Living Proof

Four

After circling the inner ring road twice, Resnick squeezed into a parking place at the rear of the hospital, close to the offshoot of the canal. Above, the sky showed a flat, unbroken blue, but the sun, for early summer, gave off little warmth. He thrust both hands deep into his jacket pockets as he walked.

That way in took him past the psychiatric wing and an image of his ex-wife, Elaine, slipped unbidden into his mind: the way she had looked the last time he had seen her, after spending God knows how much time in places likes this. And Lynn, he kept thinking of Lynn two years without a relationship worthy of the name, and when she had come close to giving her trust to someone again, it had been the wrong man.

It had been a mistake that had cost her more than pride and self-esteem; it had very nearly cost her life. Resnick remembered how it ended: the mud that had sucked, thick, about his feet as he had run across the field-end, awkwardly towards her, helicopter hovering noisily above; the way the blood had pumped, jaggedly, from his heart when he knew that she was safe.

In the months since then, all conversation between them had been formal, withdrawn, as if what each had glimpsed in that despairing clutch of arms was more than they would dare acknowledge. And Michael Best was in custody awaiting trial for kidnapping and murder. His days in court and Lynn's still to come.

The single door which Resnick knew led through to the 11 rear of Accident and Emergency was directly in front of him and he pushed it open and went in.

They sat in small groups of relatives and friends or else they sat alone, staring off into that space where time, long since, had decided to stand still. For so many of the people here, Resnick thought, this was how they spent their lives; uncomfortably, on institutional chairs in institutional rooms, waiting for the number clicking slowly over to correspond to the one clutched in their hands. Social services, the housing department, medical centre, the dole; the bored clerk checking their answers, painstakingly scrawled upon this form or that. Rent rebate, clothing allowance, disability benefit. The women, pregnant, or with three kids under five who ran and chased between the lines of chairs, defying all the shouts and threats, sporadic and half-hearted, until finally they went flying, arse over tip, crashed into the wall and cried. Men with short moustaches, tattoos and sallow faces, shutting out all noise, clenching and re clenching their fists at their children's screams the futility of dreams.

An Asian family sat off on its own, near the door, the man in a brown suit, bandage lopsided about his head, his wife in a said, pale blue and green, carpet slippers on her feet, a small child, little more than a baby, sleeping fitfully inside her arms. Close to Resnick, a middle-aged man with tight grey hair and lined face, wearing someone's cast-off Fair Isle pullover pocked with holes and small burns, sat smoking a cigarette, after each drag carefully tapping the ash into the empty can of Strongbow cider clenched between his knees.

The nurse Resnick intercepted was wearing a sister's uniform and the badge on its lapel told him her name was Geraldine McAllister. Almost certaintly she was older, but all she looked was twenty-five or six.

"Excuse me," Resnick said.

"But you had somebody brought in earlier, a stab wound…"

"We had several."

"This one…"

"Three, to be exact." Resnick had expected Irish and what he got was Scots, not broad but unmistakable, musical.

"The one I'm interested in…" he began.

She was looking at the warrant card he held out in one hand.

"That would be John Smith, then, I expect."

"Is that his name?"

She smiled.

"Probably not. But we had to call him something. He refused to give a name." The smile was still there, broader if anything.

"Not very inventive, is it?"

"I'm sure you've got better things to do."

"Than be inventive? I doubt that. Not round here."

"Gerry," a male nurse called from round a curtain, 'can you take a look at this a minute? "

"You," she said to Resnick.

"Inspector. Don't go. Two shakes now and I'll be back."

One small emergency extended into another and it was not so far short of half an hour before they were sitting in a cramped office behind the receptionist's desk. A polystyrene cup of lukewarm grey coffee sat, unwanted, between Resnick's feet.

Gerry McAllister held an X-ray in her hand, slanted up towards the light.

"You can see, the wound isn't very deep, a couple of inches at most. Even so," she shook her head, 'a little bit higher and to the left. "

Her hair was not chestnut as Resnick had first supposed, but auburn, redder at the ends than at the roots. And she was older, a cross-hatch of worry lines around her eyes. Thirty-four or five?

"Was it consistent with, I mean, did it seem to have been made with a knife?"

13 "Rather than what? A knitting needle, something like that?"

It hadn't been precisely what Resnick had in mind.

"A couple of weeks back," Gerry McAllister said, 'we had this woman come in. She'd nagged down a taxi on the road; didn't have any money, but the driver brought her here just the same. There was a knitting needle sticking out from the corner of her eye. "

Automatically, Resnick cast his mind back, trying to recall whether the incident had been reported.

"There'd been a row at home, apparently. Things had got out of hand."

Resnick nodded.

"Boyfriend or husband?"

The sister shook her head firmly.

"Mother. Should they go to the bingo or stay in and watch Blind Date. 1 She smiled.

"Alarming, isn't it, the way things get blown up out of all proportion? Arguing like that over something like Blind Date."

"Our Mr Smith," Resnick said.

"He didn't say anything about how he came to be stabbed?"

"My hand slipped a little on the needle," Gerry said, 'when I was giving him his injection. Punctured the skin more than I'd intended.

He didn't even open his mouth then. "

Resnick grinned and got to his feet.

"I've checked up on the ward, it's okay for you to go up and see him.

Maybe he'll talk to you," she said.

Resnick doubted that were true, but thanked Gerry McAllister and followed her out of the room. Immediately, three voices were calling her from three different directions, each as urgent as the next.

The anonymous victim had been put into a side ward which he shared with two men way past pension able age and a nervous-looking youth whose bed was marked

"Nil by Mouth'.

He was lying on his side, face towards the wall, a tray of barely browned toast and soggy cereal on the bedside cabinet, untouched.

"Not hungry?" Resnick asked, pulling out a chair and setting it down close to the bed.

The man raised his head enough to look into Resnick's eyes, then rolled away.

"Whatever happened," Resnick said, 'you were lucky. Lucky someone found you, brought you to us; lucky to be here. That whoever did this wasn't stronger. "

He reached out and, without force, rested his hand on the upper edge of the sheet, bone and flesh of the man's shoulder beneath. At his touch, the man flinched but nothing more.

"Listen," Resnick said, 'if there's somebody out there attacking men, men who put themselves in a vulnerable position we need to bring them in. If we don't, well, you understand what I'm saying. The next person might not get off as easy as you. " His voice was soft beneath the squeak of passing trolley wheels, the muffled inanities of breakfast television from the main ward.

"You wouldn't want to be responsible for that, would you? Someone dying?"

Beneath his hand, Resnick felt the muscles tighten through the loose flesh of the man's arm.

"Whatever you were up to, last night, no reason that shouldn't remain your business. No need to broadcast it around. Time to time, we all do things we'd rather nobody else knew. Family. Friends. It's something I can understand."

For an answer, the man shuffled further across the bed, shrugging off Resnick's hand; sheet and blanket he pulled up until they half-covered his head.

Resnick leaned low across him, close enough to sense the damp ripeness of the man's sweat. His fear.

"Think on what I've said. Talk to us. Co-operate. You'll 15 find it easier all around." Resnick raised his head and then, almost as an afterthought: "There is a charge, you know, obstructing the police in the course of their duties."

He took a card from his wallet and slipped it between the man's reluctant fingers.

"I'll be waiting for you to call me. Don't leave it too long."

Five "Yes, madam," the uniformed PC was saying to the old lady at Enquiries, 'of course I can arrange for the Crime Prevention Officer to call round. If you'll just let me have your name and address and phone number, then he'll get in touch with you and agree a time. "

Resnick stepped around the woman as she fumbled in her handbag for the scrap of paper on which she had scribbled all the details down.

"I've just moved, you see, and I forget…"

Off to the right of the stairs, a repetitive yelling came from the direction of the police cells, the same two words, over and over, deadened of all meaning.

"Hold it down in there," came the custody sergeant's voice.

"I said, hold it down!"

Resnick grinned into the silence that followed. The newly appointed custody sergeant had been transferred from Central CID; six foot three, boots that shone whenever he was on duty and shirts that were always freshly ironed. Most Saturdays he played alongside Divine in the Force's first XV and when he said hold it down, only the most drunken or foolish disobeyed.

Resnick turned left at the head of the stairs, towards the bird-like clamour of phones.

"CID. DC Kellogg speaking…"

"CID. DC Naylor…"

"CID…"

"Graham," Resnick raised a hand in greeting as he 17 threaded his way between the rows of desks towards his office.

"Any chance of a cup of tea?"

"Kev," Millington said, looking across at Naylor.

"Mash for us, will you?"

Naylor drew the telephone away from his face, one hand clamped across the mouthpiece.

"Mark, you're not doing anything."

"Lynn," Divine began, noticing that she was on her feet, 'while you're up. "

"Don't," Lynn shook her head, 'as much as think about it. "

"Chuffin' hell!" Divine moaned, heading for the kettle. "At least when Dipak was still here, you could count on him to fall for it."

Overhearing, Lynn treated him to a look that would have stripped several layers of wallpaper. Although off duty, DC Dipak Patel had intervened in a brawl in the city centre and been fatally stabbed for his trouble: he had been a close colleague and a good friend.

"What I meant," Divine grinned, seizing his chance to wind her up, 'one good thing about encouraging all these minorities into the Force, they're so grateful to be here, they don't mind doing a few chores. "

"Yes?" Lynn was out from behind her desk, blocking his path.

"All these minorities? Take a look. Mark. How many can you see?"

"Aside from you" you mean? "

"All right," Millington said, setting himself between them.

"Shut it.

The pair of you. "

"The pair…" Lynn began.

"Enough!" Like a referee about to issue a yellow card, Millington raised a hand in the air and glared. Lynn held his gaze for ten, twenty seconds, before turning aside, and grudgingly resuming her seat.

Blowing her a kiss over Millington's shoulder. Divine wandered across towards the kettle.

"And you," Millington said quietly, coming up behind Divine as he was flipping tea bags into the pot, 'don't be so quick with your mouth.

That way you might give what you call a brain a bit more of a chance. "

There were three Home Office circulars waiting on Resnick's desk for him to read, initial and pass on; a subscription renewal form for Police Review and information about a forthcoming course on the computer analysis of fingerprints at Bramshill College. Resnick pushed these to one side and shuffled through his drawer, searching for the flier from the newly refurbished Old Vie the Stan Tracey Duo were playing that season and, if at all possible, he didn't want to miss them.

"Boss?" Millington knocked and entered, two mugs of tea precariously balanced in his one hand.

Resnick reached out and relieved him of one of the mugs, found a space to set it down; was it Millington or his wife, he wondered, who'd selected that particular shade of olive green from the suit rack in Marks and Spencer's?

"Ram raiding," Millington said, helping himself to a seat.

"Buggers have come up with a new twist."

Resnick sipped his tea and waited; over the past eighteen months there'd been a dramatic increase in the number of robberies carried out with the aid of stolen cars. As a method it was hog simple: drive the car fast through the front window of a city centre shop, jump out, grab what you can, either slam the car into reverse and drive back out or run like fuck.

