Under My Skin (16 page)

“Yes, I should think so. Do you want me to look at it?”

He got up and came over to where I was sitting, pulling the desk lamp with him so it threw more light on my face. “Close your eyelid for a moment.”

He ran his fingertip along the line. I swear I hadn’t thought about it till the touch connected—about what had happened to the last man who’d fingered me there. But then he’d been one of the bad guys. And as of now I had nothing on Maurice but a few dodgy alterations.

“Is that painful?”

“No. I’m just a little sensitive.”

“I’m not surprised. Nasty thing to have happen. Was anyone else hurt?”

“Yes, the man who caused the accident.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

And there was something in the way I said it that made him pause. He removed his finger and sat back against the desk.

“Well, a small skin graft would improve it no end. You’d hardly notice it.”

“I see. And how much would that cost?”

He pursed his lips. “Oooh, at a rough estimate somewhere I would say in the region of a thousand pounds.”

Oh fine, I thought. I’ll just slip back to the Majestic and he’ll have it on his desk at sundown. Listen, said someone else. You should think about this. Add the bonus to the winnings and you’ve got it. Hey, sleazebag, that’s the windscreen cleaner’s money you’re talking about.

Aloud I said, “Thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”

“Why don’t you do that?” he said, and this time his tone definitely wasn’t that friendly.

I got up and held out my hand. The good-byes were
short. I got as far as the door when he said, “By the way. Did you meet my wife at Castle Dean?”

I turned. “Your wife?”

“Yes. Olivia Marchant. Tall, good-looking woman. I think she mentioned you.”

And I think she didn’t. “No. No, I’m afraid not.”

“Ah, well, good luck with your films, Miss Lansdowne. And let me know about that eye.”

A
s double whammies go it was a good one. The consultation fee came to one hundred and twenty pounds. The extra thirty was the time I had been late. When I queried it, the girl at the desk downstairs said she’d only just been told about it. Which meant that he’d only just decided. But then why not? He knew I wasn’t coming back and presumably he still thought I was on expenses.

Which of course I would have been if I hadn’t been disobeying orders. I plucked three fifties from my wallet. “No, don’t go,” shouted the others. “We’re getting to like how snug it is in here.” Christ, I thought. Three hours’ sleep and I’m disintegrating.

I walked back to the car trying to make sense of it all. Either Mr. Marchant had good reason to fear what a journalist might discover (in which case the chances were that I was on the right track), or he knew something about me that he shouldn’t. Maybe he had found the Castle Dean notes on Miss Lansdowne glaringly inaccurate. Certainly there would have been no mention of the scar. And when you think about it, of course, who in that profession would have dared to omit it?

Oh well, so my cover was blown. Just as long as he didn’t make it part of his dinner conversation with his wife tonight. Had I been a real professional, the danger would have been an incentive to wrap up the case that afternoon. But no private eye can work without wheels, and although technically I still had mine, they had someone else’s bloody
great yellow clamp on them. Fantastic. I ripped the letter off the windscreen. Not even so much as a reply. Some people are so unfeeling.

By the time I was mobile again there was nothing left of the day and whatever my id was saying to my ego (or was it the other way round?) I could have barely afforded the eye operation anymore anyway. I was even going to be hard-pushed to fulfill my promise to the Holloway Road windscreen washer.

I drove home via his set of traffic lights, but I was too late. He’d already gone. Shame. Given my present state of schizophrenia, I might well have given the money to someone else by tomorrow morning.

I got back to four messages. The first two were from Amy. “Hi, Hannah … Hannah …?”

Then the second, slow, very deliberate: “Hello. This is Amy. Mum says you can take me to the cinema on Saturday, but tonight I have to go to bed early. What?” A mumble in the background. “And she says thank you. She’ll call you soon.” More mumbling, a small “bye,” then finally a click.

The third message was even less intelligible, the accent thick as olive paste. “Missa Woolff, diz is Marcella Gavarona, you call me about dat little shit Marchant. Yesa, I can tell you. You call, I tell you all.”

Well, at last. Someone who had something to say. It was seven o’clock in Milan. I opened a bottle of wine—Italian, of course—and dialed her number.

