by Paul Charles
“You mean as in a snob?” Allaway asked.
“Don’t get me wrong. To my face he was always pleasant enough, isn’t that right, Jean Claude?”
“That’s right, Cynthia,” came the reply right on queue. The Frenchman looked happier now they weren’t speaking ill of the dead.
“But I know the look. I know inside he felt he was better than me. He might never have said it, but he felt it. Mind you, it’s my own fault; I shouldn’t have been cleaning for him.”
“Why do you say that, Mrs Cox?” Allaway asked.
“It is very difficult to explain. I’m not very good at putting these things into words. Isn’t that right, Jean Claude?” she said as she stubbed out her butt on the sole of her shoe and flicked it into the garden.
“That’s right, Cynthia,” Jean Claude replied as he went off to fetch the butt.
“Oh, leave it, Jean Claude,” Mrs Cox said dismissively. “Paddy’s not here to complain about it now, is he?”
“What would he have complained about, Mrs Cox?” Irvine asked.
Cynthia Cox studied Irvine.
Irvine wondered what she saw. Of course, he knew what he saw when he looked in the mirror at himself, but he knew she wasn’t seeing the same thing. Would she favour his qualities over his flaws, or vice versa? Was that how the laws of attraction worked? When you look at someone and their qualities - visual, physical and (eventually) spiritual - outweighed their faults, were you attracted to them? And if you saw mostly faults and flaws, were you not attracted to them? If you see someone’s qualities does that mean that you ignore their faults and again vice versa?
In that moment he studied Cynthia just as much as she studied him. What did he see? He saw a woman who dressed more glamorously than her work suggested she could. She was well presented. From what he could tell, she seemed to have a fine figure, but middle-aged women, whom he was quite attracted to, rarely allowed their clothes to go with the flow of their bodies. Irvine often imagined what women he’d just met would look like in the heat of passion. To him this was the moment, the moment when women were totally lost in their pleasure, when they looked their most beautiful. He wasn’t getting a good vibe in this department from Cynthia Cox. Perhaps if he’d met her and she hadn’t betrayed a little of herself from the conversation they’d just had, he might have had a different, more appealing vision.
Her eyes flickered a few times as she broke off their mutual stare. The look in her eye suggested she knew exactly what Irvine had been thinking for those few brief seconds. Perhaps she’d been thinking the same? To Irvine, it looked as if she had seen something that attracted her. He didn’t know what made him think this, maybe it was the fact that she looked like she had a marginally gentler smile for him than previously. More likely he reckoned, it was his ego getting the better of him.
“What would he have complained about?” she repeated still looking at Irvine. “What do men always complain about? It’s simple: men only really complain about how much they feel short-changed in their life, while not accepting that they’ve been short-changed due entirely to their own inabilities. Men only complain about what they think they should have as their God-given right, but they haven’t had the knowledge or suss to get.” She smiled, and while she continued staring at Irvine, she concluded with, “Isn’t that right, Jean Claude?”
Part Two
Camden Town
Chapter Sixteen
Kennedy wandered into the reception area of North Bridge house late in the afternoon. His mind was miles away as he tried his hardest to imagine what Patrick Mylan’s voice might have sounded like.
“Can you at least tell me which detective is working on the case?”
Involuntarily, Kennedy took an extremely deep breath. His brain seemed to be having great difficulty getting the oxygen pumped through his body, to a body in need.
Tim Flynn, the efficient and diplomatic desk sergeant, clocked Kennedy’s discomfort, but outwardly ignored him, thereby allowing him the time to step through the side door unrecognised. Neither policeman, however, had allowed for the intuition of the speaker, who immediately raised her head, like a deer magnetised by a familiar scent.
As the Beatle bob (circa 1966’s Rubber Soul album sleeve shot) swung around, canopying her hair in a movement the Fab Four would have been proud of, ann rea said his name before her eyes had a chance to make contact with him.
