you. Can I come in for a minute?”
“What help?”
O’Malley glanced up and down the empty hallway, and then drew out his wallet. He flexed it open, showing a few tens and twenties inside.
Stavely gave him a hard look, and then the door closed as the chain came off. He opened the door fully, and O’Malley got a full view of him. A loose gray hooded cardigan on a thin frame. A black beanie over hair that was almost all gray, and skin that looked like it didn’t get enough light.
“Here,” Stavely said, walking ahead of him down a very short, very bare corridor that had only two doors opening off it. They passed a bedroom that was in darkness. Little except a mattress and a cupboard were visible. The whole place smelled of stale smoke, though it was cleaner than O’Malley had been expecting. There was no moldering food odor, and Stavely himself was well washed.
Stavely led him to an open-plan kitchen and sitting room, which was dominated by a large screen and a PlayStation. The screen was a frozen image of a fierce gun battle. It looked like Russia from the buildings and weaponry, and it was uncomfortably realistic to O’Malley.
Stavely sat near the remotes, where a can of beer was waiting. “What are you looking for?” he asked in a very neutral tone.
“Nothing for my mood,” O’Malley replied, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It’s actually information. And it’s not the kind of information that’s going to get you into any trouble.”
Stavely went very still. He looked at O’Malley, and then reached for a cigarette from a packet stuffed between the cushion and the arm of the sofa. He shifted his hips in order to reach into a pocket and pull out a lighter, and then lit up without speaking.
“It’s information thirty years old,” O’Malley went on, “so it’s pretty stale. It’s about a large sale of Dexedrine you made to a boy called Daniel Benham.”
O’Malley caught a strange twist to Stavely’s mouth, but he still said nothing.
“You probably remember the missing girl, Aurora Jackson.” He waited for a reaction, and in the end Stavely nodded. “We’ve found her remains. The trouble for us is that she’d been buried next to a very large quantity of Dexedrine, and we need to rule those drugs out of any involvement. We’re not, and I need to be firm about this, interested in pursuing any dealing or distribution crimes against anyone.”
There was another silence.
“How does tracing them help you?”
“If they came from a fairly normal source, we can show that it wasn’t connected to Aurora being murdered. Which is what happened to her.”
He waited again while Stavely thought this over. He was a careful man, O’Malley thought, and possibly not stupid. O’Malley had low expectations when it came to small-time dealers.
“So you want to show that the Dexedrine wasn’t dangerous to know about,” Stavely said.
O’Malley nodded. “I don’t believe her death had anything to do with the drugs. But I have a DCI who is thorough as hell, and is going to be relentless about pursuing the drug connection until we can close it down. I want to close it down.”
Stavely took a long drag on the cigarette and then tapped it into an ashtray. “I don’t know, man,” he said slowly. “It sounds like trouble.”
Stavely was closed off in the way that people who survived by keeping things secret often were.
“You’re going to have to help at some point,” O’Malley said, in a low voice. “The chief is not going to let this go. If you knew the man, you’d realize that. Your best bet, as God is my witness, is to be helpful now, while it’s still your choice, and make him want to overlook you.”
Stavely balanced the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and watched it for a while. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just answer a few questions for me. About the drugs, and Daniel Benham.”
Stavely let out a large sigh, and shook his head. “I asked you in for a sale.”
“Think of it,” O’Malley said, drawing out his wallet again, “as a different sort of sale.”
He held out two twenties, and Stavely’s attention was immediately on the money. It was a noticeable shift.
“Here,” O’Malley said, and put the two notes down on the table in front of the dealer. Stavely watched them, his hands moving slowly over each other. O’Malley decided that was enough for him to continue. “You ended up with the