The woman who answered couldn’t speak any English at all. But eventually she worked out what I wanted. She put down the receiver and I heard her yell “Signora Gavarona” a number of times. I got the impression it was a big place.

The tap of the heels on the tiles gave her away. I almost didn’t need to go to Milan to meet this one. She would be size 12, nipped at the waist, have black stockings, black hair, shiny shoes, and some serious eye makeup. The apartment
would be originally sixteenth century, one of those gorgeous urban numbers that went on for miles, and it would be lovingly and expensively restored. She’d probably be getting ready to go out to dinner with her businessman husband, unless of course he was already in jail for offering bribes. Almost made me wish I had studied Italian instead of French.

“Ah yes, Miss Wolfe. You want to know about Maurice Marchant? I come to him last year, in May it was, because I hear that he is very good at the faces. So I ask him to do a little lift. You know, not the big cut, just a tuck around the eyes, give it a little more cheekbone. He say yes, he has developed a special new mini-lift, no marks, no problem.

“It is not cheap, not cheap at all, but is good. Until six months later when my face, she go funny on one side, droppy, pulled. Imagine. I cannot go out of the apartment, I cannot do anything. I am absolutely like a—what do you say?—leeper. So I ring him up. He say he never heard of such a thing. I tell him I have it. He say I must come back. So, I get on a plane with a big bandage on my face and I come to him. He looks, he say no good. He does it again. But it’s still not right. Still I have little lumpy bits in the cheek. He say I am imagining them, that it is fine now. I say he is bad doctor. And I want my money back. Or I make big trouble for him, make sure everybody knows what he does.”

Oh …? Horse’s head in the bed, nails in the sponge. All my life I’ve wanted to be in one of these plots. I could hardly contain my excitement. “So what happened?”

“What happen? He doesn’t give it. He say there’s nothing more he can do.”

“And?”

“And so he is a pig. And I tell everybody this, all the best women in Milan. He is finished here. Kaput. Over. And if you want to put this in your newspaper, I say it to you happily. But, please, no real name and no photos, OK?”

Good-bye, Signora Gavarona, and may all of your facelifts be droppy ones.

Had there not been a last message to follow I might have given way to the slough of despond. As it was I was saved by the beep.

“Hello. Hannah, this is Marty Tranchant, Pete Pantin’s manager. I gather you’re interested in doing a feature on him? I’ve faxed you some stuff and arranged some tickets for you to see his gig tonight at the Camden Palace, second set, starts around 10:30. Maybe you could catch a word with him afterward. Though he might be a little tired. It’s great that the
Guardian
sees him as a postfeminist figure. I know that’s going to knock him out. He’s very into politics and girl talk.”

If my flat had been big enough, I would have run to the fax machine. The photos were wonderful: Pete in a Paul Smith suit with one foot on the body of a half-naked woman who was snarling into the camera. There was also a magnificent piece of PR-speak that called him a poet of the sex war.

I grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep, then dressed for the occasion. All this late-night trucking. Just seemed a shame I wasn’t having more fun.

Camden Palace on a Tuesday night. For the last couple of years it’s made me feel old just driving past the place. I tell you I’d be more tempted to try more music if I didn’t feel I could have given birth to most of its fans. Tonight, though, was different. For once I didn’t feel out of place. But then Pete had been around a long time. In the foyer I counted at least a dozen balding pates and donkey jackets that were old with, rather than despite, their owners. Obviously he had taken some of his fans with him.

I sat at the back. The songs were dire—a touch of the Robert Blys over a bed of decidedly old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll. My favorite was “Drumming in the Dark”: “You’re
not the only one who hurts, babe. If you want it equal, you got to take it as well as dish it out.”

Mind you, the old boys seemed to like it. Maybe they were all being pursued by the Child Support Agency. Maybe Pete was, too.

The second set ended around midnight. I waited till the crush had gone and then found the stage door. I told the doorman Pete was expecting me, but he turned out to be busy. So I waited. He took his time.