"Bloke out at Wollaton, just back in from tending his begonias holly-leafed, apparently, not so easy to grow… anyway, sat himself down to watch a spot of racing, wife about to do the honours with the biscuit barrel and a pot of Earl Grey, when this four-year-old Ford Escort comes steaming up his front drive, detours across the 19 lawn, smack into the conservatory at the side of the house."

"After his prize blooms, then, Graham?" Resnick asked. But Millington was not to be diverted.

Old boy grabbed the fire tongs and went off to repel boarders, while his missus phoned us. These three youths were into the house through the side door, knocked him flying, concussion, had the old lady tied up with the telephone wire and went out of there in five minutes flat Half a dozen cups gone from his trophy cabinet, silver medals, jewellery box from the bedroom, her fur coat, watch, thirty-five-piece ruby wedding dinner service, didn't as much as bother with the VCR. "

"The couple, how're they doing?"

"Shook up, who wouldn't be? Keeping him in Queen's for a few days' observation. She's got'a daughter, come to stay."

Leads? "

"Car was stolen the day before, shopping centre out at Bulwell. Found abandoned a few hours later, not so far short of Cinderhill."

"Wouldn't be much left of it, then."

"Four wheels and a chassis."

Resnick had a mouthful more tea.

"Didn't Reg Cossall have something going over that way somewhere?"

"Broxtowe, yes. Still has. Urban Youth Initiative, that's the official name for it. Won't tell you what Reg calls it."

"Have a word, then, Graham. Might tie in with something, someone he's got tabs on."

"Right' " Meantime, description of what's missing. "

"On its way round today. Long as we can keep forgetting the photocopy budget."

There was a knock and in response to Resnick's

"Come in," Divine's head and shoulders appeared round the edge of the door.

"Kev and me are just off up the Forest. I was wondering, bloke in the hospital, anything useful?"

Resnick shook his head.

"Not as much as a name. How about Vice?

Anything from them? "

"Low profile last night, as it happens. Promised to put the word out today, though. Turn up anything, they'll let us know."

"Okay, Mark. Oh, and if Lynn's still there…"

But Lynn Kellogg was already in the doorway.

"Break- ins in the Park.

Five in total. Close enough to be the work of the same team. Several reports of an old post office van in the area, could have been using it to haul the stuff away in. "

Resnick nodded.

"Cool your heels on that for an hour, will you?

Fellow who was stabbed last night, he's out at Queen's, refusing to say a word. Get yourself down there, see what you can do. "

"Right, sir, will that be Mata Hari, then, or Florence Nightingale?"

Resnick looked at her carefully and she was a long way from smiling.

"Don't suppose I'm allowed to ask any more if it's the time of the month?" Millington said, after Lynn had closed the door.

"No, Graham. You're not."

Millington shrugged inside his olive-green suit and sucked on his upper lip.

"This party I'm getting up to go to Trent Bridge, first Saturday of the Test, you've not changed your mind?"

But Resnick was already shaking his head. Watching County of a Saturday afternoon through the winter was one thing all the speed and excitement of plant germination, but at least it was over in an hour and a half. Whereas cricket. "Oh," Millington said, a last thought as he left Resnick's office.

"Skelton wants to see you. Something about shots 21 in the park?" And he was off, wandering in the direction of the teapot, lips puckered together as he whistled thoughtfully through the opening verse of

"Sailor*. An early hit of Petula's, but a good one.

Six When Resnick knocked and entered, Skelton was standing behind his desk looking at the first of several sheets of fax paper which were curling around his hand.

"Charlie, come on in."

Resnick recognised neither of the other people in the room, a man and a woman rising to greet him, the man stepping forward with an uncertain smile.

"Charlie, this is David Tyrell, Programme Director of Shots in the Dark. Detective Inspector Resnick, CID."

Tyrell was tall, taller than Resnick by an inch or more, bespectacled, his already slim body made slimmer by a suit that Resnick wagered cost more than a season ticket to County plus change.

"Inspector, good to meet you."

Tyrell's handshake was strong, the eyes behind the glasses unblinking, but his skin had the pallor of someone who has spent too long out of the light.

"This is Mollie," Tyrell said.

"My assistant."

"Mollie Hansen. Assistant Director, Marketing." Her grip was quick and cool and those five words enough to mark her as a Geordie, strayed from home. She stood there a moment longer, taking in Resnick with slate-grey eyes, the pinch of blood where he had nicked himself shaving, the speck of something yellow crusted to his lapel. A widening of her mouth, not yet a smile, and she stepped back scarlet T-shirt, Doc Martens, jeans.

"You know this festival, Charlie? The one Mr Tyrell's responsible for."

Not really. "

Over by the side wall, Mollie Hansen sighed.

"Why don't we all sit down?" Skelton suggested.

"See what we've got."

Tyrell crossed his legs, drew a cigarette packet from his pocket and, almost in the same gesture, pushed it back from sight.

"Shots has been running four years. It's a crime and mystery festival, films mainly, TV, more recently, books as well. Each year we invite special guests, stars, I suppose you'd call them, to some extent built the programme around them. You know, Quentin Tarantino, Sara Paretsky, people like that."

Knowing neither of them, Resnick nodded. He felt the strength of Mollie Hansen's gaze, weighing him up for what she thought he was.

"This year," Tyrell continued, 'we've got Curtis Woolfe. The director. His first public appearance in fifteen years. "

"Sixteen," Mollie said quietly.

Tyrell ignored her and carried on.

"For the book side of things, we've managed to get Cathy Jordan to come over from the States. Which is great."

"Except…" began Mollie.

"Except she's been receiving threatening letters."

"Which is why we've come to you."

Cathy Jordan, Resnick was thinking. Jordan. He wondered if he should know the name, wondered if he did. The last crime novel he'd tried to read had been an old Leslie Charteris found inside a chest of drawers he'd bought in an auction at the Cattle Market. He had never finished it Skelton was holding the faxed copies out towards him and Resnick stood and took them from his hand. The words were typed and faint, not easy to read.

You know, I really do think you've been allowed to pursue what is after all a very limited talent altogether too far.

It's one thing, of course, for people who should know better to be taken to the point where they will award you prizes, quite another for you to have the brazen effrontery to accept them.

Remember Louella Trabert, Cathy, remember what happened to her?

Resnick looked up,

"Louella Trabert?"

"She's in one of her novels," Tyrell said.

"A character."

"A victim," Mollie said.

Resnick was watching her, the tilt of her chin, the flushing high on her cheeks.

"What does happen to her?" he asked.

"She gets dragged from a car in the middle of the night, with her children left strapped in the back seat. These guys haul her off into the woods, strangle and rape her. Next morning one of the kids gets free and finds her upside down, tied by her ankles to a tree, her body slit from neck to belly with a hunting knife. Gutted."

"Not exactly," Tyrell said.

"Jesus! How exact do you want it to be?"

Resnick glanced at the other letters and set them back down.

"You're taking these seriously? She's taking them seriously? Cathy Jordan."

"Seriously enough to let us know," Tyrell said.

"But not enough to prevent her coming."

"They were posted in America?" Resnick asked.

Tyrell nodded.

"New York. Where she lives."

"And she's no idea who sent them?"

"Apparently not."

"Well," Resnick moved back to his seat.

"Maybe she feels she'll be safer over here anyway."

Tyrell looked over at Mollie, who was already reaching down towards the black leather bag by her feet.

25 "This arrived this morning," Mollie said, the envelope in her hand.

Seven Dear Cathy, I keep waiting for you to make the announcement, go public, seize the moment during one of those chat shows you're always on whenever I switch on the TV. You know, one of those quiet moments, snuggled down on the set tee with Letterman, or laughing with Jay Leno and then, out of the blue, leaving aside all the fun and the gossip and you are funny, Cathy. I have to give you that you'll come right out with it. Let me tell you something now, you'll say, looking right at us with those big, blue eyes of yours, the truth is, David, Jay, I am the most talent less bitch that ever got up on her hind legs and walked. Real talent, that is. Leaving aside self-promotion and back stabbing plagiarism all the things I'm really good at.

Oh, and of course it helps to have the morals of the well-known alley cat, best not forget that.

The trouble is, Cathy, the richer you get, the more units isn't that what you call books nowadays, dear? – you sell, the less likely this is to happen. So I'm going to have to stop it now, myself, over here in England. Put an end to this farrago, once and for all. You do understand me, don't you, Cathy?

You do realise I am serious? Poor little Anita Mulholland, Cathy. remember what happened to her.

The letter was on a single sheet of white paper, A4 size, un watermarked undated, almost needless to say, unsigned. At first glance, a good bubble jet or laser printer had been used. The envelope in which it had been delivered was self-sealing, slim and white, manufactured by John Dickinson and with the words

"Eurolope Envelopes' printed over and over in a grey diagonal across the inside. Centred on the front of the envelope, the words " Cathy Jordan'. No postmark, no stamp.

"You found this where?" Resnick asked.

Tyrell glanced at Mollie. 'in the office," Mollie said. " At Broadway.

It was there with the other mail when I arrived. "

"What time?"

"I usually get in at around a quarter to ten. This morning it was earlier, half past nine. I was sorting through the post and I found this."

"Who else was in the office beside you?"

Mollie gave it a little thought

"The cleaner would have been and gone. If the mail arrives before she leaves, usually she'll put it on the desk, but this was still on the floor. The only other possibility is Dick McCrea, he's the finance director. He's sometimes in ahead of me, but…"

"But today he's in London," Tyrell put in, 'a meeting at the BFI. He would have gone straight to the station, the 7. 38 train. "

"If he'd forgotten something, though," Resnick said, 'at the office, something he needed. "

"Dick McCrea," Mollie said, 'got his memory in a direct deal with God. Forget is a word he doesn't admit exists. "

"Miss Jordan," Skelton said, 'you've told her about this? "

"Not yet," said Tyrell.

"We thought… I thought first of all we should speak to you. See if there wasn't something you could do. Not a bodyguard, exactly…"

"Heaven forbid!" Mollie said, not quite beneath her breath.

"I don't know," Tyrell continued, 'some kind of police presence, maybe. Low key. Something that would reassure her. "

"The last thing we want," Mollie said, 'is for people to be put off attending because they think there's going to be some kind of incident. "

Or, Resnick thought, for one of your star guests to get back on the plane and fly home.

"When's Cathy Jordan due to arrive?" Skelton asked.

"Tomorrow," Mollie said.

"The early morning flight. Her publisher's meeting her at Heathrow and taking her into London for lunch. She's continuing up here by train. She should arrive about a quarter to five."

