26. An Invitation of sorts

Where we ask who is playing around with who

Friday, last hour before shut tap

“We have to make a move,” Moses says, as if he’s seen something in her eyes that’s enough to terrify him out of the room. He begins to collect up his stuff. “We DJ tonight.”

“Up at the Loft,” Vardaman says, and begins to stuff his bits n bobs into his pockets.

“Can we talk again?” Waingard says softly, acceptingly.

Shrugs.

“That’s your call, I guess,” says Moses.

“Who knows what might come back to you about last night. Anything might be helpful,” she says.

Moses says – and it surprises all three of them – “Come up the club.”

“The Loft?” Waingard says. The boys are standing now but she has remained seated.

“Mo, she’s a copper investigating a murder, she doesn’t have time to dance to the fucking Smiths.”

“Maybe I will,” Waingard says. “It’s been a long day. Maybe I could do with letting my hair down.”

She looks Moses straight in the eye as she says it. It won’t take much to bend and break him. It may, she thinks, even be painless.