FRAMED

by Lynda La Plante

  “No.” He frowned at the bag. “You should be careful carrying that amount of money around.”

  Lola gave him a brief deadeye look. He wished he hadn’t spoken. She probably knew more about the safe handling of cash than he ever would. But I’m a copper, he thought, I say these things… .

  As they turned from the cashier a teller approached Lola, obsequiously smiling. He said if she would like to see the safety-deposit facilities she should follow him. She nodded, hooking her arm through Larry’s. As they followed the man toward a large oak door, Lola was chattering again.

  “You know how much that suite at the Hyde Park is per night?” She rolled her eyes. “But Papa insists he knows I am safe there, he can always find me. He has a few pieces of jewelry from the family, so sometimes I sell something for him… .*

  “If a suite at the Hyde Park Hotel costs anything like that dinner …” Larry laughed, feeling extraordinarily at ease with Lola, and with himself. “You know, I almost had heart failure, honest I did… .”

  A couple of hours later, in the incident room at St. John’s Row, DI Shrapnel brought DCI McKinnes the news that the doctor supervising Von Joel’s progress had said he could be moved. McKinnes nodded, adding the information to an influx he was juggling, trying by every means he could muster to make things happen. He tapped the shoulder of a WPC who was passing.

  “Get another check on the driver of the truck,” he told her. “See if there’s any kind of tie-in with Minton.” He turned and saw DC Colin Frisby walk in. “Oy! Frisby! Anything out of order at Jackson’s?”

  “Well …” Frisby came across, looking wary. “Jackson’s wife said he didn’t come home last night. Something up, is there?”

  The telephone rang and Shrapnel answered it.

  “We’re moving Myers,” McKinnes said distractedly, tono one in particular. He stared at Frisby suddenly, as if he had just heard him. “What did you say?”

  “Guv”—Shrapnel covered the mouthpiece—“it’s the Super. He wants you ASAP.” McKinnes scowled and turned away, muttering that he was going to get a sandwich first. “He’s on his way up,” Shrapnel told the Superintendent, and dropped the receiver.

  “Frank …” It was DC Frisby again. “Is Jackson off the Myers case? If he is, can you get me to replace him?”

  Shrapnel raised his finger and flicked his own ear.

  “Too much of this, Frisby,” he said, “can land you in it.”

  In the Superintendent’s office McKinnes was required to furnish a case update. It would have been easier if his men were still acting on fresh information, or if the existing evidence and circumstantial developments would come together in a way that equaled progress. Matters were not static, but they were moving too slowly. The Superintendent didn’t want to hear that, so McKinnes did all he could to make it sound as if significant breakthroughs were imminent. He ate a sandwich as he delivered his report, gesturing with a still-sealed cup of coffee in the other hand. When he had talked himself dry-throated he tugged off the cap from the plastic cup and spilled coffee down his jacket.

  “Shit!” he spluttered, spraying crumbs. “You got a tissue?”

  The Superintendent handed one over. McKinnes dabbed at himself, managing to spill coffee on the desk as he put down the cup and the tatters of the sandwich.

  “That shooter killed the security guard,” he assured the Superintendent. ‘That’s enough to hold Minton. I think he was on the job and I think Eddie Myers has more. Now we’ve got him back, I’ll put the pressure on him.”

  There was no more to report about the case. McKinnes moved to the door before the Superintendent could think of any questions that might detain him.

  “Oh”—as he pulled the door open he pretended to remember something unimportant—“Jackson’s off the case, he’s too inexperienced.”

  The Superintendent frowned. “Have you got a problem with him?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. Give these youngsters an inch and they’re ruddy Perry Masons… .”

  The Superintendent turned to the desk as McKinnes left. He looked down and sighed, gazing at the spilled coffee and the mutilated remains of the sandwich.

  As the day wore on, Larry Jackson’s awareness of his position began to harden. Away from Lola—she was busy, things to do, people to see—he no longer walked with his feet an inch above the ground, though terra firma wasn’t so hard as it might have been. In spite of a new layer of resilience he found himself missing the case again, craving the involvement. There was, too, the aggravation of being cut off from contact with Von Joel, which was no small nuisance.

