Free Transgressions by Sarah Dunant Page B

here only twice, once before the wedding, once after, but it still made him more of an expert than the rest of the division. Not to mention the seventy words of Czech he’d picked up with which to charm the in-laws. She had laughed at his accent, but you could tell she liked it. Fuck it, if they’d been together she could have been with him now, back in her beloved city, away from the madness of New York. She’d end up back here anyway. She didn’t have the stamina for America. If she did, she would have stuck by him. What fucking cop’s wife walks out the first time the going gets rough?
    Let it go, Jake, let it go.
    He glanced back up at the apartment window. Not his beat. The guy in the car down below would check out the man. His job was the woman. She ordered a brandy, then left it on the bar while she went to the bathroom. She was there a long time. As she walked back in, she looked around to check that no one was watching. She took a long hit of her drink, then sniffed loudly, tossing her fair hair across her shoulders, as if getting something off her back. Yep, she was good-looking. But it wouldn’t take long now. Just like home. For all its fancy history and high hopes, once you started really looking, this damn city was as dirty as New York. But, then, a junkie is a junkie the world over.
    The night before he’d left home he’d stayed in Manhattan, gone down to the Village and caught a French movie in some art-house cinema; it was supposed to be a street thriller. The girl in it was a druggie, too, but far too pretty for the part, too much of a pout on her well-shaped cheeks. Jeez, hadn’t any casting director ever really looked at one of these girls, for Christ’s sake? Looked at what smack does to a body if you take it for long enough: how it digs out all the fat of the face, turns the skin yellow, wrecks the joints. Not exactly what you’d call value for money. Just as well that the brain stops counting costs.
    The woman at the bar still had a way to go, but it was only a matter of time. She finished the brandy and ordered another. Slivovice. More brandy than plum. He’d got legless on it his first night at the hotel. And paid for it all the next day. But she looked like she’d been drinking it all her life. She pulled a small compact mirror from her purse, slid the glasses up, and looked at herself, assessing the damage, running a tentative finger over the line of the ripening bruise. It must be hurting now, he thought: a throb like a hammer blow to the center of the eyeball. The brandy would do nothing to smooth that away. She slid the glasses back down. He watched her carefully over the top of his magazine, working out how to begin the conversation. Strictly speaking, it was against the rules, his role was to watch not talk, but two weeks into this job and they were getting nowhere fast. And everyone knew Jake Biderman wasn’t a man known for sticking to the rules.
    He put down the magazine, got up, and walked her way, sliding himself onto a stool a couple down from her. She threw him a derisory glance, dismissing him instantly. He smiled. “Hi.”
    She ignored him.
    “Is bad?” he said, in Czech, the accent damaging the words. He tapped his eye to make sure she’d got the point.
    Again she didn’t seem to hear, putting up a hand to her chin and letting her hair fall over her cheek and eye.
    He waited. Then said, “You know him?”
    She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe his tenacity. “Fuck off,” she said sweetly in English.
    The guy at the end of the bar cleaning the glasses laughed.
    She had style. He had to hand it to her. “Can I buy you a brandy first,” he said, grinning.
    She looked up and into the mirror behind the bar, her attention momentarily distracted. He followed her glance. A man was walking past, then he was gone.
    She got off the stool slowly, her ass sliding its way down. Nicely done. Practiced almost. Standing closer he could smell her, something rank