Living Proof r-7

by John Harvey

  Neither was Ben Riley, who, to Resnick's continuing regret, had relocated to America some ten years ago. He doubted whether Sarah Prentiss visited the library much either, now that she was Sarah something else, and living in Northamptonshire with a husband, kids, and a couple of cars. He had learned this from Ben, with whom she had, for some years. "exchanged the obligatory Christmas cards.

  Why was Resnick thinking of all this?

  Betty Carter was singing

  "Body and Soul' on the car stereo as he drove, mingling the words and tune with those of a second, similar song, so that the final, climactic chorus seemed forever delayed, but that wasn't it. Not exactly. More confusing still, the words of yet another song were worrying away at some part of Resnick's mind.

  "Send in the Clowns."

  He had heard Betty Carter live just once. A rare trip to London, a weekend in early spring, and she had been at Ronnie Scott's. A striking black woman, not beautiful, not young; warm and confident, good-humoured, talking to the audience between numbers with that slight show- business bonhomie that set Resnick's teeth painfully on edge. But when she sang. He remembered

  "But Beautiful',

  "What's New?" the way she would move around the stage with the microphone, her body bending to the shapes of the words with a combination of feeling and control that was unsurpassable.

  Scott himself, nose like a hawk and gimlet-eyed, his sixty-odd years showing only where the skin hung thinly at his neck, had been leading his quartet through the support slots on the same evening. Tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums. After several rousing numbers, Scott had played a two-chorus version of Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns', almost straight, bass and drums dropping out, the tone of his saxophone ravishing and hard, one of the best ballad performances Resnick had 162 ever heard, silencing the club and striking him straight to the heart.

  Ben Riley's heart.

  Resnick had never known his friend fall for any woman the way he had fallen for Sarah.

  "Don't know what she sees in me, Charlie, but thank Christ that she does!" And soon after,

  "Not going to believe this, Charlie, but I think we're going to do it. You know, yes, tie the knot." During the preparations for the wedding, little by little, Resnick had sensed Sarah withdrawing; the way she would react sometimes when he saw them together, snatches of conversation that were reported back. He tried to say something about it once and it was the first and only time Ben had come close to hitting him. Three weeks before the ceremony, Sarah had told Ben there was somebody else.

  When Ben had scraped himself back off the ground days later, he sent her flowers and a telegram / guess they sent in the clowns a line from the song, which was popular at the time. With Sarah, certainly.

  She had bought Ben a record of it, Judy Collins.

  He didn't know her response, whether she laughed or cried. He wouldn't talk to Resnick about her for months, years, wouldn't hear her name; then, one day, Ben said she had phoned him, from nowhere, out of the blue. Almost, he had failed to recognise the voice and the name; of course, it was no longer the same. Feeling low, lonely the way only marriage can make you feel, she had got to thinking about him. What he was doing. Where he was. They met once on a country road and she held his hand but turned aside from his kiss; there were things she wasn't telling him about the marriage, she made that clear, a tiny hook that bit deep. Then came the Christmas cards: With love from Sarah and family. The last few were returned to sender: Ben Riley had gone to the States.

  Why was Resnick thinking of all this now?

  She was out in the garden and hadn't heard the bell. Resnick let himself in through the side gate and walked along the gravel path.

  Honeysuckle climbed the wall. She was bending over one of the flower-beds, using a tool Resnick recognised but couldn't have named, to lever out weeds. As she straightened, she put her hand, no more than a moment, against the small of her back.

  "I didn't think you'd recognised me, Charlie," Sarah Farleigh said.

  "I hadn't' She smiled at the ground.

  "When did you realise?"

  "Today. Oh, no more than an hour ago."

  She paused in pulling off her rubber gloves to look at him, asking the question with her eyes.

  "I don't know," he said.

  "I mean, exactly. It came to me suddenly, I don't know why."

  "Why don't we go inside?" Sarah said.

  "It's getting cold." This time the smile was fuller, more real, and for the first time he saw her as she had been, the woman with whom Ben Riley had fallen in love.

  The interior of the house was not ostentatious, but neat. Comfortable furniture, wallpaper Resnick would have guessed came from Laura Ashley, not an Aga but something similar dominating the broad, flagstoned kitchen where they now stood.

  "Do you really want tea?"

  "Coffee?"

  "All right," she set the kettle to boil, balanced coffee filters over two green Apiico porcelain cups, and reached the sherry bottle down from between glass jars of puy lentils and flageolet beans. Resnick shook his head and she poured a good measure for herself, tilted the glass and poured again.

  "You'll think I'm becoming an alcoholic," she smiled.

  "No."

  Her hair was thick the way it had always been, streaked now with grey. The skin around her eyes was red from too much crying, but the eyes themselves were green, the green of slate that has stood fresh in the rain, and bright. Her wrists were thin, but strong, and her calves and ankles fleshed out and solid. She had aged more heavily, more hastily than Resnick had ever imagined she would.

  "Will you come to Peter's funeral, Charlie?"

  He took a first sip of his coffee, surprised.

