‘Well?’ I demanded.
‘Donal, you haven’t been on a proper date in months. I could tell she took a shine to you. So I decided to take the initiative and intervene.’
‘And, thanks to you, the first thing I tell her is a pack of lies.’
‘Did the trick though, didn’t it? She thinks you’re some tortured soul in solitary pursuit of the baddies that hurt fallen women. She’s got your pager details now so even you can’t bottle out of it.’
I cast my most disapproving look.
‘She’s cute though, right?’ He smiled. ‘She reminds me of Holly Hunter. I was almost going to ask her “why the long face?” but she didn’t look in the mood.’
His aloft eyebrows demanded a reply.
‘If she’s so cute, why didn’t you stake a claim?’ I said. ‘You’re not normally slow in flinging yourself forward.’
‘She seemed a bit emotional to me. Or highly strung … definitely brittle.’
‘Maybe she just cares, you know, possesses normal human feelings?’
‘Well, there’s something not quite right there,’ he sniffed, ‘so, hey, you two should be perfect together.’
‘I knew you couldn’t do it,’ I smiled.
‘What?’
‘Just do something nice for me. I knew you’d have to ruin it. It’s in your DNA.’
The waiter arrived, his apron suffused in disturbing red stains that had clearly defied repeated washing.
‘It’s Sweeney Todd,’ muttered Fintan under his breath. ‘Imagine the fucking DNA in that.’
I couldn’t face flesh after what I’d just seen, so opted for fried eggs, toast and tea. As ever, Fintan had to both top me and go off-piste, ordering scrambled eggs, baked potato and tomato ‘not out of a can’. He then flummoxed the waiter further by saying no to tea OR coffee.
‘You off the hard stuff then, Fintan?’
‘Have you ever looked at the mugs in cafés? I mean really looked? Or at the knives and forks for that matter? I’ll only eat somewhere like this now if I’ve got these.’
He leaned into his satchel and produced a packet of wipes.
‘Jesus, you’re turning into Howard Hughes.’ I laughed. ‘Shall I order some peas for you to arrange in size order?’
The tea, knives, forks and paper napkins crash-landed.
‘Go on,’ he urged, ‘take a really close look.’
‘Later,’ I said, ‘tell me first the real reason why you went to all that trouble back there with Zoe.’
He put out his cigarette, plucked a wipe from the packet and set to work on a fork.
‘Well, you’re always complaining that the press never covers any of these prostitute murders,’ he said, polishing away, ‘that the cases are, how do you always put it, “starved of the oxygen of publicity”. Where did you get that by the way? On one of your training courses in Bramshill?’
‘Where else?’
He lifted the fork to his eye to examine it: ‘This time I’m really going to try.’
‘Why?’
‘Zoe told me how this girl had been cut in two and had her face disfigured.’ He placed the fork carefully on one of the napkins and looked up at me. ‘I’ve got a feeling about this story. There’s more to it.’
I couldn’t believe Zoe had been so indiscreet.
‘You didn’t tell her you’re a hack, did you?’
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t ask. If there’s one thing this job has taught me, it’s to act like you should be there. People presume the rest.’
‘Christ, wait ’til she finds out. That’ll fuck everything up.’
Fintan set to work on the knife.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘your best chance of cracking this case is if it gets lots of publicity. But for me to get it into the paper, I’m going to need your help.’
I shifted uncomfortably in the screwed-down, plastic seat. For a split second, I recognised my eye glinting in the knife’s reflection.
‘I need you to tell me all you know, and tell me the girl’s ID when you get it.’
‘Because …’
He placed the gleaming knife down beside the fork.
‘The more I know, the better chance I have of getting a good show in the paper. The better the show, the more likely I get a call from someone with information which I can then pass to you. Think about it … if you work with me on this, we might just get you back on a murder squad.’
‘What do you get, Fintan?’
‘A scoop. Let’s just say my gut instinct is telling me that this girl was no skanky tom. In fact, I’d wager she’s an actress. If she’s an actress of any note, this story will go big. Very big. It’s all about celebs these days, even minor ones. That’s what sells papers.’
I tried not to look shocked or impressed. But my mind was throwing bouquets at his feet; how in hell had he figured this out?
‘What makes you think she was an actress?’
‘I’ll give you a clue,’ he said.
‘I don’t do riddles, Fint, you know that.’
‘Okay, well, if you change your mind: A black flower, six letters. Sounds like the surname of your ex.’
The gruff waiter dropped my fried eggs with such ferocity that they scrambled on impact. He informed Fintan that his order would be ‘many more minutes’. Clearly the culinary ambitions of the Star didn’t stretch to the baking of potatoes or the sourcing of real tomatoes.
Or, for that matter, to the cleaning of knives and forks. Under duress, I agreed to examine my cutlery before tucking in. Sure enough, both bore the microscopic debris of previous meals, including a rock-hard yellow speck on the inner rim of the fork’s central prong that had to be congealed egg.
‘They’d have to fucking carbon date that,’ said Fintan.
‘It’s probably older than the chicken who laid it,’ I agreed.
He handed me his polished cutlery, but the damage had been done. I pushed the plate away.
‘Happy now?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘If you look at anything closely enough, for long enough, you’ll find its dirty little secret. The thing is, Donal, without publicity there’s far less chance that they’ll catch this woman’s killer. So why don’t you help me, just this once?’
‘I don’t know, Fintan …’
‘For her sake. I mean come on, you don’t want her winding up in some clerical bin like the others, do you? Or was that all just talk?’
As he re-appropriated his sparkling cutlery and – when it finally arrived – picked at his bespoke meal, I unloaded everything that Edwina had told me. Well, almost everything.
I held back the detail about the strands of human hair found between her thumb and finger. I didn’t want this to become common knowledge; it could yet prove our secret insurance policy, our suspect-clincher.
I concluded with the pathologist’s certainty that the victim hadn’t worked as a street hooker, news he greeted with unbearable self-satisfaction. I could tell the rest didn’t really matter to