“Ms rea has been asking if there are any developments with the death in the swimming pool,” Flynn said slowly and deliberately, giving them both a chance to compose themselves.
Kennedy still hadn’t said her name. He found himself unable to do so.
ann rea looked around the reception area. There was a woman in advanced stages of desperation because she’d managed to lose her small daughter in Camden. If the mother had lost the daughter, the daughter certainly hadn’t lost the mother, because at that moment, the cute-as-a-wee-dote, more than slightly precocious and no more than six-year-old daughter waltzed in and said to her mother, “Mum, whatever am I going to do with you? I hadn’t even finished my hot chocolate. Now come back with me to the York & Albany before the nice waitress takes my cup away. You know how much I love to get my finger in the frothy bits at the bottom of the cup.”
There was a bloodstained fifty-year-old man, in a thirty-year-old body, who looked as if he’d slept in his Paul Smith suit - or had the suit in question been specifically designed to look like that? This character with the black, curly hair was showing his licence and insurance details to Flynn.
Behind them a woman, perhaps in her mid-fifties and impressively dressed, waited patiently. Sgt Flynn kept glaring at her; it came as a surprise to Kennedy that there was a familiarity in both Flynn and her eyes - a familiarity that intrigued Kennedy.
Although not technically really in the queue, a woman with two children was next in line for attention. She was small, about five feet four, a bit overweight. The youngest child was still a baby and sat astride the side of her mother’s tilted waist, secured only by her mum’s left arm, while the other hand was locked in a vice-like grip on the left arm of a grossly embarrassed boy who, if the stubble on his upper lip was anything to go by, was perhaps sixteen. The mother kept saying in a hoarse voice, a little above a whisper, “I’m at my wits end with you, Ryan. I can’t do anything else with you; the police are going to have to help me with you.”
All of this was going on around Kennedy as he drank in the vision that was ann rea.
“I’m sorry, Kennedy. I didn’t want to do this. But there was quite simply nobody else in the office, and my editor insisted that I cover this case.”
She looked absolutely drained, perhaps even a little thinner than at their last meeting, Kennedy thought. Did this have something to do with their breaking up? Was that a good sign? Was he a bad person for considering, not to mention hoping, this was a good sign?
ann rea looked at the mother with two kids, and then back at Kennedy. He nodded to ann rea and raised a single index finger to signal the single minute he needed. He took the little woman and her two kids through to one of the interview rooms, begged forgiveness for one minute’s delay, then returned immediately to the reception area, took ann rea by the arm and led her to the front door.
“Let’s not have this chat here. We both have work to do. Are you okay if we meet in the York & Albany for a coffee in, say, one hour?”
“Okay, Christy,” she mouthed silently to him, giving him a weak but patient smile and disappearing to join the heavily peopled Parkway.
Her scent was still intoxicating him when he sat down in the interview room with the mother and her two kids. The elder boy was now ghostly white.
“Okay,” Kennedy began, “what seems to be the problem here?”
“It’s just, sir, that I’m at my wit’s end with Ryan. His father left me just before the baby was born, and I just can’t do this any more by myself.”
Kennedy waited.
“It’s the crowd he’s runni
ng around with, all their swearing and their slang. When they come around to see him, I haven’t a clue about a single word they are saying. They’re doing drugs, aren’t they, Ryan?”
Kennedy looked into Ryan’s eyes. He was certainly having a bad hair day and trying just a wee bit too hard to make a statement with his Mohawk, but the whites of his eyes were pure white. Even though his body was slumped by the uncertainty of youth, he was not under the influence of anything other than wanting to fit in; to impress.
“Ma! I keep telling you, I don’t do chemicals,” he said in a Simpson’s voice mixed with the Queen’s English.
“Tell you what,” Kennedy said, standing up, “why don’t Ryan and I have a wee chat in here by ourselves, eh?”
The mother sat in open-mouthed shock, looking as if she were now regretting the whole idea.
