Chapter 40

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Charity raffle.”

Ali laughed “You won them in a raffle?”

“Yep.”

“And I was just beginning to feel like a well-kept man.”

“Hey, I’m paying for a taxi home, what more do you want?”

“We-ell,” Ali said, and grinned as he turned away.

Yazid laughed and watched the city lights spiral dizzyingly by, their glow warped and dancing in the water on the window. Leeds wasn’t a pretty city, but tonight the darkness and the rain made it seem slightly romantic. Or maybe that was the wine, too.

“If you get really lucky and wake me up early enough,” Yazid said as the taxi peeled free of the city centre itself and the towers of lights gave away to streetlamps and glowing pub windows, “you might even get breakfast cooked for you.”

“Breakfast in bed?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“No, of course not, because if you wake up first, I get squashed.”