Lazy Bones by Mark Billingham

ordering stock, gassing with wholesalers, while every other bugger she could think of was stil dead to the world.
    She liked this time of year. The few precious weeks of summer, when she wasn't forced to choose between working in scarf and gloves or punishing her stock with central heating. She liked closing up when it was stil light. It made the early starts less painful, gave that couple of hours between the end of the day and the start of the evening a scent of excitement, a tang of real possibility.
    She closed the door behind her and climbed the stripped wooden stairs up to the flat Denise had wielded the sander and done the whole place in a weekend, while Eve had taken responsibility for the decorating. Most domestic chores got split fairly equal y between them, and though there wire the sulks, the occasional frosty silences that fol owed a pilfered yoghurt or'a dress borrowed without asking, the two of them got on pretty wel . Eve knew that Denise could be quite control ing, but then she also knew there were occasions when she herself needed to be control ed. She tended to be more than a little disorganised and though Den could be Mother Hen-ish at times, it was nice to feel looked after. The endless list-making could get wearing but there zvas always food in the fridge and they never ran out of toilet rol !
    She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and flicked on the kettle. 'Oi, Hol ins, you old slapper, you want tea?' Almost before she'd finished shouting she remembered that Denise was going straight out from work, meeting Ben in the pub next to her office. Denise had cal ed the shop at lunchtime, told her she wouldn't be home for dinner, asked her if she fancied joining them.
    Eve walked through to her bedroom to put on a fresh T-shirt while
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    she was waiting for the kettle to boil. No, she'd stay in, veg out in front of the TV with a bottle of very cold white wine. She couldn't be bothered to change and go out. It was sticky outside and uncomfortable. She'd feel dirty by the time she got there. The pub would be loud and smoky and she'd only feel like a gooseberry anyway. Denise and Ben were very touchy-feely...
    She stared at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, striking a pose in bra and pants. She saw herself smiling as she thought again about the policeman who had answered the phone a week before. Impossible to picture from just the voice of course, but she'd tried anyway and was pretty keen on what she'd come up with. She was fairly sure that, crime scene or no crime scene, he'd been flirting with her on the phone, and she knew ful wel that she'd been flirting right back. Or had she been the one to start it?
    She pul ed on a white, FCUK T-shirt and went back into the kitchen to make her tea.
    They'd sent a car round the day after she'd cal ed, to col ect the cassette from her answering machine. She told the two officers that she,d have been more than happy to bring it into the station, but, understandably, they seemed eager to take it with them.
    Walking around the flat opening windows, she debated whether a week was quite long enough. She couldn't decide whether she should just turn up, or if it might be better to cal . The last thing she wanted was to look pushy. She had every right of course, being involved, to see what was going on. It was only natural that she should be a bit curious after the business with the phone cal , wasn't it? Surely, going along to enquire if there had been any progress in the case was no more than any other concerned citizen would do.
    She suddenly realised that, wandering around the flat, she'd put her tea down and couldn't remember where. Sod it, thekitchen was close and she knew exactly where the fridge was.
    Opening the wine, she wondered if Detective Inspector Thorne
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    'That's xvool, the navy one. I'l bloody roast in the navy.'
    Thorne took a deep breath, thinking, Please your bloody self. 'Listen, I'm going to come and pick you up on the day and we're