In one of the other flats, someone was blasting 50 Cent and someone else was screaming at him to turn it down. Imelda didn’t seem to notice. I said, “I need to ask you one more thing.”

Imelda had good antennae, and something in my voice had tweaked them: the blank look slid back onto her face. I said, “Who’d you tell that me and Rosie were heading off?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. I’m not a bleeding squealer.”

She was sitting up straighter, ready for a fight. I said, “Never thought you were. But there’s all kinds of ways to get info out of someone, squealer or no. You were only, what—eighteen, nineteen? It’s easy to get a teenager drunk enough that she lets something slip, maybe trick her into dropping a hint or two.”

“And I’m not stupid, either.”

“Neither am I. Listen to me, Imelda. Someone waited for Rosie in Number Sixteen, that night. Someone met her there, killed her stone dead and threw her body away. Only three people in the world knew Rosie was going to be there to pick up that suitcase: me, Rosie, and you. Nobody heard it from me. And like you just said yourself, Rosie had kept her mouth shut for months; you were probably the best mate she had, and she wouldn’t even have told you if she’d had any choice. You want me to believe she went and spilled her guts to someone else as well, just for the crack? Bollix. That leaves you.”

Before I finished the sentence, Imelda was up out of her chair and whipping the mug out of my hand. “The fucking cheek of you, calling me a mouth in my own house—I shouldn’t’ve let you in the door. Giving it all that about calling in to see your old mate—mate, my arse, you just wanted to find out what I knew—”

She headed for the kitchen and slammed the mugs into the sink. Only guilt gets you that kind of all-guns-blazing attack. I went after her. “And you were giving it all that about loving Rosie. Wanting her to be the one who got away. Was that all a great big load of bollix too, Imelda? Was it?”

“You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. It’s easy for you, swanning in after all this time, Mr. Big Balls, you’re able to walk away whenever you like—I’ve to live here. My kids have to live here.”

“Does it look to you like I’m fucking walking away? I’m right here, Imelda, whether I like it or not. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, you are. You get out of my home. Take your questions and shove them up your hole, and get out.”

“Tell me who you talked to, and I’m gone.”