  He got home deliberately late. He picked at a semi cold dinner alone in the kitchen, while Susan and the boys watched television in the living room.

  At nine o’clock the phone rang. He wandered out to the hall and answered it. It was Lola. All at once he was on the defensive, watching the door to the living room. He was so nervous about being caught he could hardly hear what she was saying. The change in him hadn’t gone so deep as he had thought. There was still a chicken, a small one, flapping about in his psyche.

  “I can’t,” he snapped into the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry.”

  What was she suggesting, anyway? What exactly was a scene? “No, really, I can’t, and don’t call again. I said I can t.

  He looked up and saw Susan come into the hall.

  “I’ve got to go,” he snapped. “Good-bye.”

  Susan watched as he practically threw down the receiver.

  “I’m going to make some cocoa,” she said. “You want some? I said the kids can stay up and watch the end of the film.” She nodded at the telephone. “Who was that?”

  “Just work,” Larry said—too fast, he was sure. “No, thanks.”

  The telephone rang again. He snatched it up.

  “Hello?”

  Susan walked into the kitchen as Lola began begging him to come to the hotel.

  “Cut it out!” he grated through his teeth.

  She was babbling at him, her voice a fluctuating squeak in the earpiece. He swore silently toward the ceiling. This wasn’t romantic adventure, it was bloody-minded mischief. It was troublemaking. He had heard about coppers driven half mad by girlfriends deciding to make problems for them at home. It nearly always started with the telephone.

  “I said no! Don’t call me here again!”

  He slammed down the phone. Susan came out of the kitchen.

  “Did you say you wanted one or not? Only we don’t have much milk …”

  The phone rang. Larry grabbed it.

  “I said no!” he snapped without listening. “I mean it! Stop messing around!”

  He pressed the cradle buttons, released them, and left the receiver lying on the table. Susan came close, staring at him.

  “Is someone threatening you? Us? Larry? Who was it?”

  “Just leave it off the hook for a while!”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me about it, would you?” Susan’s eyes had their prehysterical glint. ‘They suspected someone would try and—”

  “It’s nothing!” Larry hissed. “Nothing at all!”

  “Don’t snap at me! I don’t know what’s got into you, but whatever it is, don’t take it out on me and the kids.”

  “I’ll get them to bed,” Larry muttered, heading for the living room.

  “I’m just making their cocoa,” Susan said. “Did you want one?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Larry stiffened, staring at the living room door. “How many more times? No! No! I don’t want any frigging cocoa!”

  f

  Susan was lying in bed, face turned to the wall, eyes tight shut and not asleep. Larry got in beside her, turned off the bedside lamp, and bashed his pillow.

  “I said I’m sorry. There’s no need to act like this!”

  Susan gritted her teeth. “Like what? How am I acting, Larry?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” she snapped.

  “Yes, you do, and I said I�
�m sorry.”

  “You do nothing but yell at me, at the kids; I never know when you are in or out or what the hell you are doing. All I asked was if you wanted cocoa or not, and you .”

  “And I have apologized, okay?”

  “Then there were those phone calls, who were you yel-lin’ at on the other end of those?”

  “Mac.” “Who?”

  Larry leaned up, and sighed. “Look, it’s tough at the moment, with the accident. I mean, I dunno if I’m on the case or not.”

  Susan turned toward him. “But they wouldn’t put someone else on it, would they? I mean, you were the one who found him, why would they do that?”

  Larry lay back again. “I dunno … Mac’s an odd bugger.”

  Susan cuddled up, hooking her leg over his, and he had that awful feeling that maybe there was a love bite, something of Lola on his body. “I’m knackered, good night.” Susan curled up on her side of the bed again, night.” He reached out and patted her back, and she muttered, “Sooner this case is over and done with the better. Good night.”

  “Good night.” He lay awake until he heard Susan’s breathing deepen as she fell asleep. The warmth of her body next to him made him think of Lola.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of her, wanting her, but he knew he had better not see her again, ever.

