Living Proof

Twenty-one

Resnick had just walked into the CID room when the call came in, Millington picking up and listening only long enough to beckon him over, pass the phone across.

"Right," Resnick said, a minute later.

"We've got a body. Graham, you come with me. Mark…"

"Boss?"

"I shall need you and Kevin knocking on a few doors."

Divine didn't need telling twice.

"How about Lynn?" Millington asked. They were in the corridor, heading for the stairs.

"Seeing the shrink, isn't she? Could always get her to cancel. Reschedule."

"For the sake of fifty minutes? No, I don't think so."

Millington pushed open the rear door to the car park. "How long till all this psycho babble business is over and done with, that's what I'd like to know?"

"Graham," Resnick said, with a slow shake of the head, "I doubt it ever is."

To say the body was in the bath was not quite accurate. The left arm and leg and most of the trunk were hanging inside, the right leg outside, trailing at an awkward angle to the floor. The right arm stretched along the bath's rim, the head resting, open-mouthed, against the crook of the elbow. From the position alone, it was unclear whether the dead man had been trying to climb into the bath or crawl out.

A patchy trail of blood contoured its way across the carpet, leading from the bed into the bathroom; blood had dried in tapering lines down the plastic-coated side of the bath beneath the body and more had collected around the plug hole like a pressed rose.

"Dragged there, d'you reckon?" Millington asked.

Resnick's mouth tightened.

"Possible. Dragged himself, could be."

Why the bath, then? Not the door? "

"Might not have known. Just getting away. Disorientated. Then again, maybe it was deliberate. Wanted to wash it off."

There was a uniformed officer outside the door, another further along the corridor, shepherding curious staff and guests on their way. From the hotel register, it had been established that the occupant of the room was a Peter Farleigh, with an address Resnick recognised as one of those villages in the Wolds, north of Loughborough.

The clean towels which the maid had been carrying were in a heap near the door where she had dropped them; the maid herself was lying down in one of the vacant rooms, according to the manager, in a right old state.

"We don't know, of course," Millington said, 'if this is Farleigh or not. Not for a fact. "

Resnick nodded, stepping back into the main room. Both he and Millington were wearing plastic coats over their street clothes, white cotton gloves on their hands.

A wallet lay on the table beside the bed, nudged up against the base of the lamp. Cautiously, Resnick fingered it open. Whatever money it might have held was gone. Surprisingly, though, the credit cards seemed to be in place. Behind a kidney donor card was a membership card for a squash club in Melton Mowbray which bore a small, coloured photograph above an address and the name, Peter John Farleigh. The man poised over the bath looked different, in the way that dead people do, but Resnick had no doubt that he was one and the same as the person pictured in the photo.

Resnick stood where he was, focusing on the bed, the ruck of clothes, darkly stained; under the almost silent hum of the air conditioning, the scent of sweat and blood were unmistakable. He tried to imagine what had happened in that room, tried to magic words, expressions out from the walls. If that address were still correct, then Farleigh lived no more than an hour's drive away, so why opt for the hotel in preference to going home?

Sex, Resnick thought.

A lover.

A liaison, bought and paid for, bought and sold.

Sometimes this was what it cost.

The door opened from the corridor and Parkinson, the pathologist, came in: tall, bony, thinning hair, neat in a mossy tweed suit.

Automatically, he fingered an extra- strong mint from the roll in his side pocket and slid his glasses from their case.

"Now then, Charlie, what have we got here?"

Lynn thought, this room always smells of flowers. Roses, though there were none that she could see. She sat in the same chair, wooden arms and a curved back, comfortable, but not so comfortable that you would drift off to sleep. Not even through these long silences. Petra Carey, Dr Petra Carey, sitting near to the window, seemingly relaxed. There was a desk, but the doctor ignored it, except sometimes at the beginning of the session when Lynn arrived, she would be there, finishing writing up her notes, glancing, perhaps, at Lyim's file.

