Living Proof r-7

by John Harvey

  Millington wanted to tell him we hardly had a manufacturing base any longer, and most of that was due to the government or bad management most likely by people like him. Most of the factories Millington knew that shut their doors never got round to opening them again. To say nothing of the pits. Hell and hullabaloo there'd been above a year back, marchers on the streets and speeches in the Square, whole bloody communities on the dole. Arnold Bennett! It was almost enough to make you vote Labour.

  "Another?" Divine tapped his empty glass. Embellishing the story of his night out with a couple from Annesley, mother and daughter, had left Divine with quite a thirst.

  "No, you're all right. Off home any minute."

  "Come on. Early days yet, just a half."

  Millington flattened his palm across the top of his glass and shook his head.

  "Suit yourself," Divine grinned and let out a low belch to get the barman's attention.

  "Hey up!" he called, 'how 39 about some service? " Divine, anxious not to lose his ^audience, hadn't even got to the bit about the snake yet.

  A cos lettuce and half a cucumber were waiting for him in the salad spinner, a Marks and Spencer lasagne in the microwave. Millington guessed from the spoons on the dining room table there'd be dessert, like as not that Greek yoghurt with honey.

  Madeleine called down from the bedroom to say she'd not be many minutes, wouldn't he like to make them a nice cup of tea? While the kettle was coming to the boil, he wandered off into the garden; this time of the year, all you had to do was turn your back and the bloody grass wanted cutting.

  Trills and worse wafted down from the upstairs window; auditions for the local amateur operatics were in the offing and Millington could sense this year his wife was nurturing ambitions beyond the chorus.

  "What would you think, Graham," Madeleine asked a while later, showing the jar of Hellmann's low-calorie mayonnaise to her salad, 'if I said I were going to try out for the lead? "

  "I'd say good luck to you," said Millington, poking around in his lasagne.

  "You don't think I might be, well, wrong for it? The part, I mean."

  "Depends what it is."

  "The Merry Widow. I'm sure I told you."

  "And that's the part? The one you're after? The merry, er, widow?"

  Madeleine set down her fork and knife and prepared to look hurt.

  "Yes."

  Beneath his moustache, Millington smiled.

  "Not trying to tell me something, are you, love?"

  What? Oh, Graham, no. For heaven's sake! "

  "Not been slipping down to the garden centre for the odd half gallon of weed killer A little arsenic in the salad dressing?"

  "Graham! Don't say things like that. Not even in jest."

  Millington went back to his lasagne, wondering what had happened to good old meat pie and chips.

  "What I meant was," Madeleine began. It was later and she was spooning yoghurt into two bowls.

  "The character, the one I'd like to play, she's meant to be gay…"

  Gay? "

  "Lively. Sort of sparkling, you know. Full of joy." Madeleine paused, scraping stray yoghurt from the back of the spoon on to the edge of the carton.

  "Sexy."

  "Well, that's all right, then."

  "What?"

  "For the part. Sexy."

  Madeleine pushed her bowl away.

  "That's what I mean."

  "What?"

  "It's just a joke."

  "It'snot a joke."

  "It is."

  Millington stood up from his chair, leaned across the table and kissed her on the mouth. When he eased away, some few moments later, there were honey and yoghurt in his moustache and neither he nor Madeleine knew who was the more surprised.

  "I was wondering" Millington said, turning away from a woefully unfunny situation comedy on the TV, 'if you fancied an early night? "

  Across the room, Madeleine blinked across a pile of nine-year-olds' science notebooks. Thirty-seven drawings of a paramecium, all of which made it look like a hairy shoe.

  "All right," she said.

  "Yes, I could. I'll just have to finish these first." Already she was making calculations, dates and figures flying around her head, wondering if 41 maybe it was worth checking her temperature with the bathroom thermometer.

  Chipper, Millington had put on the dressing gown his mother-in-law had bought him the Christmas before last and gone downstairs to make a pot of tea. Never mind Divine and all his bragging, Millington was prepared to wager it didn't get much better than that.