  18

  Von Joel’s shorn hair looked lopsided and rather strange, and a few bruises were still visible on his face, but for a man who had been through major trauma and had only just come out of the hospital, he looked remarkably fit. As his handcuffs were unclocked he ran his gaze around the seedy bedroom. He sighed quietly as the police officer pocketed the cuffs and left him. As a comedown this place was spectacular. It was not simply seedy and scruffy and terminally downbeat; it was dirty. The rug was colorless with ingrained dirt, there was dirt on the window ledge and walls, he could smell dirt when he inhaled. The light in the room came from a single weak bulb coated with a film of dirt. McKinnes appeared at the doorway. He held up a sheet of paper. “Where’s Jackson?” Von Joel asked. “Your pal M in ton says he wasn’t on the robbery. He’s o-nt an alibi. Same one he had last time.“Von Joel delicately pinched the skin between his eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb. He looked at his narrow bed with weary eyes. “His word against mine,” he said.

  “Oy, look at me.” McKinnes came into the room. “I’m not here to play games, Eddie. You’ve got more, I need more.”

  “And I’ve got a headache.”

  McKinnes considered the situation. It was Saturday night. It was settling-in time. On top of that, all things considered, the prisoner couldn’t be feeling too grand. McKinnes decided he would go easy until they got down to the organized, on-the-record questioning first thing Monday morning. From then on there would be no kid gloves, no cotton wool. One way or another, easy or the hard way, Mr. Smartarse would come up with the goods.

  “Sweet dreams, Eddie.” McKinnes walked out of the bedroom. Von Joel glanced at his bags, made a face as he sniffed the air again. He went to the window and peered out past the curtain. There was nothing to see through the streaky grime. He dropped the curtain back in place and turned to the door again, frowning. He knew the set-up had been radically changed, too radically, and he would bet not all of the changes were visible yet.

  “Where’s Jackson?” he whispered.

  f

  Larry had nursed his wrath for the entire weekend. He brought it to the Hyde Park Hotel fresh and still simmering on Monday afternoon, after hanging around the station all morning trying, without any luck, to get a word with McKinnes. He drummed his fingers on the desk as the receptionist called Suite 340.

  “It’s ringing, sir.”

  Staying mad had been easy. The kids had played merry hell with his nerves and Susan had managed to say and do all the wrong things, over and over, in every permutation. Disruption and aggravation had been piled on his brooding. The brooding itself had been bad enough; isolation from the case had begun to give him a degree of unrest amounting to actual pain. All weekend, every time he thought of what had been done to him at St. John’s Row, he wanted to yell. He wanted to lash out and hit something and pretend he had smashed the hairy vindictive kisser of Jimmy McKinnes.

  There had been no corner of peace for Larry. Home was a bear garden, a noise-pit with the kids yelling and banging and Susan alternately squeaking and whining. Whenever he tried retreating into himself, thinking of his breakthrough night with Lola, the sexual jolt was short-circuited by the recollection of her malicious antics on the phone. All in all, the weekend had been undiluted misery, and now he wanted to share some of that.

  “You can go right up, sir.”

  He hadn’t rehearsed what he would say to Lola, he knew it would come out under its own steam and at the right pace; all he had to do was aim it. Leaving the lift he strode along the passage and knocked on the door hard, twice. He tensed himself.

  The door clicked and swung open. He saw Lola walking away from him. She was barefoot, wearing a silk robe, her hips swaying like a voluptuous metronome to the pulse of the music pouring from the stereo unit. It was turned up full blast, a recording of Caruso that Larry had heard before, blaring through the bedroom wall at the safe house.

  He followed her into the sitting room, slamming the door behind him. Lola stopped in front of the stereo, gazing down at it, swaying, her arms wrapped around her tight little body. “Listen to him,” she said without turning. “Listen to the way he reaches the high notes with such softness. It’s magic. Pure magic. The decrescendo to pianissimo on thefinal B flat—oh, Pavarotti and Domingo can’t touch him… .”

