Free Red Light by Graham Masterton Page A

door opened and John appeared, accompanied by a billow of acrid smoke, as if he were a demon making an entrance in a pantomime.
    ‘Ah, Katie! I thought I heard your car.’
    ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, what’s going on?’ said Katie, flapping her hand at the smoke. ‘You haven’t set fire to the place, have you?’
    ‘Oh, that, no, everything’s fine. I just let the potatoes boil dry, that’s all. I’ve opened all the windows in the kitchen. Come on in.’
    Barney, her Irish red setter, came trotting out of the living room to greet her. ‘Don’t jump up, Barney,’ she told him. ‘I’m a little too tired for jumping up.’
    ‘Hard day, huh?’ John asked her. He kissed her and then helped her out of her red waterproof jacket.
    ‘Yes, well, I’d rather talk about your day than mine.’
    ‘Hey, come take a load off, and I’ll pour you a drink. I bought champagne, to celebrate.’
    ‘I’ll just have a vodka to start with, if that’s okay. Jesus, how many potatoes did you burn?’
    ‘Oh, I think I managed to rescue most of them. I forgot all about them, that was the trouble. You know me, I can only think about one thing at a time and most of the time that’s you.’
    ‘Get away out of here, you spoofer,’ she smiled, but she put her arms around his waist and lifted up her face for them to kiss. She had grown to love him so much. He was tall, with dark curly hair, though he had been to the barber’s to have it cut shorter and neater for his interview with ErinChem. His eyes were brown but in some lights they could look agate or even garnet-coloured. Although she thought he was Greek-god handsome, Katie was always taken by the way he never seemed to take himself too seriously, and was never arrogant. At the same time, she had seen for herself how determined he was. He had come within an inch of persuading her to resign from An Garda Síochána and accompany him to San Francisco.
    She kissed him again and again. He looked so attractive in his crisp white shirt and he still smelled of the 1881 aftershave he had worn for his interview, although he smelled of burned potatoes, too.
    ‘Hey, are you
hungry
?’ he asked her, as she kept on kissing him.
    ‘I’m in love. And I’m so happy you’ve got that job.’
    ‘Well, me too. If it all works out well, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do fifty times better than I would have done in the States. That CEO thinks a whole lot of you, doesn’t he, that Aidan Tierney? He was praising you up to the sky.’
    ‘I did him a favour once,’ said Katie, and then immediately wished that she hadn’t. She gave John one more kiss and went over to the drinks table and poured herself a double measure of Smirnoff Black Label. She took a large swallow, and coughed, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
    John stopped in the doorway. ‘Hey, are you okay? Not going to choke to death on me, are you, before I can serve you my celebratory supper?’
    Katie shook her head, lifting her glass to show him that she was all right, just trying to get her breath back.
    Then – ‘What favour?’ he asked her.
    ‘Oh, it was nothing much. His daughter got into some trouble and I had a word in the right ear, that’s all.’
    ‘What kind of trouble?’
    ‘She was caught shoplifting, that’s all. Nothing too serious. I think her boyfriend egged her on. A right piece of work he was.’
    ‘So Aidan Tierney owed you?’
    ‘You could say that. Stop looking so grim!’
    ‘I’m not looking grim. I just wanted to get this straight. Aidan Tierney agreed to interview me because he owed you a favour. It wasn’t just because you happened to know each other socially and you suggested that I might be the best person for the job?’
    ‘But you
are
the best person for the job – you know that. Whatever favour Aidan might owe me, he wouldn’t have taken you on if he hadn’t thought you were going to be brilliant at it!’
    John said, ‘I’d better go see how my pie’s doing. I