Necessary as Blood

to it.
    The guv was right, he thought as he rode the stifling Tube back to Euston Road. Since the break-up with his ex-girlfriend, she of the hyphenated Stella Fairchild-Priestly, he‘d become a mole. Cullen had always been focused on work — one of the reasons behind the failure of the relationship — but lately he‘d become obsessive, and he‘d read enough pop psychology to know that such single-mindedness wasn‘t healthy. Not to mention the fact that he wanted above all to succeed at his job, and pissing off the boss was not the way forward.
    But nothing else seemed to motivate him. Social networking was not his cup of tea, although he‘d lurked on Internet sites. It was an easy habit to acquire when part of your job was finding out things about other people, but that made him even less likely to want to put information about himself in the public domain.
    As the train lurched into Euston Square Station, he waited, sweating, as he listened to the carriage creak and groan. He hated the Tube, even when it wasn‘t sweltering. It occurred to him that he could buy a car and avoid public transport altogether — that would be something new to occupy him for a bit. But then parking near his flat would be a nightmare, and as he often had access to transport-pool cars during an investigation, it seemed a pointless expenditure.
    He climbed the stairs to the street and walked east, his steps slowing as he neared his building. He hated his flat, a boring grey cube in a boring grey building near Euston Station. Stella had liked to say that he lived on the edge of Bloomsbury, but that was stretching it, in terms of style as well as geography. She‘d always wanted to make him sound cooler than he was. Hell, that was an understatement — she‘d always wanted to make him cooler than he was.
    As part of her ‘fix Dougie‘ mission, she‘d done the flat up for him in a trendy minimalist style that he‘d hated from the first minute. But he‘d not wanted to hurt her feelings, and since they‘d split, he‘d never found the energy or the imagination to change it. He‘d bought some nice audio equipment, but Stella had made fun of his music collection so often that he was reluctant to share it with anyone else, and in truth he listened to his iPod most of the time.
    And then, after Stella, there had been Maura Bell, the prickly detective from Southwark, and that little interlude had put paid to any remaining self-confidence. He tried not to think about that disaster.
    Entering his building, he took the lift to his floor and unlocked the door. The place was tidy, at least, but roasting. He pulled open the sitting-room window as far as it would go, letting in a faint current of exhaust-scented air, then looked round the flat in increasing dismay.
    Why did he stay? His lease was coming up for renewal next month, he realized, and he hadn‘t yet signed the papers. The flat had been the best he could afford before he‘d been promoted to sergeant, but he‘d had several pay rises since then. He even had some money in the bank — aside from splashing out on electronics and decent clothes for work, he didn‘t spend much, and he‘d paid off all his university debt.
    An exhilarating sense of freedom swept through him. He could go... anywhere. Somewhere nearer work. Somewhere near the river, maybe. Kincaid was right, he needed a hobby. He‘d rowed at school, and it had been the only athletic thing he‘d ever been halfway decent at. Maybe he could find a flat in Fulham or Putney, near the rowing club.
    He booted up his computer, then checked the fridge. One beer, but that would do for now. He sat down again and typed in ‘Flats to Let‘.

    The next morning Cullen went in to work early, excusing his further zealousness on the grounds that he wanted to take some time off at lunch. He‘d not slept much, lying awake with visions of flats dancing in his head, knowing it was unlikely any would live up to their adverts, but unable to resist the siren lure of fitted kitchens, power showers and hardwood floors. One flat even claimed to have a view of the river, and although he knew that probably meant standing on a box in a room the size of a postage stamp, he‘d put it first on his list.
    Schooling himself to take care of business before calling estate agents, he shut himself in Kincaid‘s office with the assistance requests that had come in overnight for the murder investigation teams. He‘d make a start on assignments, then