Living Proof (23 page)

"Cathy, I think you know Sarah Dunant."

"Sure. We met at the Edgars last year."

The two women smiled and brushed cheeks and set off towards the platform, Mollie leading the way.

"So which part of the States are you from?" the woman was saying.

Ana, "how long are you over for?" And,

"Oh, interesting."

Frank all the while hearing Cathy's voice / wonder if that isn't long enough? Eight years. Close to. Saying it, it didn't seem so long. But living it. He shook his head. Some days he could scarcely remember when there had been anything else.

"Sorry," Frank leaned sideways towards the woman's stool. "I didn't catch what you said."

"I said, do you want another drink here or are you ready to move on somewhere else?"

The music had shifted again, back from some guitar band that reminded Frank of the Byrds, back to the Crusaders, the album they made eighty-one, eighty-two? - with Joe Cocker.

"I'm okay here," Frank said.

"Unless you're getting restless?"

She shook her head and slid her empty glass towards his; all this time they'd been talking and he still hadn't got a good look at her face.

"Two more," Frank called along to the barman.

"Same as before."

The convention room was comfortably full, without being overcrowded.

Mollie had been able to spot a few of the more vocal feminists, identified them from previous events she had helped to organise.

Representations of Women in the Media. Melodrama and the Family. She had talked to quite a few of them at length, respected what they had to say. Liked them.

After a brief introduction in which Sarah Dunant had placed Cathy Jordan's work within the context of post- seventies crime fiction, she led her through a series of questions about her career, its false starts and now its successes. Dunant then summarised the prevailing politically correct readings of crime fiction and asked Cathy for 210 her opinions. There were questions from the floor, searching rather than hostile, and then the interview was over: polite, professional, non-contentious.

Cathy had opted to close the session with a reading and she chose the opening chapter from Dead Weight. Instantly, the caustic, slightly self-deprecating voice of Annie Q. Jones buttonholed the audience and when she finished it was to warm applause.

Mollie came on to the platform to thank both women formally and bring the proceedings to a confident close. Now she could take them to the hotel bar, buy them a drink, make her excuses, take herself home and rest, thankful that the evening had passed without incident.

Still in the bar, Frank was explaining the difference between a latte and a mocha, though he wasn't sure if his companion were still listening and if she were, whether she had understood. Where previously there had been several feet of space behind them, now they were constantly being banged against and jostled by one or other of the young people who stood in groups around them, smoking and drinking and laughing. The volume of the stereo had increased four-fold and whatever was being played now seemed to consist of a thumping bass and very little else.

"You want to try somewhere else?" Frank asked, mouth close against her hair.

"I thought you weren't interested?"

"I'm interested." He wondered how long her hand had been on his knee.

"Then let's go back to your place."

"How d'you mean?"

"You've got a room, haven't you? You're staying at a hotel?"

Frank shook his head. Now that he could see her, he liked what he saw. Liked her breath, slightly sweet, upon his face.

"We can't go there."

"I thought you were here on your own. Have you got a wife or something?"

"That doesn't matter. We just can't go back to my room, that's all."

He let his hand cover hers, where it was still resting, high on his thigh.

"What's wrong with your place?"

"We'll go to another hotel," she said, and smiled.

"As long as your credit card's good for it."

"Hey, don't worry about the money. But d'you think we'll get into somewhere this late? Town strikes me as pretty busy."

"Don't worry about that," she said, getting carefully down from her stool.

"Just trust me."

Thirty-eight The first time Resnick had seen Sharon Gamett; the sun had been showing weakly through winter clouds and the earth beneath their feet had been coarse with frost. All around them. the high stink of pig food and pig shit. Other officers, silent, as they lifted a stretcher across the ruts, the body of a young woman sealed beneath thick plastic that was spotted here and there with mud.

Now, as she pushed her way through the bar towards him, Resnick realised that she was both taller than he had remembered and likely older too. The only black face in the Sir John Borlace Warren.

"Your local?"

Resnick grinned.

