Cold Shoulder by Lynda La Plante

his overweight frame behind his desk in his precious old leather swivel chair.
    ‘I reckon that Summers woman was right — she was a whore, that’s why she doesn’t know how tall the guy is. Maybe he never got out of the vehicle, just picked her up on the sidewalk…’
    Bean nodded agreement. ‘Unless both the Summerses and this caller got the wrong guy. Maybe he just drives a blue Sedan.’
    Rooney leaned on his elbows. ‘Possibly, but it’s the hammer, a claw hammer. If you read Forensic on the type of weapon used to kill Norman Hastings, they say: “A blunt-edged hammer-type head, one inch in diameter, with a claw section one and a quarter inches long”.’ He sifted
through his files until he found the Forensic photographs of the dead man, close-ups of the blows inflicted to his skull, cheeks, and chin. If the anonymous caller was right, they were looking for a killer with a big bite taken out of his neck.
    Rooney looked at Bean and grinned. ‘This shouldn’t take long then, should it? We got Dracula out there now — but at least we can check all Hastings’s associates. No bite, we’ll eliminate them.’
    Lieutenant Bean frowned, unsure if Rooney was joking. Suddenly he barked at Bean to get cracking.
    ‘I thought you were joking, for chrissakes!’
    Rooney picked at his bulbous nose. ‘Fuck off. We got to take that call seriously, it’s too detailed not to. Go on, move it! And, by the way, the shoe we got could also be the whore’s. The Summerses sort of thought she only had one shoe on
but
they weren’t certain.’
    ‘Right. I’ll take the shoe with me — get everyone to try it on, maybe find the owner.’ Bean was joking but Rooney looked as amused as the Summerses had been by his Cinderella crack. He carried on, working through the file, yawning. Something was nagging at him — the description? Was it too pat? Some kind of hoax? But the fact that they had found bloodstains in the glove compartment where the anonymous caller claimed the man kept the hammer was just too close a coincidence. Rooney guessed the caller was the woman the Summers couple witnessed leaving the car — and that Mrs Summers had been correct. She probably was a whore.
     
     
    Lorraine had the worst headache she had ever known. No hangover had been this painful. She was dizzy if she stood up, if she moved she felt sick — and she had vomited the first time she sat up. Thanks to the antibiotics and the aspirin, however, the splitting pain behind her eyes eased a fraction. She had made the phone call then, while Rosie was out getting ice from the grocery store. She had been brief intentionally as she didn’t want a trace made, and she was back in bed when Rosie returned.
    The torn old sheet crammed with ice was soothing, but there was no way she could get up and go to the AA meeting. Rosie was uneasy at leaving her alone, but needed to go to the meeting herself. Lorraine just wanted to be left alone. Her whole body ached, but the pain across her eyes was torture, so bad she couldn’t even think of a drink, let alone getting up to pour one. All she wanted was for the pain to go away.
     
     
    She remained in Rosie’s bed for more than a week, had to be helped to the toilet, for even that small amount of exercise exhausted her. She found any noise unbearable — no TV, no radio. She could eat, and Rosie waited on her hand and foot. She enjoyed being needed; it occupied her mind and, like Lorraine, she didn’t give a thought to booze.
    Two weeks went by. Jake never got round to contacting his friend at the clinic to ask about Lorraine. In fact, like Rosie, he had grown quite fond of her because, sick as she was, she didn’t complain, and often made him laugh. Her pain was obvious, however, and he had told Rosie that if Lorraine’s condition did not improve she should be taken to hospital.
    Almost half-way through the third week, the headache subsided and Lorraine was able to shower by herself. That afternoon, Jake took