Free Why We Die by Mick Herron Page A

didn’t involve police. Who wouldn’t have heard about it at all, if D.R. Hunter hadn’t copped it as they left . . . Which was where her scenario might collapse if it weren’t for the desperately-fucking-stupid element – in any group of more than two criminals, one would operate best at room temperature. And when you married poor impulse control to a low attention span, then dumped the mix into a lawless enterprise, someone was going to get hurt.
    Something else worried her. She was pretty sure there was a fictional private eye who drove a cute VW. Probably in California. Jeff might be taking the piss.
    Action happened over the road – a woman paused by Sweeney’s window; spent fifteen seconds clocking its contents, then moved on briskly: either putting all thoughts of jewellery behind her or hurrying to tell someone of her plans, who could tell? That was it for half an hour; thirty minutes during which Zoë tested her logic and found it held. There was no way on earth she was going to find Sweeney’s robbers by looking for them. Sooner or later they’d do it again and be arrested on the job, but that wouldn’t mean Zoë got paid. Meanwhile, she knew something the police didn’t, which was that these guys had known exactly what they were after, and where Sweeney had kept it. Getting a line on who else had known that was her only available starting point.
    She browsed. In the glovebox she found a tube of Polos, an A–Z of Santa Teresa – wherever that was – and a nice pair of nail scissors she put to use: she’d been meaning to buy a pair for ages. Meanwhile, on the radio, an internationally megaselling author explained that he’d chosen popular rather than higher fiction because he’d never write anything as good as Ulysses . Zoë, who’d read one of his books, doubted he’d ever write anything as good as Where ’ s Spot? In the window of the Cancer Relief shop she caught an image of white hair/pink wool, and pretended to be taking notes.
    Lunch was an apple, followed by a Polo. At one, Sweeney left, to return ten minutes later with a sandwich. Zoë sank into her seat, donning her favourite disguise of trying to look like somebody else, but he didn’t glance in her direction. He seemed curiously shorter today. Money worries, she guessed. Her own loomed large behind her. She could almost hear them squabbling in the back seat.
    Sweeney had more customers in the afternoon, but none of them excited her. The first, a man in a grey suit whose joints shone, looked more salesman than customer. She could imagine the standoff that must have made. The others were a young couple, early twenties; the male half eager, the way Zoë read it; the woman going with the flow – outmanoeuvred, perhaps, by her own disinclination to cause hurt. A ring was a ring; a bracelet, a bracelet. Sometimes promises were handcuffs. When they left twenty minutes later, he seemed to be halfway through a list of points that needed making: reasons to be cheerful, perhaps. The woman listened, nodded, half-smiled . . . Waited for a break in the traffic through which she could hurl herself, screaming.
    That was about it. Cars ebbed and flowed with the clock: school run, office exodus. Sweeney closed at six, though his enterprise had had a needy, unfulfilled air since four thirty at least. Walking away, he stooped like a man on whom gravity had done a number. For a while, she wondered about following him home; then for a while longer wondered what would be the point of that? Instead, she went home herself: ate a bowl of pasta, drank a glass of wine . . .
    Doing nothing exhausted her. Her body felt like she’d put it through an uphill, dangerous struggle. It craved exercise, she supposed. Weariness was a con her mind was hoping to pull. In another life she’d have gym membership, or a robust callisthenics routine. In this one she had another glass of wine and went to bed.
    Where she slept the fitful, punished sleep such shirking deserved. She