"Not exactly."

After Sharon had rung him with the information about Marlene Kinoulton's probable drug supplier, he had put through a call to Norman Mann at Central Station and the choice of meeting place had been the Drugs Squad officer's shout.

"Pint?" Sharon asked.

"Guinness, thanks. Half."

By the time she had been served, Norman Mann had joined them, lager in hand, dark hair thick on his head and curling up over the collar of what had clearly been bought from a job lot of black leather jackets.

Resnick shook his hand and did the introductions.

"This Richie," Mann said, once they had elbowed their way into a corner, 'had our eye on him for quite a while. There's a blues he does his drinking some nights. No sense looking for him there too early, but by the time we've supped a couple of these, we could wander down. See what's what' "You think he'll talk?" Sharon asked.

"Give us anything we need to know?"

Norman Mann winked broadly.

"Always a chance. Smoked enough weed, we'll be lucky to shut the bastard up."

The room was small and, in the way of most hotel rooms, anonymously airless. Frank had tried to kiss the woman as she leant back against the door, clicking the lock, but she had swerved her head aside.

Then, as he had reached towards the light switch, she had caught hold of his arm and ducked beneath it, twisting him round till he was hard against her. She had kissed him then, her mouth slippery over his, teeth blocking out his tongue.

"At least now you're going to tell me your name?" he said.

"Why? Isn't it better like this?"

in the dark? "

"Yes."

But it was not quite that, the curtains only partly pulled across and light enough from the city shining through; he touched her face and she shuddered, almost before the touch, as if anticipating something else. His skin against hers was surprisingly soft. At first, she squirrel led the tip of her tongue into his palm and then drew her teeth down and around one of his fingers, nipping it a little at the knuckles before drawing her lips back along it so slowly that he moaned. With a laugh, she bit down into the fleshy round beneath his thumb.

"Hey!"

"Hmm?"

Frank fumbled her open at the front and bent his head into her neck, squeezing her breasts. Whatever moment he might have pulled back at had long passed. She touched him and, arching back his head, he closed his eyes.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's go to bed."

Soon she was kneeling over him, kissing him, deft pecks like a bird's, delicate and sharp. His trousers had been pushed and kicked down to his ankles, shirt thrown sideways to the floor; his boxer shorts were tight across his thighs.

Like me, Frank? "

" Sure I like you. "

" I mean me. Really me. "

"Sure."

You're lying, Frank. "

"I'm not."

"Lying."

"Look, I swear to God..."

"Anyone, Frank. I could be any woman in the whole wide fucking world.

Any woman, Frank. Any cunt in a storm. "

He made to roll aside and she leaned her weight against his arms, surprisingly strong.

"What's the matter, Frank? Don't want me any more? Huh? Don't fancy me?"

Head sideways below the pillow, he didn't answer.

"Don't you like it when a cunt talks back, Frank? That the problem?"

"There's no problem," he mumbled, only just audible above the hum of the air conditioning.

"What?" Her face lowered close to him, laughter in her voice, teasing.

"I said there's no fucking problem."

"Temper," she scolded.

"Temper." And rocking back on his hips, she reached a hand behind and between his legs and he could sense rather than see her smile.

"You're right, Frank. No problem at all."

She moved again, her buttocks lower on his thighs, the front of her pale-coloured briefs against his balls. Spreading his hands, straightening his arms, he raised his face towards hers and she kissed him, he kissed her, her fingers tugging at his hair.

Wait," she said, minutes later.

"Wait."

"What for?" His breathing was harsh.

"What do you think?" Swivelling off him.

"I have to go to the bathroom, of course."

He watched her dart away, pale, no longer slender, saw the shimmer of electric light before the bathroom door closed it out. With a slow sigh, he lay back down, rested an arm across his face and once more closed his eyes.

A blues club in Radford or Hyson Green didn't mean laid- back, Mississippi Delta bottleneck, the kind that might grace TV advertisements for beer or jeans; it didn't even mean second- or third-generation bump and grind, juke blues, South Side Chicago, T-Bone Walker or Otis Rush. It meant after-hours drinking. Red Stripe and rum, the sweet scent of marijuana drifting in lazy spirals down the stairs.

