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It seemed only a moment later when I awoke, feeling surprisingly refreshed. A glance at the clock indicated that my nap was more like two hours than one, and it was just the beginnings of movement in the room that had awakened me. Rosie was yawning and stretching and looking around bleary-eyed, while Gumshoe went from being curled up on the floor like an infant to complete alertness in a flash. Nether looked as bright-eyed as before, sitting back and gazing around at us sleeping babes. I prised myself from my desk chair and made more coffee, this time omitting to offer any of the hooch from the medicinal bottle. While I was handing out cups filled from the hot coffee pot, Gumshoe moved over to sit on the floor at Rosie's feet. "Rosie," he began, taking her hand in his and looking up at her like a forlorn puppy, an attitude quite at odds with his usual hard-nosed pragmatism, "There's still something we need to know. All of us." Rosie sat up straight, like a keen girl in the front row of a schoolroom. "What is it that you know?" he went on, "Or, at least, what do they think you know? There must be something, or they wouldn't be going to all this trouble." Rosie shook her head sadly. "I've been racking my brains. I can't think of anything. Anything at all." Gumshoe looked even more forlorn. A thought seemed to strike Rosie. She put her other hand over Gumshoe's massive paw. "Thank you for saving my Bar," she said, looking directly at Gumshoe, "And me." Her gaze glanced off me and settled on Nether. "All of you. I'm most grateful," she added, "I just wish I could help more." I resisted the temptation to tell her that Nether was just protecting his own interests, at least in part. That news could wait a while. A thought struck me. Perhaps that few hours sleep had done some good after all. "Have you got a photo of that Milton guy?" I asked Gumshoe. "Sure." He extracted his hand, with a degree of reluctance, from Rosie's grasp and reached into an inside pocket. He pulled out a manila envelope, opened it and extracted a couple of prints - obviously file photos - and waved them at me. I put the coffee pot back on top of the filing cabinet and took them from his hand. The snaps showed a scruffy-looking human male of indeterminate age, with wild staring eyes erupting from a face framed by ginger hair, moustaches and beard. To the best of my knowledge, I had never seen that man before in my life. I shook my head briefly, then handed one photo to Nether and the other to Rosie. Rosie's eyes narrowed as she focussed on the face in the photograph. Like all good publicans, she would have had a good memory for faces; in her position, it's always important to remember to welcome back a long-lost customer, or to eject potential troublemakers before they start. "I know this man," she said firmly. I glanced at Nether, who also shook his head to confirm he didn't recognise the face. "Who is he, Rosie?" "Don't know his name. He's been coming into my bar fairly regularly over the last few months. Always on his own, always with plenty of money - money he was happy to spend, maybe more money than I think he was comfortable with." She paused for a moment, suddenly aware of three pairs of eyes on her. "His name is - was - Milton," Gumshoe said gently, "He was killed, murdered, yesterday. We didn’t know you knew him." "I was always unsure about him," Rosie went on, barely audibly, clearly shaken by the news, "He asked a lot of questions, made a lot of the regulars quite nervous. I wouldn't let Nether come out while he was around. Although Nether wasn't home much around that time anyway." "That sounds like a connection to me," I said, "But what did Milton actually find out?" Just that that moment, the phone rang.
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Part 66