It was getting on for two when the call came. He was sitting in his dressing room, freshly showered in a clean shirt and new old jeans, with a bottle of Foster’s and a Jay McInerney novel on the table. He obviously thought he looked OK. He was wrong. The years had taken their toll on him. The face was puffy round the edges and there was still a definite straining at certain key trouser seams. Either Maurice had really blown it or whatever fat had been sucked out Pete had sucked back in again. Seeing the overstretched crotch reminded me of that divine moment in
Spinal Tap
when the bass guitarist sets off the security alarm at the airport with a roll of coins stuffed down his inside trouser leg. Now there’s an operation that would make Marchant’s fortune. I had trouble not laughing.

He got up to greet me. “Hi. Sorry for the wait. Business matters. So, d’you enjoy the set?”

I nodded and found myself gushing out an enthusiasm I didn’t feel. Rock ’n’ roll. That’s the amazing thing—makes everyone sixteen again.

I asked him for his autograph first. Well, I had this sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t want to give it to me later, and I needed to have an example of his handwriting to compare. He signed his name with a flourish. It was of course unreadable. So I asked him to write a little dedication above it.

To Hannah. May she always write the truth. “Thanks,” I simpered. “I’ll do my best.”

I won’t insult you with the interview. Released from the discipline of a song lyric, his views on sexual politics were about as profound as Margaret Thatcher’s, although somewhat more muddled, caught as he was between liberal claptrap and male backlash. But then my attempt at impersonating a
Guardian
journalist was hardly more successful. Still, at least we didn’t row. Until, that is, we got onto the bit about image, and how much he hated living in a society that emphasized what you looked like rather than what you were.

“You really sympathize with women about that, do you?”

“Sure. That’s what the new album’s all about. Men and women both being true to themselves and not to some image that others have built up for them.”

“So you don’t mind—I mean not being a sex symbol anymore?”

And he laughed. “I think people can be attractive at any age, don’t you? As your body gets older, then so does your mind. That’s what it’s all about.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, and we grinned at each other. “In which case why did you have the liposuction done?”

“What?” You could see he was absolutely stunned.

“The liposuction on your thighs. Was that … like … your decision? I mean I’ve heard it said that it was your way of showing solidarity with the pressure that women are under. Except I gather it didn’t go too well.”

“Who told you about that? Who told you about that? That fucking greaseball Marchant. Did you get it from him?”

“Who’s Marchant?” I asked. “No, I heard it from another journalist. Sorry, I didn’t know it was sensitive. I thought you
knew…. It’s all around. It’s made you a bit of a hero figure for women, actually. Because you did it, and then when you weren’t satisfied you complained. Lots of women don’t feel they have the courage to do that. It’s like you showed us how to connect our sensitivities to our aggression.”

But he wasn’t listening (just as well, given the crap I was talking). He had gone a strange shade of puce, a bit like a frog blowing up with air, and he was on his feet shouting.

“Get the fuck out of here. This is invasion of privacy, that’s what this is. I’ve never had anything done to myself. Nothing at all, you hear. And if you say I did, I’ll sue you. It’s people like you who ruined my fucking career first time around. You aren’t going to do it again. Fucking liberty. Mangy old tart …”

I left him exploring the outer reaches of his New Man vocabulary. It was a good deal more vivid than his songs.

I stood out on the pavement enjoying the night’s silence. Well, there you go—the only chance I ever had of a onenight stand with a rock ’n’ roll star and I blew it. What the hell. I always liked Jackson Browne more anyway. There was something more real about his pain.

Once again it was the middle of the night and I was wide awake. This case was turning my body clock around. At least no one had nicked the car.

I drove into town and found an all-night café just off Leicester Square that I used to frequent when my nights were about having fun. It was quieter than I remembered. Or maybe I was. And the prices had gone up. I ordered a cappuccino and a toasted sandwich. A guy came out and started to play stylish, lazy. It sounded quite nice. I settled myself down, dug out the files and my little black book (PIs don’t have lovers, they just have suspects), and did some office work.

First I laid out the anonymous note to Maurice Marchant on the table and put Pete Pantin’s vacuous message next to
it. They had been written by two different people, although of course that in itself didn’t prove anything. I put a pencil cross by his name. I had now followed up on six of the suspects. And none of them—alive, dead, or living in Bermuda—seemed quite the sort to conduct a sustained campaign of malice against that “greaseball” Marchant.