Living Proof (16 page)

"You believe me now, don't you?" I said.

"You're filth," she says.

"You're scum. You're never setting foot in this house again." The kids upstairs, hanging out of the upstairs, taking it all in. "

He ground the nub end of his cigarette into the threadbare carpet with his heel.

"What was it you wanted to know?"

Sharon Gamett had been on court for the best part of an hour and a half; two games down in the fourth set and any rhythm in her service had gone. A couple of double faults, an attempted lob off her backhand which had landed closer to the next court than the one on which they were playing, and it had been over.

"Thanks, Sharon. Good game."

"Sure," Sharon grinned.

"I was crap."

Her opponent laughed. He was a nice enough bloke, sergeant in Surveillance, wife and two-point-four kids, semi-detached south of the city at Ruddington.

"Time for a drink after?"

After? "

"Shower, change, whatever?"

"Thanks, no. Maybe some other time. I'm going to shower at home."

She was almost at her car before Divine spotted her, Divine and Naylor, leaning up against their own vehicle, taking in what there was of the sun. The rhododendron bushes thick along the perimeter of University Park behind them.

"Will you look at that?" Divine said.

"Legs that go all the way up to her arse!"

"Right," Naylor said.

"New design. Don't know if it'll catch on."

"Clever bugger!"

Naylor gave a shout and Sharon turned and saw them, no more than a couple of big kids, standing there in shirtsleeves, grinning. She wished she had stopped for a shower now, changed; aware of her sports shirt sticking to her, the sour-sweet smell of her own sweat.

"Called in at the station, said you might be here," Divine said.

Day off. "

"Win?" Naylor asked.

"Not exactly."

"This bloke copped it in the hotel," Divine said.

"You heard about it?"

She nodded.

"Witness made an ID..." Naylor said, taking over. "Waiter, works in the hotel restaurant' " She's a torn," Divine said, interrupting.

"Local?"

"So it seems."

Name? "

"Kinoulton. Marlene."

Sharon wished they weren't having this conversation out there, cars driving in and out of the tennis centre behind them. Sweat growing cold.

"Know her?" Divine asked.

"I've not been here long enough to know all the girls."

"But this one, this Marlene?"

I might. " They waited.

144 "You know the girl I contacted you about? Doris. The one said she might have something interesting to tell me, about the night that man was knifed near the Alfreton Road? Well, turns out, as far as Marlene Kinoulton's got a best friend, she's it."

Divine grinned across at Naylor and Naylor winked back: at long last they might be getting somewhere.

Resnick had taken McKimber back through the evening in low gear, beginning to end.

"Never occurred to me at first that she was on the game. Never cottoned on. I thought, I suppose, nothing special, even so, not going to let themselves get turned into a knocking shop. But then I thought, yes, well, why not? Where all the money is, isn't it, after all? Blokes with time on their hands, money to spend."

"So, as far as you were concerned, at the beginning, it was what?

Just a casual chat? "

"Well, no, not exactly. Way she was coming on to me, right off like, knew it was more than that. But, well, like I say, I suppose I thought I'd clicked, you know. Pulled."

"And when did she make it clear that wasn't exactly the case?"

"When we got to the room."

"Once you were inside?"

"No. I was just, like, about to use the key. One of them bits of plastic, not really a key at all. She leaned past me, hand against the door.

"You know this isn't your birthday, don't you?" That's what she said. " He looked over towards Resnick.

"She was there, then, wasn't she? What was I supposed to do?"

"What kind of a woman would you have said she was?" Resnick asked.

"Based on that first part of the evening."

"Woman? She was a tart, wasn't she?"

"Yes, but before you knew that. I mean, was she pleasant, well-spoken? How did she come across?"

McKimber shrugged.

"Just sort of normal, you know."

"Intelligent? Bright?"

"Bright enough to know she had my balls in her pocket' " But, aside from what you've already said, were you surprised to find out she was apparently a prostitute? "

"Surprised?" McKimber shook his head.

"One way or another, they all are. I mean, that's the way it works. If you can get someone to pay for it, why give it away?"

Resnick showed him six sets of photographs, six different women, all similar, all with dark hair.