  "Isn't that what they always do, Morse and the others? I've watched them on television, standing in the background at their victims' funerals, looking for suspects among the guests."

  "I don't think that would be appropriate," Resnick said. "Not in this case." He looked into her eyes.

  "But, yes, if that's what you want.

  Yes, I'll be pleased to come. "

  "Thank you," she said. And then,

  "Peter has family, of course, had, but I can't say we ever really got on."

  "You have children, though." He had seen their photographs in the hallway and on the mantelpiece in the living room when they had walked past "Yes, three."

  All grown up? "

  "All grown."

  Sarah took her sherry to the window; it was darkening steadily outside and somewhere was getting rain.

  "Do you ever hear from him at all?"

  Ben? "

  " Yes. "

  "Not for a while. He's in America, you…"

  "Yes, I know. Montana, isn't it? Nebraska? One of those western states."

  "Maine, he moved to Maine."

  "Married?"

  "There's someone, yes."

  Children? "

  Yes, there's a child. A boy. I. "

  "Charlie, I don't want to know." There were tears in her eyes, but she was damned if she was going to cry. There had been crying enough lately and with good reason. What was the point of crying over impossibilities? Spilt milk gone sour.

  "Sarah, what happened to your husband, I couldn't be more sorry."

  "Thank you. I know." She smiled again, a generous, smile, almost a laugh.

  "You always were a sympathetic man." Turning, she rinsed the sherry glass beneath the tap. "Maybe I should have married you."

  "I don't think so."

  She did laugh then.

  "No, neither do I. Why don't we sit for a while in the other room? Have you got time, before you need to be getting back?"

  Resnick got to his feet.

  "A little, yes."

  They sat in armchairs on either side of an open fireplace which had a centre piece of dried flowers in the grate. The curtains, full and dark and with a recurring motif of leaves, were closed. There was one photograph of Peter, arm around one of his daughters, laughi
ng into the camera. The others were of the children, none of Sarah herself.

  On the polished coffee table lay copies of Good Housekeeping and "Vanity Fair, several paperback books.

  "Did you marry, Charlie?"

  "Uh-hum."

  "Elaine, is that what she was called?"

  Resnick nodded.

  "Yes." Christ, he didn't want to talk about this.

  "What happened, Charlie?"

  "We divorced."

  "For better or worse."

  "Something like that' " Which was it for you? " Sarah asked.

  166 "Oh, worse. I suppose it was worse."

  "And now? Have you come to terms with it now?"

  "I think so."

  "And you're still in touch?"

  "Not really, no."

  "A shame. But, then, I suppose it's better that way."

  He didn't answer immediately.

  "It is for me."

  Sarah drank more of the gin and tonic that had replaced the sherry.

  "You think I treated him badly, don't you? Your friend, Ben. What I did, the way I behaved, you think it was pretty inexcusable."

  Resnick shook his head.

  "No. I don't think that. I think, at the time, I was sorry he was so hurt. But, you know, my job, it's hard to sit in judgement about what people do."

  "You surprise me. Seeing what you see, I should have thought you did that all the time. Pass judgement."

  "I know. Only that doesn't seem to be the way it works. What happens, most of the time anyway, whatever it is someone's done, somehow you come to understand. No way you could talk to them, else." Resnick looked across at her.

  "At some point in our lives, we're all capable of anything. I suppose that's what you learn most."

  Sarah sipped her drink.

  "You don't know any more yet," she said, 'about what happened to Peter? I mean, why or. "

  "Not really, although…" He stopped, uncertain, and she leaned forward a little, waiting for him to carry on. "There's a chance, just a chance, mind, we might have a lead, something to go on."

  Sarah set down her glass.

  "It's funny, isn't it? These days, you think, oh, people fooling around. Prostitution. Casual sex. Aids, that's what leaps to mind, isn't it? Aids, that's the danger. Not… not this."

  "I think," Resnick said, 'if you're going to be okay, I ought to be moving. "

  "Yes, of course, fine. You don't have to worry about me. I'm not about to do anything stupid."

  "I didn't imagine you would."

  She walked with him to the door.

  "The funeral…"

  "You'll let me know."

  "Of course."

  He was almost at the car, when she called him back. "That girl, the one who was here with you the other day."

  "DC Kellogg. Lynn."

  "She's in love with you, you know."

  "Thought you weren't coming," Divine said, as Naylor materialised through the crowd. He had nabbed a seat to the side of the pub, close against the windows that looked out over the trees and sloping shadows of the park. Quiet half-hour with Sharon Gamett, who knew what might develop? But not now.

  "Here," he said, trying not to sound too grudging.

  "You can just about squeeze in here."

  Naylor set down his own pint and the refill he had bought for Divine, and sat next to a youth in a cotton shirt with sleeves rolled back, who grudgingly made space for him.

  "Sort out all the under-age drinkers amongst this lot," Naylor said.

  "Have the place to ourselves."

  "Aye, well. Better things to do, eh?"

  "Happen."

  "How was Canada's feller-made-good?"

  "Prick of the first water."

  Divine laughed.

  "Maybe should've brought him along. There's women here, not seen a good shagging since Forest last won bloody Cup."