Resnick and Skelton exchanged glances. Aside from the recent stabbing, there were other serious crimes outstanding: a sub-post office that had been robbed at gun-point and the postmaster shot through the leg and shoulder when he tried to resist; a domestic incident that had left one partner with burns to the face and neck from scalding water, one of the children with badly bruised ribs and a closed eye; unsolved burglaries were up for the third year in succession, as were thefts from vehicles and taking and driving away without consent. The recruitment of new staff was on hold. Budgets were screwed down tighter than an Arctic winter. This was policing in the age of cost-effectiveness and consumer choice, when those at the top talked of minimal visual policing, counted the paper clips, put a ban on overtime and sat up long into the night massaging the crime figures. If Resnick and Skelton were in the business of selling sentences, less and less people were buying. The last thing they needed was a media celebrity in need of mollycoddling, a body to guard 29 and protect against an unknown possible assailant during a festival at which the attendance might run into the thbusands.

Skelton took a breath.

"Charlie, why don't you liaise with Miss Hansen? Arrange to meet this Cathy Jordan, talk to her, try and get a sense of how serious she thinks these threats really are. Assure her we'll co-operate as fully as we can during her stay. Without making promises we can't keep."

Resnick nodded reluctantly and glanced over at Mollie Hansen who was already drawing a card from the back of her Filofax.

"My number's on there."

"Meantime," Skelton was on his feet now,

"I trust neither of you will say anything about all of this to the press. If there is anything to these letters, the last thing we need is a three-ring circus."

"Of course," said Mollie

"Absolutely," said Tyrell.

Unless, Resnick thought, they reckoned that instead of putting people off, a few good rum ours might do wonders at the box office.

"Here," Mollie said, pulling a paperback book from her bag and pushing it into Resnick's hands.

"You might like to take a look at this. It's meant to be one of her best."

DEAD WEIGHT An Annie Q. Jones Mystery by CATHY JORDAN

"One last thing," Resnick said.

"The Anita MulhoIIand mentioned in the letter, is she another character in one of these books?"

"That's right," Mollie said.

"Another victim?"

"She goes on holiday with her family, to Mexico. She's thirteen. One evening her parents go down to a barbecue by the hotel pool and leave her upstairs in their room. When they get back up, an hour or so later, she's gone. A few days afterwards, someone comes across this thing like a scarecrow in the hills outside the town; it's made from Anita's clothes, up high on a cross of sticks. The police get up a search and dogs find her body in a shallow grave." The tension in Mollie's voice was tight now and undisguised.

"That's it," she said, 'apart from the ways she's tortured before she dies. "

Tyrell was looking at her with concern, possibly anger. Quickly he shook Resnick's hand and then Skelton's.

"We should be going.

Superintendent, Inspector, thanks for your time. "

"I'll expect to hear from you," Mollie said to Resnick from the door.

"Meantime, enjoy the book. Let me know what you think."

After she and Tyrell had left the room, Skelton fussed with a few things on his desk and cleared his throat.

"Quite partial to a bit of Morse, myself," he said.

Resnick didn't answer. He dropped the paperback down into the already sagging side pocket of his coat and headed out along the corridor towards the CID room. Another task he was certain he didn't want.

Sharon Gamett took her time walking back up Forest Road West to where she had parked her car, a four-year- old Peugeot in need of a new clutch. She was wearing black ski-pants that emphasised her height, a red and yellow scarf pulled bandana-like across her hair; in one hand she was carrying a can of Lucozade, a paper bag containing a cheese and ham cob in the other. Relaxed, Sharon moved like someone at ease with herself, strength held in reserve.

The vehicle that slowed alongside her was a Vauxhall, almost certainly a fleet car, a dark blue Cavalier. The 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…"

But he could already hear Divine's shout and raucous laughter as the two detectives entered the outer office. It didn't take long for them to make their report.

"We could have one last try tonight," Naylor suggested.

Resnick nodded.

"Keep in touch with Vice, let them know you're around."

"Reminds me, boss," Divine said.

"One of theirs this morning, one we spoke to, real looker, Afro-Caribbean." His tongue negotiated the term with exaggerated care, as if stepping across a minefield.

"Wanted to be remembered to you, Sharon Garnett."

A memory flicked across Resnick's face. He had first met Sharon early in the year: a cold January morning, the ground rimed with frost, a body buried in a shallow grave. One of the victims of the man who had held Lynn Kellogg prisoner.

Resnick glanced over towards Lynn's desk, wondering if she might have picked up on the name. But, directory open before her, Lynn was talking intently into the phone.

"All right, Mark," Resnick said.

"Thanks."

Sharon, as she had made clear, was keen to move across to CID; he would have a word with the inspector in Vice, find out how she was settling in, couldn't do any harm.

"D'you know," Millington said later. It was already well past six and Resnick had been considering cutting his losses, calling it a day.

"D'you know, for the price of a seat at the Test, good one, mind you, up behind the bowler's arm, you could see three films at the Showcase, nip into the bowling alley for a couple of games and still have cash left over for Chicken McNuggets and fries."

Resnick was sure he was right.

"You read a bit, don't you. Graham?" he said.

"I like the odd Ken Follett, Tom Clancy. Why d'you ask?"

"Here." He pulled Cathy Jordan's book from his pocket. "Have a go at this. Might just be your kind of thing."

Millington took the book, looked at the cover, shrugged, tossed it on to his desk.

"Thanks. You coming over the road for a quick pint?"

"Another night."

"Suit yourself."

It was the same old routine they went through most 37 evenings. Unless there was a special reason, Resnick preferred to let the team have the bar to themselves. Oh, he'd stop by for a quick Guinness now and again, buy a round and be on his way. Fancied a drink later, he would stroll over to the Polish Club, elbows on the table with a bottle of Czech Budweiser or Pilsner Urquell, listen to the. gossip about who was in hospital, who had died, what Sikorski had said to Churchill in 1941.

Nine Millington didn't stay long in the pub. Somehow he had managed to get himself wedged between Divine, making the usual extravagant claims about his sex life, and one of those ritual bores with a four-hundred thousand-pound house in the Park. Sooner multiple orgasms, he thought, than a voice that spoke from generations of cold showers and good breeding, boring on and on about the way the working class was intent upon undermining the country's manufacturing base.

Millington wanted to tell him we hardly had a manufacturing base any longer, and most of that was due to the government or bad management most likely by people like him. Most of the factories Millington knew that shut their doors never got round to opening them again. To say nothing of the pits. Hell and hullabaloo there'd been above a year back, marchers on the streets and speeches in the Square, whole bloody communities on the dole. Arnold Bennett! It was almost enough to make you vote Labour.

"Another?" Divine tapped his empty glass. Embellishing the story of his night out with a couple from Annesley, mother and daughter, had left Divine with quite a thirst.

"No, you're all right. Off home any minute."

"Come on. Early days yet, just a half."

Millington flattened his palm across the top of his glass and shook his head.

"Suit yourself," Divine grinned and let out a low belch to get the barman's attention.

"Hey up!" he called, 'how 39 about some service? " Divine, anxious not to lose his ^audience, hadn't even got to the bit about the snake yet.

A cos lettuce and half a cucumber were waiting for him in the salad spinner, a Marks and Spencer lasagne in the microwave. Millington guessed from the spoons on the dining room table there'd be dessert, like as not that Greek yoghurt with honey.

Madeleine called down from the bedroom to say she'd not be many minutes, wouldn't he like to make them a nice cup of tea? While the kettle was coming to the boil, he wandered off into the garden; this time of the year, all you had to do was turn your back and the bloody grass wanted cutting.

Trills and worse wafted down from the upstairs window; auditions for the local amateur operatics were in the offing and Millington could sense this year his wife was nurturing ambitions beyond the chorus.

"What would you think, Graham," Madeleine asked a while later, showing the jar of Hellmann's low-calorie mayonnaise to her salad, 'if I said I were going to try out for the lead? "

"I'd say good luck to you," said Millington, poking around in his lasagne.

"You don't think I might be, well, wrong for it? The part, I mean."

"Depends what it is."

"The Merry Widow. I'm sure I told you."

"And that's the part? The one you're after? The merry, er, widow?"

Madeleine set down her fork and knife and prepared to look hurt.

"Yes."

Beneath his moustache, Millington smiled.

"Not trying to tell me something, are you, love?"

What? Oh, Graham, no. For heaven's sake! "

"Not been slipping down to the garden centre for the odd half gallon of weed killer A little arsenic in the salad dressing?"

"Graham! Don't say things like that. Not even in jest."

Millington went back to his lasagne, wondering what had happened to good old meat pie and chips.

"What I meant was," Madeleine began. It was later and she was spooning yoghurt into two bowls.

"The character, the one I'd like to play, she's meant to be gay…"

Gay? "

"Lively. Sort of sparkling, you know. Full of joy." Madeleine paused, scraping stray yoghurt from the back of the spoon on to the edge of the carton.

"Sexy."

"Well, that's all right, then."

"What?"

"For the part. Sexy."

Madeleine pushed her bowl away.

"That's what I mean."

"What?"

"It's just a joke."

"It'snot a joke."

"It is."

Millington stood up from his chair, leaned across the table and kissed her on the mouth. When he eased away, some few moments later, there were honey and yoghurt in his moustache and neither he nor Madeleine knew who was the more surprised.

"I was wondering" Millington said, turning away from a woefully unfunny situation comedy on the TV, 'if you fancied an early night? "

Across the room, Madeleine blinked across a pile of nine-year-olds' science notebooks. Thirty-seven drawings of a paramecium, all of which made it look like a hairy shoe.

"All right," she said.

"Yes, I could. I'll just have to finish these first." Already she was making calculations, dates and figures flying around her head, wondering if 41 maybe it was worth checking her temperature with the bathroom thermometer.

Chipper, Millington had put on the dressing gown his mother-in-law had bought him the Christmas before last and gone downstairs to make a pot of tea. Never mind Divine and all his bragging, Millington was prepared to wager it didn't get much better than that.

Madeleine, for whom it had actually been almost as satisfying a ten minutes as her husband had concluded, sat, propped up by a brace of pillows, searching for her place in Lives of the Christian Martyrs and still envincing a slight glow.

Millington brought the tea back up on a tray; best cups and saucers, green padded cosy, a small plateful of rich butter shortbread and custard creams. He remembered to stop whistling

"Don't Sleep in the Subway' out on the landing, not wanting to irritate her nerves.

"Graham," Madeleine said, all smiling reproach, 'we'll get crumbs in the bed. "

"Not to worry," he winked.

"Be changing the sheets tomorrow anyway."

Biting her tongue rather than telling him not to be smutty, Madeleine reached for a shortbread biscuit instead. Millington settled the tray between them, poured milk and tea, set his cup on the bedside table and reached for the book that Resnick had handed him.

Madeleine's only immediate reaction was to shift a little on to one side, leaning her weight towards the light.

If anyone had told me. Annie Jones, you'll end up spending your seventh wedding anniversary alone in the front seat of a rented Chevrolet, outside of Jake's at the Lake in Tahoe City, I'd have told them to go jump right in it. The lake, that is. But then if that same anyone. "Graham," Madeleine said, rolling towards him, 'what- ever's got into you? "

"How'd you mean?"

"First, you know, and now this."

This? "

"You're reading in bed."

"So?"

"You never read; not anywhere, never mind in bed."

"I read that what's his name? – John Grisham."

