I had just a few loose ends to tidy up, before I could throw this mess back into whichever circle of hell it had come from. I believe that “closure” is a steaming load of middle-class horseshite invented to pay for shrinks’ Jags, but all the same: I needed to know for sure if that had in fact been Rosie in that basement, I needed to know how she had died, and I needed to know if Scorcher and his boys had picked up any hint about where she had been going, that night, before someone stopped her. I had spent my whole adult life growing around a scar shaped like Rosie Daly’s absence. The thought of that lump of scar tissue vanishing had sent me so light-headed and off balance that I ended up doing gobsmackingly moronic things like getting hammered with my siblings, a concept that just two days earlier would have sent me running screaming for the hills. I felt it would be a good idea to get my bearings back before I did something dumb enough to end in amputation.

I found clean clothes, went out to the balcony, lit a smoke and rang Scorcher. “Frank,” he said, with a level of politeness that was carefully calibrated to let me know he wasn’t happy to hear from me. “What can I do for you?”

I put a sheepish grin in my voice. “I know you’re a busy man, Scorcher, but I was hoping you might do me a favor here.”

“I’d love to, old son, but I’m a little—”

Old son? “So I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “My lovely squad buddy Yeates—you know him?”

“We’ve met.”

“Fun, right? We had a few last night, I told him the story here, and he’s giving me flak about my girlfriend walking out on me. Long story short, and leaving aside how deeply wounded I am that my own colleague could doubt my sexual magnetism, I’ve put down a hundred quid that says Rosie didn’t dump my sorry ass after all. If you’ve got anything that’ll settle this for me, we can go halves on the winnings.” Yeates looks like he uses kittens as Pop Tarts, and he’s not the chummy type; Scorch wouldn’t follow up.

Scorch said stuffily, “All information relating to the investigation is confidential.”

“I wasn’t planning on selling it to the Daily Star. Last I checked, Yeates was a cop, just like you and me, only bigger and uglier.”

“A cop who’s not part of my team. Just like you.”

“Come on, Scorch. At least tell me whether that was Rosie in that basement. If it’s some Victorian body dump, I can pay Yeates his money and move on.”