"Lynn, it's good to see you. How are we today?" Petra Carey, today in a short jacket and loose, long skirt, white blouse with a slight frill, wedding ring wide on her hand. Scrubbed face and careful hair, attentive eyes.

"What would you like to talk about today?" Lynn supposed she might be five years older than herself.

Quiet, she could hear the ticking of the clock.

There were seven wounds in all: four to the chest, one between the ribs to the left-hand side, two low in the stomach, approximately two inches above the line of pubic hair. All but one of the chest wounds were scarcely more than superficial; the deepest seeming the one which had passed between the ribs, close, Resnick guessed, to where the heart had been still beating.

After the scene-of-the-crime team had finished shooting off several rolls of film and videoing Farleigh's body in situ, it had been removed from the bath and laid on thick, opaque plastic sheeting.

"What time are we looking at?" Resnick asked.

Parkinson wiped the thermometer with care and returned it to its case.

"Ten hours, give or take."

"Midnight, then?"

"Round about."

Resnick grunted. At midnight, he had been leaving Sonny's restaurant, exchanging handshakes and goodbyes with David Tyrell, hoping that the heated words being exchanged between youths outside the pub opposite would not escalate into blows, causing him to intervene.

"Any chance you'll get to my panel tomorrow?" Cathy Jordan had asked.

Resnick had replied noncommittally uncertain; now it was clear that he would not.

He had picked up a cab across the street from Ritzy's and, home, had poured himself a half-inch of bison grass vodka and read a little more of Cathy Jordan's book. So far, the most likely culprits behind April's murder seemed to be a former ex-criminal client of her father, a rejected would-be lover, or -just out of the woodwork April's half-brother by one of her father's previous liaisons.

Resnick's money was on the brother. In the book, it was easier; in the book it didn't matter if he were wrong.

"Nothing else for me here now," Parkinson said.

"You'll be at the post?"

Resnick nodded.

In a room along the corridor, Kevin Naylor was patiently questioning Mane-Elisabeth Fourier, having to remind her almost every other sentence to speak in English, not French. Earlier, he had tried a few remembered phrases from his school days and she had looked at him blankly, as if he were speaking another language. Then finally she told him everything she knew.

Divine had found two of the guests with rooms on the same floor, still lingering over their breakfast in the dining room, but they claimed neither to have seen nor to have heard anything. Names and addresses of the other guests he obtained from the hotel register.

Computer records showed that Farleigh had stayed at the hotel on three occasions in the past eighteen months, the first time for a single night, the others of which this was the last for two.

Always a single room, always on his own.

"Visitors?" Millington asked.

"You know the kind I mean."

"We try not to encourage it, but…" The manager shrugged.

"People do what they do."

"And Farleigh, you don't know if…"

"I've no idea."

"No gossip amongst the staff? No…"

"You'll have to ask them yourself."

We will. "

The first of the night staff to respond to urgent requests that they make themselves available for questioning, was one of the waiters from the restaurant. Yes, he recognised the man's photo and, no, he had eaten alone, but after he had finished his meal he had sat down again with somebody else. The description the waiter gave was backed up by the barman when he arrived some forty minutes later. Late thirties, early forties, dark hair, black dress. On the game? Could be, nowadays it was increasingly difficult to tell.

Had either of them seen the woman there in the hotel before? No, they didn't think they had. If they were to be shown some photographs?

Oh, surely, they'd be happy to oblige. Tickled pink. Couldn't let the likes of her be running around free, now, could they? Was it true, as they'd heard, she'd stabbed him fifteen times or was it just the twelve?

"Sure you're up for this?" Resnick asked.

Lynn was looking through the car window at alternations of hedgerow, sunlight catching silver along arable fields.

"I'll be fine," she said.

At the outskirts of the village, Resnick slowed behind a dozen sheep, a lad no older than fourteen herding them slowly through a farm gate.

When Resnick glanced across at Lynn, the skin around her eyes was drawn. He knew he shouldn't have asked her to come with him; knew also that in situations such as this, she was irreplaceable.

