Living Proof (24 page)

Thirty-nine Frank Carlucci couldn't be certain how long he had lain there before he realised the woman wasn't coming back. However much sexual anticipation he was experiencing, the effect of innumerable whisky sours had meant that the meeting between his head and a pair of the hotel's comfortable pillows had so far resulted in one thing only.

The woman was. he seemed to remember thinking, taking one hell of a long time in the bathroom, but aside from that, he didn't recall very much at all. A sound that, he now realised, might have been that of the room door opening or closing, and that was all.

Sitting up first quickly, and then, as his head informed him speed was ill-advised, cautiously he looked at his watch. Too dark too see. Reaching across, he snapped on the bedside lamp. Blinking, then squinting, he tried again. A quarter past one. He had scarcely been asleep any time at all.

Easing himself off the bed, he checked the bathroom, the door to which was wide open and, of course, it was empty. Only then, with sinking desperation, did he scrabble on the floor for his jacket and fumble his wallet out into the light. He knew what remained of his English cash and all his credit cards would be gone, but, contradicting him, they were there, the money, as far as he could tell, intact.

Back in the bathroom, he splashed cold water in his face and then wondered why he was bothering. Cathy was bound to be asleep in their own room by now, another 220 hotel across the city, and what was to be gained from waking her, he didn't know. Better to face her the next day with a fresh face and a good story.

Frank hung the Do Not Disturb sign outside the door, climbed back into bed and inside five minutes he was snoring, first lightly, then loudly.

They had been parked across the street some ten minutes, Norman Mann smoking two Bensons while he and Resnick listened to one of Sharon's anecdotes about policing deepest Lincolnshire.

"Go into some of those places," Sharon said, 'and I'd know how my relatives felt, getting off the boat at Tilbury in the 1950s. " Or mine, Resnick, thought, in 1938. Except, of course, that they'd been white.

"Well, what d'you think, Charlie? Shall we give it a pull?"

Resnick pushed open the car door and stepped out on to uneven paving stones. Apart from a stereo playing too loud a half-dozen doors down, the street was quiet. The end terrace to the right, facing north, had stone cladding on the front and side walls, window frames and ledges which had been newly painted, yellow, and a small sign attached to the front door to show that the householders were members of the local Neighbourhood Watch. The house opposite had a derelict washing machine upside down outside in the scrubby front garden, one of its upper windows covered in heavy-duty plastic where the glass had been broken and not replaced, and at least a dozen milk bottles beside the front door, each containing a varying amount of mould and algae.

"So, Charlie no call to be much of a detective here, eh?"

"Give me a minute," Sharon said at the space where the front gate should have been.

"I'll get round the back."

Once she had disappeared from sight, the two men slowly walked towards the door. When Resnick rang the bell it failed to work; he knocked and no one answered, but from the sound of the television they knew somebody was at home. Norman Mann leaned past him, turned the handle and pushed and the door swung grudgingly inwards.

"Thanks very much," he said with a wink, 'we'd love to come in. "

They followed the sound of amplified voices into the front room.

Three youths, status unemployed, were watching a video of Naked Gun 2'/^ amongst a plethora of beer cans and empty pizza boxes and the faint scent of dope.

What the fuck? "

Resnick showed them his identification, while Norman Mann walked past them towards the television set and switched it off.

Hey! You can't. "

"You live here?" Mann asked.

Yeah. "

" All of you? "

Yeah. "

"Who else?" Resnick asked.

One of the youths, his head partly shaven, a trio of silver rings close in one ear, got awkwardly to his feet. "Look, you gonna tell us what's going on? What the fuck this is all about?"

"Easy," Mann said.

"We ask questions, you answer them. So, now who else is there, living in the house?"

The youth looked round at his mates before responding. "There's Telly, right, up on the first floor at the front..."

"He's not here now," put in one of the others.

"Off home to see his old man."

"Who else?" Resnick said.

Two of them exchanged quick glances; the man with the 222 shaven head stared at a stain in the carpet, one amongst many.

"You won't let on?" he finally said.

"To who?" Norman Mann asked.

