Director's Cut (9 page)

Chas Walker told Peter Ward and anyone else who was listening,
“That tart had so many rings on her face you could've hung a fucking
curtain on it.” He was referring to Rodney Grant's girlfriend.
In the back seat Donna Fitzgerald remained tight-lipped. At the
beginning of the day, just like at the end of it, all men were bastards.
Right?

Rodney Grant was scrawny, tattooed, no more than nine stone and no
taller than five-seven. And the closest he'd come to forty-quid
aftershave was in his girlfriend's catalogue. He reeked of stale beer,
tobacco and tooth decay.

Cole's eyes were sleepless. By the time he arrived at interview room
3 he was already shaking his head in the knowledge that they had the
wrong man.

He toyed with the notion of giving the interview to Fitzgerald and
Carter. It was always a good idea to keep the big guns until later.
Watch it through the screen, perhaps. See what the body language told
you, the nervous scratch on the nose, the unconscious hiding of the
lips, the sweat, that sort of thing. But he needed to move this one
forward without wasting time. He wanted Grant TIED so they could
concentrate on the real thing.

A uniform stood aside as Cole entered. Donna Fitzgerald sat before
Rodney Grant. Grant was smoking, elbows on the table, faded tattoo of
a snake wrapped around a knife on his left forearm, not at all fazed. He
was a regular and police interviews were no big deal. He was almost
bored by the proceedings.

Cole took in the sunken features, the sharp eyes and the lines of
corruption that etched his face. He sat opposite.

Grant blew him some smoke and said calmly, “Can we get on with
this? I'm tired. I was up early.”

“This is a no-smoking area so put that fucking thing out.”
Grant's eyes widened. He looked for an ashtray then ground the butt
beneath his heel.

He said, “Happy?”

Cole said, “No, I'm not. And most of it's down to little toerags like
you.”

PC Fizgerald reached to the recorder.

Cole said, “You don't want a brief?”

“No need.”

“What do you do for a living, Rodney?”

“This and that. At the moment I'm caretaker at the Carrington. Get
you some tickets if you like. You'd get to see Anthea take her clothes
off.”

“Day before yesterday, around eight in the evening?”

“I was out.”

Cole waited. His eyes grew colder.

“Walking, you know? Contemplating the state of the nation, that
sort of thing.”

“That's good.”

Donna watched Cole with more interest than was healthy, but she
couldn't help herself. She was in free fall, helpless, caught up in some
chemical reaction that was beyond logic.

Cole continued, “I want you to think carefully about your next
answer.”

Grant looked into Cole's eyes and recognized something he didn’t
like at all. He shifted in his seat. The lines on his face looked painful.
His lips twisted and he rubbed the snake tattoo so that it appeared to
slither around the dagger.

“Right," Grant said suddenly. "I've thought. Call it community
spirit.”

Cole nodded, “That’s good. I do like it when the public cooperate.”
“What then?”

“Simple. Let's run thought it, shall we? Why were you in the fitness
club and why did the instructor find it necessary to ask you to leave?”
Grant pulled a face. “I suppose you know already.”

“Maybe, but just for the record.”

“By the pool, right? Clocking the latest fashions.”

“On the kids?”

“Right, see? I'm into fashion.”

Donna frowned. Cole's voice pulled her attention.

“And what about the woman who complained?”

“What about her?”

“You threatened her?”

“Just an idle threat. It wasn’t meant. She caused me grief, that’s it.”
“Now tell me about the evening?”

“Well, what time, eight wasn't it?”

“That'll do to start.”

“Yeah, a bit later maybe. Got to do it, haven't you? Pulled in the
square.”

“Rented?”

Grant made eye contact with Donna, enjoying the moment.
“That's what I mean. He took the money.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Supermarket. Car park.”

“Did you get his name?”

“I call him Jason, but you can call him anything you like. He lets
you choose.”

“He's a regular?”

“He’s been around.”

“A local boy?”

“Maybe. Who knows? No accent on him that I picked up.”
“You could pick him out?”

“I could do that.”

“You know him well?”

“No, only bits of him, you know?”

“I know.”