The house was well back from the road, a small Flat parked in the drive.

"Mrs Farleigh," Resnick said to the middle-aged woman who came to the door.

"I'm Detective Inspector Resnick and this is Detective Constable Kellogg. I wonder if we might come inside?"

Twenty-two Sarah Farleigh had gone through all the normal reactions to her husband's death: disbelief, shock, anger, finally tears. Lynn had moved to hold her and the older woman had shrugged her off, stumbling from the kitchen in which they had been talking, through the French windows of the living room into the garden, which was where Resnick found her, squatting in the middle of half an acre of lawn, face in her hands.

For several minutes he hunched there beside her, while a blackbird noisily disputed their presence from the branch of a nearby apple tree. When the worst of the crying, the kind that scrapes against the chest, tears the back of the throat, had stopped, to be replaced by intermittent, stuttering sobs, Resnick reached for her hand, the one in which a sodden Kleenex was tightly balled, and she clutched at his fingers as if they were all that could prevent her from falling.

Clung to them until they hurt.

"Do you know," she said a little later, letting go of Resnick's hand, accepting the handkerchief that he offered her, wiping her face and blowing her nose.

"Do you know, he would never lift a finger in this garden? Not as much as mow the lawn. These trees, the flower beds, all of the shrubbery down along the south wall, that was all me. My work. I even used of course, he used to get it at a discount, he would do that1 even used the fertiliser the company made, you know, the one where he worked. Whose goods he sold. It could have been anything, you see. Kitchenware, clothing, anything, just as long as it was something he could sell. It didn't matter that… it didn't matter that… it was used to make things grow."

Resnick was ready; he shifted his weight and caught her as she half-turned, her body, stiff and thickening into middle age, falling across him, his arms supporting her, her brown hair harsh and soft against his neck.

Over the top of her head, he could see Lynn standing in the doorway, watching; after a while she turned back into the house.

The telephone rang and then was still.

Sarah Farleigh straightened and, shakily, got to her feet. "I'm sorry. Thank you. I shall be all right."

Resnick smiled a wan smile.

"I shouldn't be surprised if Lynn hasn't made some tea."

She looked at him.

"No. I expect she has. It's what women are good at. It's what we do."

Resnick walked with her, back to the house.

The scene-of-crime team had lifted seventeen good prints from the hotel bedroom, the bathroom had yielded eight more. Likelihood was that most of the prints would have come from Farleigh, others either from the hotel staff or previous occupants of the room. So much for cleaning. All these people would have to be contacted, checked and eliminated. If everything worked out the way it did in the textbooks, if luck and logic were on their side, any prints unaccounted for would belong to Farieigh's attacker. If that person had a record, well, while not exactly home free, the police would have a suspect, clear in their sights.

Everyone involved in the inquiry knew things were rarely that simple.

"Any sign of those photographs? From the hotel?" Resnick was barely into the office, loosening his tie, undoing the top button of his shirt.

"Promised half-hour back," Millington said, looking up from the computer printout splayed across his desk.

"Give them a chase."

"Right. Mark…"

Boss? "

"Ten-by-eights from this morning, find out where they are. And while you're about it, check out the arrangements for viewing the scene of crime video."

"On it now."

"Good lad."

Resnick was reading the printout upside down.

"From the hotel,"

Millington explained.

"Three lists. Guests registered for the past two nights, previous occupants of Farleigh's room, going back two months, and all staff on duty in the past forty-eight hours."

"Any headway?"

"Kevin's got a couple in now, running through photos with them. Maybe they'll pick out the woman, maybe not. If not, best haul our tame artist in, get a composite."

"How about the hotel?"

"We've got three lads out of uniform, questioning the staff as they clock in."

Resnick picked up the list and let it fall.

"We'll need more bodies."

"Too right. I can hear 'em bleating about overtime already."

Resnick sighed.

"I'll have a word with the old man. He can lean on the ACC. Budgets should be their problem, not ours. Meantime, we should get the names on this list checked with Intelligence at Central. Never know your luck."

