fatal stab wounds. '
Susan Tyrell reached over and pushed one of several preset buttons, switching the radio to Classic-FM.
'Did you see the picture, David?'
'Mm? Sorry, which picture?' He was standing by the microwave, concentrating on the controls; one second too many and the croissants would be reduced to slime. Close by stood the matt black espresso machine he had talked Susan into buying him the Christmas before last and which he had never learned to use.
'In the paper,' Susan said.
'The woman they mink's been stabbing all those men.'
'On the game, isn't she?'
'So it says.'
The microwave pinged and David slid the warm croissants on to plates.
It was warm enough again for them to sit out in the garden, make use of the deck chairs Susan had picked up on sale at Homebase. He picked up the paper from where Susan had left it and carried it back to his chair. Centre columns, page three.
'Marlene Kinoul- ton, doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it? Not exactly stunning, either. Can't quite imagine who'd want to shell out for her.'
'Really?' Susan said, pouring the coffee.
'I should have thought she was just your type.'
David laughed.
'What on earth's that supposed to mean?'
'Oh, you know, one of those raddled creatures you fantasise about, short on morals and long on hearts of gold. I can remember you dragging me off to see Cutter's Way..: ' Jeff Bridges. '
'. just for the scene where Lisa Eichhom looks so pained and awful after he's walked out on her. What did you say? You'd never seen a woman looking so bereft. '
'Or beautiful. 1 ' Right. ' Susan broke into the croissant with her fingers. ' And then she gets killed. '
David raised an eyebrow and passed her the jam.
'Goes with the territory.'
'Prostitutes and whores, you mean? Victims.'
'I suppose.'
Susan looked at him hard.
'I wonder why they're always the ones you fancy so much?'
A butterfly landed for an instant on David's sleeve, then fluttered off towards the cotoneaster.
'I liked Julie Andrews once.'
'You were seven. And you're avoiding the issue.'
'Is it an issue?'
Susan brushed crumbs from the front of her blouse.
'It might be.'
David wriggled his lean body against the striped canvas. Just when he was having a nice, relaxing morning for a change.
'Then I suppose it's to do with oh, you know what it's to do with fallen angels, forbidden fruit.'
'Like her?' Susan said, nodding in the direction of Marlene Kinoulton's picture in the newspaper.
'But you don't fancy her,'
'That's different.'
'Why? Because she's not pretty, screen-star pretty?'
'For God's sake, Susan, because she's real. And because what goes with her is real.'
'Such as?'
'How long a list do you want? Herpes, gonorrhoea, Aids.'
'Oh,' Susan said, 'for a moment I thought you were talking about commitment. '
'Commitment? To a whore?'
'Yes. Why not? That's what it is, after all. You start off fancying her, you decide to pay for her, you end up sticking a condom on your cock and sticking it inside her. I'd say that called for quite a lot of commitment, wouldn't you?'
David had jerked to his feet, spilling coffee down one leg of his trousers and across the seat of the deck chair 'Christ, Susan, what's this all about?' He couldn't remember her so animated, so angry.
Susan put down her cup and plate, folded her hands across her lap.
'The night before last, I went out and picked up a man.'
David stared at her, mouth slightly open. Just stared. As if hearing it for the first time, he heard the harsh, bright call of the magpie on the overhanging branch of their neighbour's pear tree.
'I picked him up in a bar and we went to a hotel.'
David turned towards the bottom of the garden, walked five paces, turned back around.
'Look, Susan, I'm sorry, I can't deal with this now. I have to go.'
All she could do was shake her head from side to side and laugh.
Hurrying past her into the house, David froze at the entrance to the hall. Where was his briefcase? Where were his keys? What was going on with his life?
'David,' Susan touched his arm and he flinched.
'David, look at me.' And she leaned back against the front door the way she thought Claire Trevor might have done, Barbara Stanwyck or Jane Greer.
'I didn't tell you so that you could deal with it. It's done. Over. I just wanted you to know.'
As he tried to push past her, reaching for the handle to the door, she added, close to his ear,
'I thought you might look at me differently, that's all.'
He hesitated for a second before tugging at the door and Susan stepped to one side, letting him go.
She was still standing in the hallway when she heard the car start, tyres spinning a little as it sped away. She hadn't told him exactly how drunk she had needed to be, the way excitement and revulsion had tasted in her mouth; nor about the way her face had looked in the bathroom mirror before she had decided to cut and run.
Susan looked at her watch: nine seventeen. They would have realised at school by now she wasn't coming in. She was surprised they hadn't phoned. In the living room, she poured herself a generous glass of gin, lit a cigarette: isn't that the kind of thing Lisa Eichhom would do? Claire Trevor. Barbara Stanwyck. Jane Greer. All those women who rarely made it in one piece, through to the final reel?
Resnick sat at the coffee stall, taking his time through his second espresso of the morning. A sudden shower had surprised him as he was walking his way down from the Woodborough Road and he had ducked into the market by the rear entrance.
Marlene Kinoulton's photograph was prominently displayed on the front page of the local paper. All of the previous night's searching had brought them nothing but sore feet and abuse. Urgent messages had gone out to Leicester, Sheffield, Derby, the other cities where it was known she had worked. It was too early to gauge the extent and accuracy of public response, though early signs were far from promising; what had come through via the information room so far had been patchy and poor. Nowadays, it seemed, unless you went on television, Crimewatch UK or one of those, chances of lighting a fire under the public were poor. And he supposed, in time, if Kinoulton weren't traced, that was what would happen. Actors and a film crew and a researcher asking to interview him so that they could get it just right.
'Later tonight, on Crimewatch UK, the intriguing story of the missing prostitute and the hotel-room murder…'
A woman with a child of under two clinging to her skirt, climbed on to the vacant stool next to him, lifted the child into her lap and stuck a dummy in its mouth. Directly across from where he was sitting, a man he had put away for two stretches for burglary, joked with one of the Asian stall holders over a cup of tea. He did not acknowledge Resnick, nor Resnick him. When the festival was over and all the visitors and writers and film makers had returned to wherever they had come from, this was what it would come back to. People who lived here; who did what and to whom?
'Another espresso, inspector?'
'Thanks. Better not.' Lifting the small cup to his mouth, he swallowed down what was left. Dark and bitter,
