Tom rolled slowly to his knees and let out a sharp ‘Ow!’ as pain shot through his back and knees.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No – I just thought I’d say, “Ow.”’

‘You’re hard to help, you know that?’

‘Shut up or fuck off.’

Halo shut up. But he didn’t help Tom to his feet. That took Tom several wincing attempts to do all by himself.

*

‘I guess we surprised him.’ Halo stirred sugar into his coffee.

Tom pursed his lips irritably. ‘You think?’

‘You dropped your coffee on the couch. Sylvia’s mad as hell.’

Tom shrugged.

‘Niño’s a good guy.’

‘With a good left hook.’

Halo sighed and gave up.

There was no part of Tom’s body that wasn’t painful. He could feel welts striping his back from the stair edges, and wished they’d taken a booth where the seats were deeply padded, instead of these crappy metal chairs.

‘I only wanted to know about the paperwork.’

‘Maybe he thought it was about something else.’

‘Like all the other bogus parts he may have installed, you mean? That’s reassuring.’

‘Should I tell Vee?’

‘Tell her what?’

‘How the investigation’s going.’

‘Shit, Halo!’ Tom was angry with him on so many levels he could barely articulate. ‘What the hell have you told her?’

‘Just that you’re trying to narrow down—’

‘Well, don’t! I don’t want her thinking I’m gonna have answers for her soon – or ever! And don’t call it an investigation!’

‘But I—’

‘It’s not official. I don’t have access. In fact, I probably have less access than you do, now that Lenny Munro knows I’m poking around. And that’s what I’m doing – poking around with a stick in the dark. A small stick. A big dark. So don’t fucking tell her anything! Don’t even go round there!’

Halo stared into his coffee. Tom was no connoisseur of body language but the embarrassed cast to Halo’s shoulders spoke loudly even to him.

‘Oh, shit. You’re fucking her, aren’t you?’

Halo’s eyes flicked up at him warningly. ‘Not fucking.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry! Making love! You’re making love to her, aren’t you?’

Halo shrugged. Tom pushed his chair back from the table and winced at the pain in his back. He got up and threw a couple of bills on the table. ‘Great. Just great.’

‘What is?’

‘Every bastard’s having sex but me.’

*

He waited for Pete to call him to chew him out for hassling Niño Alvarez or to send him on a pipeline job, but no call came. Tom figured it meant Alvarez had something to hide.

Ness didn’t call either. Big surprise there.

A week ago he’d had two jobs. Two shit, half-hearted, not-what-he-really-wanted jobs, but two jobs nonetheless. Now it seemed he could be out of both of them.

Fuck it. He still had his unofficial probe into the Pride of Maine. And a week of vacation time to take. He called Kitty and took it.

The phone rang as he was stuffing his trusty sweatpants into his flyaway. Once he’d taken all the NTSB crap out of it, he was surprised to find how much it held.

‘Hi, Tom.’

‘Ness?’

Shit. Now she calls.

‘Want to come play with me?’

Had she meant it to sound the way it did? Probably not: her voice could make the back of a cereal packet sound sensual. He bit back the suggestive comeback and went for the mundane truth. ‘I can’t. I’m going away for a week.’

‘Oh.’

The silence was brief – more a hesitation, really.

‘Somewhere nice?’

‘South Africa.’

‘South Africa!’

‘Yeah.’