Gibbs nodded. “So . . . this woman invited you back to her place, and . . . ?”

Sellers took a long sip of his pint, then mumbled something inaudible.

“What?”

“It was a shelter, all right? Her ‘place’ turned out to be a fucking . . . shelter for battered women.”

“‘All right, love, wipe yourself . . .’”

“Will you shut the fuck up? It’s not funny. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now.”

“So . . . what happened?” Gibbs asked.

Sellers looked away.

“Don’t tell me you went in there and did her anyway?” Of course he had. Sellers, on the promise of a fuck, would stop at nothing. “I hope she had her own room at least.”

“Yeah. Own room.” Sellers sighed. “I thought it was OK, you know? She seemed to like me; she’d invited me there—I hadn’t pushed it at all. And at first it was all right. The sex was decent. It was a bit odd being in a shelter, but a place is just a place, right?”

“Something went wrong?” Gibbs guessed.

“You could say that. Afterward, when I tried to leave . . . she had a major freak-out. Suddenly, I was a shit who’d used her, just like all the others. I don’t know what she expected, how long she wanted me to stay, but I had to get home. I’d told her I was married, hadn’t promised her anything. I thought it was just a bit of fun. She started hitting me, punching me in the face and in the stomach. I had to hold her wrists to stop her. It was a nightmare.”

“You were in a battered women’s shelter, mate. What did you expect?”

“Yeah, a battered women’s shelter!” Sellers said indignantly. “I didn’t expect to get battered in there, by a woman!”

“You didn’t tell her your name, did you? Or your job?”

“I’m not that stupid. I was just Colin, no surname, electrician.”

“So you did tell her your name.” Sellers was a giver by nature; that was his problem: too generous-spirited, too talkative. “What happened? Did you manage to calm her down?”

“Yeah. She wasn’t happy about me leaving, but she agreed to let me go without trying to kill me. I couldn’t talk her out of thinking I was a shit, though.” Sellers turned to Gibbs. “I’m not a shit, am I?”

“No.”

They drank their pints in silence.

“That wasn’t the end of it,” Sellers said once he’d finished his drink.

Gibbs groaned. “Don’t tell me you went back for more?”

“No. Wouldn’t go back there if you paid me. But . . . it was horrible. Leaves a bad taste, having something like that happen. It’s never happened to me before. I didn’t want to go home feeling like crap, so I . . . well, I tried again. Not with the same woman.”