‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had to find someone,’ said Morland. ‘It’s harder now. The safest way is to take the vulnerable, the lost, the ones that nobody will miss. If that means junkies and whores, then so be it.’

‘Junkies and whores may not be good enough.’

‘It’s been many years, Hayley. Some people are wondering if it might not be necessary at all.’

She fared up.

‘Who? Tell me!’ Her eyes grew sly. ‘The same ones who are whispering about my “commitment” to the town?’

He should have stepped more carefully. She heard everything, turning the details over in her mind and examining them the way a jeweler might consider gemstones before deciding which to keep and which to discard.

‘I know there are some who are starting to doubt me,’ she said.

Hayley stared at Morland, as though willing him to confess that he himself had been guilty of such thoughts, but he did not. She leaned over the table and grasped his hand. Her skin was cold, and its look and feel reminded him of the cheap chicken cuts at the Dixon house.

‘That’s why this is so important,’ she said. ‘If I’m to go, I want to leave knowing the town is secure. I want to be sure that I’ve done all that I can for it.’

She released her grip on him. She had left marks on the back on his hand, as if to remind him that she was still strong and should not be underestimated.

‘What do you suggest?’ he said.

‘We talk to the Dixons. We tell them to find us another girl, fast. And no junkie either: we want someone clean and healthy. If they come through for us, we’ll see what more the town can do to help them out if they’re in trouble.’

‘And if they don’t?’

Hayley stood and started clearing the table. She was tired of talking with him. The discussion was over.

‘Then they’re a threat to the security of the town. There’s still money in the discretionary fund, thanks to the decision not to disappear the hobo.

‘And,’ she added, ‘our friends will be grateful for the work.’

11

I was sitting at a table in Crema Coffee Company on Commercial when the man who called himself Shaky found me. It was just after nine in the morning, and while a steady stream of people kept the baristas busy, most of the tables remained empty. It was that time of day when folk wanted to order and go, which suited me just fine. I had a nice sun-dappled spot by the window, and copies of the New York Times and the Portland Press Herald. Crema had one of the best spaces in town, all bare boards and exposed brickwork. There were worse places to kill an hour. I had a meeting later in the morning with a prospective client: trouble with an ex-husband who hadn’t grasped the difference between keeping a protective eye on his former wife and stalking her. It was, depending upon whom you asked, a thin line. Neither did he appear to understand that, if he really cared about his wife, he should pay her the child support that he owed. On such misunderstandings were hourly rates earned.

Shaky wore black sneakers, only slightly frayed jeans, and an overcoat so big it was just one step away from being a tent. He looked self-conscious as he entered Crema, and I could see one or two of the staff watching him, but Shaky wasn’t about to be dissuaded from whatever purpose he had in mind. He made a beeline for my table.

It wasn’t just Shaky who called himself by that name, apparently everyone on the streets did. He had a palsied left hand that he kept close to his chest. I wondered how he slept with it. Maybe, like most things, you just got used to it if you had to endure it for long enough.

He hovered before me, the sunlight catching his face. He was clean-shaven, and smelled strongly of soap. I might have been mistaken, but it struck me that he’d tidied himself up and dressed in his best clothing to come here. I remembered him from the funeral. He was the only one present to shed a tear for Jude as he was lowered into the ground.

‘You mind if I sit down?’ he asked.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

He licked his lips, and nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Any preference?’

‘Whatever’s the biggest, and the warmest. Maybe sweet too.’

Since I was mainly a straight filter kind of guy, I had to rely on the girl behind the counter to guide me on warm and sweet. I came back with a maple latte and a couple of muffins. I wasn’t too hungry, but Shaky probably was. I picked at mine to be polite while Shaky went back to the counter and loaded up his latte with sugar. He tore into the muffin as soon as he resumed his seat, then seemed to realize that he was in respectable company and nobody was likely to try and steal the snack from him, so he slowed down.

‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘The coffee as well.’

‘You sure there’s enough sugar in there for you?’ The stirrer was pretty much standing up by itself in the coffee.

He grinned. His teeth weren’t great, but the smile somehow was.

‘I always did have a sweet tooth. I guess it’s still in there somewhere. I done lost most of the rest.’

He chewed some more muffin, holding it in his mouth for as long as he could to savor the taste.

‘Saw you at the cemetery,’ he said, ‘when they put Jude in the ground. You’re the detective, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘You knew Jude?’

‘A little.’

‘What I heard. Jude told me that he did some detecting for you, couple of times.’

I smiled. Jude always did get a kick out of being asked to help. I could hear some skepticism in Shaky’s voice, just a hint of doubt, but I think he wanted it to be true. He kept his head down as he stared up at me, one eyebrow raised in anticipation.

‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘Jude had a good eye, and he knew how to listen.’

Shaky almost sagged with relief. Jude hadn’t lied to him. This wasn’t a wasted errand.

‘Yeah, Jude was smart,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t nothing happened on the streets that Jude didn’t know about. He was kind, too. Kind to everyone. Kind to me.’

He stopped eating, and in an instant he looked terribly lonely. His mouth moved soundlessly as he tried to express emotions that he had never shared aloud before: his feelings for Jude, and about himself now that Jude was gone. He was trying to put loss into words, but loss is absence and will always defy expression. In the end, Shaky just gave up and slurped noisily at his latte to cover his pain.

‘You were friends?’

He nodded over the cup.

‘Did he have many friends?’

Shaky stopped drinking and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘No. He kept most people at a distance.’

‘But not you.’

‘No.’

I didn’t pursue it. It was none of my business.

‘When did you last see him alive?’

‘Couple of days before he was found in that basement. I was helping him to collect.’

‘Collect?’

‘Money. He was calling in the debts he was owed, and he asked me to help. Everyone knew that me and him was close, and if I said I was working on his behalf then it was no word of a lie. He put it all down on paper for me. As I’d find someone I’d cross the name off the list, and record how much they’d given me.’

He reached into one of his pockets and produced a sheet of paper, which he carefully unfolded and placed before me. On it was a list of names written neatly in pencil. Beside most of them, in a considerably messier hand, figures were scrawled: a couple of dollars, usually, and no sum more than two bucks.

‘Sometimes I’d get to a person after he did, and maybe they’d already have paid up, and maybe they wouldn’t have. Jude was soft, though. He believed every hard luck story because it was his way. Me, I knew some of them was lying. As long as they was breathing, they was lying. I made sure that if they could, they paid.’