Living Proof r-7

by John Harvey

  "Young Divine stormed past me and up the stairs as if you'd given him a good earful. Blotted his copybook again, has he?"

  Millington shook his head.

  "Mark? No, nothing I've said. Just off up the canteen, most like, have a good sulk."

  What about? "

  Millington's best malicious smile slid out from under his moustache like a ferret on the loose.

  "Course of true love, never did run smooth."

  Kevin Naylor took two mugs of tea over from the counter, two sugars in Divine's, one in his own.

  "Here. Drink that." Divine continued glowering at a sausage cob, which sat encircled on his plate by a moat of brown sauce. Two tables away, three uniformed constables and a civilian clerk were arguing the merits of the present Nottinghamshire side.

  "Give this lot a white ball with a bell in it, and they'd not top three figures against a blind school."

  "What's up?" Naylor asked.

  "Lesley?"

  Lesley Bruton was a staff nurse at Queen's Medical Centre. Divine had met her during the course of an enquiry and been immediately attracted. Nothing in itself unusual in that. Divine in the vicinity of an attractive woman was like a water diviner in overdrive. What had been unusual was that, despite her early indifference, he had stuck with it.

  Months it had taken him to wear Lesley Bruton's patience down to the point where she would even talk about going out with him. Divine, week after seemingly thankless week, just chancing to be driving past the entrance to the hospital as she was coming off shift, more often than not still wearing her staff nurse's uniform beneath her outdoor coat. When finally he caught her at a weak moment and she conceded a quick drink, he had surprised her by making her laugh; surprised her more by not making a play for her when he dropped her at the house she shared with two housemen and three other nurses. Though she could see in his eyes it was what he was set on.

  Since then she had put him through a series of arbitrary tests, from keeping him waiting one hour and forty-nine minutes due to an emergency admission, to holding a handful of her damp Kleenex as she sobbed her way through the sentimental bits of Mrs Doubtfire. Last night it had been an ordeal by association: Lesley had organised a leaving do for one of the other nurses on the ward and made it clear to Divine she wanted him along. It had all been fine until he'd lost count of his lagers and graphically propositioned one of Lesley's friends.

  "Jesus!" Naylor said, hearing the story.

  "Don't believe in asking for trouble, do you?"

  "All I said was, one into two, how many times d'you reckon it'd go:' Pillock!"

  Divine dipped his head and savaged the sausage cob. "Wasn't as though I was trying to have it away behind her back."

  "Might've been better if you were."

  "Yes, happen you're right' And then, eyes brightening: " Got to admit, though, can't beat a threesome to get your hormones in an uproar. Remember those sisters whose caravan caught fire out at Strelley. "

  But Naylor had other things on his mind, more compelling than his colleague's compulsive sexual shenanigans. Now that the baby was up and toddling, walking really, baby no longer, Debbie was only making noises about trying for another. As if eighteen months of postnatal depression had never happened. Perhaps blowing what little they'd saved on a trip to Florida would be worth it after all, shift her mind on to a different tack.

  "I hope we're doing enough, Charlie, that's my concern. I'd not be happy coming out of this with egg all over our faces."

  Skelton held the milk carton up questioningly and Resnick merely shook his head; as it was, calling the superintendent's coffee black was asking to be summonsed by the Race Relations Board.

  "If anything should happen to her, you know what I mean."

  Resnick set cup and saucer on the floor beside his chair. "Watching brief, that's what I thought. Public appearances 78 and the like. There's a dinner tonight, just informal, I thought I might go along."

  Skelton looked at Resnick with interest before fidgeting with the papers on his desk.

  "No follow-up on that stabbing in Alfreton Road?"

  Resnick shook his head.

  "We've done a check of the hotels. Nothing.

  Bloke's likely off home, thanking his lucky stars, shooting a line to his wife about where the scar came from. "

  The photograph of Skelton's wife, Resnick noticed, had still not found its way back on to his desk.

  "Nothing else I should know about?" the superintendent asked.