  Madeleine, for whom it had actually been almost as satisfying a ten minutes as her husband had concluded, sat, propped up by a brace of pillows, searching for her place in Lives of the Christian Martyrs and still envincing a slight glow.

  Millington brought the tea back up on a tray; best cups and saucers, green padded cosy, a small plateful of rich butter shortbread and custard creams. He remembered to stop whistling

  "Don't Sleep in the Subway' out on the landing, not wanting to irritate her nerves.

  "Graham," Madeleine said, all smiling reproach, 'we'll get crumbs in the bed. "

  "Not to worry," he winked.

  "Be changing the sheets tomorrow anyway."

  Biting her tongue rather than telling him not to be smutty, Madeleine reached for a shortbread biscuit instead. Millington settled the tray between them, poured milk and tea, set his cup on the bedside table and reached for the book that Resnick had handed him.

  Madeleine's only immediate reaction was to shift a little on to one side, leaning her weight towards the light.

  If anyone had told me. Annie Jones, you'll end up spending your seventh wedding anniversary alone in the front seat of a rented Chevrolet, outside of Jake's at the Lake in Tahoe City, I'd have told them to go jump right in it. The lake, that is. But then if that same anyone. "Graham," Madeleine said, rolling towards him, 'what- ever's got into you? "

  "How'd you mean?"

  "First, you know, and now this."

  This? "

  "You're reading in bed."

  "So?"

  "You never read; not anywhere, never mind in bed."

  "I read that what's his name? – John Grisham."

  "You bought the book when we were on our way back from Devon, read the first two pages, put it in the bag for Christian Aid and saw the film."

  "Two pages is about all I'll read of this as well, if you don't let me get on with it. Try engaging you in conversation once you're stuck into one of these door stops of yours and I get a look fierce enough to excommunicate the Pope."

  "All right, Graham," Madeleine said, giving it just a touch of the long-suffering.

  "I'm sorry. I won't interrupt you again."

  "S'okay, love," Millington said, fidgeting his backside against her hip.

  "Not as if it's anything serious, not like yours. No one's going to set me an exam on it when I've finished." He opened the paperback wide and cracked the spine a little, rendering it easier to handle.

  But then if that same anyone had told me, the day I appeared, fresh out of law school, ready to start work at the offices of Reigler and Reigler, bright and full of promise in my newly acquired dove-grey two-piece with a charcoal stripe, skirt a businesslike three inches below the knee, that I would swap what was clearly destined to be a famous legal career for that of 43 a lowly private eye, I would gleefully have signed committal forms, assigning them to the nearest asylum, and tossed away the key.

  "You know, Annie," my mother had said, the time I plucked up courage to explain, 'you can't really be a private eye, they only have them in the movies. And books. And besides, they're always men. "

  My mom. God bless her, always seemed to have a vested interest in remaining firmly behind the times.

  "Sure, Mom," I said, 'you're right. " And inched back the business card I had proudly given her, stuffing it back down into my wallet.

  There'd be another time.

  Madeleine turned with
a start as Annie Q. Jones hit the floor with a small bump. Millington's eyes were closed and pretty soon, she knew, he would begin to snore. Leaning across him carefully, Madeleine lightly touched her cheek to his and then switched out the lamp.

  The kids outside the amusement arcade at the end of Fletcher Gate stared back at Resnick with flat, hostile eyes. Fifteen, sixteen, younger: high-top trainers, T-shirts, jeans; cans of Coke and cigarettes and something in a polystyrene box from Burger King. Maybe they knew he was a policeman, maybe not; what they saw was someone older than their fathers, another version of their teachers, probation officers, social workers, another heavily built man in a shapeless suit.

  A common incongruity, the windows in front of which they lounged or sat displayed pottery objects no one ever bought shire horses, vases, bug-eyed dogs all steadily gathering dust.

  Resnick turned right towards Goose Gate, pausing for some moments outside Culture Vulture, looking with quiet delight at the display of extravagantly designed shirts he would never wear, black brothel-creeper shoes of the kind he had surreptitiously changed into almost thirty years before, ready to go out and about with his mates.