They were illegal, of course, and the police knew where they were and who ran them, and those that ran them knew the police knew and, unless something exceptional happened to upset the racial apple cart, that was how it stayed.

This particular club was off the Radford Road, more or less across from where the Hyson Green flats used to be, until they had been bulldozed down and the land leased to house another supermarket.

Perish the thought the Council would build more homes. The fact that the club was above the premises of what had been some kind of outreach office of the Probation Service, only added a little extra piquancy.

Norman Mann paused at the foot of the stairs and drew 216 in a deep, long breath.

"What d'you reckon, Charlie? Worth inhaling, eh?"

Smelled a sight better than a lot of things illegal, Resnick thought, and likely did a lot less harm, but that was as far as he was prepared to go.

The treads on the stairs were cracked in places and bare. As they climbed higher the bass from recorded reggae made the walls vibrate.

Norman Mann motioned for Resnick and Sharon to stay at the end of the landing, went to the door and knocked. There followed a long and fairly tortuous conversation Resnick couldn't hear.

"We'll wait down there," Mann said, when the head he'd been talking to withdrew and the door was sharply closed.

In what had once been the Probation office, a forty-watt bulb hung from a length of fraying flex. Miraculously, it still worked. What it cast light on were an old desk, empty boxes, balls of dust, a stack of forms waiting forever to be filled in and signed those that hadn't been shredded by the mice for their nests. A hungry cat would have thought it had died and gone to heaven. Next time Dizzy nips my trouserieg because he thinks I've put him on short rations, Resnick thought, I'll bring him down here and lock him in.

Richie made them wait. When he finally appeared in the doorway, he was wearing a skinny-ribbed V-neck jumper in bright colours and tight trousers which, even in that dim light, shone when he moved. He was slightly built and about as pale as a black man can be without becoming Michael Jackson. He stood lounging against the door frame with a can of lager in his hand, "Who's these?" he said, indicating Resnick and Sharon with a nod of the head.

Norman Mann made the introductions.

"Marlene Kinoulton," Resnick said.

"We'd like to find her."

"Slag! I'd like to find she first." The syntax was right, but at root the accent was no more Caribbean than if he'd gone down the pit at sixteen which conceivably he might have done, except that by then they were already closing them down.

"She owe you?" Norman Mann asked.

"She owe everybody."

"That why she's keeping her head down? Maybe skipped town?"

"She not even got the sense to do that. I saw her fat white ass only this afternoon."

"You sure?" Resnick asked.

"I not blind."

"Then you would have had a word with her," Norman Mann said.

"Her owing you, and all."

"She getting into this car, in't she?"

"Which car?"

"I don't know. Big white car. She's working, in't she? Doing business. Drive off before I can say a thing."

"No way you could have been mistaken? You're positive it was her?"

"Yeah."

Where? "

"Round near her place."

"You got an address for her then?" Resnick said.

"What's it worth?"

Both men stared at him and Richie stared back for long enough to show no way were they going to intimidate him. Then he gave his can a little chug.

"How about peace of mind?" Norman Mann said. "Goodwill."

"What you want she for?" Richie asked. He was looking at Resnick.

"Something serious," Resnick said.

"Nothing that would affect you, I can promise you that."

218 "Promise?" Richie drained the can and tossed it into the nearest corner.

"What's that?"

Over their heads, someone had turned up the volume and the ceiling had started to shake.

"That gives way," Norman Mann said, glancing up, 'going to be a lot of people hurt bad. Crying shame. "

"Forest Fields," Richie said.

"She have a room, Harcourt Road."

Number? "

"Top end, corner house."

"Which side?"

Richie grinned.

"Depend which way you looking, don't it?" And then, addressing Sharon directly for the first time, 'stead of hangin' out with these guys, get your black ass down here some night, show it a good time. "