Living Proof (21 page)

Susan Tyrell stood in the centre of the kitchen, door open to the garden, whisking meringue and wondering how long it had been since she and David had made love. Probably it had been Christmas, that squeaky bed in her parents' spare room, several bottles of cheap champagne and some good port enough to stir a little life into David's libido. Even then, he had called out the name of some movie star at the point of climax. His and not hers. Hers had been an altogether quieter, more private affair, later.

Since then it had been a cuddle last thing at night, those long moments before falling into sleep, David's last waking act to turn away from her arms.

"Why do you stay with him?" her friend, Beatrice, had asked.

Susan had sat there like a contestant on Mastermind, stumped for the right answer.

"This damned festival," Tyrell said, coming into the kitchen, cell phone in his hand, 'is getting more like a Quentin Tarantino screenplay every day. "

Terrific, Susan thought, blood and gore and bad seventies pop songs, continuing to stir the meringue as he relayed the events at the hotel.

"You are coming to the show this afternoon?" Tyrell asked.

"Oh, yes, I expect so."

"You should. Aside from one screening at the Electric in 1982, Dark Corridor hasn't been shown in this country since the fifties. And Curtis himself hasn't set eyes on a print of Cry Murder since he was still in the States."

"Really?" Susan said with barely feigned interest. The meringue was just stiff enough now to cover the pie. She could have got into an argument about rarity not always equalling quality if the damn films were any good, why hadn't some enterprising programmer shown them? - but she lacked the energy.

Umpteen eleven- to eighteen-year- olds, nine till four, Monday to Friday, she knew well enough to reserve her strength for what really mattered.

Back at the hotel, Lynn Kellogg and Kevin Naylor were questioning as many of the staff and guests as they could find. Resnick had phoned Skelton and arranged to meet him back at the station to make his report; he had promised to talk with Cathy again later. Frank sat in the chair before a silent television, watching a ball game that, for all its apparent similarities to baseball, he just didn't understand.

Cathy Jordan lay on the bed, fully dressed, staring up at the ceiling with blank, blue eyes.

Thirty-four "I guess when I married Frank, that was more or less my last chance.

Kids, I mean. Oh, we talked about it, back and forth, you know. Frank he would have been keen, keener than me, if you want to know the truth, but, well, the time never did seem right. This book to be finished, that book; another damn tour. In the end, I suppose the idea just ran out of steam. "

Cathy Jordan had wanted to get away, clear her head, and Resnick had brought her to Wollaton Park, green slopes and a golf course, ornamental gardens round an old ancestral pile and down below where deer were grazing, the lake they were walking around.

"You have kids?" Cathy asked.

Resnick shook his head.

"But you're married, right?"

"I was. Not any more."

"I'm sorry." She laughed.

"I say that, sorry, automatically, you know, without thinking. Truth is, half the friends I've got are divorced and most of the others wish they were, so..."

They emerged between brightly coloured rhododendron bushes at the far end of the lake, a middle-aged couple walking amongst other couples who were exercising their dogs, simply enjoying the sunshine. Here and there, men sat transfixed beside fishing rods, immovable as stone.

"Mostly, now, I never think about it. Kids, I mean. Then something happens like today well, never like today, 192 not, thank God, exactly like that and somehow it starts up again..." Her voice trailed away and it was a good few moments before either of them spoke. A pair of Canada geese skidded noisily on to the water, scattering blue.

"I guess it gets easier, right? I mean, the point finally has to come, you accept it: I am not going to be a parent."

Resnick shrugged.

"Maybe," he said, not believing it was so. Even now it would lurch at him, unsuspected, out from the darkest corner of the house or through the glare of a midsummer street the urge to have a child of his own.

"Well, I tell you," Cathy was saying,

"I'm from a big family and whenever we get together, nephews and nieces every which way, I get home after one of those things and I'm glad of the rest." She laughed.

"I've got three sisters, five cousins, seems they pop another one out whenever they stop to take a breath."

Resnick smiled and together they walked on past the lake's edge and up the slow incline towards the Hall. By the time they had turned through the gateway past the stables and the small agricultural museum, it was time to drive the short distance back to the city.