  "Advisory meeting's tomorrow."

  "Maybe just get some advice," Resnick said.

  "Like how are we supposed to increase the percentage of successful investigations when there's a ban on overtime."

  "Remember the old story, Charlie," Skelton said, 'the one about the rabbit and the hat. "

  Sixteen Lynn had no trouble recognising Cathy Jordan. Red hair tied back with green ribbon, blue denim shirt, pale cord three-quarter skirt, tan boots, she stood, relaxed, alongside a table on which copies of her books had been piled high. A glass of red wine in her hand, she was chatting amiably to a pleasant-faced man in a dark suit whom Lynn took to be the Waterstone's manager. There were quite a few people already hovering in the general area of the table, glancing almost surreptitiously in the author's direction, waiting for the official business to begin.

  Lynn stood by this month's best-sellers, making sure she had the layout of the shop clear in her mind: the main doors onto Bridlesmith Gate were at her back, a second entrance, from the foot of Bottle Lane, was in the corner of the travel section, several steps up to her left; around the corner at the far end, she remembered, were children's books and what? gardening? something like that, yes, gardening. Lynn moved through the steadily growing crowd and introduced herself.

  Cathy Jordan took half a step back to look at her Lynn with her newly short hair almost flat on her head, navy cotton jacket and dark skirt, black low-heeled shoes.

  "Resnick, you work with him?"

  "Inspector Resnick, yes, that's right."

  "Sent you along to hold my hand."

  "Not exactly."

  A line was beginning to form now, curving its way back between the other tables; those at the front coughing a 80 little nervously, wondering how it was Lynn had somehow got in before them.

  "You're not armed or anything?"

  Lynn shook her head.

  "Should I be?"

  "God, I hope not' Cathy Jordan smiled.

  "Just, if someone's standing behind my back with a gun, I like to know."

  "Don't worry," Lynn said.

  "I probably won't be at your back at all."

  "Prefer to merge into the crowd, huh?"

  "Something like that."

  "Good." Still smiling.

  "Good." And, turning back towards the manager: "Shall we get to it?"

  Derek Neighbour had made sure of getting there in plenty of time.

  Parking, he knew to his cost, was always a problem after mid-morning, so he had left his home in Newark shortly after eight, called in briefly at the antique shop he ran with his partner, Philip, and arrived in plenty of time to find a space on the third floor of the Fletcher Gate multi-storey. From there it was only a short walk down the steps on to King John's Chambers and Water- stone's was just to the right which was as well, considering the weight of what he was carrying.

  Derek hadn't discovered Cathy Jordan until Shallow Grave, which, of course, was her fourth, the fourth Annie Q. Jones, and, even then, he had almost never read it at all. For at least six weeks it had lain on the nice Victorian wash-stand below the bedroom window, six weeks when Philip would say to him,

  "Have you read that book yet?" and he would reply,

  "Well, no, not exactly. But I'm getting around to it."

  What Derek normally liked was what the Americans, who had to invent a category for everything, called "Cosies'. Old-fashioned would have been another way of putting it, but then, what was wrong with old-fashioned?

  C
raftsmanship, attention to detail, control. Dorothy Bird- well, now, she had long been one of Derek's favourites.

  But Philip could be persuasive.

  "Cathy Jordan, I do think you'd like her. She's good. The genuine article."

  Since some of Philip's bedtime reading was, well, dubious to say the least, Derek had remained noncommittal. Till, one day, or to be precise, two, he had been laid up in bed with flu. The Patricia Moyes he was rereading for the third time had come to its same, careful ending; Dorothy Birdwell had pottered around in the East Anglian fog to disappointingly little purpose, and there were just so many times you could reread the letters page of the Telegraph.

  So, propped up on his pillows and with some Beechams and hot lemon close to hand, he had started Shallow Grave: The first time I saw Anita Mulholland she was a happy twelve-year-old with braces on her teeth and a smile that would have knocked out the angels; next time I saw her was a year later, to the day, and she was dead.