Millington nodded.

"Next thing up."

In his office, Resnick wondered if it weren't time to call down to the front desk, see if someone wasn't nipping across to the deli.

They were getting tired, Naylor could see that; losing concentration.

Time and again he was having to stop them, not leading, not wanting false information, but slowing them down, bringing them back. Not wanting their eyes to gloss over another page of photographs without discriminating, letting individual features sink in. Known prostitutes, working the city centre, with a possible preference for hotels.

"Jesus," the waiter said.

"How much longer are we going to be?"

"Not too long now."

Yes, but how long? "

Till we're done. "

"Don't worry," the barman said, winking.

"I know him. This is how he spends his breaks; feet up in the bogs back of the kitchen, looking at pictures of women. Only difference, these've got more clothes on."

"Up yours!" the waiter said, cheerily feigning offence.

"Nota Not today. It's Friday and I'm a good Catholic, remember?"

"Here," Naylor said, turning the page.

"Take your time and have a careful look at these."

Resnick had the scene-of-crime photographs spread across his desk; the gorgonzola and radicchio sandwich he was eating lay on a paper bag in his lap. What held his attention most, aside from the un focusing depth of the dead man's eyes, was the haphazard pattern of stab wounds in the chest, the single blow the first to be struck, or delivered later, after the fury of the first assault? – that had penetrated the ribs and found the heart. Resnick imagined Farleigh struggling from the bed, endeavouring to escape, only to fall across the mattress-end before the blade was driven home again. Was that how it had been? And then the slow crawl towards the bath.?

Resnick looked again at the pictures of Farleigh's face, the spread of his overweight body. What had he done or said, Resnick wondered, to provoke such an outburst?

He brought the remaining half-sandwich to his mouth with both hands and chewed thoughtfully. Catching a stray drip of mayonnaise on the back of his hand, he looked around for something to wipe it on, finally resorting to licking it away; the last thing he wanted to do was get splotches all over the photographs.

"There!" the waiter said.

"Where?"

There. "

The face he was pointing to, finger wavering stubbily above it, was of a woman who was probably in her forties, with dark hair that hung, puppy-dog-like, around her ears and over equally dark eyes. There was no humour in those eyes. For all the world, she looked as if she had been willing the police photographer to shrivel up and yes die.

Marlene Kinoulton.

"You're mad." The barman said, shaking his head. "That's never her."

I say it is. "

"She's too old, way too old."

"You didn't see her as well as I did. You were never as close."

"She was at the bar."

"How many times? Twice? Once? You think how many times I was over to the table, bending over to serve her…"

"Gawping down her front."

"Never mind that. You know what I'm saying. I had a better sight of her than you. And for my money, that's her."

The barman swivelled away in his chair, gestured towards Naylor.

"The hair. It's wrong."

"What d'you mean wrong?" the waiter asked.

"It didn't look like that at all."

"So what? Aren't women changing their hair all the time?"

"But this look it's thicker, bushy. Can you not imagine feeling that? What it'd feel like? Coarse, am I not right? Where that one last night in the bar, her hair was fine, well looked after, finer than this. No, no way, this is never her."

For several moments there was silence, both men sneaking glances at Naylor and Naylor not wanting to influence either of them unduly.

The barman finally jumped to his feet.

"Well, I don't care what you say. I reckon that's her and I'm sticking to it. And now, if there's anything you want me to sign or whatever I'll sign it, because then, I don't mind telling you, I've had quite enough and, if it's all right with you, I'm out of here, so I am, now."

Kevin Naylor was looking at the photograph. Marlene Kinouhon. The name meant nothing to him. He. would pass it on down the line and, as long as she was still working the city, they would bring her in. He knew that both men were looking at him, waiting for him to say something positive, send them on their way. His back was aching from bending over the albums for so long and he knew he could do with a pint, but it was at least an hour before he would get one, possibly longer. Always, jarring at the edge of his mind, the conversation he had had with Debbie over breakfast, over children, another baby.

