by I K Watson
Rodney Grant was scrawny, tattooed, no more than nine stone and no taller than five-seven. And the closest he'd come to forty-quid aftershave was in his girlfriend's catalogue. He reeked of stale beer, tobacco and tooth decay.
Cole's eyes were sleepless. By the time he arrived at interview room 3 he was already shaking his head in the knowledge that they had the wrong man.
He toyed with the notion of giving the interview to Fitzgerald and Carter. It was always a good idea to keep the big guns until later. Watch it through the screen, perhaps. See what the body language told you, the nervous scratch on the nose, the unconscious hiding of the lips, the sweat, that sort of thing. But he needed to move this one forward without wasting time. He wanted Grant TIED so they could concentrate on the real thing.
A uniform stood aside as Cole entered. Donna Fitzgerald sat before Rodney Grant. Grant was smoking, elbows on the table, faded tattoo of a snake wrapped around a knife on his left forearm, not at all fazed. He was a regular and police interviews were no big deal. He was almost bored by the proceedings.
Cole took in the sunken features, the sharp eyes and the lines of corruption that etched his face. He sat opposite.
Grant blew him some smoke and said calmly, “Can we get on with this? I'm tired. I was up early.”
“This is a no-smoking area so put that fucking thing out.” Grant's eyes widened. He looked for an ashtray then ground the butt beneath his heel.
He said, “Happy?”
Cole said, “No, I'm not. And most of it's down to little toerags like you.”
PC Fizgerald reached to the recorder.
Cole said, “You don't want a brief?”
“No need.”
“What do you do for a living, Rodney?”
“This and that. At the moment I'm caretaker at the Carrington. Get you some tickets if you like. You'd get to see Anthea take her clothes off.”
“Day before yesterday, around eight in the evening?”
“I was out.”
Cole waited. His eyes grew colder.
“Walking, you know? Contemplating the state of the nation, that sort of thing.”
“That's good.”
Donna watched Cole with more interest than was healthy, but she couldn't help herself. She was in free fall, helpless, caught up in some chemical reaction that was beyond logic.
Cole continued, “I want you to think carefully about your next answer.”
Grant looked into Cole's eyes and recognized something he didn’t like at all. He shifted in his seat. The lines on his face looked painful. His lips twisted and he rubbed the snake tattoo so that it appeared to slither around the dagger.
“Right," Grant said suddenly. "I've thought. Call it community spirit.”
Cole nodded, “That’s good. I do like it when the public cooperate.” “What then?”
“Simple. Let's run thought it, shall we? Why were you in the fitness club and why did the instructor find it necessary to ask you to leave?” Grant pulled a face. “I suppose you know already.”
“Maybe, but just for the record.”
“By the pool, right? Clocking the latest fashions.”
“On the kids?”
“Right, see? I'm into fashion.”
Donna frowned. Cole's voice pulled her attention.
“And what about the woman who complained?”
“What about her?”
“You threatened her?”
“Just an idle threat. It wasn’t meant. She caused me grief, that’s it.” “Now tell me about the evening?”
“Well, what time, eight wasn't it?”
“That'll do to start.”
“Yeah, a bit later maybe. Got to do it, haven't you? Pulled in the square.”
“Rented?”
Grant made eye contact with Donna, enjoying the moment. “That's what I mean. He took the money.”
“Where did it happen?”
“Supermarket. Car park.”
“Did you get his name?”
“I call him Jason, but you can call him anything you like. He lets you choose.”
“He's a regular?”
“He’s been around.”
“A local boy?”
“Maybe. Who knows? No accent on him that I picked up.” “You could pick him out?”
“I could do that.”
“You know him well?”
“No, only bits of him, you know?”
“I know.”
“What are you? A social worker? What do you care? He’s got a menu. Bareback costs an extra score!”
“Have you seen anyone else hanging around the club, a stranger, anything unusual?”
The lips contorted, made the nostrils flare, showed off strands of black hair that would hold the bead of snot. Eventually he shook his head. “I go to the Square to see the kids, don't I? That's all I'm clocking. Jason would know. He knows everything that's going on. Every new face is business, right?”
“That's a pity. It means you're going to have to find this rent boy for me. Let's call him Jason. If you can find him, and if he confirms your story, then you can go home.”
“Fair enough. I can do that. He's always there, on the Square. Good as gold.”
“Is now a good time?”
Grant shook his head and spread his hands. “It's got to be later, maybe seven.”
“In that case you can catch up on your sleep. There’s a room downstairs that’s very quiet and no one will disturb you.” Donna Fitzgerald had her eyes on Cole anyway, so they didn't need to move. She said, “I'll wake him, Guv.” As she spoke she fingered her engagement ring, pulled it up and down her finger and, for just a moment, almost off. Her prior arrangements for the evening to make up for the one she missed – sweet and sour and the rest – never crossed her mind.
Free fall. They call it. And the rip-cord was slippery.
In the corridor she said, “Why didn’t you mention Carol Sapolsky. Why not tie up Grant's alibi once and for all?”
“He's not our man. This kid, Jason or whatever he's called, is probably our best bet. We need to find him. Not for Grant. For the other faces he can give us.”