"You bought the book when we were on our way back from Devon, read the first two pages, put it in the bag for Christian Aid and saw the film."

"Two pages is about all I'll read of this as well, if you don't let me get on with it. Try engaging you in conversation once you're stuck into one of these door stops of yours and I get a look fierce enough to excommunicate the Pope."

"All right, Graham," Madeleine said, giving it just a touch of the long-suffering.

"I'm sorry. I won't interrupt you again."

"S'okay, love," Millington said, fidgeting his backside against her hip.

"Not as if it's anything serious, not like yours. No one's going to set me an exam on it when I've finished." He opened the paperback wide and cracked the spine a little, rendering it easier to handle.

But then if that same anyone had told me, the day I appeared, fresh out of law school, ready to start work at the offices of Reigler and Reigler, bright and full of promise in my newly acquired dove-grey two-piece with a charcoal stripe, skirt a businesslike three inches below the knee, that I would swap what was clearly destined to be a famous legal career for that of 43 a lowly private eye, I would gleefully have signed committal forms, assigning them to the nearest asylum, and tossed away the key.

"You know, Annie," my mother had said, the time I plucked up courage to explain, 'you can't really be a private eye, they only have them in the movies. And books. And besides, they're always men. "

My mom. God bless her, always seemed to have a vested interest in remaining firmly behind the times.

"Sure, Mom," I said, 'you're right. " And inched back the business card I had proudly given her, stuffing it back down into my wallet.

There'd be another time.

Madeleine turned with a start as Annie Q. Jones hit the floor with a small bump. Millington's eyes were closed and pretty soon, she knew, he would begin to snore. Leaning across him carefully, Madeleine lightly touched her cheek to his and then switched out the lamp.

The kids outside the amusement arcade at the end of Fletcher Gate stared back at Resnick with flat, hostile eyes. Fifteen, sixteen, younger: high-top trainers, T-shirts, jeans; cans of Coke and cigarettes and something in a polystyrene box from Burger King. Maybe they knew he was a policeman, maybe not; what they saw was someone older than their fathers, another version of their teachers, probation officers, social workers, another heavily built man in a shapeless suit.

A common incongruity, the windows in front of which they lounged or sat displayed pottery objects no one ever bought shire horses, vases, bug-eyed dogs all steadily gathering dust.

Resnick turned right towards Goose Gate, pausing for some moments outside Culture Vulture, looking with quiet delight at the display of extravagantly designed shirts he would never wear, black brothel-creeper shoes of the kind he had surreptitiously changed into almost thirty years before, ready to go out and about with his mates.

Blown-up reproductions of Blue Note record covers hung as a backdrop: Big John Patton, John Coltrane; trumpeter Lee Morgan in his three-buttoned Italian jacket, neat shirt and knit tie; Dexter Gordon, leaning back from the curve of his saxophone and laughing on A Swingin' Affair. Inside Resnick's head a Hammond organ surged and Jimmy Smith set out on

"Groovin' at Small's', a blues solo Resnick had long savoured, even though the album itself had disappeared from his shelves without trace or reason years before, the way favourite albums were sadly wont to do.

Crossing into Broad Street, the sound played on against a counterpoint of car horns and discordant voices, underscored by the insistent rap beat that came through the open doors of other hip, expensive clothing stores; only when he stopped outside Broadway's offices and pressed the buzzer did the music disappear.

"Charlie Resnick," he said, head bent awkwardly towards the intercom.

"Here to see Miss Hansen."

Too late, he thought Ms would have been more appropriate, awkward to pronounce as he always found it.

The door to Mollie's office was open, but Resnick hesitated long enough to catch her eye before walking in.

The scarlet had been replaced by a plaid shirt which almost matched the one on k. d. lang in the Even Cowgirls Get the Blues poster that was tacked up behind Mollie's desk. The desk itself held neatly labelled files, a stack of bright red plastic trays close to overflowing, several movie books, a battered A-Z map of the city, three purple mugs, each holding a residue of coffee and, at me centre, a desk- size Filofax with annotations in three colours.

"You found it all right, then?" Mollie said brightly, gesturing for him to sit down.

Resnick moved two telephone directories and eased himself down into the chair.

"Coffee? I can send out for cappuccino. You know the new deli at the end of the street?"

"If it's no trouble."

Mollie called past him towards the open door.

"Larry, I don't suppose you've got a minute…"

He had.

Mollie drew a sheet of paper from one of the files and slid it towards Resnick. Her desk, he thought, lively and organised as it was, lacked the merest trace of anything 46 purely personal a photograph, a fading birthday card, a Post-it note reminding her to buy more flour, a pint of milk. He wondered where she kept her life and what it was like or if this were all there was.

"This is Cathy Jordan's itinerary," Mollie was saying. "As you can see, we're trying to make as much use of her as we can. Some of these things…" leaning forward, she pointed with her finger, '. are arranged in tandem with her publisher. And here, and you see, here, she's taking a couple of days out. Stratford, I think, and Scotland.

Or maybe it's the Lakes. "

Resnick ran his eyes up and down the page press conference. Radio Nottingham, Radio Trent, Central TV, BBC Radio Four, several book signings, a reading, two panel discussions and her attendance was requested at a civic reception. Also there were the name and address of the hotel where Cathy Jordan would be staying, complete with telephone, fax and room numbers. He would study it all in detail later.

"Covering all of these isn't going to be easy."

"Until we've talked to Cathy Jordan, we just don't know." Only slightly mocking, she treated him to her professional smile.

"One thing we have to remember, she's not just our guest, she's a guest of the city as well."

"And our responsibility."

Mollie was still smiling. Resnick folded the list and slid it into his inside pocket.

Larry turned out to be a ruddy-faced youth of nineteen or twenty, ponytail dangling down beneath the reversed peak of his deep red Washington Redskins cap. The coffee, in white polystyrene cups, was strong and still hot. Mollie took a spoon from one of the used mugs and lifted chocolatey froth towards her mouth with such expectation that, for a moment, Resnick saw more than an efficient young woman whose life was strictly colour-coded.

"The letters," Mollie said, 'what did you think? I mean, ought we to be taking them seriously or not? "

Resnick tasted a little more of his coffee. To a point, I don't see we have any choice. After all, Louella Trabert, Anita Mulholland they may just be characters in books, but that doesn't mean the threats aren't real. "

Mollie smiled, meaning it this time.

"You've got a good memory for names."

Resnick knew that it was true. Names and faces. There were others he could have added. Victims. Fact and not fiction. It went with the job, like so much else: a blessing and a curse.

"You don't like her, do you?"

"Who?" Mollie sitting back a little, on the defensive.

"Cathy Jordan."

"I don't know her."

"You know her books."

That's not the same thing. "

Resnick shrugged.

"Isn't it? I should have thought they must come close."

Mollie was fidgeting with her spoon.

"Anyway, what I think's neither here nor there." She leaned forward again, the beginnings of a gleam across the grey of her eyes. "Unless you think I'm the one who wrote the letters."

Are you? "

Mollie nipped a page in her Filofax.

"If the train's on time, I could ask her to meet you at the hotel. There should be time before the opening reception. Say, a quarter past six?"

Resnick set down his cup.

"All right Always assuming nothing crops up more urgent."

"Good."

He got to his feet.

"Here," Mollie said, handing him a glossy black brochure with the Shots in the Dark logo heavily embossed on its cover. This is the press kit There's a programme 48 inside. And a complimentary ticket. It is a crime festival, after all. I should have thought you'd find quite a lot of interest.

Especially if you like the cinema. "

For all his good memory, Resnick was having trouble remembering anything he'd seen since The Magnificent Seven. He took the brochure and nodded his thanks.

"I don't suppose you've had a chance to look at that book yet?"

Mollie asked when he was at the door.

"No, afraid not."

As he walked out along the narrow entryway and on to the street, Resnick noticed a freshening of the wind and when, back at the corner of Hetcher Gate, he tilted his head upwards, he felt the first drops of a summer shower bright upon his face.

Eleven It wasn't as though Cathy Jordan had never been to England before.

First, as a visiting student, on exchange from her state college in Kansas City, Kansas, she had been catapulted headlong into the heyday of British hippydom. Carnaby Street and the Beatles and the Stones and her first toke, four girls passing it between them, cramped inside one of the cubicles in the ladies' room at the Roundhouse.

Could it really have been the Crazy World of Arthur Brown out on stage, singing Tire'? Or maybe that was later, underground at UFO?

She couldn't remember now. The way her world had spun three hundred and sixty degrees beneath her, it was a wonder she remembered anything at all. Her family ringing nightly, after watching television newscasts of the French students setting fire to the barricades outside the Sorborme; youngsters with long hair battling with police outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

"Are you okay? My God, Catherine, are you sure you're okay? What is going on over there? The whole world seems suddenly to have gone mad." One of her dad's Eddie Pisher albums playing steadfastly away in the background – "Oh! My Papa!"

"Wish You Were Here."

Her second visit had been made almost ten years later, when her first husband had been stationed at a US air force base in Lincolnshire and she had opted to join him for six months. In a number of ways, it had not proved such a good idea. From time to time, women old enough to be not 50 just her mother but her grandmother had chained themselves to the base's perimeter fence in protest at the American presence. Sometimes when she was shopping in the nearest town, angelic-faced young men wearing CND badges or brandishing copies of Socialist Worker would spit at her in the street.

Whatever else, her abiding impression of England was not of cobbled streets, spied through the swirl of a quaint Dickensian pea-souper; nor of some fading thatched roof idyll over which the sun barely set and where the squire and village bobby reigned supreme. England, for Cathy Jordan, represented unrest and disruption, change not only for the country, but for herself.

Yet looking out now through the smirched window of the Intercity train as it cleaved through the flat softness of the Midlands landscape, she saw only field on field washed by a perpetual grey drizzle cattle standing morose at hedgerows, a single tractor turning ever-widening circles to no purpose, knots of ugly houses huddled at road ends nothing to stir her heart or energise her mind.

Three days ago it had been Holland, before that Denmark and Sweden, Germany: just another damn book tour, that's what it was. A tour she had begun alone and was ending with her second husband, Frank Cariucci, asleep on the seat alongside her.

Frank, who had got bored minding his own business back in the States and had flown out to mind hers. Except that he had forgotten what it had become like for the pair of them, on the road together the sterile proximity of hotel rooms and polite, translated conversation.

More than three days and Frank was floundering awkwardly in Cathy's wake, bored, and Cathy, unable to stop herself, was sniping at him without let-up or mercy.

This was already the sixth day.

The brittle plastic glass which held her Scotch now had no more than a quarter-inch of once-iced water slopping about at the bottom, and Cathy wondered if she had the energy to walk back through the train to the buffet car and order another.

"Do you think she'll be here on time?"

Mollie Hansen glanced up from her Independent.

"I don't see why not, do you?" There they were, twice on the Listings page, bare details under Events Around the Country and a boxed Daily Ticket offer two pairs of seats for the opening night complete with picture. Good old Independent'. Saturday they'd promised a feature length piece on the Curtis Wooife retrospective, which would fit nicely with the Cathy Jordan profile they were publishing on Sunday. Coverage in the Observer, the Telegraph and The Times, all they needed now was the Mail for a pretty clean sweep.

