by John Harvey
"What is your present occupation?" Lynn asked.
"I'm a lecturer in Women's Studies."
"Here in the city?"
"In Derby."
"And are you married or single?"
"Neither."
"I'm sorry?"
"I have lived with the same partner for seven years; we have a three-year-old child. We are not married. Is that clear enough?"
As a manifesto, Lynn thought
"Ms Plant, you do admit the assault on Cathy Jordan…"
"Demonstration. I was making a demonstration."
"In relation to Ms Jordan?"
"In relation to her work."
"You disapprove of her books, then? You don't like them?"
"Which question do you want me to answer?"
No wonder she didn't want a solicitor, Lynn thought, she thinks she is one.
"Aren't they the same thing?" she asked wearily.
"Disapproving and not liking?"
"Yes."
"I like eating Terry's Chocolate Oranges, sometimes two at a time; I also like popping into McDonald's last thing at night for apple pie. I don't really approve of either."
Someone walked past along the corridor outside, heavy feet set down slowly and with purpose. Lynn tried not to look at her watch or the clock on the adjacent wall.
"Can you tell me," she asked, 'why you disapprove of Cathy Jordan's books so strongly? "
"Which version do you want? The fifty-minute lecture or the single-paragraph outline?"
Lynn was reminded of those times she had been lectured by her head teacher at school.
"The outline will be fine."
"Right. What I object to about her books is that they rely on an almost exclusive portrayal of women as victims, usually victims of violent and degrading assault. Their degradation and pain are in direct proportion to Jordan's profit. She's got rich on women's suffering. She should know better."
"And your intention was to teach her that lesson?"
"I thought it was appropriate."
"Covering her With paint?"
Yes, don't you? "
"Then you do admit to throwing paint over Ms Jordan?"
"I thought of it more as pouring, but yes, all right. I do."
"You assaulted her."
"Surely that's for the court to decide?"
"You want this to go to court?"
"Of course."
Oh, God, Lynn thought, spare me from people who know what's right for me better than I do myself. The whole Greenpeace, civil liberties, feminist bunch of them. "This action, was it carried out on behalf of some group or organisation?"
"Not officially, no. It was an individual act."
Vivienne Plant's shoulders braced back even further. "There was no such person."
"Ms Plant, I was there in the shop. I saw you standing in line with another woman, talking. A woman wearing a black shirt and jeans. You came into the shop together. Approached Ms Jordan together. After the incident, you ran out together. You were not acting on your own."
"Well, that's going to have to be your word against mine."
Lynn shook her head. She could have thought of places she would rather be than shut up with Ms Self-righteous, plenty of them.
"All right," she said, 'we'll come back to this again. "
"Look," Vivienne said, leaning forward, holding Lynn with her eyes, 'the responsibility for what happened is mine. Okay? But what I did, I did for all women; not just me. "
"All women?" Lynn said.
Of course. "
"I don't think so."
No? "
Lynn pushed back her chair and got to her feet.
"You didn't do it for me."
Vivienne pitched back her head and laughed.
"Well, you really do need the fifty-minute version, don't you?"
Lynn reached sideways, towards the Off button on the tape machine.
"This interview stopped at thirteen minutes past three."
Once Naylor had settled him down, assured him that in all probability he would be able to drive back to Newark ahead of the evening rush hour and allowed him to make a call to his partner, Derek Neighbour had proved a good witness. He had seen Vivienne Plant's actions clearly and described them with accuracy. Yes, she and the other woman, the one in the black shirt, had chattered away all the time they were waiting in the queue and although he hadn't heard a great deal of what they had actually been saying, the impression they gave was not of two people who have only just that moment met Absolutely not.
"So it was your impression that the two women were friends? That they knew one another quite well?"
Very well, more like. "
"And their names? Did you hear either of them address the other by names?"
"No. Come to think of it, no. Not that I can recall. I don't think they did."
"All right, Mr Neighbour. Thanks a lot. We've got your address and if we need you again-we'll be in touch."