“What are you? A social worker? What do you care? He’s got a
menu. Bareback costs an extra score!”

“Have you seen anyone else hanging around the club, a stranger,
anything unusual?”

The lips contorted, made the nostrils flare, showed off strands of
black hair that would hold the bead of snot. Eventually he shook his
head. “I go to the Square to see the kids, don't I? That's all I'm
clocking. Jason would know. He knows everything that's going on.
Every new face is business , right?”

“That's a pity. It means you're going to have to find this rent boy for
me. Let's call him Jason. If you can find him, and if he confirms your
story, then you can go home.”

“Fair enough. I can do that. He's always there, on the Square. Good
as gold.”

“Is now a good time?”

Grant shook his head and spread his hands. “It's got to be later,
maybe seven.”

“In that case you can catch up on your sleep. There’s a room
downstairs that’s very quiet and no one will disturb you.”
Donna Fitzgerald had her eyes on Cole anyway, so they didn't need
to move. She said, “I'll wake him, Guv.” As she spoke she fingered her
engagement ring, pulled it up and down her finger and, for just a
moment, almost off. Her prior arrangements for the evening to make
up for the one she missed – sweet and sour and the rest – never
crossed her mind.

Free fall. They call it. And the rip-cord was slippery.

In the corridor she said, “Why didn’t you mention Carol Sapolsky.
Why not tie up Grant's alibi once and for all?”

“He's not our man. This kid, Jason or whatever he's called, is
probably our best bet. We need to find him. Not for Grant. For the
other faces he can give us.”

“Guv, the sarge knows all the toms by name. It’s his patch and he
keeps both eyes on what goes on.”

“Mike will be out there doing his bit and so will every other copper.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t help. Let’s find this kid. You’d be
surprised just how much kids notice that adults don’t.”

Donna struggled, not at all convinced.

Cole reported back to Chief Superintendent Baxter. The super sighed
and said reluctantly, “Your earlier thoughts, Rick. Perhaps you better
get in touch with your old mate. We've got a psychopath knocking on
our door. We need someone to open it.”

Cole nodded.

“And you better find out if Margaret Domey's feeling any better. In
for a penny, I suppose. If we're going to have these people under our
feet she might as well be a part of it. She might learn something.”
“It won't be modesty, not from Geoff Maynard.”

Baxter groaned and tucked in to a sandwich. Thick smoked ham
from Yorkshire with English mustard and real Anchor butter on freshly
baked crusty bread – none of your supermarket shit. And on the side, a
manly slab of Lincolnshire pork pie. Forget the job, the super was in
heaven. His wife knew how to keep a man happy.

So in the happy hour, when doubles were the price of one and pints
were pegged at a pound, the coppers hit the High Road and the streets
behind where single lights blinked red and where boys and girls from
eight to eighty were trading. It was a growth industry; from about four
to eight, if you were counting in inches, more if you were black and
slightly less in cold weather. Or so they said.

Chas Walker had pulled the short straw and he drove and Rodney
Grant checked out the faces and in the back Donna Fitzgerald
wondered what the DI would feel like inside her. The thought was
exciting, disorientating and heightened by lack of sleep. She wondered
whether he was still working. He’d still been in the office when they
left and she’d caught a fleeting – speculative – glance. In what was it?
Three days? The kozzer in his dark suit had turned her world on its
head. She was a teenager again, straight out of fourth form, full of
uncertainty, looking forward to bed so she could think slow thoughts
of him and nothing else.

This Sheerham is a crazy old place, where people lie in bed alone
listening to the person beside them, where heaven wears suspenders
and a come-on smile and is suspended twelve feet off the ground.
Anthea Palmer, ex-weather girl, lit up in soft neon, looked out
across the town. Her stockings glistened and the gap between her
thighs sent shivers down the backs of the passers-by. These admen
knew a trick or two.

And a queue formed at the box office.

That night, Jason, for want of his real name, took the night off, and
they didn't find him.

The song from the show went: “Oh, Mr Lawrence, I really missed
you…”

And incredibly, given the old-fashioned lyrics, it was climbing the
Christmas charts.

