Mistletoe in the Mortuary (Inspector Rames)

Chapter 4

The morning brought an old woman who'd died of a ruptured berry aneurysm and a young man who'd died of a ruptured spleen. Cassia performed both post-mortems in the vicinity of Zacharias, who made cold observations about things he thought she'd missed. Always while she was already noting them down.

She spent her afternoon split between the staff office and the mortuary's viewing room, and it turned into such a busy day that she almost forgot about Sebastian's promise. But it returned to the forefront of her mind when she started to leave and found him standing by the doors.

The mortuary was in the basement of the hospital, and the entrance hall was a small room squashed in before the lift and the stairs. Sebastian made it feel even smaller. He was leaning against the wall, the collar of his coat still turned up from the walk.

She stopped in her tracks. "Hi. I wasn't expecting to see you here."

He straightened up, his gaze sweeping over her street clothes: boots, jeans, and a fluffy jumper under her duffel coat. "Our new hobby starts in half an hour, and I thought we could go straight there are long as you were dressed sensibly. Which you are."

"When am I ever not dressed sensibly?"

"Last night." His eyes darkened. "You were wearing a little lacy dress."

"That's not sensible?"

He looked at her for a long moment: predatory, appreciative. And she realised that maybe it wasn't sensible when she was with him.

He turned away. "Not in these temperatures. We'll have to change trams, so we might be standing around."

"What are we doing when we get there?" She followed him out, fumbling in her pockets for gloves.

"Wine tasting."

"Drinking is a hobby?"

"Yes. I've been a few times with...other people."

"Other women, you mean." Cassia's heart sank. She'd imagined them doing something new. A hobby that was just theirs.

"Yes, but not for a while. I'm not dating anymore."

"What?" She stopped at the foot of the stairs and gaped at him. "Why?"

He carried on walking.

***

The wine tasting lesson was being held on the other side of the city, in a glass skyscraper set back from the street. Inside, the lobby was chic and modern. The best robots from Ackerman Electronics stood behind a crystal desk. Sebastian didn't stop to ask for directions, but instead strode into the lift and sent it to the top floor.

This was not the informal affair Cassia had been expecting. She glanced down at her jeans and sighed.

They emerged in a wide hallway and passed through a set of doors with swirling plaques. Socrico Wine School. The room beyond it had a ceiling as far above them as the sky, glistening with chandeliers. There was another desk, this time made of mahogany, where Sebastian spoke to a pretty receptionist who recognised him on sight. She ticked their names off a register and directed them to their classroom.

It was really a dining room, of an ilk that brought to mind old English manor houses. The walls were half wood-panelled, half painted monarch green. They passed over an ancient patterned carpet towards a table that could have sat twenty, where a group of people were already gathered. Glasses, bottles, and metal cups were laid out on white cloth.

Sebastian stopped a little way from the table and looked at her carefully. "What do you think?"

"It's very extravagant." She felt like a street rat here, but she smiled and summoned a light-hearted tone. "Who knew there was a fine art to getting drunk?"