a tall man, decent shoulders, in good trim. He had black hair cropped regrettably short, perhaps to hide curls; the sort of skin that would brown easily instead of going painfully pink in April sun as Joel’s did; liquid dark brown eyes. Not a Valentino, despite the Pictorial’s claims, but extremely easy to look at, all the same.

Even easier if he smiled more. He’d initially held his mouth tight and hard in a decidedly unappealing way, but when he’d been startled it had softened and rounded and...oof. Joel could be a fool for a man like that.

If that man wasn’t a rozzer. Which this one was. So fuck him, and not in the good way.

He brought over the tea—milk, no sugar—and took his own chair. “Well. You want something.”

“Yes. It’s to do with a client of yours.”

“I’m not discussing my clients’ business. That’s confidential.”

“I understand, but as it happens, I already know what you told her. Or rather, I have been informed what you told her. I want to know if that information is accurate and, if it is, how you knew it.”

Joel narrowed his eyes. “That still sounds like me discussing a client’s business, and also like none of yours. You said this wasn’t a professional call.”