Naylor got to his feet. Derek Neighbour continued to look up at him, uncertain.
"Was there something else?" Naylor asked.
"Something you wanted to add?"
"It's just, well, you know, the damage…"
"To Miss Jordan? Apart from the shock, I don't think it was too serious. Her clothes, of course, and…"
"No. To me. My books."
"Well, I don't know. Perhaps Waterstone's, in the circumstances…"
"You don't understand. There's a first edition of Uneasy Prey, absolutely ruined. I don't even know if I'll be able to find another one, and if I do, the cost is going to be close to three hundred pounds. More."
Three hundred, Naylor was thinking, for one book. Only a crime book, at that. Debbie's mum got through four or five a week from the library, large-print editions in the main. Bebbie reckoned she could get one finished between Neighbours and Countdown. Why would anyone pay three hundred quid for something you could get through in a few hours and never want to look at again? It didn't make a scrap of sense. * 92 "The stuff with the paint she's ready to admit to. Eager. Not that she could do anything else." Lynn was at her desk in the CID room, talking to Graham Millington. Vivienne Plant she had left to stew a little in the interview room. "The woman who was with her, though, she won't give us a thing. Denies knowing her altogether."
"No chance she's telling the truth?"
Lynn looked up at him.
"None."
"Charlie," Skelton said, 'we're not going to let this woman wrap us round her little finger, commit time and money, all so's she can garner free publicity for whatever cockamamie idea she's spouting.
Women's Studies, that's her, isn't it? Jesus, Charlie! Women's Studies, Black Studies, Lesbian and Gay Studies, what in God's name happened to good old History and Geography, that's what I'd like to know? "
Resnick couldn't oblige. Though he had recently been taken to task for carelessly using the masculine pronoun by a very intelligent and thoughtful young woman, who, it had turned out later, believed Norwich to be located in the middle of Hampshire.
"What about the American?" Skelton said.
"Is she keen to press charges?"
"We don't know yet…"
"Then it's about time we bloody did!"
Right, Resnick thought, getting to his feet, and it's about time you went back to running before you have some self-induced heart attack.
Whatever was going on behind closed doors in Skelton's executive home, it wasn't happy families.
Lynn was waiting outside Resnick's office.
"Graham and I had another go at her. Still won't budge. Didn't know the other woman from Adam.
I mean Eve.
" She's lying?"
"Not just that. She knows we know she is, but at the moment there's not a lot we can do to prove it. Loving that, isn't she? Clever cow!"
"Not your favourite person, then?" Resnick smiled.
"Women like that," Lynn scowled, 'whatever their intentions, just end up making women l
ike me feel inferior. "
"Well, looks like you can have the pleasure of kicking her free. Last thing the old man wants to do is contribute to her publicity campaign."
"What about Cathy Jordan? Suppose she wants…"
To lay charges? I doubt it. Wouldn't exactly help her, would it? But if she does. " Resnick shrugged.
"I don't suppose Ms Plant's about to do a runner, do you? Suddenly turn into a shrinking violet?"
Lynn looked back at Resnick, concerned; unless she was very much mistaken, he had made a joke.
"Catherine, dear. How awful for you. How perfectly awful."
How Cathy Jordan hated being called Catherine; especially by Dorothy Birdwell, watt led hands flustering all around her, smelling her old maid's smell of face powder and malice.
"Yes, well, you know, Dotde, it really wasn't so bad."
"Perhaps you should consider following my example, dear, and have a nice young man to look after you."
Marius Gooding was standing a short way off, blazer buttons glistening. For the first time, Cathy noticed his manicured hands, long fingers flexing slightly at his sides. Catching Cathy's gaze he made a quick dipping gesture with his head, somewhere between a nod and a bow, a token smile of sympathy passing across his face. Without her understanding exactly why, something deep inside Cathy shuddered.
"I don't need a nice young man, Dottie," she said,
"I have a husband."
