by Paul Charles
“She said she’d been dying to meet me, so Patrick must have liked her, because he never usually discussed his… his concubines. She was very, very nice, full of fire. I think we would have gotten on well; we shared a similar sense of humour. She was either dashing off genuinely or Patrick had warned her not to hang around, because she left soon after I arrived, but she acted like she didn’t want to leave. I think Patrick liked her a lot. I did wonder if he was considering dating her. I knew he liked her in that way.”
“How did you know?” Kennedy asked.
“That night in bed, Patrick was just different.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kennedy and Coles left Simmons to plan the remainder of her life and got into Coles’ car without saying a word.
He wondered if he should offer to take her out for a meal. She had implied to Chloe Simmons that she had got all dressed up to see him, but it might seem chauvinistic if he just assumed they were going to go back to her place, have a few glasses of wine… He thought that she’d probably heard from someone in North Bridge House that he’d split up with ann rea. She couldn’t be aware of Sharenna Chada, for no one was aware of her. He chastised himself when he thought of Miss Chada and how good she’d been for him in more ways than one. But they weren’t exactly dating in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. In fact they weren’t dating under any interpretation of the word.
DI Anne Coles made the decision for him.
“I was thinking we should go for a drink.”
“That sounds great,” Kennedy agreed quickly.
It was 18.40 when they reached the Prince of Wales, which was quite close to the station where she’d picked him up. He wondered if it was either the local police hang-out or, perhaps, close to her home.
Kennedy went to the bar to get their drinks and Coles went off, “to find a quiet corner.”
She didn’t want to kiss in a public place, did she? As he looked over he saw she was touching up her make-up. He was feeling about ten feet tall. He felt slightly guilty for not having thought much about Coles after she’d left North Bridge House, but since then she had blossomed into this amazing woman and… and she still seemed interested in him and… he was single - well, apart from the potentially complicated relationship with Sharenna. As the barman poured two glasses of Chardonnay, Kennedy wondered again what exactly his relationship with Sharenna Chada was. After tonight, would he need to stop seeing her socially? He knew he didn’t want to stop seeing her professionally, so effective was her work as a osteopath. He didn’t really want to stop seeing her socially either. Kennedy wondered if he should try and continue to see both. He’d never ever cheated on a girl or woman in his life…but …he’d just been dumped… and…
The barman put the two glasses of wine on the counter. Kennedy turned and started to walk over to Coles. He suddenly realised that, in all of the scenarios, he’d been considering her as a sex object, and he realised they were going to talk about… What were they going to talk about?
She was looking at him now as he crossed the room. She was smiling her vulnerable smile. She looked so beautiful. Her hair was puffed up in a Farrah Fawcet type of healthy wild mane. She’d found them a corner booth, and she uncrossed her legs and moved them to one side to make room for him to take the seat beside her. As she did so, she unintentionally flashed a bit of leg and, in that one split second, Kennedy realised exactly why Coles had whispered to Simmons that she was aware of the joys of wearing silk stockings. Now it was Kennedy’s turn to feel a shudder go through his entire body.
He chastised himself for not being considerate enough to check if Anne Coles had wanted some bar food. Was he in too big a hurry? Was his haste shared by Anne Coles?
Then circumstances took over, and events unfolded much hastier than Kennedy had ever dreamt possible.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They’d no sooner clinked glasses than she said, “Ah, here he is, a bit earlier than I expected. Christy, I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend, William Campbell. Bill, this is a former colleague of mine, Christy Kennedy.”
Kennedy turned to see a mountain of a man, “her Gentle Giant” is actually what she called him. And wasn’t the Gentle Giant just as keen to impart news? He was “bursting to tell anyone who’d listen.”
“Has she told you yet?” he said, with all the enthusiasm Kennedy had being experiencing up a minute ago. “She’s agreed to do me the honour of becoming my wife.”
She protested that she and Kennedy hadn’t had time to discuss anything yet, least of all her wedding news.
