Behind Closed Doors by Michael Donovan

it’s legal.’ A voice broke through the background, yelling something unintelligible down the phone. Sadie yelled back to shut up. ‘Every night’s legal,’ she shouted. ‘It’s what students do. Chill out, Mr Detective! You going to arrest me?’
    I looked around. The Podium’s noise level was barely high enough to cover what was coming from my phone. I remembered what I’d said to Shaughnessy. No kids under our feet. Now it was calls.
    â€˜What’s up, Sadie?’ I said.
    â€˜I’ve got her address!’ Sadie yelled.
    â€˜Whose address?’
    â€˜Becky’s aunt!’
    That got my attention.
    â€˜I found a letter,’ Sadie said. ‘Becky sent it when she was staying with her aunt last year. The address is right there!’
    â€˜Read it out, Sadie.’
    â€˜Got your pencil out, Mr Detective?’
    â€˜My pencil’s always out, Sadie.’
    That got a giggle. I let it go. Sadie shouted an address in Hungerford and I wrote it on a beer mat.
    â€˜That’s great,’ I told her. ‘What about the aunt’s name?’
    â€˜Dunno,’ she yelled. ‘I already told you. Something clerical.’
    I must have forgotten. The address was enough though.
    â€˜Good girl,’ I said. ‘That helps me.’
    Another burst of laughter came out of my phone. Sadie’s voice in there amongst the racket.
    â€˜Hey, Mr Detective, how about coming down here? My friends wanna meet you.’
    â€˜Some other time, Sadie,’ I said. I killed the line.
    Not this side of hell, though.
    An ensemble was warming up. I grabbed another beer and settled in for the night. My phone rang again. This time it was Arabel. She asked how I was doing. A duel between drums and baritone sax answered her question. Arabel realised that conversation was impractical. Promised to call by tomorrow. I told her to take care and took my drink over to join a table where a crew of regulars had camped out. We touched glasses and relaxed in the flow of the first set. The ensemble lacked balance and swayed unpredictably between funk and down-low dirty and I knew that in another year they’d have broken up and recycled themselves into more subtle groupings but for the moment the raw energy swept us along in the flow. The oldest of the musicians was twenty.
    The late set finished at twelve thirty but the diehards stayed at the table and the bar stayed busy. It was two fifteen before I left them to it. I told myself as I always did that I was going to ease up on the Podium. I’d been saying it for ten years.
    I trudged towards Paddington, found that my luck was in: I still had the building key. The lower floors were dark. No midnight oils in personal injury. When I opened Eagle Eye’s door a freezing draft rushed out and hugged me. Our offices were colder than the stairwell. Maybe we should move our furniture out here in winter. But then our landlord would want a rise.

CHAPTER nine
    At seven thirty next day I unfolded myself from the couch and stood to move my limbs around for a couple of minutes to restore feeling.
    The office lease included a heating clause, but the landlord’s interpretation stretched only as far as a responsibility to deliver metallic rapping and background thuds from the feed pipes. The radiators themselves never got above freezing.
    In cold weather we burned a propane heater in the outer office while Shaughnessy and I toasted our feet on two-bar radiants by our desks. The propane heater produced a sweat-house atmosphere that triggered dizzy spells in susceptible clients and generally acclimatised them for when they got the bill.
    I finished my callisthenics and carried the electric heater through from my office. Placed it dangerously close in the tiny bathroom whilst I shaved and freshened up. When I checked the mirror the result was passable.
    Back in the office I retrieved the folded beer mat from my jacket and checked the