He walked out to the hall and was just at the bottom of the stairs, going up to the bathroom, when the phone rang. Without thinking, he picked it up.

‘Hello?’

The line was quiet and he spoke again.

‘Hello, who is this?’ He heard the noise as the connection was broken.

Kate came out to the hall.

‘Who’s that?’

Phil shrugged. ‘Wrong number.’ He carried on walking up the stairs to the bathroom and Kate went back to make some coffee.

Patrick Kelly lay in bed with the phone in one hand and his fingers on the receiver rest.

He was fuming. It hadn’t taken her long to get someone else!

He glanced at the clock. It was just after eleven fifteen. Probably interrupted their lovemaking. The snidey bitch! To think he had thrown out a perfectly good woman because of her. Because he was silly enough to fancy himself in love with her.

Well, that was the finish as far as he was concerned. That would teach him to think that he could ever replace Renée.

Face it, boy, he told himself, you’re on your Jack Jones and the sooner you realise that, the better.

Downstairs, Willy helped himself to another brandy. The girl had gone and Patrick had tried to use the phone. Willy had heard the bell as he’d picked it up, and then again as he’d put it down.

He shook his head sagely.

Patrick Kelly’s trouble was he didn’t know when he was well off. And he had been well off with that Burrows piece. Willy had liked her himself. She wasn’t that well stacked but she’d had class.

He sipped some more of his boss’s brandy and went back to reading his paper.

Kate was at work on a series of burglaries that had been happening over a two-year period. They all had the same MO. It was a lone man and he broke in while the woman was sleeping, sexually assaulting his victim before he trashed the bedroom, taking money and jewellery. It was the assaults that bothered her. He used the burglary as a blind. He was working up to a full-scale rape, she would lay money on that.

The phone rang.

‘Burrows.’

‘Hello, Kate.’

She took the phone from her ear and stared into the mouthpiece before answering.

‘Is that you, Willy?’

‘Yes.’

The line went quiet.

‘Well, what can I do for you?’

‘I wondered if I could see you, like?’

‘What about?’

‘Well, I don’t like to talk about it over the phone. Can we meet, please?’

Kate licked dry lips.

‘Where do you want us to meet?’

‘How about the Cartella restaurant? Tonight at eight thirty?’

‘Is this something to do with Patrick?’

Willy swallowed deeply and she heard the sound over the phone.

‘Oh, no. He’d kill me if he thought I’d rung you up.’

Kate felt her heart sink down to her boots. So he didn’t even want her name mentioned. Well, she couldn’t blame him.