As Tyrell watched the overhead screen, the arrival time disappeared.

"You see. Trouble."

Moments later, it flashed back up: 5. 18.

"Why are they never on time?"

"David," Mollie shook her head.

"A minute late, I think we can live with that. Don't you?"

The woman who walked along the platform towards them was a good few inches above average in height, even allowing for the cowboy heels on the tan boots she wore below her jeans. Red hair, straight save for a slight curl at the ends, hung shoulder-length. She had taken the time to refresh her lipstick and the greenish shadow above what, even at a distance, were disturbingly blue eyes. A tweed jacket, predominantly green and tailored at the waist, hung open over a red silk shirt. She was carrying a medium-sized carpet bag in her left hand.

Rhonda Reming, Tyrell decided, meets Arlene Dahl: though, close to, there was more than a touch of Lauren Bacall about the mouth.

52 Mollie was looking, not so much at Cathy Jordan, but at the barrel-chested man with cropped grey hair walking alongside her. He was carrying large, matching suitcases in both hands, a third tucked beneath one arm. Shorter than Cathy, what impressed immediately about him was his size. The bags he was carrying could have been toys.

For a moment, Mollie's face settled into a scowl: she didn't like surprises. Nevertheless, she was the first to step forward and hold out her hand.

"Cathy Jordan? Welcome to Shots in the Dark. I'm Mollie Hansen. We've spoken on the phone. And this is David Tyrell, he's the Festival Director."

"Hi!" said Cathy.

"Hello." Shaking hands.

"This is my husband, Frank."

"Frank Carlucci. Good to know you." His voice was pitched low and edged with something that might have been tiredness, but could have been drink.

Tensing instinctively, Mollie was surprised to find his grip so soft, not weak, almost delicate.

"We didn't know you'd be coming."

Carlucci shrugged strong shoulders.

"Last-minute thing. Joined up with Cathy in Copenhagen. Nice little town. You know it at all?"

Mollie shook her head and they began walking towards the end of the platform, Carlucci falling in step beside her, while, immediately behind them, Tyrell was talking to Cathy Jordan.

"This hotel where we were just staying," Frank Carlucci was saying, 'the Plaza. Oak panelling you'd kill for, leather books all round the bar, huh! They got this pillar in the lobby, names of all the celebrities ever stayed there engraved in gold. Well, maybe it was brass. But everyone, you know. Liza Minnelli, Paul McCartney, Jack fucking Nicholson. Michael Jackson. Well, maybe they'll be taking that one down. But Cathy, next time we go back, hers'll be up there along of the rest Alongside of Jack Nicholson, ain't that something? "

Mollie made a sound that was strictly noncommittal; Nicholson had been all right in Chinatown, but after that what was he? An overpaid actor with a paunch and falling hair.

Climbing the steps from the platform, Carlucci was still talking and Mollie realised he was the kind of man whose idea of a conversation was one-sided he talked and you listened. She moved ahead on to Cathy Jordan's free side, Tyrell on the other telling her how excited he was she could be there, how much he liked her work.

Glancing across, Mollie put Cathy's age as late forties, certainly not a day under forty-five. Her bio sheet was surprisingly coy when it came to details like age. But whatever she was, Mollie thought, she was looking good, Outside, on the station forecourt, waiting for a taxi, Tyrell assured Cathy that the civic reception would be no big deal, nothing exhausting. So far, neither he nor Mollie had said anything to her about the hand-delivered letter or its threat.

You do realise I am serious? Poor little Anita Mulholland, Cathy, remember what happened to her.

"Graham, you didn't get anywhere with that book, I suppos 7' Millington looked across the CID room hopefully, unable to pick out most of what Resnick had said. Two desks away, the world's noisiest printer was chuntering its way through a listing of the last six months' unsolved burglaries, broken down by the Local Intelligence Officer into location, time and MO.

Lynfl set down the receiver, pushed herself up from her desk afld stretched her shoulders and back. The last of her trawl around the city's hotels and she was no nearer to finding the identity of the mystery man who'd done a runner from the hospital. As one of the clerks had pointed out, with so many accounts prepaid by employers' credit cards, all some clients had to do was turn in their keys and wave goodbye.

"Sorry," Millington said, having made his way to where Resnick was standing.

"Couldn't hear a bloody word."

"That woman's book, the one I gave you…"

"How about it?"

"Thought perhaps you could give me some idea what it's about. Got to see her later."

"Ah. Can't say I really got that far. All right, though. Not rubbish, you know what I mean. One thing pretty clear- she's not Agatha Christie, you'd have to say that."

Resnick guessed that to be a compliment, but with Millington you could never be sure. This was, after all, the person who swore Petula dark did a better version of "Lover Man* than Billie Holiday.

"Not got it with you, I suppose, Graham?"

"Have, as a matter of fact. Reckoned I might give it twenty minutes in the canteen, but, of course, it never happened."

"Best let's have it back, then. Take a look on the way down."

"Suit yourself." Millington shrugged and turned away to fetch him the book.

Minutes later, Resnick was on his way down the stairs, a copy of Dead Weight in his hand.

Cathy Jordan poured herself another shot from the one of the pair of king size bottles of J amp; B Rare they had bought on the plane. She and Frank buying silence with the usual share of booze in the usual bland hotel room, though here the walls were closer together than usual.

Which meant that they were too. In a way.

Right now they were getting ready for the reception. Frank was wandering about morosely in a pair of striped boxers and a white shirt, the creases from where it had lain folded in the case pulled flat across the muscles of his arms and back; Cathy was wearing a couple of towels and a cream half slip, which she hated, but the problem with the dress she had chosen was the minute you stood in front of the light, it was the next thing to being featured in an x-ray.

For once it was Frank who broke the unspoken truce. "So what d'you think?" he said.

"You worried or what?"

"About the reception?"

"Reception, hell. The letter."

Examining a pair of tights, Cathy shook her head. "Sticks and stones," she said.

"That's it, sticks and stones?"

One leg in, one leg out, Cathy looked across at him.

"That's it."

Frank breathed out noisily and shook his head.

"You're not scared?

Spooked? Not even one little piece? "

Turning away, Cathy shook her head. Of course, she was scared. Not all the time, not even often, but, sure, step into a lift and there's a guy standing there, looking over at you in a certain way walk out into the street to catch some air and the window of a slowing car slides down who wouldn't be scared. The world was full of them, God knows, it wasn't just the pages of her books. Sociopaths.

Psychopaths. Whoever was writing those letters wasn't Dear Abbey.

But admitting it to Prank, that was something else. The way it had become between them, everything was a statement of strength, not of weakness, neediness. It wasn't in her nature to be the one to back off.

"It's why you're here, isn't it?" Cathy said.

"Reason you changed your mind, flew over. Look out for me. Protect me." She made protect sound like a dirty word.

Frank was having trouble with the knot of his tie.

"And if it is?"

"You needn't have bothered. They've got professionals for that."

Resnick arrived at the hotel later than he'd intended and Mollie Hansen was already waiting on one of the leather settees in the foyer, her duty to escort Cathy Jordan and her husband to the reception. David Tyrell had claimed the task of collecting Curtis Wooife, who had flown in earlier in the day from Switzerland, which was where he now lived. The third major guest, the octogenarian British crime novelist, Dorothy Birdwell, was being driven directly to the reception by her assistant.

Mollie, Resnick thought, was looking decidedly smart, rising to greet him in a loose-fitting pearl trouser suit which might have been silk.

Something held him back from making the compliment out loud, a sense that, to Mollie, that kind of remark would be less than acceptable.

"Nice tie," Mollie said, with a little nod.

"Interesting design. Paul Smith?"

"Spaghetti vongole."

To his surprise, Mollie laughed and Resnick grinned back.

"What happened," he asked, 'when you showed her the letter? "

"Oh, for a minute or two, I thought she was going to throw a wobbly, but then she just laughed and told me for all it was worth, I might as well tear it up. That was when I told her about you."

Before Resnick could reply, the lift doors opened and Cathy Jordan appeared in an ankle-length, off-white dress from beneath the hem of which poked the toes of her boots.

Mollie moved quickly to meet her.

"Is there time," Cathy Jordan asked, after Resnick had been introduced, 'for the inspector and me to have a chat? "

Sure," Mollie said.

"I think so."

"Great!" Cathy said, appropriating Resnick's arm. "Why don't we go to the bar?"

Perched on a stool, Cathy Jordan asked Resnick to recommend a single malt and, although it wasn't really his drink, after a quick glance along the bar he came up with Highland Park.

"Two large ones," Cathy said. And to Resnick,

"Ice?"

He shook his head.

"One as it comes," she said to the barman, 'one with lots of ice.

That's L-O-T-S. " Turning towards Resnick. she made a face.

"What is it with this country? Is ice still rationed?"

He smiled.

"We're a moderate people. Maybe we don't like too much of anything."

"That include crime?"

"Not necessarily."

"Violent crime?"

"Well, we don't have guns on the streets…" He corrected himself.

"At least, not as many as you."

"But you're getting there."

"Maybe." He said it with regret. He knew it wasn't only the more publicised areas of the country Brixton, Moss Side where weapons were increasingly easy to obtain, increasingly likely to be used.

There were estates there in the city where firearms were heard being discharged far more frequently than gunshot wounds were ever reported. He didn't imagine their aim was always less than true.

Cathy clinked her glass against his.

"Cheers."

"Cheers," Resnick said. And then,

"Miss Jordan, about this latest letter…"

"Cathy," she said.

"For God's sake, call me Cathy. And as for the letter, it's a crock, just like all the rest. Some scuzzbag shut off in a sweaty room, only way he knows of getting off, you know what I mean?"

Resnick (brought that he might.

"Then you've no worries about security?" he said, after tasting a little of the malt.

Cathy rattled the ice cubes around a little inside her glass.

"I'm in a strange country, right. It wouldn't hurt to have someone watching my back."

"All right. Mollie's given me a copy of your schedule. Maybe we could go over it and see which events you're most concerned about?"

"Sure," said Cathy, but then became aware of Mollie Hansen hovering with intent and drained her glass in a double swallow.

"Gotta go.

Look, couldn't we meet tomorrow? Go through things like you said?

Resnick got to his feet.

"Of course."

"Good. We Americans are big on breakfast meetings, you know."

"Here?"

"Half eight, how's that sound?"

Pine. "

"Good." And Mollie steered Cathy Jordan away towards their waiting car, while Resnick sat back oh the stool and nursed his way down the rest of his Highland Park.

