‘Yeah. Well, she’s in London, and Brock’s arranged for her to come down to Silvermeadow to talk to us. Didn’t he mention it?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ You know damn well so, she thought. Dr Nicholson was young and attractive and on that last occasion had seemed, to Kathy’s way of thinking, to have had her eye on Leon Desai. She would certainly have remembered if Brock had mentioned it.
‘Do you keep in touch with her, then?’ she asked, toying with her broccoli.
‘Alex? Yes, now and then. She went to Liverpool soon after the Hannaford case to join the forensic psychology unit at the university. She phoned me last week to say she’d be in London. I told Brock, and he got in touch with her.’
Stop it, Kathy thought. Tell him what you think.
‘I thought you fancied her,’ she said. ‘On the Hannaford case.’
‘Did you? Why did you think that?’ He grinned, and the way he grinned told her that maybe it was true.
She smiled back. ‘I don’t know. I just thought that. Anyway, she’s going to give us her thoughts, is she?’
‘She told Brock she’d be interested to have a look, because of the setting. That interested her, apparently. So I’m glad at least that we’ve established that Kerri really was there, otherwise it might have been a waste of time.’
Kathy wiped the last sauce from her plate and put down her knife and fork. ‘Well, that was wonderful. If you ever decide to run off with someone else-Alex Nicholson, say-promise you’ll leave me your recipes.’ She thought she got the tone about right-light-hearted banter.
‘Kathy,’ he said seriously, reaching forward and taking her hands, ‘I’ve still got lots of recipes to try out on you. You’ve no idea.’
8
T he hunt for Eddie Testor resumed the following day. It was spurred on by information given by another employee at the leisure pool, a young man whose shifts ran from Monday to Friday, so he hadn’t previously been interviewed. He recalled that he had seen Testor on the afternoon of the sixth. They were both rostered from midday to nine p.m. that day, and Testor had been due for a one-hour meal break from four to five p.m., and this was confirmed by his supervisor. But Testor had wanted his break later for some reason, and had arranged with the other lifeguard to cover for him between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. The man remembered it particularly because it had messed up his previous arrangements to meet a girlfriend during his break. He also suggested that, although Testor had never confided in him, he thought he might have had a close friend at the Silvermeadow Sports Club and Fitness Salon, where he seemed to spend much of his free time.
‘Fitness salon?’ Kathy said, taking the note from Phil. ‘What’s a fitness salon?’
‘It’s where they make you look fit, as opposed to actually being fit, Kathy,’ Phil explained patiently. ‘Sun lamps and stuff. Liposuction too, for all I know.’
‘That figures,’ Gavin Lowry growled at Kathy’s shoulder. ‘That wanker Testor would go for that. I’ll come with you.’
On the way down to the lower level, Kathy said, ‘Haven’t seen much of you recently, Gavin. How’s it going?’
He blew his nose loudly, looking out of sorts. ‘Bit hung over, actually. Me and a few of the lads went down the pub last night, after it became obvious we weren’t going to find that bastard. Drown our sorrows.’ In any ordinary town street on a wet December morning his scowling discontent would have seemed entirely normal, but here, in Silvermeadow’s perpetual Indian summer, he looked menacing and out of place, and people glanced at him uncertainly as they passed.
‘How’s your campaign against Forbes going?’
He shot her a mistrustful look out of the corner of a bleary eye. ‘Don’t know what you mean, Kathy. The chief super has implicit trust. Asked my advice this morning, as it happens.’
‘About?’
‘About Testor. We decided that it might be a good idea to work up a bit of a media storm about Testor before we catch him, so that the result will seem more “meritorious”. His word, not mine. He called another press briefing straight away. Rigorous detective work has identified a man the police are anxious to interview, blah, blah, blah. The public are warned not to approach this man who has a record of violent assault, blah, blah, blah.’
Kathy said nothing for a while, then, ‘What if he didn’t do it?’
‘Yeah, well, that’s the risk, isn’t it? Go public too soon and get egg on your face, too late and miss out.’
‘What did you advise?’
‘Boldness, grasp the nettle, seize the moment. Christ, I feel terrible. Can you slow down a bit?’
A girl in a tracksuit behind the front counter of the sports club pointed out the tinted glass entrance door of the Primavera Fitness Salon on the far side of the atrium, and they wove towards it through a stream of bustling volleyballers.
A redhead looked up from the schedules she was discussing with the receptionist as they walked in, and gave them a big smile. ‘Good morning. Haven’t seen you two here before.’ Her voice was deep and throaty. ‘Kim Hislop, manager. What can we do for you?’ The smile faded when Kathy showed her warrant card. ‘Oh yes. What now?’
‘We’d like some information about one of your customers, Ms Hislop. Is it all right to talk here?’ Kathy asked, looking around at the furniture in the reception area, something between a hotel foyer and a clinic.
The manager set her head back on her surprisingly broad shoulders, studying them before she said anything. ‘This way,’ she murmured finally, and led them into a second waiting room behind the first.
A glass door on the far wall carried the name PRIMAVERA above the stylised figure of Botticelli’s Venus wearing a sash that said FITNESS SALON. She indicated for them to sit, herself perching in her tracksuit pants on the very edge of a seat, projecting herself forward at them.
‘Well?’
‘We’re interested in anything you can tell us about Eddie Testor. Do you know him?’ Kathy showed her the computer image.
Hislop glanced at it. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ She smiled and handed it back. ‘We’re on performance contracts here. The last thing I need is a reputation for shopping our best clients to the filth, know what I mean?’
‘We’re anxious to contact him, that’s all.’
She shrugged and swept her red hair back from her forehead, her biceps swelling impressively under the brilliant white T-shirt. Then she got to her feet and took a book from a shelf and turned the pages. It was an album of photographs, Kathy saw, of men and women bodybuilders in studio poses. She found the one she was looking for and passed it over to Kathy and Lowry. In it, Testor was wearing almost nothing, his body oiled and gleaming. She traced the outline of the hairless torso with a fingertip. ‘This is my work,’ she said.
Kathy’s reply was drowned by a muffled scream from beyond the Primavera door. Ms Hislop ignored it. ‘I wax him,’ she said. ‘I do most of the regulars myself.’
There was a second scream, a male voice in agony, followed by a string of curses. Ms Hislop shook her head resignedly and rose to her feet in one smooth aerobic movement. ‘’Scuse me one moment.’ She disappeared through the door.
After several minutes she returned and sat down in the same perching position, as if in the middle of a knees-bend exercise. ‘Where were we?’
‘What was that all about?’ Lowry asked.
‘God, they’re babies,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Men.’ She raised an eyebrow knowingly at Kathy. ‘It’s just so bloody embarrassing when they start to cry. Don’t you find that?’
‘What are they doing to him?’ Lowry asked cautiously.
The Primavera door opened again and a girl in a white tracksuit came out and knelt by Ms Hislop’s side, whispered in her ear.
‘All right,’ she nodded. ‘But there’s no refund. He knows that.’
