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 like 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.