Art Tatum and Ben Webster: they did it for him every time. Resnick lowered the stylus with care and watched as it slid into the groove; listened, standing there, as Tatum played his practised, ornate way through the first chorus of the tune, tightening the rhythm at the beginning of the middle eight, before stepping aside with a simple little single-note figure, falling away beneath the glorious saxophone smear of Webster's arrival. Resnick turned up the volume and wandered through into the kitchen: coffee was pumping softly inside the silver pot on the stove. He set a match to the gas on the grill, sliced dark rye bread and put it to toast. Cream cheese, not too much pickled cucumber, smoked salmon. While none of the other cats were looking, he sneaked Bud a small piece of the salmon. Some days he liked to drink his coffee, rich and dark, from one of a pair of white china mugs, and this was one of those.

Settled in his favourite chair in the living room, coffee and sandwich close at hand, album turned over and turned back down, Resnick lifted Cathy Jordan's book from the small table beneath the lamp and began to read: If anyone had told me, Annie Jones, you

"II end up spending your seventh wedding anniversary alone in the front seat of a rented Chevrolet, outside of Jake's at the Lake in Tahoe City, I'd have told them to go jump right in it. The lake, that is. But then if that same anyone had told me, the day I appeared, fresh out of law school, ready to start work at the offices ofReigler and Reigler, bright and full a/promise in my newly acquired dove grey two-piece with a charcoal stripe, skirt a businesslike three inches below the knee, that I would swap what was clearly destined to be a famous legal career or that of a lowly private eye, I would gleefully have signed committal forms, assigning them to the nearest asylum, and tossed away the key.

"You know, Annie," my mother had said, the first time I plucked up courage to explain, 'you can't really be a private eye, they only have them in the movies. And books. And besides, they're always men. "

My mom. God bless her, always seemed to have a vested interest in remaining firmly behind the times.

"Sure, Mom," I said, 'you're right. " And inched back the business card I had proudly given her, stuffing it back down into my wallet.

There'd be another time.

And so there had. My first major cheque safely paid into the bank and cleared, two other clients waiting in the wings, I had invited my long-suffering mother out for cocktails and dinner at her favourite Kansas City restaurant.

I didn't mention that, did I? About my mother being from Kansas City.

Well, that's an important part of it; it explains a great deal.

But back to cocktails. Emboldened by the second Manhattan, I had showed my mother my bank balance and launched into the spiel.

Adventure, independence, the chance to be my 62 own boss, run my own life "Mom, I'm a big girl now. This is what I want to do. You see, it'II work out fine."

Which so far, pretty much, had been true. During my time practising law I had made a lot of useful contacts, in that profession as well as the police. I was in pretty thick with a few good working journalists, too the kind that still spend more time on the street than in the office staring at their computer screen.

And Mom, I like to think, surprised herself with a smile of pride when some newfound friend asked over coffee,

"Marjorie, just what is it that your daughter does out there in California?" And my mom, smiling, saying, "Oh, she's just a private eye."

There were things about my life, though, that I didn 't tell her. A little knowledge may. in some circumstances, be a dangerous thing, but in my mother's case it's positively beneficial. I didn't tell, for instance, about the six weeks I spent in hospital after being stupid enough to get trapped up an alley with three guys who made Mike Tyson look like Mickey Mouse. Nor the occasion I stepped in front of a light and two. 38 slugs tore past me so close I swear I could feel the wind of their slipstream. And the bodies. I didn't tell her about the bodies. The one I had found tied upside down, offering freebies to half a hundred flies; the little girl I had discovered buried in a ditch. I hadn't told her about any of these things on account there was no need to upset her without cause which was why I had never told her about Diane.

My mom, you see, is strictly old school. The reason she can come to terms with what I do for a job is because, when it comes right down to it. the job I do is not that important.

At best it's a stage, a phase, it's what I do to fill in time before I finally settle dawn and get on with what the Good Lord set me on this earth for, get married, of course, and have children.

Somewhere, she has a picture of me, taken at a cousin's wedding when I was but thirteen. The same age as that poor child who ended her days in a shallow grave. There I am, on the left of the photo, wearing my pretty pink bridesmaid's dress and smiling through the jungle gym of my new braces as I cling on to the bride's bouquet which I have just caught.

When Miller and I were divorced, she took it pretty well.

"Everyone," she said, 'is allowed one false start. " Since when, despite the fact that in child-rearing terms, the years are no longer exactly on my side, she has continued, optimistically, to wait.

As, I suppose, had I. Oh, you know, a dinner date here, a concert ticket there, but pretty much I'd laid low, let my work carry the load, kept my powder dry while making sure my underwear was always clean just in case.

Diane had been a columnist for the Chronicle when I met her, women's issues mostly, date rape, who has the key to the executive wash room, the right to choose, you know the kind of thing. Her byline and a photograph (not flattering) and five bucks a word. Someone had persuaded her, with all the women Pis appearing on the bookracks, she should do a piece on the real thing.

Diane rang me and after a couple of false 64 starts we finally got to meet in a bar out by the ocean in Santa Cruz. We hadn't shaken hands before my stomach was bun gee jumping and. well, you're pretty sophisticated or you wouldn't have stuck with it this far, so you can guess the rest. That was almost a year ago almost, hell! – it-was eleven months, five days and around seven hours, and still, first thing I do once I've made sure my charge is seated safely at her table, is phone Diane's number just to hear her voice on the answer machine.

If that kind of thing happens in Kansas City – and I'm sure it does, both in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, MO then I'm sure my mother doesn 't know about it. For now, for at least as long as Diane and I go on maintaining separate apartments, I intend to see it stays that way.

Right now I check my watch against the clock on the dash and they both tell me it's fifteen minutes shy often o'clock. The coffee the woman at the reservations desk organised for me is long reduced to a residue of cold grounds and, even in the expanse of my extravagant rental, my legs are beginning to cramp up and feel in need of a stretch.

At the desk the woman remembers me and says again, if I'd care to take a seat at the bar. But I assure her I'm fine and while she sends a waiter nimbly down the carpeted stairs in search of a fresh cup of coffee. I move close enough to the stained wood balustrade to see the young woman whose safety I am charged with protecting. She's sitting at a table, center room, pretty blonde head inclined towards the pretty young man who is her dinner date, a poet from Seattle and a pretty serious one. A first collection already published by Breitenbush Books of Portland (he happened to have a copy with him and was kind enough to show me) and another from Carnegie Melton on the way. They seemed to have reached the dessert stage, so we could be on the road by ten thirty.

"They make a lovely couple, don't they?" The receptionist has come to stand next to me and I nod in agreement.

"Yes, they do."

"Do you work for Mr Reigler?" she asks.

"Sort of," I say.

By then the waiter has returned with my coffee so I thank them both and carry it outside, back into the parking lot. The air is warm enough for me to be only wearing a light sweater and even though we're close to the lake, it isn't too buggy. I stroll for a while between the cars, remembering the morning Reigler asked me to his office. It was only the second or third time I'd seen him since resigning from his law firm; the first time since his stroke. It had left him with some paralysis down the right side, not so bad that he couldn't stand, with help, and, although it was necessary to concentrate, he could speak and make himself understood. Once out of hospital and through his period of convalescence, he had insisted on coming to the office every day. Much of the time, I guessed, he just sat there and they ran things past him, playing up to the formality that all decisions were his.

What Reigler had wanted to talk to me about was a series of threatening calls, someone, anonymous, who felt their life had been 66 ruined by some case or other Reigler's firm had handled.

"Now it ain't worth doing anything to you, you sorry bastard," the last one had said, 'but you best watch out for your family, 'cause they can get hurt and there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop it.

"

Aside from notifying the police, one thing Reiglerdid was to hire me.

His daughter April was, {suspected, the one true love of his life.

She was a beauty, of a fragile kind; she was bright, dutiful enough, but stubborn. She was prepared to humor her father by agreeing I could drive her places, keep an eye out, but made it clear this wasn't going to be like the secret service and the President.

"Besides," she reminded her father, a little, I thought, unkindly, 'what could they do when Kennedy was shot? Reagan? "

Reluctantly, April agreed that I could go along on her trip to Tahoe. as long as I didn't get too close. This evening she has made it clear that any ideas I might have of sitting alongside herself and her poet while they share beautiful thoughts and a lobster and mango salad are not going to pan out. And in all honesty the only danger I suspect she might be a prey to in the midst of that crowded and fashionable restaurant rests in the depths of the poet's brown eyes.

Another turn of the parking lot and I'm back at the Chevy and there they are, April and her own Byron or Keats, stepping through the restaurant door. I set my empty cup down on the roof of the car and head towards them.

Seeing me, April's face breaks into a genuine smile and I am touched.

She is a lovely girl.

"How was dinner?" I ask.

"Wonderful!" she enthuses.

"Wasn't it. Perry?" And she turns to where he has stopped, a pace behind as if suddenly uncertain of the etiquette of dating young women who have personal bodyguards. Which is when the shot rings out and April screams as she is catapulted into my arms and I know what is clinging to my face and hair, most of it, is blood, and at that precise moment I don't know if it is April's blood or mine and, in all honesty, right then and there, I don't care.

Aside from one of the cats purring somewhere out of sight, it was quiet The record had long finished. Half the sandwich lay uneaten on its plate. Resnick sat where he was for several minutes more before closing the book, placing it on the arm of the chair, getting up and leaving the room.

Fourteen "I read your book. Dead Weight."

You did? What did you think? "

"Well, maybe I didn't read all of it. Not yet. I'm sure I will."

Cathy Jordan was looking at Resnick with amusement, her head tilted a little to one side, waiting for the truth. They were having breakfast at her hotel, sharing the decanted orange juice produce of several countries the pineapple chunks and the already solidifying scrambled eggs with a scattering of executives and Japanese tourists.

The majority of visitors to the festival were saving their pennies elsewhere.

"The first few chapters," Resnick said.

"One last night, the others earlier this morning."

"I didn't think earlier than this existed."

Resnick shrugged.

"The older I get…"

"I know, the less sleep you need. With Frank it's the opposite. I swear that man'd sleep twenty hours of any twenty-four if you'd just let him."

"And Frank is…"

"My husband. But stop evading the issue what did you think of the book?"

"I liked it."

"You did."

"Yes. You sound surprised."

She smiled with her eyes.

"No, but I figured you might be."

Resnick cut his sausage, skewered a section with his fork and dabbed it in the mustard at the side of his plate. He knew she wasn't about to let him off the hook.

"It's direct, isn't it?" he said after a little chewing.

"Like you like you talking."

Cathy was pointing at him with her knife.

"Not a good mistake to make. Annie isn't me. A long way from it."

"All right, then. Somebody who sounds like you."

"Who'll talk with her mouth full over the breakfast table and threaten her guest with sharp implements?"

"Exactly."

She laughed: okay.

"I suppose," Resnick said a few moments later,

"I was expecting something more-I don't know wordy. More description, is that what I mean?"

"Probably. Three quarters of a page detailing the stained glass window over the door, a couple more pages describing what our suspects are wearing, from the make of their brogues to the pattern on their pocket handkerchiefs, that kind of thing?"

"I suppose so."

"Potential clues."

Yes. "

"Well, if that's the kind of writer you want…" Cathy was pointing her knife towards an elderly woman, slightly stooped, grey hair pulled back into a bun, waiting while a younger man in a navy blue blazer pulled out her chair. "Dorothy Birdwell," Cathy said, 'spinster of this parish. "

"She's a writer?" Resnick asked.