  Larry was furious. He had been ready to explode all over her and she had deliberately pulled this defusing tactic. He leaned forward and hit the stop button on the tape deck. He spun Lola to face him and held up a warning finger to her face.

  “You don’t call my home. Ever. You hear me?”

  For one beat she stared, wide-eyed, then she flew at him. Her left fist cracked on his ear and her right hand delivered a stinging slap to his right cheek. He reeled back.

  “If it wasn’t for you,” she screeched, “he wouldn’t be locked up! It’s all your fault!”

  “I …” Larry blinked at her, rubbing his cheek. “I just don’t understand you—”

  “But I understand you, Larry.” The tightness of anger vanished from her face. Her eyes softened as she stepped closer to him. “I know what you came here for.” She took his hand. “Well? You want it?”

  With her other hand she undid the sash of her robe. It fell open. Larry tried not to stare. Her body was a compact miracle. She stood with her hips thrust forward, the smooth line of her belly drawing his gaze to the compelling darkness at the junction of her thighs.

  There was a sound behind the bedroom door. Larry looked at it, looked at Lola, then strode across the room. He twisted the handle and threw open the bedroom door. Charlotte Lampton lay on the bed. She was naked.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling, her hand coming up from the far side of the bed with a bottle of champagne. “Want a drink?”

  Lola turned on the Caruso tape again. She crept up behind Larry and put her arm around his shoulder.

  “If you orgasm to Verdi’s B-flat aria in Aida then you will never believe opera is boring. It will give you …”

  The rest was a moan as Lola wrapped herself around Larry, her hands sliding over him like small busy animals, her mouth hot with sighs and groans against his ear. Larry tried halfheartedly to extricate himself, his anger completely gone. Embarrassment and discomfort melted toward arousal as Lola fitted herself around him and he watched, over her perfumed hair, as Charlotte stretched

  out along the bed, still smiling at him.

  f

  A few miles away, while Larry’s afternoon became a sensual tangle, DCI McKinnes was two thirds of the way into a bad day’s interrogation. He was in the grubby, damp-smelling living room of the substitute safe house with Von Joel. They sat at opposite sid
es of a prosaic square dining table, their fingers flat on its scarred surface, each confronting the other with his stubbornness. The day had gone terribly, and now it was simply disintegrating.

  “Don’t mess me around,” McKinnes snarled, knowing it was a powerless warning, saying it because it was all he could think of. He leaned close across the table, bunching his fists, trying for an air of authority. “So you can’t help me with Minton. What about this Rodney Bingham?”

  “I don’t know him,” Von Joel said, his voice flat. “I must have been mistaken.”

  “I’ve warned you,” McKinnes growled.

  “Listen!” Von Joel jerked forward suddenly, his teeth set hard. “I just got out of hospital and you bring me to this shit hole …” He turned his head aside sharply, addressing the microphone. “I’m a sick man! I gave you all I know!” He sat back a fraction, moistening his lips, glaring at McKinnes. “Anything else, I’ll give it to Jackson, not you. That was the deal.”

  He got up from the table and walked out. McKinnes watched him go, feeling angry, getting angrier. It was one thing to be resisted by a dirty grass of a villain like Von Joel, to be slagged off by him and treated like any old clumsy piece of plod. It was quite another thing to be forced into a corner so tight that you seriously had to

  consider compromising. That didn’t sit well with McKinnes. Making concessions wasn’t his way and to think about it gave him a pain. But realities had to be faced. It wasn’t as if he was weighed down with choices.

  f

  Larry’s day had been transformed from a hot ball of rage to a hedonistic mix of sex, good drink, and laughter, all of it enjoyed against a backdrop of lofty music. More surprise entered the picture when he was sent home at six o’clock to put on his best suit. He complied without even thinking of arguing.

  Champagne, he discovered, made him an imaginative and plausible liar; by the time he left the house again he could not remember what explanation he had given Susan, but he knew she had accepted it calmly. Lola and Charlotte, as promised, picked him up at the end of the road in a taxi.

  “So where are we going, girls?”