“I mean ... oh shit, I mean, I’m sorry ... you’re not going to arrest him for doing drugs? I thought you’d just have a chat with him, and talk some sense into him for me. He’s not a bad boy really ...”
“It’s okay. No one is going to be arrested,” Kennedy said as he showed the mother and baby back through the reception area. “Wait here, please, and we’ll be back shortly.
“Ryan, you’ll have your mum worried into an early grave if you’re not careful,” Kennedy began as he sat back down with a boy again. “Where do you live?”
“Up by Chalk Farm tube,” Ryan started, and then added, “sir,” as an obvious afterthought.
“You’re not in the gang, are you?”
“No!” He protested, as wooden and stiff as Pinocchio.
“Ryan, I know it’s not cool to be seen to like your parents.”
“Mother,” Ryan said, correcting the detective. “I only have a mother, and I do like her. At least she stuck with us.”
“Well, then for goodness sake, lad, just make sure you show her you care. You don’t need to embarrass yourself by being overly affectionate in front of your friends. But at least let her know what you just told me.”
Kennedy studied Ryan squirming in the chair as if someone had just spilled boiling water in his red plastic bucket seat.
“What are you interested in? Sports?” Kennedy asked.
“Nah, wasting all that energy, only for losers.”
“Music?”
“No way, I can’t waste money on all those posers.”
“You must listen to some music?”
“I don’t mind Dylan...”
“Great!” Kennedy said, visibly relieved.
“But I mean to say, it’s all just business now isn’t it? But back in your day there was some great music being made.”
“Back in my day, you cheeky little sod. Do I really look that old?”
“Well, your style is still pretty cool, if a bit out there for a cop.”
Maybe all of ann rea’s bugging him to grow his middle parted hair over his ears had hit the mark with at least one person, if not his boss.
“Okay,” Kennedy said, “no sport, no music except Dylan, what about the movies?”
“Yeah, I enjoy films, I always have.”
“Who do you like?”
“Clint Eastwood.”
“As an actor or director?” Kennedy continued with a smile crossing his face.
“As both actually,” Ryan said, allowing himself to break into a smile for the first time, “It’s the writing side that I’m interested in. Eastwood is a great director, but I think a big part of his secret as both an actor and a director is that, he always uses great writers.”
“So, you and your mates are into movies then?”
“Nah my mates aren’t. My mom has always been into films though.”
“So who would you discuss this stuff with?”
“My notebook,” Ryan admitted. “Sad or what?”
“No, not at all,” Kennedy said immediately. “You get a buzz from writing it all down?”
“Yes, I love writing.”
“Then that’s what you should do?”
“Not going to happen.”
“Why not?” Kennedy pushed.
“‘Cause it’s me, Ryan Speys from Chalk Farm.”
“Oh don’t be so stupid,” Kennedy said harshly.
Ryan shook his head furiously in surprise, but he seemed pleased not to be humoured.
“Look Ryan, sorry, but everything is there waiting for you. Listen to me now: no one, but no one, is going to put it on a plate for you. I’m not going to patronise you by saying you’re not like the rest of your peers or any of that old baloney, but if I can tell you one thing, I’d tell you this. If you have a passion for something, a passion for anything, well then that immediately sets you apart from the pack. On top of which, if you’re prepared to work at it, that puts you in a different league altogether. And then…”
“Who knows?” Ryan added sarcastically.
“No Ryan, not, ‘who knows,’ but more… then you’ll at least have a chance of enjoying your life.”
“But all the websites say there are too many writers. They say that the publishers are either closing down or have slush piles of manuscripts bigger than our tower block.”
“Hey, slow down Ryan, slow way down. We all have to crawl before we can walk.”
“Sorry?”
“Okay Ryan. I’ll do something for you, if you do something for me. Okay?”
They both looked at each other for a few seconds.
“Deal?” Kennedy eventually asked, sticking out his hand towards Ryan.