"So you have, dear, sometimes I forget."
"What in hell's name happened to you?" – Frank's first words when Cathy had appeared back at. the hotel in borrowed clothes, face oddly aglow, hair clotted red. "Something go wrong at the beauty shop?"
"Screw," she'd said, pushing past him on her way to the bathroom, 'you! "
"Nice idea, Cath, if you could remember how. Wait for you to screw me, might as well hand my dick to Lorena Bobbitt for surgery."
The only answer was the sound of water bouncing back from the shower.
Frank poured himself a drink and took it across to the window, looking out There was a plane rising slow between the small, off-white clouds and for a moment, wherever it was heading, he wished he were on it. Then he laughed. The thing that had most fascinated him about the whole Bobbitt affair, the way the guy had made a living later in a Californian nightclub, women handing over good bucks to dance with him in the hope of scooping ten grand by giving him a boner.
For Prank, whose childhood had been spent in castoffs and hand-me-downs and who had stolen his first quarter at age five, it was eloquent testimony to what made his country great. The ordinary American's ability to make entrepreneurial capital in the face of any adversity.
Tyrell had insisted on living as close to the centre of the city as his and his wife's combined salaries would allow. After all, he had reasoned, the one thing we don't want to add to my already antisocial hours is a lot of unnecessary travelling time, right? And Susan Tyrell had nodded agreement and said nothing about the fact that buying a house where her husband was suggesting would give her a forty-five-minute drive each way to the comprehensive where she taught.
Besides, she had liked the house: substantial, large without being sprawling, one of those late-Victorian family homes near the Arboretum which she and David had redecorated and were steadily filling with books and videos instead of children.
Another of those decisions that Tyrell had talked her into with his usual mixture of enthusiasm and dodgy rationalisation. She had, Susan knew, allowed it to happen too often, agreed to far too much for too long and in 96 favour of what? A quiet life, contentment? When most of their friends were already into their second divorce or separation, what was she trying to prove? That she was a survivor? That, despite all the odds, she and David still loved one another, that they had found a way of making it work?
The first time she had spoken to him, really spoken, had been after a seminar at the University of Warwick, where they were both doing Media Studies. The only one of the group not majoring in Film, Susan had sat there for eight weeks, listening, contributing very little.
Finally, she had plucked up her courage and launched into a mild attack on the film they had been watching, a fifties musical called It's Always Fair Weather. Pretty enough, she had said, but pretty vacant. Fun, but why all the fuss? David had told her in no uncertain terms and after twenty minutes she had bowed her head and agreed with him and a pattern had been set.
On the way out of the seminar, he had invited her for coffee; in the coffee bar he had invited her to a movie. The movie turned out to be two, an Elvis Presley double bill, and David had made them sit on the front row. King Creole was okay, he pronounced, but the really interesting one was Change of Habit, Presley's last feature, 1969.
And Susan had kept her thoughts to her popcorn, watching Dr Elvis falling sanctimoniously in love with a speech therapist she had only later identified as Mary Tyler Moore.
"Didn't you think it was great," Tyrell had enthused later, 'the way our sense of Presley as star bifurcates the diegesis of the narrative? "
"Um," Susan had said.
"Yes. Absolutely."
She looked up now from the pile of books she was marking, hearing the front door open and Tyrell's voice calling her name from the hall.
"Susan, you there?"
She would, he thought, be in the long kitchen which doubled as dining room, marking another thirty-three pastiches of EastEnders, ever ready to pop another frozen pizza into the microwave.
"My God! You won't believe what happened, in the middle of the day, broad daylight. Must have been like that scene in Carrie, the one with the pig's blood, you know."
Susan was on her feet, filling the kettle.
"I heard about it on the car radio."
National? "
"No, Radio Nottingham."
"Oh," Tyrell sounded disappointed, ferreting in the cupboard for what was left of the packet of custard creams.
"I thought at least we might've got some good publicity out of it."
"I wonder if she felt the same? The woman what's her name?"