"Thanks," he said.

"Thanks for all your time. You've been very helpful."

Twenty-three Frank Carlucci had picked up the first edition of the local paper on his way back from the. municipal pool. Thirty minutes of steady lengths, interrupted only by the arrival of the first batch of school kids of the day. Juice and coffee hadn't been as difficult to find as the last time he was in the country, ten years before, but even so, his request for a ca fee lane had been treated with disbelief and the cappuccino he ordered instead was weak and boasted no more than a quarter-inch of froth. Let me into this market, Frank thought, and I could clean up.

Cathy was in the shower when he got back, between the groans and the splashes singing one of those old Brill Building songs by Carole King, Neil Sedaka, one of those. Later that day was when Shots on the Page, the literary segment of the festival, began, and she would be at her busiest, fans simpering round her for autographs coming off with the same stupid questions "Who are your favourite mystery writers, Ms Jordan?"

"Where do you get all your ideas?",

"Just how much of you is there in Annie Q. Jones? Is she really you?" One major difference between them, Frank knew for sure, no way his wife was a dyke.

The water stopped and a few moments later Cathy came through from the shower, a towel about her hair.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Carlucci whistled in wonder.

"You still got a great body, you know that?"

"Frank," Cathy smiled, her voice slipping into the mock-innocent tone with which she often teased him, 'you didn't drown. You're back. "

For once, Frank refused the bait.

"Maybe it's 'cause you never had kids, I don't know, but you're in as great shape now as when you was twenty-one."

"Bullshitter! You didn't know me when I was twenty- one."

Carlucd laughed.

"More's the pity." He cupped one of her buttocks with his hand and she slapped him away.

"Hey, you don't want to get felt up, shouldn't walk around that way."

"What's that, Frank, rape defence A? Your honour, she was asking for it' " What you talking, rape? Husband pats his wife's ass, that's not even sexual harassment. Not even today. "

Cathy pulled on a pair of white underpants and began sorting through her tights.

"I know, Frank, you're right. It's just, well, sometimes I have difficulty remembering that you're my husband, I mean."

"Listen," said Frank, serious now.

"I ever force myself upon you?"

Cathy straightened away from the bed.

"No, Frank, I can't say you have. Not recently anyway. Not since that time in Atlanta I broke your nose."

"You didn't break my nose. A few seconds maybe, it was out of joint.

Hey, you ev^n helped pop it back, remember? " / " And got snot and blood all up my arm for my trouble. "

She had her back to him, snapping on a brassiere, and he waited until she turned, wondering if she were really mad, remembering. She didn't look mad. Standing there. white bra with some cleavage and a little lace, blue jeans, even with her snarled-up hair, she looked great He told her so.

"Look," he said.

"I'm serious. You don't think we could…" Eyes straying towards the bed.

126 "Come on, Frank. I just got out the shower. And I've got this radio interview in less than half an hour. Mollie's coming by to pick me up."

Right, thought Frank, always something. He tossed her the paper and Cathy caught most of it, the second section sliding from the bed down to the floor.

"Maybe you should take a look at this before you go.

Hung on to your front page spot, but only just. I'll see you later," he said and left the room.

The piece describing the affray in the bookshop was boxed towards the bottom of the page, two columns. Beneath the headline, STAR US CRIME WRITER ATTACKED, Cathy Jordan's face smiled out from one of her standard issue publicity shots.

"Presumed feminist protest…" it read. And: "Although clearly shaken by the unprovoked assault, the visiting best-selling American author insisted she would not be curtailing her very full programme during the city's top film and fiction festival. This evening. Miss Jordan is appearing on a Shots on the Page panel discussing the future of crime fiction. 9 Terrific, Cathy thought, every weirdo and closet voyeur coming out of the woodwork, eager to see what I'm going to get doused in this time.