  Blown-up reproductions of Blue Note record covers hung as a backdrop: Big John Patton, John Coltrane; trumpeter Lee Morgan in his three-buttoned Italian jacket, neat shirt and knit tie; Dexter Gordon, leaning back from the curve of his saxophone and laughing on A Swingin' Affair. Inside Resnick's head a Hammond organ surged and Jimmy Smith set out on

  "Groovin' at Small's', a blues solo Resnick had long savoured, even though the album itself had disappeared from his shelves without trace or reason years before, the way favourite albums were sadly wont to do.

  Crossing into Broad Street, the sound played on against a counterpoint of car horns and discordant voices, underscored by the insistent rap beat that came through the open doors of other hip, expensive clothing stores; only when he stopped outside Broadway's offices and pressed the buzzer did the music disappear.

  "Charlie Resnick," he said, head bent awkwardly towards the intercom.

  "Here to see Miss Hansen."

  Too late, he thought Ms would have been more appropriate, awkward to pronounce as he always found it.

  The door to Mollie's office was open, but Resnick hesitated long enough to catch her eye before walking in.

  The scarlet had been replaced by a plaid shirt which almost matched the one on k. d. lang in the Even Cowgirls Get the Blues poster that was tacked up behind Mollie's desk. The desk itself held neatly labelled files, a stack of bright red plastic trays close to overflowing, several movie books, a battered A-Z map of the city, three purple mugs, each holding a residue of coffee and, at me centre, a desk- size Filofax with annotations in three colours.

  "You found it all right, then?" Mollie said brightly, gesturing for him to sit down.

  Resnick moved two telephone directories and eased himself down into the chair.

  "Coffee? I can send out for cappuccino. You know the new deli at the end of the street?"

  "If it's no trouble."

  Mollie called past him towards the open door.

  "Larry, I don't suppose you've got a minute…"

  He had.

  Mollie drew a sheet of paper from one of the files and slid it towards Resnick. Her desk, he thought, lively and organised as it was, lacked the merest trace of anything 46 purely personal a photograph, a fading birthday card, a Post-it note reminding her to buy more flour, a pint of milk. He wondered where she kept her life and what it was like or if this were all there was.

  "This is Cathy Jordan's itinerary," Mollie was saying. "As you can see, we're trying to make as much use of her as we can. Some of these things…" leaning forward, she pointed with her finger, '. are arranged in tandem with her publisher. And here, and you see, here, she's taking a couple of days out. Stratford, I think, and Scotland.

  Or maybe it's the Lakes. "

  Resnick ran his eyes up and down the page press conference. Radio Nottingham, Radio Trent, Central TV, BBC Radio Four, several book signings, a reading, two panel discussions and her attendance was requested at a civic reception. Also there were the name and address of the hotel where Cathy Jordan would be staying, complete with telephone, fax and room numbers. He would study it all in detail later.

  "Covering all of these isn't going to be easy."

  "Until we've talked to Cathy Jordan, we just don't know." Only slightly mocking, she treated him to her professional smile.

  "One thing we have to remember, she's not just our guest, she's a guest of the city as well."

  "And our responsibility."

  Mollie was still smiling. Resnick folded the list and slid it into his inside pocket.

  Larry turned out to be a ruddy-faced youth of nineteen or twenty, ponytail dangling down beneath the reversed peak of his deep red Washington Redskins cap. The coffee, in white polystyrene cups, was strong and still hot. Mollie took a spoon from one of the used mugs and lifted chocolatey froth towards her mouth with such expectation that, for a moment, Resnick saw more than an efficient young woman whose life was strictly colour-coded.

  "The letters," Mollie said, 'what did you think? I mean, ought we to be taking them seriously or not? "

  Resnick tasted a little more of his coffee. To a point, I don't see we have any choice. After all, Louella Trabert, Anita Mulholland they may just be characters in books, but that doesn't mean the threats aren't real. "

  Mollie smiled, meaning it this time.

  "You've got a good memory for names."

  Resnick knew that it was true. Names and faces. There were others he could have added. Victims. Fact and not fiction. It went with the job, like so much else: a blessing and a curse.