"You going to be okay?" Resnick asked. They were standing beside the car in the hotel forecourt, motor idling.

"Mollie seemed concerned about this interview you have to do."

Cathy gestured dismissively with her hand.

"I'll be fine. And listen, thanks for this afternoon. Most people wouldn't have taken the time.

I'm only sorry I wasn't better company. "

"That isn't true."

She threw back her head and laughed.

"Along with everything else, I'm fucking premenstrual!"

Resnick watched her walk towards the doors.

"Take care," he said, then climbed back in the car and drove to the station.

Millington's wife was spending the afternoon rehearsing The Merry Widow and he had come in to the office in an open-neck shirt and his third-best sports jacket, the one with the leather-patched sleeves, and was threading his way, painstakingly, back through the statements mat pertained to Peter Farleigh's murder. Something whose importance they had failed to grasp, a connection they had missed if it were there, so far it had eluded him.

"Call for you from the wife," Millington said, seeing Resnick walk in.

Resnick's stomach went cold; without reason, his first thought was of Elaine.

"Ex-wife, that is," Millington went on.

"Widow. Farleigh's."

"Sarah," Resnick said.

"Yes, that's it. Wants to know, once the inquest is over, will we be prepared to release the body?"

Resnick's breathing was back to normal.

"I'll talk to her, thanks."

He looked down at the material on the sergeant's desk.

"Anything?"

Millington shook his head.

"About as enlightening as shovelling shit."

Resnick nodded and moved away.

"Boss." He turned again at the sound of Divine's voice; Mark coming into the room with a slice of part-eaten ham and pineapple pizza folding around his hand. Lunch, Resnick thought, I knew there was something.

"Had a bell from Gamett. Says she's going to have another go at Kinoulton's mate later, reckons as how she knows more'n she's letting on."

"You think she's right?"

"Could be. Let's face it some bugger's got to know something."

194 "Okay," Resnick said.

"Keep on top of it." Sharon Gamett, Divine thought, I shouldn't mind. Tilting back his head as be lifted the pointed end of pizza to his mouth, he wandered over towards his desk.

In the corner near the kettle, Resnick found the remnants of a packet of chocolate digestives and dunked them in lukewarm tea. He was considering phoning Sarah Farleigh, still wondering exactly what he might say, when Kevin Naylor and Lynn Kellogg got back from Cathy Jordan's hotel.

Naylor had talked to the room service staff on duty, the young woman who had prepared Cathy Jordan's breakfast tray, the man who had taken it up to her room, knocked, received no reply and left it on the trolley outside the door. He had talked to the maid who had been changing bed linen and towels on that floor. Everyone had followed procedure; no one had noticed anything amiss. Unless one of the staff were lying, and Naylor didn't think this was the case, the most likely scenario was that the macabre 'baby' had been exchanged for the proper contents of the basket while the trolley was outside the room. Which raised the question since, presumably, the thing had required planning, and since whoever was responsible could hardly have been sure the breakfast trolley would be so conveniently standing there what other means had been envisaged for its delivery?

After helping Naylor a while at the hotel, Lynn had gone off in search of Vivienne Plant, who, after a few obligatory warnings about harassment, had been only too happy to give the names and addresses of three witnesses who could testify that she had been engaged in a fortnightly badminton game that morning, after which she and her friends had progressed to Russell's bar for a good, unhealthy fry-up brunch.

"Okay," Resnick said, having listened to their reports.

"Without getting into a lot of lengthy forensics and committing more hours than we can afford, that may be as far as we can go. For now, anyway."

"That's okay, then," Naylor said, walking with Lynn across the QD room.

"We can get back to doing something important."

Lynn stopped in her tracks.

"What?"

"Well, you know. Not as if there was any real harm done," Naylor said.

"No harm?"

"You know what I mean. It's not as if anything actually happened."

"Something happened all right," Lynn said.

"Yes," Naylor agreed, digging an even deeper hole for himself, 'but not serious. "

"Suppose it had been Debbie, though, Kevin, how would you feel, then?