But she didn't think about that for long; her eyes kept being pulled back to the top of the page: Police Probe Hotel Slaying. DEAD MAN FOUND NAKED IN BATH

Police launched a major inquiry today after the body of 53-year-old Wymeswood man, Peter Farleigh, was found in his hotel room earlier this morning. Farleigh, a married man with three grown-up children, who worked as a sales executive for Myerson Chemical and Fertiliser, had been stabbed a number of times in the chest and abdomen. His body was discovered when Mane- Elisabeth Fourier, a maid employed by the hotel, entered Mr Farleigh's room. She found Mr Farleigh's naked body lying in the heavily blood-stained bath.

Miss Fourier, who is nineteen, and studying English here in the city, works at the hotel on a part-time basis. She is understood to have been sedated and treated for shock.

An incident room has been set up at Canning Circus police station and the inquiry is being headed by Det Insp Charlie Resnick.

A police spokesman said they were not sure if there was any link between Mr Farleigh's murder and a recent incident in which an unidentified man, apparently naked, was found with stab wounds in the Alfreton Road area of the city. This man, whose injuries were treated at Queen's Medical Centre, has since disappeared without trace.

Forensic experts are continuing to examine the room in which Mr Farleigh was found for clues and a postmortem examination will be carried out by Home Office pathologist Prof Arthur Parkinson.

Det Insp Resnick declined to give any further details of the death until the post-mortem has been carried out, or to 128 detail any lines of inquiry being followed.

Speaking from her five-bed roomed detached home in the village ofWymeswood, a grief-stricken Sarah Farleigh said,

"Peter was a model husband and a perfect father to our children. We are all heartbroken at the news of what has happened."

Well, Cathy Jordan thought, that puts the occasional pot of paint into perspective, doesn't it? She slid a green silk shirt from its hanger in the wardrobe and held it against herself in front of the mirror. Radio, for God's sake, she was about to do radio. What did it matter what she looked like? Now that he had his very own murder inquiry, she doubted that good old Charlie Resnick would have much time left over to think about her.

Mollie Hansen was waiting for her in the lobby, one of Cathy's books and a folder of publicity material under one arm.

"The car's waiting. It isn't far."

"Fine. And, look, I hope you made it clear. I'll talk about anything but that stupidity with the paint."

"Of course," Mollie said, holding open the door.

"I've spoken to the producer twice."

Cathy Jordan sat in front of the goose-neck microphone, a plastic cup of water near her right hand. Across the broad desk, the morning presenter picked his way through several cassettes before finding the trail for that evening's live broadcast from Mansfield Civic Centre and slotting it into place. A recording of

"Up, Up and Away' by the Fifth Dimension was coming to an end. He had already checked Cathy's voice for level.

"More music later. But now I've been joined here in the studio by the American crime writer Cathy Jordan, one of the people most responsible for the amazing increase in the popularity of women in this field. Good morning, Cathy."

"Hi."

Tell me, Cathy, while it's true that your books have proved almost as popular here as back home in the States, this hasn't been without some opposition. I believe, for instance, there was an incident yesterday involving some paint. "

Twenty-four The questions didn't finish there.

Even without the additional publicity, the hotel's principal convention room would have been full for Cathy Jordan's evening panel, but, as things had developed, it was close to overflowing.

Delegates who had been unable to get seats were standing at both back and sides, or leaning against ledges and walls; several more were sitting cross-legged between the front row and the platform. Cathy, herself, was sitting to the left of Maxim Jakubowski, the chairman; the young Scottish writer, ian Rankin, sat, toying with his water glass, alongside her. On the chairman's right, Dorothy Birdwell and the tall figure of South Londoner and ex-Who roadie. Mark Timlin, sat in unlikely alliance.

"Excuse me, I have a question…" The voice was articulate, middle-class, used to making itself heard.

"I have a question for Ms Jordan…" From the chair, Jakubowski leaned forward and acknowledged the speaker from the floor.

The woman was standing now, a few seats in from the central aisle near the back of the room rimless glasses, greying hair pulled back, a perfectly unexceptional print dress. Alongside Jakubowski, Cathy Jordan had poured water into her glass; everything had been going smoothly up to now, as predictable as discussions on the future of crime fiction tended to be.

