Chapter 43

It turned out that Mims lived in a flat just round the corner from Grace Street, more or less opposite the Bag of Nails, the pub where she had robbed Priest of the phone they were now heading to retrieve. The sound of thumping music was bleeding through the pub walls as they passed. A huddle of men passing round a roll-up outside eyed them wearily as Mims led Priest across the street to a row of terraces.

Georgie had expressed her displeasure when Priest had invited her to wait in the car.

‘I’ll be a few minutes, tops,’ he had said.

‘Can I at least have the keys so I can put the heating on?’

‘The battery is almost as old as you so don’t give it more than five or ten minutes.’

Mims’s home was a one-bed flat above a kebab house with a 1970s kitchen that smelt of joss sticks. It was homely enough – warm and clean, simply furnished. The living room was the size of Priest’s smaller bathroom, with a two-seater sofa covered by a knitted rug, an Ikea coffee table and a miniature flat screen TV on the sideboard.

A grey cat opened a languid eye from its basket in the corner as Priest took one end of the sofa, but otherwise the creature seemed disinterested in the new visitor.

‘This must all be a bit of a shock,’ Priest began, although he realised it sounded lame and predictable. Fortunately, Mims had put her animosity aside for now and collapsed on the sofa next to him.

‘I suppose so.’

‘You’re too clever a girl to be working at that gym.’

‘How do you know I’m clever?’

Priest nodded at the picture tucked behind the TV. It wasn’t in a frame, just a four-by-six portrait photograph of Mims, with natural mousy brown hair, holding her degree jubilantly for the camera.

‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘Of course. A first in physics with astrophysics from Glasgow.’ She glanced over at the photograph and Priest detected an unsubtle pang of disappointment from her look.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

She exhaled heavily, thought for a moment. Perhaps wondered whether to tell him anything, before saying, ‘I’d like to say that I produced the most brilliant thesis which proved unequivocally the existence of dark matter and burnt out from the sheer enormity of it . . . but in truth I had an affair with one of my tutors and . . . well, my career options were suddenly narrowed.’

‘I don’t see how having an affair with a tutor would damage your employment prosp—’