Ryan met Kennedy’s hand with his own mid-table and shook it furiously. “Deal!”
“Okay, I’ve a mate, a friend who is a journalist for the Camden News Journal. I’ll talk to her about getting you part-time work around their office, and in return I want you to become a better son to your mother.”
Ryan studied Kennedy carefully for a considerable time.
“Thank you, sir,” he eventually said. “But what’s in it for you?”
“Sorry?”
“Well, you said you’d do something for me if I did something for you. But it appears to me that both parts of the deal are to my advantage.”
Kennedy nodded to himself slowly. He thought Ryan Speys, of Chalk Farm, with that attitude, at least must have a chance in the world.
“Oh, my friend, the journalist, will think that I have some very cool friends. That will be more than enough for me,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Ryan Speys’ situation and Kennedy’s promise meant that at the very least the first part of his meeting with ann rea over their coffee in the York & Albany turned out to be a whole lot easier than either had expected.
“Of course I can do that. I’d be happy to, Christy,” she said.
“Thanks a million,” Kennedy said, fearing they’d immediately run out of safe ground conversational steam.
It took seventeen minutes of their conversion until either of them was brave enough to open up the recent wound.
“I’m sorry.”
There it was; she’d said it.
“I know you don’t love me. I know it’s over,” he said quietly, steadying himself by lifting his glass of cold, crisp white wine. The words sounded much gentler now than how he’d heard his voice say them when he’d imagined this meeting. Still, it was devastating for him to have to admit.
He and ann rea were sitting at one of the tables outside the York & Albany. It was early evening and the office crowds had disappeared as the restaurant-cum-bar was getting ready for its diners. Straight across the road was North Bridge House, and Kennedy was aware that anyone over there could look out of their windows and see him and ann rea. To the outside world, to all his colleagues, it might look like they were having a cosy wee chat.
“Oh, Christy,” she sobbed, and then made a fuss over searching for a Kleenex in her bag. As usual for ann rea, she had to remove every single item before she found the thing she was looking for. Some of them were presents Kennedy had bought for her: there was the tan leat
her wallet; there was her small pink Sony tape recorder for her interviews; her Beatle key ring; there was the last book he had bought her, a paperback. She fanned through the well-thumbed pages of One Day by David Nicholls.
“I love this,” she said, stopping her unpacking routine for a few moments as she considered the book. “I’m savouring it, allowing myself only a few pages at a time. It’s so sad; please don’t tell me if they get back together again. I suppose for the book to work they have to, but I’m nervous.” And then she dug back into her bag and hoaked around a bit more, producing her notebook with telephone numbers scribbled on the front page, a few pens and more pencils, her indispensable jar of Clarins Cream, some Night Nurse capsules, perhaps their presence betraying another reason for the running nose. Then she got frustrated because her tears were dropping from her almond shaped eyes into her bag.
Something strange had happened to Kennedy when he’d said to ann rea, “I know you don’t love me. I know it’s over.” Up until that point, up until he’d vocally confirmed his worst fear, there had still been a chance something would happen to make it all right again. Now that he’d actually said the words to her, he shivered down to the toes of his blue and pink socks, realising that he’d made it real. Well, it wasn’t that it wasn’t real up to that point. By her lack of attention and no contact, she’d already proved that point, but now he knew he’d stopped hoping for something he just couldn’t have. Of course, it didn’t mean he had finished his walk in the dark forest; it didn’t mean that his pain was over. It did, however, mean that the pain wasn’t going to get any worse. Kennedy imagined that life would never ever feel as bad as this again.
“Christy,” she started as she dried her nose and tried to laugh through the end of her tears, “I’m sorry about this. I know how much you hate public displays of emotion, but I couldn’t really get through this if we weren’t out here. I’ve thought a lot about this, and I suppose the thing I keep coming back to is: if I have to think so much about whether or not I love you, then I obviously…”