Cathy arched an eyebrow.

"Rumour has it."

The waitress, a student on a six-month visit from Lisbon to learn English, offered them more coffee; Cathy Jordan spread a hand over the top of her cup, while Resnick nodded and smiled thanks.

"Toast," Cathy said to the waitress, 'we could use more toast. " And then, to Resnick,

"One literary novel when she was at Cambridge or Oxford or wherever it was. Love between the wars; unrequited, of course. After that, nothing for a decade. More. Up to her scrawny armpits in academia. Then, out of nowhere, comes A Case of Violets and everyone's frothing at the mouth about the new Allingham, the new Marsh, the new Dame Agatha. Right from then till practically what? – ten years ago, everything she wrote was guaranteed, gilt-edged bestseller."

Resnick watched as the man in the blazer and light grey trousers carefully eased Dorothy Birdwell's chair into the table, bending low to enquire if she were all right before taking his own seat.

"Who's that?" Resnick asked.

Cathy lowered her voice, but not by very much. "Marius Gooding. Her nephew. Or so she says. Of course, we like to think he's something more." Cathy laughed, quietly malicious.

"Can't you see them, every night after she's taken her teeth out, getting at it like monkeys, swinging off the chandeliers?"

Resnick could not. Marius seemed fastidious, slightly effete, his moustache daintily trimmed. Resnick watched as he leaned forward to tip a quarter-inch of milk into Dorothy Birdwell's cup, before pouring her tea. Marius was possibly forty, Resnick thought, though he contrived to look younger the kind of man you expected to find hovering around the edges of Royal Ascot, the Henley Regatta, though since Resnick had never been to either, that was a mixture of prejudice and conjecture.

"Dorothy Birdwell," he said.

"What did puncture her career ten years ago?"

Cathy Jordan laughed.

"We did. Women. Marcia Muller, Paretsky, Grafton, Patsy Comwell. Linda Barnes. Julie Smith. A whole bunch of others. Took old Dottie's space on the book-racks and wouldn't give it back."

"Just because you're women?"

"Some say. Pretty much."

"Dorothy Birdwell'sa woman."

"Another rumour. Nothing proven."

Resnick smiled but continued.

"These authors you mentioned, they're all American? Is that the reason?"

"Maybe it used to be. Part of it, anyway. But not any more. Liza Cody, Val McDermid, Sarah Dunant – you've got people of your own, doing pretty good."

"So what is the reason?" Resnick asked.

"Why the big change?"

Cathy pressed butter onto her toast and shattered it into a dozen brittle pieces.

"Okay. Pact: most crime readers are women. Fact: we give them protagonists they can identify with. Heroines. Never mind old biddies purling two and two together or chief inspectors with aristocratic leanings and patched tweed jackets, this is the age of the female PI. Smart, sassy, full of spunk, as likely to lay you out as get laid. On her terms. And enjoy it' " So she's out of date? BirdweU? "

"She was always out of date; that was the attraction. The thing is, now she's out of fashion. Which doesn't mean she doesn't still have her readers, just less of them and they're getting older all the time." Cathy leaned closer.

"Rumour has it, her agent's on the hunt for a new publisher; after twenty years with one house. Something's hurting."

Resnick set down his coffee and glanced round again at Dorothy Birdwell.

"You don't think, if she's got reasons to be jealous…?"

Dorothy? Behind those letters? I'd like to think she had it in her.

But, no, not a chance. Malicious looks at thirty paces, that's her mark. " Cathy reached out and lifted up Resnick's tie, the end of which had been mopping up what remained of the mustard.

Resnick nodded and sat back, drawing the copy of Cathy's schedule from his pocket.

"This afternoon, you're 72 signing books at Waterstone's; early this evening, introducing a film at Broadway…"

"Black Widow, d'you know it? No? Great little movie. Sexy. Debra Winger doing mouth to mouth with Theresa Russell, then busting her for murder."

"After that?"

"There was something about a bunch of us going out to dinner. This director they've dug up. They're screening one of his films after mine. You should come. Some place called Sundays? David promised the food was pretty good."

"Sonny's," Resnick said.

"And, yes, it is."

"Then you'll be along?"

"Maybe. I can't promise."

"The policeman's lot…"

"Something like that."

"Suit yourself."

"How about earlier?" Resnick asked.

"The signing. Would you feel happier if I had someone there? Just keeping an eye?"

Cathy smiled.

"The author who got stabbed with a poisoned dagger behind the mystery shelves? Sounds too much like something out of a Dorothy Birdwell to me."

"Okay. As long as you're sure." Resnick checked his watch, then pushed back his chair and reached for his wallet.

"Don't bother," Cathy said.

"It's covered."

"No, I don't think I can…"

She covered his hand with hers.

"You're my guest It's charged to the room. Which gets charged to the festival. Relax. It's not a crime.

Not a bribe. Honest. Besides, young Mollie would be thrilled at the idea of buying you breakfast. "

"I doubt it."

Cathy's half-snort, half-laugh was loud enough to turn heads.

"What?" Resnick said.

"You may be good at your job1 hope to hell you are but you sure know shit about women!"

Flushing, Resnick tried for a smile.

"I'm sorry," Cathy said, taking his hand again and giving it a squeeze.

"I didn't mean to be insulting."

"That's okay."

"Or just another brash American."

'You're not' She held his gaze before replying. She liked the way the skin crinkled around his eyes when he smiled.

"Good. I'll look forward to seeing you tonight."

"If I can," Resnick said.

"I'll try."

He was conscious of Marius Gooding watching him all the way to the dining room door only one reason he didn't stop and look back at Cathy before passing through. He would check the roster, have a word with Skelton, see if they couldn't send somebody down to the bookshop in their lunch hour just the same. As for later, the invitation to the restaurant, he didn't know, though the last time he'd been to Sonny's, he remembered, on the occasion of his friend Marian Witczak's fortieth birthday, he'd had the rack of lamb and it had been very tasty, very sweet "Listen," Divine was saying into the telephone. Not saying, shouting.

"No, listen. Listen. Listen up a minute. Bloody listen!"

Most of the CDD room did exactly that; stopped whatever they were doing to stare at Mark Divine, standing beside his desk, brown hair pushed back from his forehead, blue shirt, dark trousers, tie twisted round, anger reddening his cheeks in ragged circles, telephone tight in his hand.

"For once in your life, just listen."

Whoever was at the other end of the line chose to ignore the advice.

Connection broken, Divine stared at the receiver in frustration before slamming it back down. "Stupid tossing woman!"

"Nice," Lynn Kellogg remarked.

"No wonder you're so successful at pulling. All that suave sophistication."

Divine mouthed an everyday obscenity and kicked his chair back against the wall, stuffed both hands deep into his pockets and slouched out.

"Must be," Lynn said, enjoying a little tit-for-tat retribution, 'his time of the month. "

"Time you weren't here, isn't it?" Millington said from the far end of the room.

"One of your snouts, give you a lead on those break-ins, didn't he?"

Lynn lifted notebook and ball-point from her desk and found space for them inside her shoulder bag. She was almost at the door when Resnick walked in, breathing a little heavily after hurrying up the hill from Cathy Jordan's hotel, patches of mustard yellowing nicely on his tie.

Off far? "

Lynn shook her head.

"Dkeston Road."

"How long d'you reckon?"

"An hour. Hour and a half."

"Think you could get yourself into the city centre, middle of the day? Waterstone's, corner of Bottle Lane…"

"And Bridlesmith Gate. Yes, I know it. Why?"

"This American author who's over. Jordan, Cathy Jordan."

"Sleeping Fools Ue. 1 " Sorry? "

"One of her books. I read it last year."

Resnick was quietly impressed. Aside from anything else, where did she get the time?

"There've been a few threatening letters. Offering her harm. Doesn't seem to take them too seriously herself and I'm not sure how far we should, but it might be no bad idea, to have someone around. She's doing some kind of book signing, one o'clock. Don't want to stick a uniform in there, scare people off."

"Okay, fine. Be interesting to meet her, I should think."

"Pop back in on your way down, I'll fill you in."

Lynn nodded and was on her way.

Resnick beckoned Millington closer.

"Young Divine stormed past me and up the stairs as if you'd given him a good earful. Blotted his copybook again, has he?"

Millington shook his head.

"Mark? No, nothing I've said. Just off up the canteen, most like, have a good sulk."

What about? "

Millington's best malicious smile slid out from under his moustache like a ferret on the loose.

"Course of true love, never did run smooth."

Kevin Naylor took two mugs of tea over from the counter, two sugars in Divine's, one in his own.

"Here. Drink that." Divine continued glowering at a sausage cob, which sat encircled on his plate by a moat of brown sauce. Two tables away, three uniformed constables and a civilian clerk were arguing the merits of the present Nottinghamshire side.

"Give this lot a white ball with a bell in it, and they'd not top three figures against a blind school."

"What's up?" Naylor asked.

"Lesley?"

Lesley Bruton was a staff nurse at Queen's Medical Centre. Divine had met her during the course of an enquiry and been immediately attracted. Nothing in itself unusual in that. Divine in the vicinity of an attractive woman was like a water diviner in overdrive. What had been unusual was that, despite her early indifference, he had stuck with it.

Months it had taken him to wear Lesley Bruton's patience down to the point where she would even talk about going out with him. Divine, week after seemingly thankless week, just chancing to be driving past the entrance to the hospital as she was coming off shift, more often than not still wearing her staff nurse's uniform beneath her outdoor coat. When finally he caught her at a weak moment and she conceded a quick drink, he had surprised her by making her laugh; surprised her more by not making a play for her when he dropped her at the house she shared with two housemen and three other nurses. Though she could see in his eyes it was what he was set on.

Since then she had put him through a series of arbitrary tests, from keeping him waiting one hour and forty-nine minutes due to an emergency admission, to holding a handful of her damp Kleenex as she sobbed her way through the sentimental bits of Mrs Doubtfire. Last night it had been an ordeal by association: Lesley had organised a leaving do for one of the other nurses on the ward and made it clear to Divine she wanted him along. It had all been fine until he'd lost count of his lagers and graphically propositioned one of Lesley's friends.

"Jesus!" Naylor said, hearing the story.

"Don't believe in asking for trouble, do you?"

"All I said was, one into two, how many times d'you reckon it'd go:' Pillock!"

Divine dipped his head and savaged the sausage cob. "Wasn't as though I was trying to have it away behind her back."

"Might've been better if you were."

"Yes, happen you're right' And then, eyes brightening: " Got to admit, though, can't beat a threesome to get your hormones in an uproar. Remember those sisters whose caravan caught fire out at Strelley. "

But Naylor had other things on his mind, more compelling than his colleague's compulsive sexual shenanigans. Now that the baby was up and toddling, walking really, baby no longer, Debbie was only making noises about trying for another. As if eighteen months of postnatal depression had never happened. Perhaps blowing what little they'd saved on a trip to Florida would be worth it after all, shift her mind on to a different tack.