How would she feel, d'you think? "

"She'd be upset, course she would..."

"Upset?"

"Yes, but she'd get over it."

"Which means it's not worth our bothering with?"

"Not as much as some other things, no."

"If she'd been hit, though? Physically attacked, raped even?"

"Then, of course, that'd be different."

Lynn laughed, more a snort than a laugh.

"Fact you can't see wounds and bruises, Kevin, doesn't mean a person hasn't been damaged. Hurt.

Doesn't have to mean it's less serious. "

Doris Duke didn't look as if she were working. Instead of high heels, she was wearing a pair of scuffed trainers and there was a hole at the back of her black tights big enough to slip a hand through. Aside from what still stuck, haphazardly, to her face from the previous night, she wore no make-up. Her hair had been pulled back from her head and hung raggedly down, secured by a couple of pins and a rubber band. There was a cigarette in her hand.

Sharon eased the car over to intercept her and Doris's head instinctively turned; she wasn't out looking for business, but she wasn't going to shunt it away.

As soon as she recognised Sharon, she knew it was business of a different kind.

"What d'you want now?" she asked, trying to summon up a belligerence that wasn't really there.

Sharon set the hand brake slipped the car into neutral. "Talk."

"Oh, yeah? What about now?"

"This and that?"

"Pay for my time, will you?"

Sharon smiled.

"You've been watching too many of those TV movies, Doris. That's the only place girls like you get paid to talk to the likes of me."

Doris stood uneasily, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, cigarette cupped in her hand.

"From what I've seen, your sort are either looking to bang you up and slap the hell out of you, or they're sniffing round for freebies."

She gave Sharon a look that was meant to be provocative. "Which is it with you?"

"Neither. I told you. I just want to talk."

"And I said, what about?"

"Marlene."

Doris dropped her cigarette to the pavement, quickly ground it out and began to walk away.

"Doris..."

"No," she called over her shoulder.

"I already told you everything I know."

Sharon released the hand brake and let the car coast after her.

"All right," she said through the window, 'we'll talk about something else. "

"Yeah? Uke what? Swap recipes and tips on chipping away old nail polish?"

"If you Uke, yes. Why not?"

"You know sodding well why not!"

Sharon let the car roll on down the hill, Doris, head down, crossing the road behind her. By the time Sharon had stopped the car and got out, they were level.

"Come on, Doris. A deal."

Yeah? What's that? "

"I'll buy you a meal and we'll talk and if you don't want to say anything more about Marlene, that's fine."

"I thought I didn't get paid for my time?"

Sharon was standing next to her now, taller, having to stoop down; Sharon wearing a leather jacket, unzipped, over her souvenir T-shirt from a Prince concert, blue jeans and a pair of ankle-high Kickers, green with a grease mark on one heel.

"This isn't buying your time, it's buying you lunch."

Lunch? "

"Tea, dinner, whatever. Come on, when did you last eat?"

"That's where I was going now." "So fine. Where to?"

Doris grinned, just a little, not giving it too much. "McDonald's.

Got these vouchers I've been saving from the Post. Two McChicken sandwiches for a couple of quid. "

"Okay," Sharon said.

"Why don't we go in the car? That way, we could go to the one by the canal, what do you say?"

Sharon told Doris to keep her McChicken vouchers for another occasion and splashed out on two Big Macs, fries, apple pies, cola. They had stopped at the paper shop on Lenton Boulevard so that Doris could buy another twenty Bensons, king size. There was a seat by the window, and although they couldn't actually see the canal from there, they could work out where it was, across the other side of Sainsbury's car park, to the right of Homebase.

Doris picked out most of the middle of her Big Mac, toying with the bun but never really eating it. The fries she dunked in a generous puddle of red sauce. Sharon ate slowly, saying little, trying to make the younger woman feel at ease.

Doris told her about a childhood bounded by Hackney Marshes and Homerton Hospital; Dalston, Clapton, Hackney, Leyton. A familiar enough story, familiar to Sharon certainly, not so very different from her own; the same story many of the working girls had to tell.