  Naylor nodded absent-mindedly and drank.

  "Hey up, though. Here we go. There's one I'd not mind putting it to myself."

  Dressed in a black roll-neck, leather jacket and blue- black jeans, Sharon Gamett was making her way past the raised platform of the stage, where a tubby retread of Eiton John was fiddling with the wiring of the electric piano and preparing to excite the crowd with a despairing version of "Crocodile Rock*.

  "What are you having?" Divine said, out of his seat and reaching for his wallet.

  "A headache. I've heard this bloke before. What say we drink up and leave?"

  A few minutes later they were walking along Arboretum Street and heading for Balmoral Road, a narrow cut-through that would take them to the Goose Fair site and the Forest Recreation Ground.

  "This tart we're looking for," Divine said, 'how well d'you know her? "

  "Doris? Like I say, I've not been here long enough to know the girls well, but, yes, I've had words with her once or twice."

  And? "

  "She's all right. Straightforward enough. Honest."

  Honest? "

  "Yes. She doesn't make any bones about what she does. Doesn't make a fuss if she's nicked."

  "Back on the street the next night, probably carrying a dose of Aids."

  Sharon stopped walking. They were on the corner of Forest Road East, the cemetery that took up one corner of the recreation ground, off to their right. Immediately before them, open space dropped to near darkness and, beyond that, the lights of the terraced houses of Forest Fields.

  "You don't know that," Sharon said.

  "And if she had, who gave it to her, answer me that?"

  A needle? " Kevin Naylor said.

  I don't reckon Doris does drugs," said Sharon. Divine laughed, the sound carrying on the wind. Makes her the only scrubber round here who doesn't."

  Doris Duke was short as Sharon was tall. They finally tracked her down some forty minutes later, climbing out 170 of a Mazda saloon in four-inch heels that still left her well below average in height. She was wearing a pink T-shirt that stopped between belly button and ribs, a waist-length nylon jacket, midnight blue, and a skirt which, when she backed out of the car, left little to the imagination. A small handbag hung from one shoulder by a gold chain.

  "Doris."

  She almost smiled when she saw it was Sharon; a smile that fast turned sour when she saw the two men in her wake.

  "Doris, we'd like to talk."

  "Oh, we would, would we?"

  Divine wanted to slap the sneer from her face for a start.

  "Yes, about your friend."

  "Which friend's that, then?"

  "Marlene."

  No. "

  "Marlene Kinoulton. Don't let on you don't know who I mean."

  "I know who you mean, all right. Just she in't no friend of mine."

  "Since when?"

  "Since she legged it with fifty quid she owed me."

  "And when was that, Doris?"

  "Couple of days back."

  "And the fifty pounds?"

  "Lent it her, didn't I? Slag never give it me back."

  "Why did she want the money?" Divine asked.

  "I don't know, do I? Never asked."

  "Come on, expect us to believe you handed it over, just like that?"

  "I don't give a toss whether you believe it or not. So happens it's the truth. One of your mates says they're short, you don't go through some sodding inquisition, right? If you've got it, you hand it over."

  Divine wasn't so sure.

  "Even if it's fifty pounds?" Naylor asked.

  Doris Duke laughed.

  "Fifty? What's fifty quid? I can thumb down the next punter comes along here, earn that in twenty minutes."

  "Then why," said Sharon, 'are you so steamed up about it? "

  "Christ, you don't understand anything, do you? It's the principle of the sodding thing."

  They went to sit in Sharon's car to talk, Doris insisting that they drive well clear of the Forest first.

  "Certain people see me sitting with you lot, they'd be less than well pleased
." Doris had grown up in the same part of east London that Sharon had lived in before striking out for the provinces, and because of that, and the fact that Sharon was clearly different the Vice Squad wasn't exactly overflowing with blacks Doris felt that, underneath it all, Sharon was all right.

  But now it wasn't Sharon asking die questions.

  "And you last saw Marlene when?" Divine said.

  "I told you, Tuesday."

  "The day you lent her the money?"

  "Yes."

  "Lunchtime. In the Queen."

  "Jesus, yes."

  "All right, Doris," Naylor said, 'we only want to be sure we've got It right' "Oh, yes, I know," sarcasm edging her voice.

  "Don't want to put words into your mouth."

  Or anything else. Divine thought. Under the car's interior light, Doris's make-up was thick enough to chip and there was the dear residue of a bruise, dark above her left eye.

  "And she didn't say anything about her plans? Taking off somewhere for a few days? We know she used to work 172 in Sheffield and Derby. That wasn't why she wanted the money? For the fare?"

  "Look," Doris said, her voice taking on the pained expression people reserve for children, the old or the very deaf,

  "I don't know where she is. Don't even know where she's been. We were mates, yes, but we never lived out of one another's pockets. Sometimes she'll be off somewhere, weeks at a time; I don't see her around and then I do.

  This business, you don't ask too many questions. And the fifty. "

  She pulled open the ashtray beside the dashboard and stubbed out her cigarette. "… Most likely she owed someone. Either that or she just fancied going into town, buying herself a new dress."