"I hope we're doing enough, Charlie, that's my concern. I'd not be happy coming out of this with egg all over our faces."

Skelton held the milk carton up questioningly and Resnick merely shook his head; as it was, calling the superintendent's coffee black was asking to be summonsed by the Race Relations Board.

"If anything should happen to her, you know what I mean."

Resnick set cup and saucer on the floor beside his chair. "Watching brief, that's what I thought. Public appearances 78 and the like. There's a dinner tonight, just informal, I thought I might go along."

Skelton looked at Resnick with interest before fidgeting with the papers on his desk.

"No follow-up on that stabbing in Alfreton Road?"

Resnick shook his head.

"We've done a check of the hotels. Nothing.

Bloke's likely off home, thanking his lucky stars, shooting a line to his wife about where the scar came from. "

The photograph of Skelton's wife, Resnick noticed, had still not found its way back on to his desk.

"Nothing else I should know about?" the superintendent asked.

"Advisory meeting's tomorrow."

"Maybe just get some advice," Resnick said.

"Like how are we supposed to increase the percentage of successful investigations when there's a ban on overtime."

"Remember the old story, Charlie," Skelton said, 'the one about the rabbit and the hat. "

Sixteen Lynn had no trouble recognising Cathy Jordan. Red hair tied back with green ribbon, blue denim shirt, pale cord three-quarter skirt, tan boots, she stood, relaxed, alongside a table on which copies of her books had been piled high. A glass of red wine in her hand, she was chatting amiably to a pleasant-faced man in a dark suit whom Lynn took to be the Waterstone's manager. There were quite a few people already hovering in the general area of the table, glancing almost surreptitiously in the author's direction, waiting for the official business to begin.

Lynn stood by this month's best-sellers, making sure she had the layout of the shop clear in her mind: the main doors onto Bridlesmith Gate were at her back, a second entrance, from the foot of Bottle Lane, was in the corner of the travel section, several steps up to her left; around the corner at the far end, she remembered, were children's books and what? gardening? something like that, yes, gardening. Lynn moved through the steadily growing crowd and introduced herself.

Cathy Jordan took half a step back to look at her Lynn with her newly short hair almost flat on her head, navy cotton jacket and dark skirt, black low-heeled shoes.

"Resnick, you work with him?"

"Inspector Resnick, yes, that's right."

"Sent you along to hold my hand."

"Not exactly."

A line was beginning to form now, curving its way back between the other tables; those at the front coughing a 80 little nervously, wondering how it was Lynn had somehow got in before them.

"You're not armed or anything?"

Lynn shook her head.

"Should I be?"

"God, I hope not' Cathy Jordan smiled.

"Just, if someone's standing behind my back with a gun, I like to know."

"Don't worry," Lynn said.

"I probably won't be at your back at all."

"Prefer to merge into the crowd, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Good." Still smiling.

"Good." And, turning back towards the manager: "Shall we get to it?"

Derek Neighbour had made sure of getting there in plenty of time.

Parking, he knew to his cost, was always a problem after mid-morning, so he had left his home in Newark shortly after eight, called in briefly at the antique shop he ran with his partner, Philip, and arrived in plenty of time to find a space on the third floor of the Fletcher Gate multi-storey. From there it was only a short walk down the steps on to King John's Chambers and Water- stone's was just to the right which was as well, considering the weight of what he was carrying.

Derek hadn't discovered Cathy Jordan until Shallow Grave, which, of course, was her fourth, the fourth Annie Q. Jones, and, even then, he had almost never read it at all. For at least six weeks it had lain on the nice Victorian wash-stand below the bedroom window, six weeks when Philip would say to him,

"Have you read that book yet?" and he would reply,

"Well, no, not exactly. But I'm getting around to it."

What Derek normally liked was what the Americans, who had to invent a category for everything, called "Cosies'. Old-fashioned would have been another way of putting it, but then, what was wrong with old-fashioned?

Craftsmanship, attention to detail, control. Dorothy Bird- well, now, she had long been one of Derek's favourites.

But Philip could be persuasive.

"Cathy Jordan, I do think you'd like her. She's good. The genuine article."

Since some of Philip's bedtime reading was, well, dubious to say the least, Derek had remained noncommittal. Till, one day, or to be precise, two, he had been laid up in bed with flu. The Patricia Moyes he was rereading for the third time had come to its same, careful ending; Dorothy Birdwell had pottered around in the East Anglian fog to disappointingly little purpose, and there were just so many times you could reread the letters page of the Telegraph.

So, propped up on his pillows and with some Beechams and hot lemon close to hand, he had started Shallow Grave: The first time I saw Anita Mulholland she was a happy twelve-year-old with braces on her teeth and a smile that would have knocked out the angels; next time I saw her was a year later, to the day, and she was dead.

The voice, Annie's voice, had gripped him from that first sentence and hadn't let him go. The story, oh, the story was fine, perfectly fine, though in truth, there was little about it that was particularly original. But there were moments when Derek's skin had tightened about him, moments when the cold of shared fear slid along the backs of his already feverish legs and arms. And there was the disgust and shock of what had happened to that young girl. But without the voice, the sure, buttonholing quality of the voice, none of the rest would have been enough.

He finished Shallow Grave and, when he had recovered, set out to acquire the others. Philip had copies of the book that preceded it.

Sleeping Fools Lie, and the one which came after it. Dead Weight. But now Derek had 82 been well and truly bitten, he wanted to read all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries from the beginning. The second, Uneasy Prey, he finally found in an Any two for 50p box on the market, dog-eared and marmalade-stained, but, as far as he could see, intact. Angels at Rest, the first of the series, proved more difficult. It had been brought out in paperback in Britain by a firm that had rapidly gone into liquidation, and had been published in hardback in a small edition intended primarily for libraries. Derek had finally tracked down a copy through the Books Wanted section of Philip's Guardian.

Derek, of course, was more than a mere reader: he was a collector with a collector's mentality. Completism was his unquestioned faith.

Inside the heavy cardboard box he was carrying were British editions of all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries, five American paperbacks, American first-edition hardbacks the 'true' firsts of everything except Angels at Rest, and, just for fun, a few assorted foreign-language versions he had picked up here and there – German, French, Danish, South Korean, Taiwanese.

A complete English-language set, except that it wasn't, to Derek's eternal chagrin, quite complete. Rumour had it that a mystery bookstore outside Phoenix had a first edition of Angels at Rest for sale at six hundred and fifty dollars, US, but it had proved sadly untrue.

Derek was still searching.

He turned his back towards the glass door into Water- stone' s and eased it open, the box held tight in front of him on aching arms. The queue at the signing table was long, but that didn't matter in the least If Derek only reached Cathy Jordan at the end of her session, so much the better, there would be more time to chat.

Lynn refused the glass of wine which the manager offered her and opted for mineral water instead, sipping it now 83 from a vantage point by the side wall, close to the books on poetry and theatre. She admired the way Cathy Jordan dealt with her fans; a smile for each one, not forced but seeming genuine, to each she offered a palatable slice of conversation; copies of her books she signed in black ink with a nourish, using a fat Mont Blanc pen she carried especially for the purpose: For Emily from Annie Q. amp; me! Cathy Jordan The C was round and deep enough to contain, almost, the rest of her first name; the J swooped towards the bottom of the title page before sweeping through its final curve.

"Well," Cathy Jordan said, 'it's good to meet you, too. " Her voice, American, slightly nasal, sounded overlarge within the confines of the store.

Lynn had decided she would buy a copy of Dead Weight for herself, but wouldn't bother, probably, to get it signed. The line was dwindling to an end: a youngish man wearing a black Anthrax T-shirt and with two gold rings in his right ear, one immediately above the other, was having his book signed now, and behind him two women waited together, deep in conversation. The taller of the two was wearing a brightly coloured ethnic dress, a green rucksack slung casually over one shoulder; her companion, several years younger, wore a black shirt over blue jeans, one hand resting on the leather shoulder bag slung from her shoulder. Behind them another man, older, with gingery hair and glasses, stood with an open cardboard box of books at his feet; and finally, a fortyish woman with a Warehouse carrier bag in one hand and a small child, already beginning to grizzle, clinging to the other.

Lynn glanced at her watch; she thought, I can be back at the station by half past two.

The man in the T-shirt moved away and the taller of the women swung the rucksack from her shoulder. The boy at the back of the queue had started to cry and his mother gave his arm a tug, causing him to cry louder. A couple of fourteen-year-olds, arms loose around each other's limber bodies, passed carelessly in front of where Lynn was standing.

"We've read all of your books," the woman in black was saying.

"They really made an impression."

"And since it's your first visit," her friend said excitedly, 'we've brought something for you. "

"Well, that's real nice," Cathy Jordan said, giving it her best smile.

The woman raised the rucksack high and swung it towards the table: what was inside was a plastic container and what was inside that was blood. A lot of blood. It poured over Cathy Jordan's face and hair and down her front, splashing across what was left of the piles of books.

"We thought," one of the women was shouting, 'you'd like to know what it was like. "

Lynn pushed the two youths aside and in four paces she was at Cathy Jordan's side; Cathy standing, arms outstretched, blue of her shirt adrift in blood.

"Are you all right?"

"What the hell do you think?"

On his knees, Derek Neighbour was lifting books from their box as deftly and carefully as he could; those that had been lying on top were thickly spotted and stained.

Lynn part-swerved round him, part-vaulted over him; the mother with the Warehouse bag dragged her screaming child towards her and Lynn cannoned into the shelves avoiding him. Ahead of her she could see the two women pushing their way through the doors on to the street.

"Make way!" she called.

"Make way, police!"

Nobody moved.

Lynn ran between them, failing to notice the table opposite the cash desk until she struck it hard, somewhere between hip and thigh, her cry lost in the crash of books against the floor.

Stop! "

They were running full-pelt down the middle of St Peter's Gate, ignoring the traffic, both pavements clogged with lunchtime shoppers, grazing on their take away burgers or baked potatoes.

Police! "

Halfway down, they separated: the one in black continuing on, actually gaining speed, the woman in the dress dodging her way into the arcade of fashionable shops that led towards the square.

Lynn ducked into the narrow alley higher up and emerged on to Cheapside before the woman was in sight; for a moment, Lynn thought she might have doubled back, but no, there she was, pushing between a knot of people outside Saxone's window.

Right! " Lynn yelled, catching hold of the collar of the woman's dress.

"That's it!"

The dress ripped and, stumbling, the woman, all but bare-chested, fell across the kerb by the pedestrian crossing. A green double-decker bus pulled up not so far short of where she was sprawling.

Lynn seized one of the woman's arms and yanked her back on to the pavement; leaning over her, a crowd gathering quickly round, she drew out her warrant card and held it high in the air.

"I'm a police officer and I'm placing you under arrest. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Someone at the back of the crowd began a slow hand clap and several more jeered; the majority started to drift away. On the ground, without bothering to pull the 86 material of her dress around her, the woman began to laugh.