*
They had made love in the centre of the bed and then rolled off to different sides. That was the heart of their relationship.
Furn awoke in the morning to that beautiful ginger hair now in daylight. He was surprised that she was still there. Then he realised it was Sunday - the one day of the week she was not racing off at first light to take her part in the murky world of Senator Law.
Furn quietly pulled himself out of bed. The day after the Sapien tsunami, he had work to do. With most of his clothes scattered around various hotels, he was forced to do some time travelling as he got dressed in Levi 501s, a grey Diesel shirt and a fawn cotton jacket – the kind of plain clothes he used to wear before he became a plainclothes policeman.
From there, he went to the kitchen and put his mouth under the cold water faucet: what he didn’t drink helped to wake him up. The presence of scratches and bruises was made evident by the flow of water. The lack of any searing stabs of pain, however, was what mattered. It meant Furn could get on with his day.
He returned to the bedroom and rummaged through his crumpled dirty laundry for his wallet, holstered pistol and mobile phone. It was a routine he had been through many times before and like always the pistol was full and the wallet empty. The mobile phone he dealt with last. No messages, just May’s confession that it was bugged. He turned from it to her mop of hair cascading out from the bed covers. He must have stood there watching her sleep for a full minute. There were many things he could have done with that phone but what he did do surprised himself the most: he slipped it into his jacket pocket on his way out of the door.