  The voice, Annie's voice, had gripped him from that first sentence and hadn't let him go. The story, oh, the story was fine, perfectly fine, though in truth, there was little about it that was particularly original. But there were moments when Derek's skin had tightened about him, moments when the cold of shared fear slid along the backs of his already feverish legs and arms. And there was the disgust and shock of what had happened to that young girl. But without the voice, the sure, buttonholing quality of the voice, none of the rest would have been enough.

  He finished Shallow Grave and, when he had recovered, set out to acquire the others. Philip had copies of the book that preceded it.

  Sleeping Fools Lie, and the one which came after it. Dead Weight. But now Derek had 82 been well and truly bitten, he wanted to read all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries from the beginning. The second, Uneasy Prey, he finally found in an Any two for 50p box on the market, dog-eared and marmalade-stained, but, as far as he could see, intact. Angels at Rest, the first of the series, proved more difficult. It had been brought out in paperback in Britain by a firm that had rapidly gone into liquidation, and had been published in hardback in a small edition intended primarily for libraries. Derek had finally tracked down a copy through the Books Wanted section of Philip's Guardian.

  Derek, of course, was more than a mere reader: he was a collector with a collector's mentality. Completism was his unquestioned faith.

  Inside the heavy cardboard box he was carrying were British editions of all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries, five American paperbacks, American first-edition hardbacks the 'true' firsts of everything except Angels at Rest, and, just for fun, a few assorted foreign-language versions he had picked up here and there – German, French, Danish, South Korean, Taiwanese.

  A complete English-language set, except that it wasn't, to Derek's eternal chagrin, quite complete. Rumour had it that a mystery bookstore outside Phoenix had a first edition of Angels at Rest for sale at six hundred and fifty dollars, US, but it had proved sadly untrue.

  Derek was still searching.

  He turned his back towards the glass door into Water- stone' s and eased it open, the box held tight in front of him on aching arms. The queue at the signing table was long, but that didn't matter in the least If Derek only reached Cathy Jordan at the end of her session, so much the better, there would be more time to chat.

  Lynn refused the glass of wine which the manager offered her and opted for mineral water instead, sipping it now 83 from a vantage point by the side wall, close to the books on poetry and theatre. She admired the way Cathy Jordan dealt with her fans; a smile for each one, not forced but seeming genuine, to each she offered a palatable slice of conversation; copies of her books she signed in black ink with a nourish, using a fat Mont Blanc pen she carried especially for the purpose: For Emily from Annie Q. amp; me! Cathy Jordan The C was round and deep enough to contain, almost, the rest of her first name; the J swooped towards the bottom of the title page before sweeping through its final curve.

  "Well," Cathy Jordan said, 'it's good to meet you, too. " Her voice, American, slightly nasal, sounded overlarge within the confines of the store.

  Lynn had decided she would buy a copy of Dead Weight for herself, but wouldn't bother, probably, to get it signed. The line was dwindling to an end: a youngish man wearing a black Anthrax T-shirt and with two gold rings in his right ear, one immediately above the other, was having his book signed now, and behind him two women waited together, deep in conversation. The taller of the two was wearing a brightly coloured ethnic dress, a green rucksack slung casually over one shoulder; her companion, several years younger, wore a black shirt over blue jeans, one hand resting on the leather shoulder bag slung from her shoulder. Behind them another man, older, with gingery hair and glasses, stood with an open cardboard box of books at his feet; and finally, a fortyish woman with a Warehouse carrier bag in one hand and a small child, already beginning to grizzle, clinging to the other.

  Lynn glanced at her watch; she thought, I can be back at the station by half past two.

  The man in the T-shirt moved away and the taller of the women swung the rucksack from her shoulder. The boy at the back of the queue had started to cry and his mother gave his arm a tug, causing him to cry louder. A couple of fourteen-year-olds, arms loose around each other's limber bodies, passed carelessly in front of where Lynn was standing.

  "We've read all of your books," the woman in black was saying.

  "They really made an impression."