"Look," McKimber said, 'you're wasting your time. I've already been through this. "

"Humour me," Resnick said.

"Let's try again. Just these few."

McKimber lit another cigarette. A good minute before he answered, Resnick could see that he'd stopped really looking.

"I'm sorry,"

McKimber said.

"It isn't any good."

"You're quite sure."

"Yes, I said. The only one..."

"Go on."

"The only one it just might possibly be..."

"Yes?"

McKimber transferred the cigarette to his mouth and jabbed a finger "That one. That's the only one, if you told me I had to pick out one of these, had to, that's the only one comes close. Only one that's near." And he picked out, not Marlene Kinoulton, but the woman in the set of photographs immediately above her, gazing into the camera with a slight squint.

Divine and Naylor had driven Sharon Gamett back to her flat and waited while she had cleaned up and changed into tan leggings, a purple T-shirt, black cotton jacket. Together, Naylor driving, they trawled the red-light district looking for Marlene Kinoulton and her friend 146 Doris Duke. Nowhere to be seen. None of the girls out working claimed to have seen them for several days. A week. Sheffield, try Sheffield.

Leeds.

"Sorry," Sharon said eventually.

"We're wasting our time. We'd be better trying again later tonight. Late."

"Fair enough," Divine said and Naylor pulled in towards the kerb.

"I might have a problem," Naylor said.

"With later. I'm supposed to be off round Debbie's mum's. She's got this relation over from Canada. Nephew or something. Having a bit of a celebration."

"Sounds," Divine said with a smirk, 'like the kind of thing you wouldn't miss for the world. "

"Yes, well. I'll see what I can do."

Sharon opened the car door.

"Half ten in the Arboretum then, okay?"

"Get there first," Divine grinned, 'and mine's a pint of Kimberley. "

"You wish! I'm the one doing you a favour, remember? And mine's a Bacardi and Coke. Large. Ten thirty, right?"

Divine watched as Sharon walked away.

"Second thoughts, why don't you go hobnobbing with the in-laws after all. Leave this to me."

"Thought you were being faithful this month?" Naylor said.

"One-woman man."

"Yeah, so I am," Divine grinned, grabbing his crotch. "It's just this that doesn't understand."

Twenty-seven "Honey, you sure you're up for this?"

Cathy Jordan hesitated in what she was doing, adjusting her silver Zuni earrings in front of the mirror; her favourites, the ones she had bought in Santa Fe.

"God, Frank, I wish you wouldn't do that."

"What? Show a little concern?"

"Call me honey that way. Makes me feel like something out of Norman Rockwell."

"Not The ShiningT He came up behind her with arm raised, as if holding a knife, leering his manic Jack Nieholson leer.

"Honey, I'm home!"

"Jesus, Frank."

What? "

"All that's been going on, that's not so funny."

Dipping his head towards her shoulder, an oddly tender gesture, he slid both arms around her.

"That guy, huh? The one in the paper. Poor bastard!"

She was looking at his reflection in the dressing table mirror, both their reflections: familiar and strange.

Frank? "

"Umm?"

"Did you read any of the new book?"

"Your new book?"

Uh-huh. "

"I didn't think you'd even shipped it off to the publishers yet."

"No, but..." "You're still working on it, right?"

"Fiddling, that's all. The manuscript."

"You remember one time you caught me reading these pages you'd left lying around? I thought you were going to go crazy."

Cathy Jordan smiled into the mirror.

"That was a while back. I was more cranky then. Nervous, I guess."

"What you mean is, back then, you cared what I thought."

"That's not what I mean at all." Looking at him, defiance and concern in his eyes, the stance of his body, strength of his arms. So easy to have turned inside those arms.

"Anyway," Frank said.

"I didn't look at it, not a peek. How come you ask?"

"Oh..." Her voice drifted off and she looked away; how strange desire was, months in which she had felt God! - nothing, at best a mixture of comfort and irritation, and now this.

"It doesn't matter," she said, and moved her mouth over his.

They kissed until it was difficult to breathe.

"Jeeze," Frank said, as she released him.

"What's got into you?"

Cathy let her smile spread wide and when she laughed it was down and dirty.

