The legend is clean. Daniel Roth, thirty-eight, bouncer, last in Manchester, before that the military. The police spent four weeks working on it. I wear it like a suit that almost fits. Outside Club Ruths in Manchester, there's a queue stretching around the corner.
On the fourth night she comes out to me herself.
Ruth is somewhere in her forties, in a black dress that says nothing and a coat she doesn't need at this temperature, and she stands beside me on the step and lights a cigarette without offering one. We watch the street together for a full minute.
“You hold your left shoulder like a man who's worn a holster for years,” she says. “You check the mirrors on the parked cars. You've never once looked at the girls.” She exhales. “You're police, Daniel.”
My real name. My stomach goes cold and my face, I hope, does nothing.
“Whatever gave you that idea.”
“Relax. Your handler's sloppy, not you.” She drops the cigarette and grinds it out with a heel that costs more than my car. “Here's what happens next. You keep the door. I pay you cash like everyone else. You see what you see.” She looks at me then, properly, and her eyes are amused and completely without fear. “I'm not going to ask why. I'm going to ask whether you're any good at it.”
