Ash & Bone

7

Miracle of miracles, his connection pulled into Nottingham station no more than twenty minutes late. The young taxi-driver chatted amiably as he drove, apologising for the detour necessitated by the tram tracks along Canal Street and up Maid Marian Way. 'Testing 'em, know what I mean? Putting 'em down, pulling 'em up, putting ' em down. Trams they got goin' round, five mile an hour you're lucky. First ones 'posed to be startin' next year. Same they said last year, innit?'

The house was in the Park, a large and rambling private estate near the castle. Victorian mansions originally built for those who had profited from mining and manufacturing, the sweat and labour of others. Now it was barristers and retired CEOs, new heroes of IT and dot.com.

Martyn Miles had made his money from women's fashion and a chain of hair and beauty salons, in one of which Elder's wife, Joanne, had been working when her affair with Miles began.

Miles had bought a tranche of land near the northern edge of the estate, carved out of some burgher's tennis courts and grounds, and commissioned an architect friend to design something modern yet self-effacing, a curve of concrete frontage borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright and the New York Guggenheim. The emphasis inside was on space and light, everything arranged around a living room of double height, separated from the stone patio and garden by a wall of glass.

When her marriage to Elder had broken down, Miles had moved Joanne in. Since then, things between them had been rocky: the last Elder had heard, Miles, having moved out and magnanimously left Joanne with the keys, had thought better of it and moved back in. But things might have changed again.

Joanne's Freelander was parked outside. No sign of whatever Martyn might have currently been driving, but there he was, stretched out on the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, pale blue linen shirt toning in with the blue-grey of the room.

'Hello, Frank.' He swung his legs round slowly and smiled. Something colourless with tonic sat within reach on the floor. 'Just holding the fort till you arrived.'

Elder said nothing. Brittle, anonymous jazz played faint through speakers unseen.

Joanne stood close against the glass, smoking a cigarette.

Opening the front door to him, she had turned her head from the kiss Elder had aimed, maladroitly, at her cheek.

'Can I get you anything, Frank?' she said now.

He shook his head.

She was wearing a silver-grey metallic dress that shivered when she moved. Make-up, even expertly applied, hadn't been able to disguise the dark skin heavy below the eyes.

'It's a good thing you came, Frank,' Miles said. 'A good thing. Get this sorted before it goes too far.'

How far was that? Elder wondered.

'These past weeks,' Miles said, 'she's been out of control. Running wild.'

'Don't exaggerate,' Joanne said.

'You wouldn't know, Frank,' Miles continued, ignoring her. 'No way you could, not living where you do. But she's been doing just as she likes, out all hours. Seventeen, I know, Frank, a young woman, but even so. Rolled up here drunk more than a few times, smelling like I-don't-know-what, some poor sod of a taxi-driver outside waiting to get paid. I've tried talking to her but she won't listen. And, besides, you might not think it's my place.'

'All that happens,' Joanne said, 'you end up losing your temper.'

'Sometimes she's enough to make a saint lose his temper.'

'You would know.'

'Okay, okay.' Miles raised both hands in resignation. 'I'll off out and get a drink, let you two talk amongst yourselves. Good to see you, Frank.'

Elder nodded.

Whistling softly, Martyn Miles slipped his feet into a pair of soft leather shoes, pulled on his leather coat, expensive and black, and left the room. Neither of them spoke until they heard the front door close.

'Sit down, Frank. Are you sure you won't have a drink? I'm having one.'

'Okay, a small Scotch'll be fine.'

'I'll see what there is.'

'Anything.'

She poured herself a large white wine, Elder a more-than-decent measure of good malt.

'She's not here, then?' Elder said. 'Katherine?'

'She came in an hour ago, changed her clothes and went out again.'

'She knew I was going to be here?'

'I told her.'

'And you don't know where she went?'

Joanne shook her head.

Elder sipped his Scotch. 'You said she was seeing someone.'

'Rob Summers.'

'Someone she knew from school, or…?'

'He's not a boy, Frank. In his twenties, maybe more.'

'You've met him, then?'

'Not met exactly.'

'And the two of them, it's serious?'

'If it was, it wouldn't be so bad. It's more casual than that, as far as I can tell. His whim, I dare say. When she's not with him, she's hanging round with all manner of riff-raff. Punks and Goths and God knows what. The kind you see lolling around the Old Market Square.'

'Jesus,' Elder said.

'I am worried about her, Frank. You know, drugs and everything.'

'She's got a level head on her.'

'You think so?'

Elder got up and paced from wall to wall. 'That psychiatrist she was seeing…'

'Psychotherapist.'

'You haven't talked to her, I suppose?'

'Katherine stopped going to her a good few months ago.'

Elder stopped close to where she was sitting on the settee. 'It's a mess, isn't it? A fucking mess.'

Reaching up, she took hold of his hand and, for a moment, until he pulled it away, rested her head against his arm.