  "You don't like her, do you?"

  "Who?" Mollie sitting back a little, on the defensive.

  "Cathy Jordan."

  "I don't know her."

  "You know her books."

  That's not the same thing. "

  Resnick shrugged.

  "Isn't it? I should have thought they must come close."

  Mollie was fidgeting with her spoon.

  "Anyway, what I think's neither here nor there." She leaned forward again, the beginnings of a gleam across the grey of her eyes. "Unless you think I'm the one who wrote the letters."

  Are you? "

  Mollie nipped a page in her Filofax.

  "If the train's on time, I could ask her to meet you at the hotel. There should be time before the opening reception. Say, a quarter past six?"

  Resnick set down his cup.

  "All right Always assuming nothing crops up more urgent."

  "Good."

  He got to his feet.

  "Here," Mollie said, handing him a glossy black brochure with the Shots in the Dark logo heavily embossed on its cover. This is the press kit There's a programme 48 inside. And a complimentary ticket. It is a crime festival, after all. I should have thought you'd find quite a lot of interest.

  Especially if you like the cinema. "

  For all his good memory, Resnick was having trouble remembering anything he'd seen since The Magnificent Seven. He took the brochure and nodded his thanks.

  "I don't suppose you've had a chance to look at that book yet?"

  Mollie asked when he was at the door.

  "No, afraid not."

  As he walked out along the narrow entryway and on to the street, Resnick noticed a freshening of the wind and when, back at the corner of Hetcher Gate, he tilted his head upwards, he felt the first drops of a summer shower bright upon his face.

  Eleven It wasn't as though Cathy Jordan had never been to England before.

  First, as a visiting student, on exchange from her state college in Kansas City, Kansas, she had been catapulted headlong into the heyday of British hippydom. Carnaby Street and the Beatles and the Stones and her first toke, four girls passing it between them, cramped inside one of the cubicles in the ladies' room at the Roundhouse.

  Could it really have been t
he Crazy World of Arthur Brown out on stage, singing Tire'? Or maybe that was later, underground at UFO?

  She couldn't remember now. The way her world had spun three hundred and sixty degrees beneath her, it was a wonder she remembered anything at all. Her family ringing nightly, after watching television newscasts of the French students setting fire to the barricades outside the Sorborme; youngsters with long hair battling with police outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

  "Are you okay? My God, Catherine, are you sure you're okay? What is going on over there? The whole world seems suddenly to have gone mad." One of her dad's Eddie Pisher albums playing steadfastly away in the background – "Oh! My Papa!"

  "Wish You Were Here."

  Her second visit had been made almost ten years later, when her first husband had been stationed at a US air force base in Lincolnshire and she had opted to join him for six months. In a number of ways, it had not proved such a good idea. From time to time, women old enough to be not 50 just her mother but her grandmother had chained themselves to the base's perimeter fence in protest at the American presence. Sometimes when she was shopping in the nearest town, angelic-faced young men wearing CND badges or brandishing copies of Socialist Worker would spit at her in the street.

  Whatever else, her abiding impression of England was not of cobbled streets, spied through the swirl of a quaint Dickensian pea-souper; nor of some fading thatched roof idyll over which the sun barely set and where the squire and village bobby reigned supreme. England, for Cathy Jordan, represented unrest and disruption, change not only for the country, but for herself.

  Yet looking out now through the smirched window of the Intercity train as it cleaved through the flat softness of the Midlands landscape, she saw only field on field washed by a perpetual grey drizzle cattle standing morose at hedgerows, a single tractor turning ever-widening circles to no purpose, knots of ugly houses huddled at road ends nothing to stir her heart or energise her mind.

  Three days ago it had been Holland, before that Denmark and Sweden, Germany: just another damn book tour, that's what it was. A tour she had begun alone and was ending with her second husband, Frank Cariucci, asleep on the seat alongside her.

  Frank, who had got bored minding his own business back in the States and had flown out to mind hers. Except that he had forgotten what it had become like for the pair of them, on the road together the sterile proximity of hotel rooms and polite, translated conversation.