driver pressed the electronic switch to lower the window and leaned across.
'Working?' he asked.
She put him at thirty, no more than thirty-five, dark striped suit, white shirt, tie; expensive watch on his wrist, hair brushed down and across to compensate for its early loss. Sharon wondered if she had seen him there before and decided she probably had not.
'How about it?' he tried again.
'You working or not?'
'Sure,' Sharon said, without breaking her stride, 'though not the way you mean. Now piss off before I run you in. '
The Cavalier was off up the street and turning left into Southey Street with speed enough to leave tyre marks on the tarmac. Sharon shook her head: why was it some men were content with a jacket potato at lunchtime and for some it was a quick shag?
Back behind the wheel of her car, she popped the top of the Lucozade can and tilted back her head to drink. A pair of girls one in a short skirt and heels, the other in tight red trousers and boots spotted her fifty yards along the opposite pavement, turned in their tracks and began to walk briskly back the other way.
The Lucozade was warm and fizzy and the cob was ten degrees short of stale; fragments of crust splintered over her legs and the seat. The Terry Macmillan she'd been reading lay open, face down, on the passenger side. The dashboard clock told her she had a good two hours to go.
Sharon Gamett had joined the police late, in her mid- thirties, a career move she had tried not to see as a sign of desperation. All her applications to CID in London had been rebuffed and it had taken a move north-east to Lincolnshire – before she was able to join the ranks of detectives. After the best part of a year, she had known she wanted something closer to the cutting edge than investigating poultry fraud and pig rustling in King's Lynn. Moving here to the city had meant a move back into uniform, but almost immediately she had put in for a transfer to Vice, officially uniformed still but working in plain clothes, a step on the ladder towards the real thing.
The Vice Squad in this neck of the woods comprised one inspector, two sergeants and twelve constables, three of whom were women. What they hadn't had, until Sharon joined, was an officer who was black.
Leaning sideways, she wedged the can into the pocket of the passenger door, and what remained of the cob she stuffed back into its bag and placed on the floor. A grey Sierra crawled past for the third time, slowing almost to a stop at every woman it passed. In her notebook, alongside its registration, Sharon wrote the time. As she watched, the car turned right on to Waverley and she knew from there it would make a left on to Arboretum, then left again up Balmoral or Addison, squaring the circle.
This time she was ready. As the Sierra headed back 33 along Forest Road East, Sharon started up the car and drove diagonally across in front of it, headlights on fall beam. The driver had two alternatives: run smack into her or stop. He stopped.
Sharon was out of her car quickly enough, not running, tapping at the near-side window for it to be rolled down.
'Police Constable Gamett,' she said, holding up her identification.
'I've observed you on three separate occasions in the past half hour, stopping to speak to known prostitutes.'
In the front of the Sierra, the two men exchanged glances and the one nearest to Sharon smiled. Divine drew his wallet from his inside pocket and let it fall open close to Sharon's face.
'Snap,' he said.
'Why don't we go and get a drink?'
The table was chipped Formica, the seats were covered in a dull red patched synthetic, and the television set above the bar was showing music videos, beamed in from somewhere in Europe. Hand-drawn posters on the walls advertised quiz nights, bingo nights and karaoke. Divine sat nursing what was left of a pint of Shipstones, Naylor a half of bitter, Sharon Gamett had drained a small glass of grapefruit juice and said no to another.
They had filled Sharon in on the events of the previous night, asked her if she had heard anything that might be useful, but she could only shake her head in reply.
'The girls you spoke to,' Sharon said.
'Any of them come up with anything?'
'Seen and heard sod all,' Divine said.
'And likely,' Naylor added, 'not to tell us if they had. '
'Then why bother going through the motions?' Sharon asked.
'Because if something happens,' Divine said, 'like this bloke in hospital takes a sudden turn for the worse and pops his clogs, or a couple of months down the line there's another incident, similar, maybe proves fatal, then at least we've covered our backsides. '
'And the guy' nor Naylor said.
'Who is your DI?'
'Resnick.'
Sharon Gamett smiled, remembering.
'Not a bad bloke. Give him my best.'
Divine swallowed down the remainder of his pint. 'Don't you get brassed off with Vice?' he asked when they were back on the pavement outside.
'Spending all day chatting up scuzzy tarts and warning off kerb crawlers.'
Sharon shook her head.
'Half the rest of the squad, eight hours a day for the past twelve days, watching seven boxes of videos, clocking faces, trying to decide if what they're seeing's simply gross indecency or worse.'
'Dunno,' Divine grinned.
'Got to be worse ways of earning a living then watching dirty movies and getting paid for it.'
Sharon's mouth moved into a rueful smile.
'More than a few of those, I doubt you'd think that way. Even a horny bugger like you!'
Divine grinned, taking it as a compliment. Naylor laughed and thanked her for her time and he and Divine turned right towards where they had parked their car, while Sharon walked across the street to have a word with one of the girls who was loitering there, smoking a cigarette.
'Will you take a look,' Divine said, head turned to watch Sharon walk away, 'at the arse on that. ' But he was careful to keep his voice low, so there was no danger of her overhearing him.
Lynn Kellogg knocked on Resnick's office door mid- afternoon, just as he was taking a bite out of a smoked chicken, tomato and tarragon mayonnaise baguette. Late 35 lunch. A sliver of chicken slipped out on to his fingers and he ate it as delicately as he could, not noticing the tomato seeds which had sprayed across his tie.
'Our mystery man at the hospital,' Lynn said.
Resnick looked at her expectantly.
'He's done a runner.'
Resnick lowered the baguette on to the back of an already stained NAPO report and gave a slow shake of the head.
'There was some kind of emergency down at the other end of the ward.
He stole some clothes and walked out without a word. I spoke to the nurse in charge; as long as he keeps the wound clean, changes the dressing, he should be fine. '
'Well,' Resnick said, 'one way of looking at it is that it's good news. No victim, no crime. '
'But?' Lynn said.
'If the similarity to that stabbing in March is more than coincidental, we've likely got someone out there with some kind of grudge. Could turn worse before it gets better.'
'That incident,' Lynn said, 'businessman from out of town, staying at one of the big hotels, wasn't that it? '
Resnick nodded.
'We could have a quick ring round, see if there's any with an outstanding account. I doubt he went back to pay his bill.'
'Worth trying,' Resnick said.
'See what you can turn up. Oh, and if Mark and Kevin are back…'