"I should like to ask Ms Jordan if she shares my concerns about the way women are increasingly being represented in crime fiction?"

Cathy sipped her water and counted to ten. ian Rankin coughed and winked.

"Here we go," he whispered.

Cathy set down her glass.

"Well," she said, 'doesn't that depend on what those concerns are? "

"Those of most women."

"Most women?"

Yes. "

There was an uneasy stirring amongst sections of the audience; some, having heard of the bookshop incident, had come anticipating conflict and so far had been disappointed, others were inwardly flinching, steeling themselves against embarrassment.

Cathy took her time, waiting until the hum of expectation had faded into an expectant silence.

"Now I don't know, of course, how you're calibrating " most". I mean, is that most women in this country? This city? Or are you claiming to speak for most women in this room?" She paused and looked slowly around and heard a few disclaimers from amongst the crowd.

"Maybe, you mean most of your own little circle of friends?"

There was a sprinkling of laughter, mostly self-conscious, during which the questioner stepped out into the aisle. For the first time, Cathy caught Man us Gooding's eye. He was sitting four rows back, staring not at Dorothy Birdwell, but at her, staring hard.

^No," the questioner was replying, her voice louder now, more openly aggressive.

"I mean any women. All women."

Again there were mumbles of dissent, but not many, not enough to deflect shouts of acclamation which seemed to come strategically from around the room. Cathy glanced towards the chairman, who un demonstratively shook his head, happy to let things proceed.

"I'm speaking for any woman who has any sense of her own strength or dignity, her own independence or sexuality…"

"Oh, come on!" Cathy Jordan said.

"Spare us the speeches."

'. and who could not fail to be appalled and threatened by the excessively violent way. "

"Always did like a bit of violence myself," Timlin said, as much to himself as anyone else.

Dorothy Birdwell, much like the Dormouse in Alice, seemed to be sleeping.

'. the violent ways in which you and others like you, serve up women as a series of passive victims at the hands of men. "

"Hang on a minute now," Cathy protested, as ian Rankin leaned towards her with a few words of encouragement.

Amongst the growing hubbub, a handful of people were heading for the exits and a number of women half a dozen now, several others prepared to join them were on their feet and pointing towards the platform.

"I intend to make my point…"

"You made your point." Cathy said, louder now, close to losing her temper.

"The same old tired point I've heard half a hundred times before. Women as victims. Poor damned women! What is the matter with you? Don't you live in the real world?"

Some of those standing had begun a slow hand clap drowning Cathy's words. The expression on the questioner's face was a satisfied sneer.

Marius had still not taken his eyes from Cathy's face.

"Pick up a paper," Cathy said into the din, so close to the microphone that it distorted her voice.

"Any paper, switch on the news^ what do you see? Women are victims. You think I invented that?

You think I made it happen? "

"Yes!" they chorused back.

"Yes!"

Cathy Jordan sat back with the gasp of mock surprise and shook her head.

"Every time you attack a woman in your books…" another voice from another part of die room.

"Every time you rape, or kill, or maim…"

"Rape? "

Yes, you. You! You! You! "

Beside Cathy, Ian Rankin was shaking his head in a mixture of bewilderment and anger, and at the far end of the table. Mark Timlin was smiling happily. Dorothy Birdwell had awoken and, like the Dormouse in Alice, was looking around in dazed surprise. The chairman tapped a warning on the end of his microphone, but to no avail.

"Every time you do those things, one woman to another…"

Cathy Jordan was on her feet, pointing.

"I do not do those things."

"Yes, you do!" It was the original questioner, closer to the stage now and pointing.

"And as long as you go on perpetrating this myth of female weakness, it will go on happening."

"That's a crock of shit!"

"Is it? Is it, Ms Jordan? Well, I hope next time you open your paper and read about some poor fifteen-year-old, or some old woman of eighty being raped and beaten, you should think about that a little more carefully."

"Jesus!" said Cathy, slamming back down into her chair.

