‘Of course I will,’ I said, and she understood. I felt the air begin to sizzle between us. ‘It’s kissing time in Whighams,’ I thought. We leaned closer to each other.
‘Hey there, you two!’ The voice was unmistakable. We separated and looked across the crowded bar, guiltily I expect, at the gallus figure of Mike Dylan. As he pushed his way over to us, another man followed behind him. Dylan’s introduction was unnecessary; I knew this one well enough. He even knew me. ‘This is my boss,’ said Dylan, ‘Detective Superintendent Richard Ross, area head of CID. I was just filling him in on this morning’s events.
‘These are the poor people who found the body. Miss Phillips and Mr Blackstone.’ He looked at me, with just a trace of truculence. I could read his mind. ‘Tough shit, Dylan,’ I wanted to say, ‘she’s taken.’
Ricky Ross was a different sort of copper to the DI. For a start he really was a Clever Bastard. He was a big, athletic bloke, good-looking, his dark hair flecked with grey; a man of substance in every way, unlike his sidekick, who had nothing behind the Armani suit but brass neck and ambition. In his younger days, he’d been quite a sportsman, with about a dozen rugby caps for Scotland as a flank forward. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘Oxgangs, a few years back. You were a probationer, but you took our training into the PI line. I forgave you, though, when you stitched up those two bastards Banks and McHugh. They needed taking care of. So how’s business?’
I gave him the obligatory shrug. ‘I’m doing all right. Not as well as you, though. You seem never to be out of the bloody papers.’
It was his turn to shrug. ‘People keep committing crimes, we keep clearing them up. It’s the law of supply and demand in reverse. The public demands action, my lot supply it, and I take the credit.’
He glanced at me with a grin I didn’t like. ‘You must have had a scare this morning. Christ, I remember you on a turnout once. It was a drugs overdose, but CID got involved. You were the greenest probationer I’d ever seen, greener even than Michael here at his first murder.’
He looked down at Prim. ‘And how about you, Miss Phillips? Are you okay now?’
‘Fine thanks,’ said Prim. ‘I’m just glad that Oz was with me, otherwise I’d have been scared to death.’
‘Mmm,’ said Ross, with a half-smile. ‘Just as well. Tell me, have you made contact with your sister yet?’
She looked up at him, sharply. ‘I haven’t a clue where my sister is, any more than I know which of her friends had the key to my flat. Believe me, when I find out…’
Ross nodded. ‘Aye, sure. Just let us know when you do.’
I decided to chance my arm. ‘Have you identified the body yet?’
‘Naw,’ said Ross. ‘Not a notion. We were thinking about circulating a description of his cock. That’s probably our best chance of a response.’
Prim frowned at him. She has a rare talent for making men feel ill at ease, but Ricky Ross was beyond her reach. He simply ignored her, continuing to smile at me. ‘Nae use to him now though, Blackstone, is it? Wonder if he’s left it to anyone in his will?’
‘Aye,’ I agreed, ‘and even if it was shared out, I can think of a couple of polismen who’d find just half of it an improvement! Present company excepted, of course,’ I added, after a pause. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked, as Prim spluttered beside me.
The phrase ‘Can I get you a drink?’ is a device which is, as far as I know, peculiar to Edinburgh. Its meaning depends entirely on the company in which the enquirer finds himself, and, with the finest inflection, shifts from a wholly sincere, ‘Can I get you a drink?’ to an equally sincere, ‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, why don’t you fuck off and leave us alone?’
Ross read my meaning correctly. ‘No thanks, we’re meeting someone. He’s over there, in fact.’ I turned to follow his gaze and caught the eye of a thin, sallow man, who I seemed to remember was a car dealer with a reputation for supplying MOT’s to fit all price ranges.
‘Oh. Okay, then. We’ll look in tomorrow to give you those statements, Inspector.’
The men in suits made their way round the bar, the pack opening up to let them pass at my deliberately loud mention of Dylan’s rank. As they reached the other side, Ricky Ross shot a look towards us, back across the crowded room, which made me feel suddenly that I might just have taken too big a liberty.
‘I didn’t like him at all!’ said Prim, as they were out of earshot.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the club. It’s difficult to underestimate a bloke like Dylan, but Ross is in a different league. He operates at a much higher level of nastiness.’
I reached for my glass, but found that during our conversation with the forces of the law an over-zealous bar steward, or an out and out thief, had removed it, and Prim’s lager, although each had been at least half-full. I started towards the bar, but she tugged my arm. ‘Come on. Forget those, it’s time for that pizza.’
I should have known. It was Thursday and so the Bar Roma was heaving, without a table in sight. Prim looked at me, frustrated beyond belief, until I put yet another Plan B into operation. We commandeered a taxi from the rank outside Fraser’s and headed for the Pizzarama, halfway up Leith Walk, purveyors of the biggest pizza in town. We bought two monsters to go, then grabbed another taxi and went back to the loft and my extensive, if inexpensive, wine cellar.
A great takeaway pizza is always slightly underdone. The Pizzarama giants, covered in tomato, pepperoni, ham, artichokes and God knew what else, fitted into my oven at a squeeze, and by the time we had finished the champagne — if you leave a teaspoon in the neck of an opened bottle of fizz, it keeps its fizziness; not many people know that — and opened a bottle of Safeway Chianti, they were ready.
Watching Prim eat her first pizza for a year was another of those seminal whatnots. She cut the huge thing into segments which she attacked with her fingers, savouring each ripped-off mouthful, smiling all the time, even as she chewed. When she finished, I still had a third of mine to go. She looked across the breakfast bar at me, her eyes huge and appealing. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I give in. Would you like some more, my dear?’
The Chianti was new and strong. As we reached the end of the bottle, I felt relaxed, uninhibited and very, very …
Prim licked the last of the pizza from her fingers and gazed across at me. ‘Remember that poor young policeman today?’
‘Who could forget the poor wee bugger? And that effing troll stood in the doorway trying not to hear him? Why d’you ask?’
‘It’s just that tonight, when you said what you said to Ross, I thought for a second, I was going to do the same thing as the boy did.’
‘I’m almost sorry you didn’t. There have been many firsts in my life today. That would have been yet another.’
She drained her glass, and reached for another bottle from the rack, but I reached out a hand and stopped her.
‘Prim,’ I said, doing my level best to make my eyes outshine anything in the night sky, framed in the kitchen window. ‘I’ve been thinking. How would it be — and this has to be a mutually agreed thing, you understand — if we decided, first of all that our deeply held principles and rules must remain unbroken, but that in all the circumstances, you should regard lunch today as having been our first date, and by the same token, that should regard myself as having been out with you at least twice?’
Our elbows were on the breakfast bar. I slipped my right hand into hers, as if we were about to arm-wrestle, and pulled her gently towards me. I kissed her, on the lips again, on her full red lips, not at all chastely this time. Her mouth opened, and I felt her tongue flick against my teeth.
She tasted of the finest sweet wine, delicious, refreshing, making me long for more.
‘In all the circumstances,’ she whispered, our foreheads touching lightly, ‘and given the duration of our acquaintance I would say that such an agreement is, at this moment in time, absolutely…’