  "And since it's your first visit," her friend said excitedly, 'we've brought something for you. "

  "Well, that's real nice," Cathy Jordan said, giving it her best smile.

  The woman raised the rucksack high and swung it towards the table: what was inside was a plastic container and what was inside that was blood. A lot of blood. It poured over Cathy Jordan's face and hair and down her front, splashing across what was left of the piles of books.

  "We thought," one of the women was shouting, 'you'd like to know what it was like. "

  Lynn pushed the two youths aside and in four paces she was at Cathy Jordan's side; Cathy standing, arms outstretched, blue of her shirt adrift in blood.

  "Are you all right?"

  "What the hell do you think?"

  On his knees, Derek Neighbour was lifting books from their box as deftly and carefully as he could; those that had been lying on top were thickly spotted and stained.

  Lynn part-swerved round him, part-vaulted over him; the mother with the Warehouse bag dragged her screaming child towards her and Lynn cannoned into the shelves avoiding him. Ahead of her she could see the two women pushing their way through the doors on to the street.

  "Make way!" she called.

  "Make way, police!"

  Nobody moved.

  Lynn ran between them, failing to notice the table opposite the cash desk until she struck it hard, somewhere between hip and thigh, her cry lost in the crash of books against the floor.

  Stop! "

  They were running full-pelt down the middle of St Peter's Gate, ignoring the traffic, both pavements clogged with lunchtime shoppers, grazing on their take away burgers or baked potatoes.

  Police! "

  Halfway down, they separated: the one in black continuing on, actually gaining speed, the woman in the dress dodging her way into the arcade of fashionable shops that led towards the square.

  Lynn ducked into the narrow alley higher up and emerged on to Cheapside before the woman was in sight; for a moment, Lynn thought she might have doubled back, but no, there she was, pushing between a knot of people outside Saxone's window.

  Right! " Lynn yelled, catching hold of the collar of the woman's dress.

  "That's it!"

  The dress ripped and, stumbling, the woman, all but bare-chested, fell across the kerb by the pedestrian crossing. A green double-decker bus pulled up not so far short of where she was sprawling.

  Lynn seized one of the woman's arms and yanked her back on to the pavement; leaning over her, a c
rowd gathering quickly round, she drew out her warrant card and held it high in the air.

  "I'm a police officer and I'm placing you under arrest. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say may be given in evidence."

  Someone at the back of the crowd began a slow hand clap and several more jeered; the majority started to drift away. On the ground, without bothering to pull the 86 material of her dress around her, the woman began to laugh.

  Seventeen

  "Well, I suppose," Marius said, pausing by the bathroom door, 'you could say that some kind of natural justice has been done. "

  The door was open just a crack and he could smell the sweet, urine-like smell of baby powder, the kind with which Dorothy liked to dust herself after her bath. At first, Marius had found it almost repellent, but now he savoured it along with almost everything else the small and delicate ways in which she kept her body sweet to the touch.

  "Marius, dear. Hand me my dressing gown, would you?"

  Quilted, pink, it slid around her shoulders like satin over old silk.

  "Tea's ready," Marius said.

  "And I found some more of those nice little cakes. The butterfly ones with the cream."

  Stepping out into the main room of their small suite, Dorothy Birdwell smiled her thin-mouthed smile.

  "Marius, you spoil me. You really do."

  "Not really," he replied, smiling back. Not nearly enough, he thought.

  "Now, dear," said Dorothy, settling carefully into a high-arched chair.

  "I want you to tell me all about what happened in the bookshop. And I don't want you to miss out a single thing."

  "Will you please state your name?" Lynn asked. "For the record."

  88 "Vivienne Plant."

  "And your address?"

  "Hat seven, Ancaster Court, Baimbridge Road, Map- perley."

  Like all of the interview rooms at the police station, this was small and airless and hung over with the unmistakable pall of stale cigarette smoke. Vivienne Plant, with her bright dress and upright posture, the after-image of a sneer on her well-tended middle-class face, looked impressively out of place.