Free Fedora by John Harvey

When they had first met, amused by his occupation, Kate had sent him copies of Hammett and Chandler, two neat piles of paperbacks, bubble-wrapped, courier-delivered. A note:
If you’re going to do, do it right. Fedora follows
. He hadn’t been certain exactly what a fedora was.
    Jack Kiley, private investigator. Security work of all kinds undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police
.
    Most of his assignments came from bigger security firms, PR agencies with clients in need of babysitting, steering clear of trouble; solicitors after witness confirmation, a little dirt. If it didn’t make him rich, most months it paid the rent: a second-floor flat above a charity shop in north London, Tufnell Park. He still didn’t have a hat.
    Till now.
    One of the volunteers in the shop had taken it in. ‘An admirer, Jack, is that what it is?’
    There was a card attached to the outside of the box:
Chris Ruocco of London, Bespoke Tailoring
. It hadn’t come far. A quarter mile, at most. Kiley had paused often enough outside the shop, coveting suits in the window he could ill afford.
    But this was a broad-brimmed felt hat, not quite black. Midnight blue? He tried it on for size. More or less a perfect fit.
    There was a note sticking up from the band: on one side, a quote from Chandler; on the other a message:
Ozone, tomorrow. 11am?
Both in Kate Keenan’s hand.
    He took the hat back off and placed it on the table alongside his mobile phone. Had half a mind to call her and decline. Thanks, but no thanks. Make some excuse. Drop the fedora back at Ruocco’s next time he caught the overground from Kentish Town.
    It had been six months now since he and Kate had last met, the premiere of a new Turkish-Albanian film to which she’d been invited, Kiley leaving halfway through and consoling himself with several large whiskies in the cinema bar. When Kate had finally emerged, preoccupied by the piece she was going to write for her column in the
Independent
, something praising the film’s mysterious grandeur, its uncompromising pessimism – the phrases already forming inside her head – Kiley’s sarcastic ‘Got better, did it?’ precipitated a row which ended on the street outside with her calling him a hopeless philistine and Kiley suggesting she take whatever pretentious arty crap she was going to write for her bloody newspaper and shove it.
    Since then, silence.
    Now what was this? A peace offering? Something more?
    Kiley shook his head. Was he really going to put himself through all that again? Kate’s companion. Cramped evenings in some tiny theatre upstairs, less room for his knees than the North End at Leyton Orient; standing for what seemed like hours, watching others genuflect before the banality of some Turner Prize winner; another mind-numbing lecture at the British Library; brilliant meals at Moro or the River Café on Kate’s expense account; great sex.
    Well, thought Kiley, nothing was perfect.
    Ozone, or to give it its proper title, Ozone Coffee Roasters, was on a side street close by Old Street station. In full view in the basement, industrial-size roasting machines had their way with carefully harvested beans from the best single-estate coffee farms in the world – Kiley had Googled the place before leaving – while upstairs smart young people sat either side of a long counter or at heavy wooden tables, most of them busy at their laptops as their flat whites or espressos grew cold around them. Not that Kiley had anything against a good flat white – twenty first century man, or so he sometimes liked to think, he could navigate his way round the coffee houses in London with the best of them.
    Chalked on a slate at the front of one of the tables was Kate Keenan’s name and a time, 11.00, but no Kate to be seen.
    Just time to reassess, change his mind.
    Kiley slid along the bench seat and gave his order to a waitress who seemed to be wearing mostly tattoos. Five minutes later, Kate arrived.
    She was wearing a long, loose crepe