But Mr Lawrence wasn't aware of it. Mr Lawrence agreed with the
colonel: pop music was for drug-takers and men with rings in their
ears.

Mr Lawrence was not fashion conscious. He considered the
vagaries of fashion were such that if you wore something long enough
then, sooner or later, it would become the height of fashion again. He
agreed with the colonel that the fashion houses were in league with the
Germans to bring back, sooner or later, the Nazi uniform. He was,
however, rather taken with the latest fashion, the miniskirt that was
shorter than ever and, in particular, the naked navel – the young firm
flat navel, the slightly swollen navel, even the coloured navel and the
navel that glinted with gold.

It was mid-afternoon on a depressing December day and the shadows
were sucking at the light and leaving the rest dirty. The trees, those that
grew from the pavements, were bare, and the colour, both on the
ground and above it, was grey. Three couples were in his shop, taking
their time to stand before the paintings, whispering. Art galleries were
like that: people whispered. There was the spell of the library about
them. People forgot that they were shops.

He was discussing frames with a middle-aged couple when the
brass bell on the heavy door announced the arrival of a young woman
and he saw her for the first time. She breezed in with a blow of winter
and Mr Lawrence filled his chest and smiled a secret smile. She was
tall and slim, her face partly masked by large spectacles which
fractionally enlarged her eyes, dark eyes that fixed on him like the eyes
of a big cat eyeing potential prey. While he finished with the couple
she flitted from piece to polished piece and from canvas to glinting
canvas like a shop-lifter, pretending to examine, more intent on who
was watching her. For a few moments she stood gazing up at an old
chestnut cooking pot that hung from the painted brick wall and then a
large painting of a brick wall itself caught her eye and she moved to
that.

The middle-aged couple finally chose a frame for their painting of
ducks flying from a green pond and once they had gone the woman
moved to the counter.

A thick woollen ruff on her sweater held her jaw high and tramlines
of green wool ran over her slight breasts and hugged her waist.
Pleats fanned out from her cream-coloured skirt and reached below her
knees. It was clingy and tantalizing and yet oddly demure and oldfashioned.
Beneath it her calves were on the slim side and she wore

white sneakers. Her mouth was wide and thin, the top lip slightly
askew, slightly down-turned. Her face was firm, her nose prettily
upturned, her cheekbones prominent and her jaw-line solid. Black hair
trailed down to the small of her back.

She moved easily, gracefully, accustomed to the flat heels, her long
thighs moving against the cream. She was five ten or eleven but looked
even taller in her slender frame. There was something youthful about
her, her features, her movement, her fitness, which made her seem
even younger than she was, which Mr Lawrence put at around the late
twenties, and there was a sign of perplexity in her bright eyes, as
though this moment was perfect but the next uncertain.

On her long finger were two rings, an engagement and a wedding,
and as she placed her slim, almost bony hand, on the polished counter,
he noticed that they were slightly worn, fifteen or twenty years old.
Mr Lawrence gave them a long look and shrugged before looking
up to meet her.

Her fixed gaze softened to a perfunctory yet nervous smile and in a
voice that was full of London she said, “Mr Lawrence? Can you help
me?”

Of course he could.

“Photographs lie,” he told her.

As he made his way to The British, hugging the pavement beneath the
slate-grey sky and the grey slate roofs and the stacks of clay chimney
pots lined up like advancing soldiers, he reflected on the encounter.
Photographs lie; the shadows give a false impression. They find form
where there is none and nothing of subtle form. And what is more, they
will never probe beneath the surface for hidden expression, they will
never explore a sensation or the temper of either the artist or his
subject. There is no art in a reflection. If there were then a mirror with
its reflection would be a work of art. The art lies entirely in the passion
behind the image, the discovery of the truth, or the lie.

She frowned, puzzled, and threw him a look that indicated his
sentiments were wasted.

But he continued.

A camera will give you the moment, something that might bring
back the memory, if you like, but nothing more. And what is more, it
will not give you the truth of the moment, or the lie, and it won’t live
and breathe and excite you. And what is even more, ultimately it will
leave you cold, wanting more.