"Come on, Susan. Cathy Jordan, how many more times? You'll meet her tonight at Sonny's."
"I'm not sure if I'm going."
"What? Don't be ridiculous, of course you're going."
"I don't know, I think I'm getting a headache. I've got all this work to do."
Tyrell swore as the last biscuit crumbled between his fingers and fell to the floor.
"Susan, it's all booked. Arranged. Besides, you want to meet everybody, don't you?"
"Do I?"
"Of course you do. You'll have a great time once you're there, you always do."
Susan reached for the tea bags.
"Earl Grey or ordinary?"
"Ordinary."
What Susan could remember was sitting at one end of the table, drinking glass after glass of Perrier while the conversation spun around her.
Tyrell smiled. He had found a cache of plain chocolate 98 digestives.
"I don't want to go without you, you know that Still, if you've really got your mind made up…"
When she looked at him, what Susan saw was relief in his eyes; he would be so much happier not having to bother about her.
"Yes," she said, pouring boiling water into the pot, 'you go on your own. "
Tyrell shrugged and sat down at the pine table, reaching for the Guardian. First chance he'd had to look at the paper that day.
Nineteen
Angel Eyes. The first film in the Festival's Curds Wooife season and, to Tyre B's mind, the best. Made in 'forty-five for Republic, and photographed by John Alton, it featured Albert Dekker as a middle-aged businessman lured to destruction by slinky, wide-eyed Martha Mac Vicar who, a year later, her name changed to Martha Vickers, would come to brief fame as Lauren Bacall's thumb-sucking, promiscuous sister in the film of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Wooife, who collaborated on the script with an uncredited Steve Fisher, persuaded
"Wild
Bill' Elliott, a Western star under contract to the studio, to shed his buckskins and play the honest cop who investigates Dekker's murder and almost falls for Mac Vicar wiles himself.
Despite the film being almost unknown, Mollie had garnered enough publicity around Curtis Wooife's reemergence to ensure a three-quarter-full house. Wooife had limited his spirits intake to a half-bottle of vodka and rather less of gin. The plan was for Tyrell to introduce him briefly to the audience before the screening and invite anyone who wished to remain behind for a question-and- answer session at the end.
As the house lights dimmed and the stage spot nicked on, Tyrell dabbed sweaty palms against the sides of his black suit and with a whispered,
"Let's go to work," set out down the sloping aisle towards the microphone.
At about the same time that Tyrell was introducing Curds 100 Wooife, Peter Farleigh was stepping out of the shower and sipping the Dewar's and ginger ale he had poured for himself earlier. A little something from the mini-bar to set him up for the evening. And why not? Whatever he was about to treat himself to, Farleigh thought that he deserved it. He had had a good day. Now it was a few drinks in the bar, a meal and then he'd see. But one thing was certain, even if he ended the night back in his hotel room watching a Channel Four documentary about Tibet, it was preferable to driving the relatively short distance home; better than enduring Sarah's pained indifference and cold back.
Even before his seven-thirty alarm call that morning, he had been wide awake, eager to go. Telegraph and Mail delivered to his room, he had browsed the front pages between buffing his shoes and shaving, the sports and financial sections he had read over breakfast the full English as usual when he was travelling, but careful to use sunflower spread instead of butter, pour skimmed milk into his coffee, half a spoonful of sugar, no more. Time to telephone his wife before leaving, remind her the Volvo had to be taken in for service; maybe she could check the wardrobe, see if any of his suits needed dropping off at the cleaner's while he was in town.
His hire car was a new Granada, almost pristine, one of the perks of the job. His first meeting, at Epperstone Nurseries, had been over by lunchtime. Oh, there'd been one or two potentially dodgy questions about increased resistance to the new systematic fungicide he was pushing, but that was what he was paid to deal with. A few fancy charts prepared by the research department, a joke about not going back to the bad old days of mercury pollution, and they had been falling over themselves to sign on the dotted line.