“Guv, the sarge knows all the toms by name. It’s his patch and he keeps both eyes on what goes on.”
“Mike will be out there doing his bit and so will every other copper. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help. Let’s find this kid. You’d be surprised just how much kids notice that adults don’t.”
Donna struggled, not at all convinced.
Cole reported back to Chief Superintendent Baxter. The super sighed and said reluctantly, “Your earlier thoughts, Rick. Perhaps you better get in touch with your old mate. We've got a psychopath knocking on our door. We need someone to open it.”
Cole nodded.
“And you better find out if Margaret Domey's feeling any better. In for a penny, I suppose. If we're going to have these people under our feet she might as well be a part of it. She might learn something.” “It won't be modesty, not from Geoff Maynard.”
Baxter groaned and tucked in to a sandwich. Thick smoked ham from Yorkshire with English mustard and real Anchor butter on freshly baked crusty bread – none of your supermarket shit. And on the side, a manly slab of Lincolnshire pork pie. Forget the job, the super was in heaven. His wife knew how to keep a man happy.
So in the happy hour, when doubles were the price of one and pints were pegged at a pound, the coppers hit the High Road and the streets behind where single lights blinked red and where boys and girls from eight to eighty were trading. It was a growth industry; from about four to eight, if you were counting in inches, more if you were black and slightly less in cold weather. Or so they said.
Chas Walker had pulled the short straw and he drove and Rodney Grant checked out the faces and in the back Donna Fitzgerald wondered what the DI would feel like inside her. The thought was exciting, disorientating and heightened by lack of sleep. She wondered whether he was still working. He’d still been in the office
when they left and she’d caught a fleeting – speculative – glance. In what was it? Three days? The kozzer in his dark suit had turned her world on its head. She was a teenager again, straight out of fourth form, full of uncertainty, looking forward to bed so she could think slow thoughts of him and nothing else.
This Sheerham is a crazy old place, where people lie in bed alone listening to the person beside them, where heaven wears suspenders and a come-on smile and is suspended twelve feet off the ground. Anthea Palmer, ex-weather girl, lit up in soft neon, looked out across the town. Her stockings glistened and the gap between her thighs sent shivers down the backs of the passers-by. These admen knew a trick or two.
And a queue formed at the box office.
That night, Jason, for want of his real name, took the night off, and they didn't find him.
Chapter 10
The song from the show went: “Oh, Mr Lawrence, I really missed you…”
And incredibly, given the old-fashioned lyrics, it was climbing the Christmas charts.
But Mr Lawrence wasn't aware of it. Mr Lawrence agreed with the colonel: pop music was for drug-takers and men with rings in their ears.
Mr Lawrence was not fashion conscious. He considered the vagaries of fashion were such that if you wore something long enough then, sooner or later, it would become the height of fashion again. He agreed with the colonel that the fashion houses were in league with the Germans to bring back, sooner or later, the Nazi uniform. He was, however, rather taken with the latest fashion, the miniskirt that was shorter than ever and, in particular, the naked navel – the young firm flat navel, the slightly swollen navel, even the coloured navel and the navel that glinted with gold.
It was mid-afternoon on a depressing December day and the shadows were sucking at the light and leaving the rest dirty. The trees, those that grew from the pavements, were bare, and the colour, both on the ground and above it, was grey. Three couples were in his shop, taking their time to stand before the paintings, whispering. Art galleries were like that: people whispered. There was the spell of the library about them. People forgot that they were shops.
He was discussing frames with a middle-aged couple when the brass bell on the heavy door announced the arrival of a young woman and he saw her for the first time. She breezed in with a blow of winter and Mr Lawrence filled his chest and smiled a secret smile. She was tall and slim, her face partly masked by large spectacles which fractionally enlarged her eyes, dark eyes that fixed on him like the eyes of a big cat eyeing potential prey. While he finished with the couple she flitted from piece to polished piece and from canvas to glinting canvas like a shop-lifter, pretending to examine, more intent on who was watching her. For a few moments she stood gazing up at an old chestnut cooking pot that hung from the painted brick wall and then a large painting of a brick wall itself caught her eye and she moved to that.
The middle-aged couple finally chose a frame for their painting of ducks flying from a green pond and once they had gone the woman moved to the counter.
A thick woollen ruff on her sweater held her jaw high and tramlines of green wool ran over her slight breasts and hugged her waist. Pleats fanned out from her cream-coloured skirt and reached below her knees. It was clingy and tantalizing and yet oddly demure and oldfashioned. Beneath it her calves were on the slim side and she wore white sneakers. Her mouth was wide and thin, the top lip slightly askew, slightly down-turned. Her face was firm, her nose prettily upturned, her cheekbones prominent and her jaw-line solid. Black hair trailed down to the small of her back.
She moved easily, gracefully, accustomed to the flat heels, her long thighs moving against the cream. She was five ten or eleven but looked even taller in her slender frame. There was something youthful about her, her features, her movement, her fitness, which made her seem even younger than she was, which Mr Lawrence put at around the late twenties, and there was a sign of perplexity in her bright eyes, as though this moment was perfect but the next uncertain.