It just makes you sick, doesn’t it? Kennedy thought to himself. It all went downhill very quickly from there. Her Gentle Giant hadn’t time for a drink; they needed to go; he’d booked them in for a celebratory engagement dinner over in Kingston, “and we had better get our skates on.” “That’s why I thought it was best we had our drink in here,” she said to Kennedy, ninety-three seconds later, as she and the Gentle Giant speedily departed the Prince of Wales. “It’s closer to the station, and of course you still don’t drive. Must rush, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
On the slow train back to Camden via Waterloo, Kennedy reflected on happier times. Times like just over an hour ago, when he and Chloe Simmons, looking like a mysterious exotic goddess, and DI Anne Coles, looking like a dead ringer for Scarlett Johansson, were sitting together, chatting happily away about Simmons’ willingness to be groomed as a sex slave for the recently departed Patrick Mylan.
To look at, Anne Coles and Chloe Simmons, while totally different, were to Kennedy both ten out of ten. Kennedy wondered if someone were only a true ten if you never experienced her fully. As Kennedy recalled the attractiveness and charm that were Coles and Simmons, he thought about what attracts a man to a woman. Perhaps the sexual act is not the most important part of the captivating dance. What then was? Surely it couldn’t be something so fickle as love? Equally he knew he had been severely prejudiced by ann rea’s (another, but again different ten) dumping him.
Even if he could ever figure out the most important part of the dance, then came the really big question: what was the most important part of the dance from the woman’s side? He knew how much he’d been attracted to ann rea and how important she had felt it was to keep the air of mystery alive in their relationship by not taking each other for granted, physically speaking. But could that really just have been her knowing he wasn’t really the man for her, while, at the same time, wanting to prolong the relationship for as long as possible because she “liked” him or was “fond” of him? He wondered what it meant for a female to acknowledge to herself that her partner had less than the perfect body, and to accept that her partner was not, in fact, her ideal lover.
Men made such a fuss over the look of a woman. And why wouldn’t they? Kennedy believed there was nothing finer to behold. But what truly defines the perfect body for someone? Has it anything to do with the age of the person who is observing? Or could it have more to do with the person who is being observed? Kennedy would admit to preferring his lover to look like all their bits - legs, arms, neck (he did love an elegant décolleté), bum, breasts, etc - are all separate, rather than part of a single body mass. But what must it feel like, to have to admit to yourself that your partner has less than the perfect body? Could that have been the deciding factor for ann rea? Had she ever, he wondered, though, Yep, I quite like Kennedy; yes I think he’s an okay guy, but the bottom line is that he just doesn’t turn me on any more. Kennedy comforted himself that ann rea had never even hinted at that. While making love, ann rea looked like the most beautiful animal in the world, but she always looked like she was totally lost in her own pleasure. Miss Chada, on the other hand, looked as if she were somewhat conscious of his pleasure while, at the same time, she also looked as if she were never really there.
His vanity had led him to assume Anne Coles was still attracted to him, that he was “the special one” she had told Simmons she was meeting later - the one she
had taken care and attention over her dress for. But then the Gentle Giant had showed up.
Kennedy was convinced there was some kind of magic in the air as they left Simmons’ apartment, and there had been. The only problem was that the magic just hadn’t been for him.
***
By the time he got back to Primrose Hill, it had just turned nine o’clock. For the first time since he left Wimbledon, he didn’t regret not being detained there, because there sitting waiting for him in her car outside his house in Rothwell Street was Sharenna Chada. She seemed happy to see him, although it was hard to tell because she never smiled a lot.
He went to the car, opened the door, sat in beside her and said, “Brilliant to see you.”
“You’re not cross I just turned up?” she said tentatively.
“The opposite in fact.”
“But you don’t want me to come into your house?” she said, nodding in the direction of his door.
