Mercy remembered the time, a professional tic, as she clicked the receive button to what she thought was going to be a call from Marcus Alleyne. Until that moment she’d been sitting at the kitchen table in her dark blue jeans, a black roll-neck cashmere sweater (a present from Amy), navy blue high heels and full make-up, waiting for him to show. Normally this would not have been an unusual situation. Alleyne, the laid back Trinidadian, felt that punctuality was uncool, while it was Mercy’s duty, as the cop, to always be on time. But given the circumstances of the phone call earlier today, and the fact that they hadn’t seen each other for four days, she thought he might, for once, have been on time. Mercy decided not to let it bother her. It was his nature. She slipped back into a reflective mood. January did this to her. The cold and wet, which she loathed, and the possibility of losing her job made her retreat into a dazed state of comfort rumination. She’d been seeing Marcus for nearly two years now.
