Crime Always Pays by Declan Burke

'Just say it, Karen. Whatever it is you're brewing up in there, just --'
              'You made plans with Doyle.'
              'You're still worrying about Doyle.'
              'You made her look ridiculous. This after she specifically told you, and I quote, not to leave her looking a total fucking blonde.'
              'Christ.' Ray shook his head. 'I thought it was men had problems with pride.'
              'There's pride,' Karen said, 'and there's looking ridiculous.'
              Ray, bone weary, flipped his smoke into the breeze. 'What're you saying, she'll come after us?'
              'You,' Karen said. 'I'm saying, she'll be coming after you.'
     
     
     
     
     
    Doyle
     
    Watching him now through the mist as he paced the street arguing on the phone, Doyle had to admit Niko'd changed. Still tall, sure, but filling out in all the right places, shoulders and chest, leaving him slim through the hips, rangy now even in the suit and open-necked shirt, the guy could easily have passed for Italian if it wasn't for the snake-skin calf-length cowboy boots.  
    She wondered if it was a woman on the other end of the line, Niko dropping her at short notice to hook up with Doyle, bring her to this cute little restaurant where they could sit out on the veranda with water streaming down off the awning overhead like a curtain against the dead heat, a cool mist blowing in against the patrons. Athens in mid-September, Christ, sultry like a Tennessee Williams fourth act. Doyle, she had a straw, was sure she could've sipped the air.
              Niko ducked in through the curtain of mist and strode to their table, folded himself carefully into the chair. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that was unavoidable.' He turned off the mobile phone and tucked it away into the breast pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of his chair. 'There,' he said with a wide, easy smile. 'No more interruptions.'
              'Don't worry about it.'
              His face had filled out too, the olive skin taut now over a fleshy fullness, the dominant nose giving him a patrician look. Plus, Doyle'd forgotten, he had eyes like warm liquorice. He picked up his fork. 'So where were we?' he said.
              Something else Doyle had forgotten, was thrilling to now, was Niko's accent, rich and slightly guttural.
              'The girl's about my age,' she lied, 'thirty-one, thirty-two. Has this weird twist to her chin like she busted her jaw one time. She'll be the one driving because the guy stopped a bullet.' She prodded her upper arm with her fork. 'He'll probably have it in a sling. Then, the wolf has only one eye, the other one being covered with an eye-patch.'
              'Like a pirate.'
              'A were-pirate. We'll be needing silver bullets.'
              'So if we find them, identification shouldn't be a problem.'
              'I shouldn't have thought so, no.'
              'Of course, the finding, this is the difficult part.'
              'You get many wolves in Athens? I mean, this late in the season.'
              'September is a busy time here, Stephanie.' Doyle with an involuntary shiver at how Niko packed about six syllables into her name. 'September is when Italy closes down, everyone goes on holidays. They come over in droves. Piraeus gets crazy this time of the year.'
              Doyle, having hit the glass ceiling a little earlier than she expected, had found herself with a lot of time on her hands career-wise. So she'd broadened her horizons, started taking courses to get her out of the office for a week at a time and put some points on her pension. Marksmanship, hostage negotiation, community policing for ethnic minorities – Doyle had done the lot. Then Ted took her away for a long weekend to Barcelona, a junket on policing electronic frontiers, cops swapping tips on how not to look like total muppets