'I'm not.'
'Lying.'
'Look, I swear to God…'
'Anyone, Frank. I could be any woman in the whole wide fucking world.
Any woman, Frank. Any cunt in a storm. '
He made to roll aside and she leaned her weight against his arms, surprisingly strong.
'What's the matter, Frank? Don't want me any more? Huh? Don't fancy me?'
Head sideways below the pillow, he didn't answer.
'Don't you like it when a cunt talks back, Frank? That the problem?'
'There's no problem,' he mumbled, only just audible above the hum of the air conditioning.
'What?' Her face lowered close to him, laughter in her voice, teasing.
'I said there's no fucking problem.'
'Temper,' she scolded.
'Temper.' And rocking back on his hips, she reached a hand behind and between his legs and he could sense rather than see her smile.
'You're right, Frank. No problem at all.'
She moved again, her buttocks lower on his thighs, the front of her pale-coloured briefs against his balls. Spreading his hands, straightening his arms, he raised his face towards hers and she kissed him, he kissed her, her fingers tugging at his hair.
Wait,' she said, minutes later.
'Wait.'
'What for?' His breathing was harsh.
'What do you think?' Swivelling off him.
'I have to go to the bathroom, of course.'
He watched her dart away, pale, no longer slender, saw the shimmer of electric light before the bathroom door closed it out. With a slow sigh, he lay back down, rested an arm across his face and once more closed his eyes.
A blues club in Radford or Hyson Green didn't mean laid- back, Mississippi Delta bottleneck, the kind that might grace TV advertisements for beer or jeans; it didn't even mean second- or third-generation bump and grind, juke blues, South Side Chicago, T-Bone Walker or Otis Rush. It meant after-hours drinking. Red Stripe and rum, the sweet scent of marijuana drifting in lazy spirals down the stairs.
They were illegal, of course, and the police knew where they were and who ran them, and those that ran them knew the police knew and, unless something exceptional happened to upset the racial apple cart, that was how it stayed.
This particular club was off the Radford Road, more or less across from where the Hyson Green flats used to be, until they had been bulldozed down and the land leased to house another supermarket.
Perish the thought the Council would build more homes. The fact that the club was above the premises of what had been some kind of outreach office of the Probation Service, only added a little extra piquancy.
Norman Mann paused at the foot of the stairs and drew 216 in a deep, long breath.
'What d'you reckon, Charlie? Worth inhaling, eh?'
Smelled a sight better than a lot of things illegal, Resnick thought, and likely did a lot less harm, but that was as far as he was prepared to go.
The treads on the stairs were cracked in places and bare. As they climbed higher the bass from recorded reggae made the walls vibrate.
Norman Mann motioned for Resnick and Sharon to stay at the end of the landing, went to the door and knocked. There followed a long and fairly tortuous conversation Resnick couldn't hear.
'We'll wait down there,' Mann said, when the head he'd been talking to withdrew and the door was sharply closed.
In what had once been the Probation office, a forty-watt bulb hung from a length of fraying flex. Miraculously, it still worked. What it cast light on were an old desk, empty boxes, balls of dust, a stack of forms waiting forever to be filled in and signed those that hadn't been shredded by the mice for their nests. A hungry cat would have thought it had died and gone to heaven. Next time Dizzy nips my trouserieg because he thinks I've put him on short rations, Resnick thought, I'll bring him down here and lock him in.
Richie made them wait. When he finally appeared in the doorway, he was wearing a skinny-ribbed V-neck jumper in bright colours and tight trousers which, even in that dim light, shone when he moved. He was slightly built and about as pale as a black man can be without becoming Michael Jackson. He stood lounging against the door frame with a can of lager in his hand, 'Who's these?' he said, indicating Resnick and Sharon with a nod of the head.
Norman Mann made the introductions.
'Marlene Kinoulton,' Resnick said.
'We'd like to find her.'
'Slag! I'd like to find she first.' The syntax was right, but at root the accent was no more Caribbean than if he'd gone down the pit at sixteen which conceivably he might have done, except that by then they were already closing them down.
'She owe you?' Norman Mann asked.
'She owe everybody.'
'That why she's keeping her head down? Maybe skipped town?'
'She not even got the sense to do that. I saw her fat white ass only this afternoon.'
'You sure?' Resnick asked.
'I not blind.'
'Then you would have had a word with her,' Norman Mann said.
'Her owing you, and all.'
'She getting into this car, in't she?'
'Which car?'
'I don't know. Big white car. She's working, in't she? Doing business. Drive off before I can say a thing.'
'No way you could have been mistaken? You're positive it was her?'
'Yeah.'
Where? '
'Round near her place.'
'You got an address for her then?' Resnick said.
'What's it worth?'
Both men stared at him and Richie stared back for long enough to show no way were they going to intimidate him. Then he gave his can a little chug.
'How about peace of mind?' Norman Mann said. 'Goodwill.'
'What you want she for?' Richie asked. He was looking at Resnick.
'Something serious,' Resnick said.
'Nothing that would affect you, I can promise you that.'
'Promise?' Richie drained the can and tossed it into the nearest corner.
'What's that?'
Over their heads, someone had turned up the volume and the ceiling had started to shake.
'That gives way,' Norman Mann said, glancing up, 'going to be a lot of people hurt bad. Crying shame. '
'Forest Fields,' Richie said.
'She have a room, Harcourt Road.'
Number? '
'Top end, corner house.'
'Which side?'
Richie grinned.
'Depend which way you looking, don't it?' And then, addressing Sharon directly for the first time, 'stead of hangin' out with these guys, get your black ass down here some night, show it a good time. '