"And about what?"

"The landlord. See, the bloke as was up there moved out and he left it to us to let out the room." A few more shifty looks wove back and forth.

"On his behalf, like."

"And you forgot?"

"No, well, we got someone in, all right..."

Norman Mann laughed.

"Just a bit slow in letting the landlord in on it?"

"Something like that."

"Well, I know how it is, lads," Mann said.

"Busy life like yours.

Going down the video shop, cadging fags, jerking off, signing on.

Understandable, really, you've never quite found the time. " One of the youths sniggered; the others did not.

"This unofficial tenant," Resnick said.

"Got a name?"

"Marlene."

"Kinoulton?"

"Yeah, that's right. Yes."

There were footsteps outside and then Sharon walked into the room.

"Back door was open. Didn't reckon anyone was about to do a runner."

"Here," said the shaven youth.

"How many more of you are there?"

"Hundreds," Norman Mann grinned.

"Thousands. We're taking over the fucking earth!"

The room Marlene Kinoulton had rented was on the first floor at the back. No lights showed under the door and when Resnick knocked there was no response. A hasp had been fitted across the door and a padlock secured.

"Have that off in two ticks," Norman Mann said, flicking it up with his forefinger.

"And have anything we find ruled inadmissible by the court," Resnick said.

"Let's wait for the morning, get a warrant."

"Suit yourself." Norman Mann looked quite disappointed. He was more of a knock-'emdownand-reckontheconsequences-afterwards man himself.

"I'll babysit the place the rest of the night," Sharon offered, once they were back downstairs.

"If she's around, she might come back."

"Good," Resnick said.

"Thanks. I'll send Divine round to relieve you first thing. Meantime, I'll chase up a warrant. See what she's got in there, worth keeping a lock on."

In the front room, Norman Mann took a swallow at the can of lager he'd popped open and set it back down with a grimace.

"What you^ re scrounging off the DSS, ought to be able to afford better than that."

Reaching round, he switched the TV set back on.

"Thanks, lads. Thanks for inviting us into your home."

Cathy Jordan woke early, with the creamy taste of another late-night supper still rich in her mouth. She lay without moving, aware of Frank's absence, accepting it without surprise. They had tried, in the time they had been together, handling her enforced absences, these trips to the conventions and booksellers of the world, in a number of ways. At root, however, there were two alternatives: he went with her or he stayed home. Cathy liked to claim she left the choice to him.

If Frank waved her off at the airport with a hug and a kiss and a see-you-in-six-weeks, within days he would be calling her erratically around the clock, unable to settle; and she would return to smiles and flowers and rum ours of drunken nights and drunken days and always there would be messages from women Cathy had never previously heard of, backing up on the answering machine.

Or he travelled with her, bemoaning the cappuccinos and gymnasia of the free world; frequently bored, listless, quick to take offence and give it. And there were mornings like this, Cathy waking to one side of the bed, the other un slept in and unsullied, and later, around lunchtime, Frank would reappear, without explanation, his expression daring her to ask. Which at first she had, and, of course, he had lied; or she had made assumptions, right or wrong, and he had responded with counter accusation and attack. It was after one of these, she had finally said,

"Frank, I don't give a flying fuck what you do or who you do it to, but if I ever contract as much as the tiniest vaginal wart as a result of your fooling around, I will never -and I mean, never speak to you again."

Sniping aside, not a great many words had been exchanged on the subject since.

Cathy sat up and surprised herself by not wincing when her feet made contact with the hotel carpet. It had been past midnight when Curtis Wooife had insisted on buying several bottles of champagne and then doctoring everyone's glass with four-star brandy. For the umpteenth time he proposed a toast to David Tyrell and thanked him for, as he put it, restoring his life's work to the light of a new day. It didn't seem as if Curds was going to be a recluse any longer. Amongst the other rum ours which abounded was one that he had been asked to film Elmore Leonard's non-crime novel Touch, with Johnny Depp as Juvenal, the beautiful healer, bleeding from five stigmata on prime time television and Winona Ryder as the record promoter who falls in love with him.