“Sorry?” he replied a little confused. “Oh, me sitting here… no, I though it might be nice if I took you out for dinner. Maybe you could show me that amazing Indian restaurant our food came from last Saturday… only if you want to, of course.”
“I would like nothing more… well maybe that’s not quite true but perhaps we can discuss that later.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At the same time Christy Kennedy and Sharenna Chada were starting into their first course in the Bombay Bicycle Club in Hampstead, DS James Irvine and DC Dot King had tracked Marcus Urry down to a suite of rehearsal rooms in Islington.
It appeared to Irvine that Urry was just hanging out at the Once Moore with Feeling complex. He was a friend, he would later claim, of the owner, Ivan Moore, and seemed to be happy holding court with some of the younger roadies, regaling them with stories of what it was like on the road in the good old glory days with his governor, Tim Dickens.
Urry obviously considered himself to be an armchair philosopher and, it appeared, had an opinion on absolutely everything inside and outside of the music business. These days, with Tim Dickens off the road, he claimed he was spending the most of his time on a course - a golf course, practising his swing. He demonstrated accordingly with his air golf club.
Irvine knew all of this only because Urry kept the two members of Camden Town CID waiting until he’d finished holding court with his fellow roadies. There seemed to be lots of Quo stories and Van the Man stories in his repertoire. Irvine started the interview off by playing up to the man’s obvious ego.
“Did you work with Van Morrison then?”
Marcus Urry refused point blank to ever look the person he was talking to in the eye. Irvine found this surprising, because physically and by his dress sense Urry screamed out, “Look at me! Look at me!” He had long, unnaturally dark brown hair, which fell in a fan close to his waist. The unhealthy looking hair was receding high on his crown and preened out high on his head like tuft on a peacock. He had a long, thick handlebar moustache, which merged with his even longer and thicker sideburns. He looked like someone who (rarely) cut his own hair. Piss holes in the snow for eyes completed his facial appearance. Irvine thought he looked like a mass murderer.
He was quite stout but tried to hide his weight under a pair of dark blue dungarees, and as he was holding court, he liked to have his arms folded and resting behind the bib of the trousers. A red plaid lumberjack shirt completed his uniform.
“I’ll tell you a great Van story,” Urry started, avoiding Irvine’s question. “He’d turned up, not far from here actually, to rehearse some new musicians. He’d hired a complete new road crew. Band and crew arrived first and were working away at their stuff. Then this wee man in a long Crombie turns up. The sound engineer takes one look at him, sizes him up and shouts to the rest of the band and crew, ‘Did anyone order a taxi?’ Van gets rattled about being mistaken for a taxi driver and mumbles something to the sound engineer. The sound engineer understands only the word ‘van.’ ‘Sorry, mate,’ he apologises to Van, and turns back to the band and crew and shouts, ‘Sorry, make that, did anyone order a van?’”
Irvine could hear a few sniggers from the crew behind them and, working on the theory of divide and conquer, he asked Urry to accompany them to the smallish but quiet canteen where Urry directed King, “Be a doll and get me a mug of tea and a bacon buttie; bacon well done. Tell them it’s for Marcus. They know how I like my tea and buttie done here.”
Irvine diffuses the situation, saying, “It’s my turn, Detective Constable King. I’ll get them in.”
Irvine placed the order at the counter with a young girl, who immediately said, “Where ye from?”
“Paisley,” Irvine admitted, “and you?”
“Aberdeen. Aye, well someone has to.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Is this for Hurry Urry?” she asked.
“Aye. He says you know how he likes it.”
“Aye, we do,” she whispered. “He just loves it with spit in the tea, and he likes the bacon slapped around the floors a bit as well.”
“Right,” Irvine laughed. “Does he work in here a lot?”
“Chauvinist prat. He hasn’t worked a day since his boss went off the road in the eighties. But he knows it all,” she replied, continuing to examine Irvine, all the time working on the sandwiches, mug of tea, and cappuccino for King. We don’t get many suits or tweeds in here, pet. Are you from a record company?”
