Free Nobody Walks by Mick Herron

everything. Her friend was dead and she was trying to pretend he wasn’t, because how else could you interpret this attempt at normality? Getting up, getting dressed, getting breakfast, was all part of making ordinary life carry on, of tarmacking over Liam’s ineradicable absence, as if his death were a pothole which might in time be fixed.
    Worst of all, there were no tears. There was just sadness, and a weary knowledge that even though she had these feelings today, there would come another morning when she would not, and the tarmacking-over would have begun in earnest.
    The lobby buzzer rang.
    It was a rule of hers not to speak when the buzzer went—the world was full of stalkers—so she lifted the receiver and waited.
    “Ms. Pointer?”
    It took her a moment.
    “… Mr. Bettany?”
    She pressed the button to let him into the building.
    It didn’t take him long to reach her floor, but long enough for her to wonder if she’d done the right thing. She was already running late. What did he want now?
    But when she opened the door, all that was replaced by a more immediate response.
    “What happened to you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your face—your head …”
    “It’s just a cut.”
    “
Just?
”
    Bettany said, “Never seen a man with a haircut before?”
    He’d lost the beard too. It made him ten years younger.
    “Can I come in?”
    They were standing in her doorway.
    “Of course. Yes. I mean …”
    She stepped back, and Bettany entered her flat.
    He looked fresher too, in new clothes, which with a pang she recognised. The collarless white shirt, the black V-neck, they’d been Liam’s.
    “Is everything all right?” she asked.
    Bettany paused, looking round her sitting room, making swift inventory. Then he turned to her.
    “Liam didn’t fall,” he said.
    “I …”
    The word tailed away. This could turn out worse than she’d feared.
    He said, “Can I smell coffee?”
    “Just instant,” she said mechanically.
    “Mind if I …”
    Flea shook her head and he followed her into the kitchen, a nook off the sitting room. She flipped the switch on the kettle, found coffee, and shook granules into a cup. Questions about milk and sugar seemed too normal. She’d pour it black, and deal with complaints as and when.
    He looked more like he ought to look now, she decided, not entirely sure what she meant. Blonder, certainly. Unbearded, his jawline was pale. He looked like he’d been through some stuff, but hadn’t been battered into submission by it.
    Handing him his coffee, she said, “What do you mean?”
    “Exactly what I said.”
    “But that makes no sense. Of course he fell. That’s how he died.”
    She was thinking, he never saw the body. Had he persuaded himself Liam was still alive? That some gruesome misidentification had occurred? It would be a good way of making everything right again.
    But would involve ignoring reality.
    He sipped the coffee, not seeming to mind it black, or very hot, and said, “He hit the road. That’s how he died. But it wasn’t a fall.”
    And now she could see where he was coming from.
    He said, “He was getting high, right? Like he’d done with you those times you talked about.”
    “Only twice. Maybe three—”
    “However many. What did he do, roll up on the balcony?”
    “No,” Flea said, then paused, remembering. “He’d roll up inside, a pair, which was usually enough. And then he, we, he’d go outside and light up there. He was kind of finicky about getting smoke in the room.”
    “What did he light up with?”
    “A lighter. He was always losing them.”
    “Well, he lost the one he used that night too. Because it wasn’t on the balcony, and it wasn’t in his pocket. The policeman gave me his effects. No lighter, no matches.”
    She waited for more, but that seemed to be it.
    He read this in her face.
    “Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But it’s enough. He had no lighter, no matches. Nowhere in the flat. He could have lit up from