On her long finger were two rings, an engagement and a wedding, and as she placed her slim, almost bony hand, on the polished counter, he noticed that they were slightly worn, fifteen or twenty years old. Mr Lawrence gave them a long look and shrugged before looking up to meet her.
Her fixed gaze softened to a perfunctory yet nervous smile and in a voice that was full of London she said, “Mr Lawrence? Can you help me?”
Of course he could.
“Photographs lie,” he told her.
As he made his way to The British, hugging the pavement beneath the slate-grey sky and the grey slate roofs and the stacks of clay chimney pots lined up like advancing soldiers, he reflected on the encounter. Photographs lie; the shadows give a false impression. They find form where there is none and nothing of subtle form. And what is more, they will never probe beneath the surface for hidden expression, they will never explore a sensation or the temper of either the artist or his subject. There is no art in a reflection. If there were then a mirror with its reflection would be a work of art. The art lies entirely in the passion behind the image, the discovery of the truth, or the lie.
She frowned, puzzled, and threw him a look that indicated his sentiments were wasted.
But he continued.
A camera will give you the moment, something that might bring back the memory, if you like, but nothing more. And what is more, it will not give you the truth of the moment, or the lie, and it won’t live and breathe and excite you. And what is even more, ultimately it will leave you cold, wanting more.
They'd already discussed the fee and it didn't seem to bother her. She'd offered a deposit that wasn't necessary.
“I understand you take on commissioned work,” she had begun. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes, when I am not busy.”
“Well, are you busy now? My friend Helen…”
“Mrs Harrison.”
“Mrs Helen Harrison,” she agreed. “Showed me the painting you did for her. My husband liked it, rather. I thought, perhaps, it would make a nice Christmas present.”
“Ah, Christmas, yes, it's coming. But my dear, the oil wouldn't dry in time. We'd be pushed to get all the sittings in.”
She seemed downhearted.
He scratched his chin and said, “On the other hand, perhaps…” “Oh, could you?”
“The portrait of Mrs Harrison turned out rather well. I was rather pleased with it.”
“Well then, will you fit me in?”
“I will have to check my diaries.”
“You have more than one?”
“Dear girl, you might not know this but there is an increasing demand for original work. People are fed up with vacant prints and copies. Framed in expensive frames it is only the frame you pay for.” Another couple in the shop looked across as he turned up the volume. The thought of prints had always raised his voice.
They discussed sittings and arranged the first. He wrote it carefully in one of his diaries.
“What shall I wear?”
“Wear? Clothes?” Now Mr Lawrence looked downhearted.
“Oh, you didn't think…? Not like Helen, for goodness sake?” She blushed. He hadn’t seen an Indian blush before and it tickled him.
He said sombrely, “I see. Or rather, I shall not see.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Low heels,” he said.
She walked from the shop. The pleats of her cream-coloured skirt swayed gently with each certain step. The old-fashioned bell rang out her exit and a block of chilled December air came in to fill the space. On the cold road to The British a Jehovah’s Witness or some other such nonsense stopped him in his tracks, a spotty teenager in a cheap suit. His bright smile and wondrous eyes offered to share the secret of life. “Can I show you the way to true happiness, Sir?” An American or Canadian accent came at him from between flashing white teeth. “Don’t be absurd.” Mr Lawrence made to push by.
But the boy persisted. “Have you ever thought about our Lord Jesus, Sir?” As Mr Lawrence groaned,
lost for real words, the youngster saw something in his eyes that unsettled him and he at once stood aside. “Have a nice day, Sir,” he said then moved away, quickly.
On the road to The British Mr Lawrence thought of the girl again; she kept coming back like a tickly cough.
“You said your husband liked it, rather. Is that rather than you?” Her eyes had narrowed fractionally; each held the glossy mahogany-coloured reflection of her prey. Her lips parted in a sudden smile and revealed a line of straight white teeth. These people from the subcontinent and Africa have such wonderful teeth, thought Mr Lawrence, as he tightened his lips. People from the USA had wonderful teeth too, but they paid for theirs.
She had said, “Yes, I liked it too. You caught her expression just right.”
“Which expression was that?”
“The one on her face.”
“Of course.”
When she walked from the shop the cream pleats of her skirt swayed gently with each step. The cloth, tight on her boyish behind, clung to her every move. The old brass bell rang out her exit and the cold air rushed in and he shivered even though in his chest there was something beginning to beat again.
He made a decision. It would be Madras tonight, after the pub. The girl had left him with the curious flavour of India.
Much later, when he ordered, he was still thinking about her. “Chicken Madras with Sudan One, Para red, Orange Two, Rhodamine B and red chalk dust.”
“Ahhh! You are speaking of illegal additives, isn’t it? That is a very fine English joke, Sir.” The waiter leant forward and in a conspiratorial tone added, “You will be noticing that I am serving the salt in these very small dishes. That is because somebody has stolen all my salt-cellars, isn’t it?”
Once a week he closed the shop at noon. His usual custom was to have lunch at The British then go off to spend his hard-earned, Brown-taxed pound, but the woman was due for her first session and that meant everything was going to be hurried. Still, it meant a change to the routine: shop first and then lunch.