“No, actually I’m from Camden Town CID.”
“Oh shit, oh damn, blast,” she hissed. “Look, I was just kidding about the prat.”
“So he’s not a prat then?” Irvine smiled, showing he was fine with her indiscretion.
She relaxed again. “Oh, he’s a prat all right,” she said, confirming that no one can make the word prat sound as big an insult as the Scottish. “No, I was just kidding about spitting in his tea and slapping the bacon around the floor.”
“Oh good, I’m not going to have to take you in then.” Irvine smiled again as he paid for the tray full.
“No, we’d never do that. We might use toilet water for his tea, but we’d never ever spit in it; and we might clean our shoes with his bacon, but we’d never ever, well hardly ever, slap it around the floors.”
By the time Irvine reached the table, Hurry Urry was holding forth, and King was now his captive audience.
“… and I’ll tell you this for nothing, that one, well she was always absolutely gagging for it,” Urry was saying, leaning his head backwards to shake his long hair from side to side.
“Marcus here was telling me about this famous female singer who liked to take her road crew to bed. What was her name, Marcus?” King asked.
“Rule number one,” Urry lectured, raising his hand in a stop sign, “you never discuss libellous issues when there are three or more people present. There’s always one (or more) to collaborate what was said and by whom. Do you get my drift?”
“I do,” King said, now happy to be distracted with her drink as Urry tore into his sandwich.
“The wee shite,” Urry snarled. “She knows I don’t like this much butter in my buttie, and she’s meant to cut off the fat from my bacon. And the tea tastes vile. How many fecking times…?” And he stomped off in the direction of the counter.
The Scottish waitress was sweet as pumpkin pie with Urry and persuaded him to return to the table; she would make a new sandwich and bring it over herself.
Urry was just concluding another Van the Man story when the waitress returned.
Urry quickly took a large bite of his sandwich.
“Now this is perfect” he said through a mouthful of sandwich (not a pretty sight) as he turned his back immediately on the waitress. “Why couldn’t you have done this the first time around?”
“Oh, I think I must have been distracted by Sean Connery here,” she said from behind Urry’s shoulder. She winked at Irvine, mimicked someone pulling a toilet chain and winked at Irvine once again.
King was confused by t
he waitress’ pantomime but she kept stum.
“Okay, guys, I’ve got things to do, people to see, or should that be people to do? Whatever. Let’s cut to the chase here,” Urry said as he washed down his second bite of sandwich with a mouthful of tea, once again speaking with his mouth full. “You guys want to speak to me about Paddy Mylan and my part in his downfall?”
The only one laughing was Marcus Urry.
“Look, I speak my mind. I always speak my mind; there’s no other way to live your life, get my drift? I can’t be arsed with all the politically correct shite. Paddy was seriously taking the piss with my boss’ income. He tried to be cool and had all these illusions of grandeur, but behind it all he was only a dumb-fecked paddy…”
“Steady on,” Irvine said.
“Do you want me to tell you my side or do you want to waste my time with your polite interruptions about your perceptions about my manners? I’m not saying you should think that Mr Patrick Mylan was a dumb-fecked paddy, but I’m saying I do. I’m not so insecure that I need you to think the same as I do. Sorry? No, I’m most certainly not sorry. That’s what I believe. This is still England, and so that will be my privilege, to speak my mind. End of. Get my drift?”
“Yes, but surely you can also see that, socially speaking, it’s just as easy to be well mannered?” King offered.
“I don’t give a feck what you think. It’s of no importance to me. End of.”
“Okay, can we get back to Mr Mylan?” Irvine suggested, trying to drag at least something from this interview.
“At last, the penny has dropped. Proceed,” Urry ordered.
“This is excellent coffee,” Irvine said, refusing to rise to the bait.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” King said, picking up on Irvine’s lead. “It’s very light and frothy, just how I love it.”