“Because most of it is common sense. I don’t need a psychiatrist on seventy grand to pinpoint crime scenes on a map for me and say: ‘He lives somewhere there.’”
“It might be common sense to you, Charlie. It’s mumbo-jumbo to most of us.”
“It’ll come. There’s no substitute for experience.”
“So how did Latham’s semen get to be all over Mrs Silkstone?” Annette asked.
I shrugged and flapped a hand. I suspect I blushed, too. “In the usual manner?” I suggested.
“So he was there when she died?”
“It looks like it.”
“But you think Silkstone was with him?”
“I don’t know, Annette,” I sighed. “What do some people get up to behind their curtains? It’s all a mystery to me. Profiling isn’t evidence. It should be used to indicate a line of enquiry, and you should always bear in mind that it might be the wrong line. When you do it backwards, like we’ve done, it’s next to worthless.”
She smiled, saying: “That was interesting. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” A waiter placed the bill in front of me but Annette’s arm reached out like a striking rattlesnake and grabbed it.
“My treat,” she said.
Light rain was falling when we hit the street, and I guided Annette under the shelter of the shop canopies, my hand in the small of her back. “Shall we have a drink somewhere?” I asked.
“Mmm. Where?”
“Dunno.” I was out of touch with the town-centre pubs. Most of them were good, once, but yoof culture had taken them over and the music made thinking, never mind conversation, impossible. Annette might not mind that, I thought, and something gurgled in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t have a calculator in my pocket, but elementary mental arithmetic said she was nineteen years younger than me. Nowhere would that gap be more evident than in a town-centre pub.
Across the road there blinked the neon sign of the Aspidistra Lounge, Heckley’s major nightspot. Formerly the Copper Banana, formerly Luigi’s Nite Scene, formerly Mad John’s Fashion Emporium, formerly the Regal Kinema. The later two of these enterprises were run by Georgie Casanove, formerly George Hardwick. Georgie was our town’s answer to Pete Stringfellow, but without the finesse.
“We could try there,” I said, nodding towards the lights.
“The Aspidistra Lounge?”
“Mmm. We could call it work, claim on our expenses. Georgie, the proprietor, isn’t exactly a Mr Big, but I think he could finger a few people for us, if he were so inclined. Let’s put some pressure on him.”
“Right!” she said. “I’m game.”
We dashed across the road, avoiding the puddles, and stepped through the open doorway of the disco. A bouncer with a shaven head and Buddy Holly spectacles was leaning on the front desk, chatting to the gum-chewing ticket girl. He straightened up and stepped to one side, taken off-guard by the sudden rush of customers, and tried to look menacing. I’ve seen more menace on the back of a cornflakes box.
“Two, please,” I said to the girl, not sure whether to speak under, over or through the armoured glass that surrounded her. We could have flashed our IDs like TV cops would have done, and they would have let us in, but I preferred it this way.
The words: “Ladies are free before ten,” came out of her mouth in a haze of peppermint that evaporated in the air somewhere between her and the bouncer, who she was gazing towards.
“Oh, I’ll take three, then,” I answered.
“That’ll be seven pounds fifty.”
I pushed a tenner towards her and she slid my change and two cloakroom tickets under the window. “Thank you.” The bouncer strode over to a door and yanked it open. I ushered Annette forward and said: “Cheers,” to him. We were in.
I know one tune that’s been written in the last ten years by any of the so-called Brit-Pop stars I see on the front pages of the tabloids, and the DJ was playing it.
I leaned towards Annette and said: “Verve,” into her ear. She stared at me, her eyes wide. “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” I added, determined to exploit my sole opportunity to swank. It’s a simple catchy rhythm, repeated ad nauseum. I nodded my head in time with it: Dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum. Once heard, it’s ringing through your brain for days, a bit like Canon in D.
“I’m amazed!” she gasped, and I rewarded her with a wink.
Our brains slowly modified our senses to accommodate the sudden change in environment. Irises widened to dispel the jungle gloom and nerves in our ears adjusted their sensitivity to just below the pain barrier. Noses twitched, seeking out pheromones from anyone of the opposite sex who was ripe for mating. Four million years of evolution, and this was what it was all leading to.
“It’s a bit quiet,” I shouted above the battery of chords bouncing through my body.
“It’s early,” Annette yelled back at me, in explanation.
It was the same as every other disco I remembered from my younger days. A bright, small dance floor; bored DJ sorting records behind a console straight from NASA; pulsating lights and lots of red velvet. OK, so we didn’t have lasers and dry ice then, but they’re no big deal. Still permeating everything was that same old feeling of despair. These places always look a dump when you see them with the house lights up. This looked a dump in semi-darkness. When I was a kid we called it the Bug Hutch, and came every Saturday to catch up with Flash Gordon’s latest adventures.
Georgie himself was behind the bar, attired like a cross between Bette Davis on a bad night and Conan the Barbarian. “It wouldn’t cost much to convert this back to a cinema, George,” I told him, flapping a hand in the direction of the auditorium.
“Hello, Mr Priest,” he growled, managing to sound threatening and limp simultaneously. “Not expecting any trouble, are we?”
“Who could cause trouble in an empty house?”
“It’s early. We’ll fill up, soon as the pubs close.”
“Two beers, please.” The locks on his head were platinum blond, but those cascading through the slashed front of his satin shirt were grey.
“What sort?”
I looked at Annette and she leaned over the bar, examining the wares. “Foster’s Ice, please,” she said.
“Two,” I repeated.
He popped the caps and placed the bottles on the counter. “That’ll be four pounds fifty,” he told me.
I passed him another tenner, asking: “How much is there back on the bottles?”
“Isn’t he a caution,” he said to Annette as he handed me my change.
We walked uphill, away from the bar and the speakers, feeling our way between the empty tables to where the rear stalls once were. It was much quieter back there, and a few other people were sitting in scattered groups, arranged according to some logic based on personal territory. As the place filled territories would shrink and a pecking order emerge. There were two couples, three men presumably from out of town, and a group of girls. We looked for a table equidistant from the girls and the couples, but before we could sit down one of the girls waved to me.
It was Sophie, with three of her friends. I nudged Annette and gestured for her to follow. The girls moved their chairs to make room for us, removing sports bags from the vacant ones.
“It’s Charles, he’s my uncle,” Sophie told her friends, a big smile illuminating her face.
“Hello, Uncle Charles,” they chorused.
I introduced Annette to them, and Sophie rattled off three names that I promptly forgot. She and Sophie renewed their acquaintance.
“You don’t do this for amusement, do you?” I asked, looking around at the decor.
“We’ve been playing badminton at the leisure centre,” someone informed me.
“We just come in for a quick drink and a dance,” another added.
“It’s free before ten,” Sophie said.
“Right,” I nodded. Apart from the price of the drinks, it sounded a reasonable arrangement. I gritted my teeth and asked them what they’d have.
