The barman glanced around, and then gave a slow nod. He’d almost finished pouring the drink.

‘Sorry, that should have been two Kronenbourgs,’ I said.

I could see from his face that he didn’t like that. He stayed still while someone squeezed in next to me, and then he grabbed another glass with bad grace.

‘Please just tell me what I was doing,’ I begged him. ‘I need to know. I was so drunk, I don’t really remember.’ I swallowed, feeling a flickering, sick beat to my heart. I was so afraid of what he was going to say. ‘Was I talking with a guy? A … tall, athletic sort of guy?’

The barman started to pour the second pint and gave a slight sigh. I could see it from the way his body moved, even though I couldn’t hear it over the music.

‘Yes,’ he said in the end. ‘You were sitting just along there with him.’

‘Over there?’

He nodded to the end of the bar that was furthest from the door. There were a few stools down at that end, but nobody serving.

‘Was I … flirting?’

The guy shrugged. ‘I’d say so. But … you didn’t go home with him or anything. He was a bit pissed off that you left in a hurry.’

I felt another twist of my heart. ‘He was? Did he say anything?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you notice this stuff, you know.’ He looked towards a barmaid working further down. ‘Look, you need to pay, and I need to get on with work. You didn’t do anything while you were here that might have … I heard about what happened, but I can’t help. I’m sorry.’

And then he was placing my two unwanted beers on the bar and holding his hand out for my card. And no matter what I asked, he said nothing more.

30

‘So what do we make of her?’ the DCI asked, as Hanson wrapped up her brief report on their stake-out. It was eight forty-five in the morning. Sheens had just returned from his early caseload meeting and, with the weekend done, CID was busy once again, though their team was down on numbers. O’Malley was on stake-out at the Reakes house, and Lightman had been sent to see April Dumont again.

‘Of Louise?’ she asked. ‘It’s hard to say. Ben couldn’t catch much of her conversation in the club, but if she really was doing her own investigating, it strongly implies that she’s been telling the truth about not remembering anything.’

‘Agreed,’ Sheens said. ‘Though whether she was involved in Alex’s death is still, frustratingly, up in the air.’

‘I want to look more at the knife,’ Hanson told him. ‘Surely that’s still our firmest piece of evidence. If I can link it to any one of our suspects, we’ll know who to press.’