Elder spent the night in one of the small hotels out on the Mansfield Road, took one look at the breakfast and opted instead for a brisk walk into the city centre, a coffee sitting hunched up against the window in Caffe Nero, scanning the front page of the paper someone had left behind.

The Old Market Square had been titivated since Elder had seen it last. The grassed areas towards the Beastmarket end had been landscaped and some of the old benches had been replaced. Katherine was sitting between two men of indeterminate age, bearded, shaggy-haired and scruffily dressed, cans of cheap lager in their hands. It was not yet ten in the morning.

A girl in a beaded halter top and skintight jeans, her face festooned with studs and rings, sat cross-legged on the ground.

A third man with a blond pony-tail, wearing jeans and a stained Stone Roses sweatshirt, stood with one foot balanced on the end of the bench, watching Elder as he approached.

Elder stopped a short distance away.

'Kate…'

Not looking up, Katherine continued, carefully, to roll a cigarette.

'Katherine, we have to talk.'

'Sod off,' one of the seated men said.

Katherine brought the roll-up to her mouth and licked along the edge; pulling clear a few stray strands of tobacco, she took a disposable lighter from her pocket and lit the cigarette, drawing the smoke down into her lungs. One more drag and she passed it to the man on her left.

'Katherine,' Elder said again, his voice raised and impatient.

'Leave me alone.'

'I can't.'

Elder moved closer and the pony-tailed man swung his foot down from the bench and stood in his way.

'He's police,' one of the men on the bench said. 'Fuckin' law.'

'Not any more,' Katherine said.

'Who is he then?'

'My father. He thinks he's my father.'

'Katherine

'She doesn't want to talk to you,' the pony-tailed man said. 'Can't you see?'

'Get out of the way,' Elder said.

The man grinned and stood his ground. 'Make me.'

Fists clenched tight at his sides, Elder wanted to take a swing at the sneering face and punch it as hard as he could. Instead, with one last glance at Katherine, he walked away to the sound of their jeers.

What the fuck, Elder thought, as he crossed South Parade and on to Wheeler Gate, what the fuck am I doing here? What's the point of all this? A waste of fucking time. He was no more than a stone's throw from the railway station before he stopped and turned around.

For the next two hours, he stood in shop doorways, sat on the stone steps in front of the Council House, shared a desultory conversation with the Post seller near the corner of King Street and Long Row. He bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee in Pret A Manger and sipped the coffee slowly through the lid.

The way Katherine was sitting now, arms tight across her chest and wearing only a thin sweater, he thought she must be cold. Perhaps if he bought coffee for her, some hot tea or soup… but he did neither, continued instead to watch and wait, knowing that she didn't want him anywhere near but unable now to drag himself away.

He remembered her as a young girl, a child, tears flooding her eyes, screaming 'I hate you!' at the top of her lungs and then, moments later, allowing him to fold her inside his arms and kiss the top of her head, the warmth of her hair.

As the bells chimed the quarter hour, a man crossed towards where Katherine was sitting.

Instinct prickled the skin on Elder's wrists and the backs of his hands.

He was not a big man, around five seven, slightly built, denim jacket, jeans, check shirt, basketball boots, fair hair flopping forward over his face. He spoke to several of the small group gathered round the bench, stepping back a pace or so to talk to the pony-tailed man, who had wandered off earlier and then returned. Katherine he ignored, but Elder had noticed the way she had become more alert at his approach, her back more upright, fingers combing through the rough shag of unkempt hair.

Five minutes, more, and as if noticing her for the first time, he offered Katherine a cigarette and lit it from his own. Another few minutes and she was standing at his side, both of them talking now, quite animatedly. Three buses went past in slow convoy, hiding them temporarily from Elder's view, and when he saw them again they were walking towards the fountains, passing in between, his hand coming to rest across the top of her shoulders as they moved past one of the stone lions guarding the Council House before turning right into Exchange Arcade.

Elder picked them up again as they emerged.

At the foot of Victoria Street, the man reached for her hand and she pulled it away. Down through Hockley not touching, side by side. Coffee shops, bars, hairdressers, retro clothing, Indian restaurants. Goose Gate into Gedling. Waiting for a gap in the traffic on Carlton Road, his arm went round her shoulders again and she did nothing to resist.

Now they were in Sneinton, short rows of narrow streets, terraced houses, back-to-backs, some with brightly painted front doors and patterned blinds, others with makeshift curtains at the windows, broken glass. The house they stopped outside was midway along, a fading 'Not in My Name' poster alongside one more recent, 'War Criminal!' writ large above a photograph of George W Bush.

A cat, ginger and white with a white-tipped tail, jumped up on to the window ledge and rubbed its head against Katherine's arm as she stood waiting for the man to unlock the door. Running between their legs, the animal followed them into the house and the door closed behind them. Though it was yet the middle of the day, he glimpsed Katherine for a moment, standing at the downstairs window, before she pulled the curtains closed. Whether she saw him or not, he did not know.