"Recently, not a whole lot."

He reached for her and she reached for him.

"Well," Cathy said, eyebrow arched.

"Have you been working out?"

They were midway between the dressing table and the bed when the phone rang.

"Leave it," Frank said.

"All right." But she could see the time, winking at her, green-eyed, from the clock radio beside the bed.

"Cathy, come on."

She reached out a hand and the ringing stopped. "Hello," she said, listening a moment before dropping the receiver back down.

"It's Mollie. She's in the foyer, waiting. We have to be there in thirty minutes."

Frank rolled clumsily round and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers pressed against his temples.

"Don't, sweetheart," Cathy said, giving his arm a squeeze. Her voice tenderly mocking.

"Don't have a headache."

"What do you suggest?" he said.

"A shower? Maybe there's time to jerk off? I know, I could jerk off in the shower."

Already she was on her feet, reaching her coat from the hanger.

"You could come with me to the store, that's what you could do. Protect me from any more militant paint- throwers. Radical fertmies. With this murder on their hands, I doubt the police will have officers to spare."

Frank looked across at her from the bed, still undecided how grouchy he was going to be.

"Don't be mad," Cathy said.

"Do this for me. Once it's over, we've got the rest of the afternoon to ourselves. We can come back here, what do you say?"

But Frank knew, they both knew, whatever he replied, the moment was gone.

Cathy hadn't known what to expect, but the city centre on a Saturday lunchtime wasn't it The way people pushed, wall to wall, along the pedestrianised street leading towards the Victoria Centre, all Cathy could think of was one of those paintings by who was it? - Brueghel. A medieval vision of Hell.

The bookshop, where she and Dorothy BirdweU were to do a joint signing, was on the ground floor of the shopping precinct. Signing with Dorothy, needless to say, had not been Cathy's own choice, but it was at the shop's request and, as her publisher had been quick to point out, the shop was capable of shifting a lot of product Cathy presumed she meant books.

150 Mollie steered Cathy and Dorothy between groups of teenagers wearing high-tops, reversed baseball caps and T-shirts, Frank and Marius, un speaking following close behind. Between River Island and HMV they passed several mothers, dragging squawking children in their wake, fathers striding several paces ahead, the fuss and commotion no concern of theirs. Cathy saw one woman spin a small boy, no more than three, out of the path of a push chair and give him a slap, hard, across the backs of his bare legs.

"There! Now stop scraighting, you mardy little sod, or I'll slap you again." For a moment, Cathy caught her eye: blonde hair tight like copper wire, cigarette, eyes hard as coal. Pregnant again. No way was she more than twenty, twenty-one. A moment, then she was gone.

"Here we are," Mollie said cheerfully.

"And look, there's a queue already."

Cathy's face beamed back at her in full-colour from a poster in the window. Inside the shop, it was reproduced many times: smaller posters on the walls, dump bins at the ends of aisles, a whole shelf of paperbacks and hardcovers, book back to front, displaying the same image. How did she look to all these people, Cathy wondered? Sunny, smug, self-satisfied. American. But, in truth, most of the people pushing round her seemed quite oblivious, not to care.

In contrast, the publicity for Dorothy Birdwell, who stood talking now to Marius, was noticeably less prominent, her books less visible.

"Cathy Jordan?" She shook hands with a surprisingly young woman in a light grey suit with a faint stripe.

"It's a pleasure to welcome you.

We've got you set up over there. " Cathy shook her hand and she turned aside to Dorothy.

"Miss Birdwell, how are you? If you'll excuse me, I'll be with you in just a moment."

Leaving Dorothy and Marius stranded, she led Cathy past the line of fans towards a table piled high with yet more copies of her books; those waiting to speak to Dorothy Birdwell were far fewer and mostly older.

"Is that her?" one woman said of Cathy as she passed.

"That's never her."

"Bet you it is."

"Some of those photos don't do her any favours, do they?"

"Not much. Lop a good ten years off her age, that's all."

"Get away!"

The manager saw Cathy installed and moved swiftly across to deal with Dorothy Birdwell and an increasingly irate Marius, who was quick to complain about what he saw as second-rate treatment.