Cathy, who to date had fielded approaches, official and unofficial, from Kim Basinger, Sharon Stone, Amanda Donohoe, Melanie Griffith, Phoebe Cates, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh to play Annie Q. Jones, had leaned across and warned Curtis not to hold his breath. In most cases, it was far better to bank the option fee and pray no one ever got around to making the movie.

She was about to get into the shower when the phone rang and she lost her footing to the sudden thought that it was someone calling with the news that something had happened to Frank. Something bad. The skin along her arms pricked cold as she lifted the receiver. Frank, out on the town in a town where men where getting stabbed and worse.

It wasn't Frank, or anything about him; it was Dorothy Birdwell, asking if Cathy would consider joining her for breakfast 226 Cathy drew breath.

"Sure, Dorothy. Why not?" And she returned to the shower, relieved, surprised, wondering if there was a certain British etiquette to these occasions she was supposed to observe.

Skelton and his wife were making brittle conversation over the toast and marmalade. Frank Carlucci had not been the only person to stay out all night unannounced. At a little after seven, Kate had phoned from Newark and said she was sorry, but she'd got stuck, missed the last train, missed the bus, there'd been some confusion and she'd missed her lift; it had been all right, though, she'd been able to stay with friends. She hoped they hadn't been too worried. Why, Skelton had asked, his temper conspicuously under wraps, had she not called to tell them this earlier, before the worrying had begun?

Kate's explanation had been too complicated and devious to believe or follow.

"What on earth was she doing in Newark in the first place?" Alice had demanded, tightening the belt to her dressing gown.

Skelton had shaken his head; aside from a vague idea that they sold antiques, he had never been certain what people did in Newark anyway.

"What time did she say she would be back?" Alice asked.

"She didn't."

He had been pouring another cup of rather tired tea, when the doorbell sounded.

"There she is now," said Alice.

"And she's forgotten her key."

But it was Resnick, braving another episode of happy families in order to persuade Skelton to apply for a search warrant for the end terrace in Harcourt Road.

"The whole house?" Skelton asked, when he had listened to Resnick's explanations.

"Might as well. While we're about it' While Cathy Jordan's breakfast was heavy on the grains and fruit, heavy on the coffee, Dorothy Birdweu's order, carefully enunciated, was for one poached egg " And that's poached, mind, properly poached, not steamed' - on dry whole meal toast and a pot of Assam tea.

"Cathy," Dorothy Birdwell said, once her egg had been delivered (a poor, shrivelled thing, in Cathy's opinion) to the table.

"I may call you Cathy, may I?"

"Sure, Dottie. That's fine." She could tell Dorothy didn't like that, but the older woman took it in her stride.

"You know, dear, I am not the greatest fan of the kind of thing that you write."

"Dorothy, I know."

"In fact, I would go so far as to say, in a way I find it quite pernicious. I mean, this may be old-fashioned of me, I'm sure that it is, but I do think there are certain standards we have a moral obligation to maintain."

"Standards?" Great, Cathy thought she's invited me down to receive a lecture, a grande-dame rap across the knuckles.

"Yes, dear. A certain morality."

Cathy speared a prune.

"Let me get this straight. Are we talking sex here?"

"My dear, you mustn't think me a prude. Sex is fine, in its place, I'm sure we would both agree to that." (We would? Cathy thought, surprised. ) "But its most intimate details, well, I don't think we need to have those spelled out for us, you see. Not in all their personal intricacies, at least And the violence we most certainly inflict upon one another, if I wish to learn of that, I can always read the newspaper though, of course, I prefer not to1 do not wish to find myself confronting it inside an otherwise charming work of entertainment You do see my point dear?"

in polite company, Cathy wondered, what did you do with a pmne stone?

Spit it out into your hand, or push it under your tongue and risk being accused of speaking with your mouth full. Either way, it didn't matter. Dorothy's question had been rhetorical.

"But I do want to say that I think the way those ghastly women have been ganging up on you is perfectly dreadful. And in no way could I ever bring myself to support their actions." She fluttered her hands above the remains of her poached egg.