"I don't believe this is happening."

"All right," Jakubowski said, raising both hands in an appeal for calm.

"Thank you very much, thank you very much indeed. I'm sure we all appreciate your point, but now I feel we should move on. Yes, thank you, there's someone over there…"

Cathy continued to sit there, taking no further part in the discussion, staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of her as her anger began slowly to subside.

Twenty-five The photographs of Peter Farleigh had been enlarged and pinned, head height, to the wall. Slightly below them, to left and to right, the other, earlier, non-fatal victims: Paul Pynchon, from Hinckley, stabbed in the red-light district near the Waterloo Road; Marco Fabrioni, beaten and tied up on the Forest; Gerry McKimber, the sales rep stabbed in his hotel room; a quick drawing from memory of the still-anonymous man who had disappeared from hospital after being found, stabbed and naked, on the Alfreton Road. The one they were now, thanks to the rare flash of inspiration from Divine, calling Polo after his sock.

Maps, dates, approximate times.

Details of wounds, weapons used.

Data.

Three colour ten by eights of Marlene Kinoulton, left profile, right profile, full face: the woman identified by the waiter in the hotel where Farleigh had been killed.

There were twenty officers in the room, most with mugs or styrofoam cups of tea. Players' Silk Cut between their fingers, Benson King Size; expectation adhering to the walls like yellow smoke.

Skelton, straight-backed, stood near the main door, watching. His responsibility, not his show. Resnick rose purposefully to his feet.

"Pynchon, Fabrioni, McKimber, Polo, Farleigh: five stabbings, one fatal. Five male victims, all of them and this is not entirely confirmed, but I think we can assume it for now engaged in some kind of sexual activity involving prostitution."

Resnick paused, making sure of everyone's attention.

"Now if we look at where the attacks took place, they break down into two basic groups: outside, in the red-light area, and inside, in one hotel or other. From that first group, two attacks those on Pynchon and on the Italian were carried out by more than one person, male as well as female, and the injuries received were more general.

Personally, I think we can disregard these as having any direct connection with Peter Farleigh's murder. Our friend. Polo, I'm not so sure about.

"We think he was running from his attacker, that's the only reasonable assumption, and that would place the attack in the same general area as those on Pynchon and Fabrioni. But what have we got?

A single wound, no more. Nothing to suggest the kind of group attack that took place in the earlier cases. So, let's presume, one assailant. All the other evidence suggests a woman, some kind of assignation that went wrong. Likely, but only conjecture. The wound is interesting, though; a single blow with a sharp implement, most likely a knife, in an area that closely corresponds to where most of the stab wounds in Farleigh's body were found. So, although Polo's stabbing is the incident about which we know least, and therefore it might be convenient to push it to the back of our minds, I don't want that to happen. Not yet. It may connect. "

He paused, glanced over towards Skelton, who avoided his eyes and fidgeted instead with the knot of his tie. What did that mean, Resnick wondered? That I'm going on too long and he's bored? Or does he think I've got it wrong? Barking up the wrong tree? Maybe his tie was simply too tight.

"Now," Resnick said, moving towards the photographs, heads turning to watch as he pointed with the first two fingers of his right hand.

"These pair, McKimber and Farleigh, this is where our main focus has to be. Look at the similarities. Both men attacked in hotel rooms, attacked with knives, stabbed more than once. In both instances, the most likely scenario, the assailant was a woman. A woman who was there for the purposes of prostitution, though it's only in McKimber's case we know that for a fact."

Lynn Kellogg's arm was raised.

"Surely, sir, we don't even know that?

The woman he claims stabbed him, she's never been identified. "

"That's right."

"So, he could be lying. I mean, we've only his word."

"Right, he stabbed himself," Divine called out, sarcastically.

"No," Lynn snapped back.

"But it could have been a man, right. A boy.

Men are prostitutes too, you know. "

"Okay," Resnick raised his hand for silence.

"We're going to be talking to McKimber again. I'm seeing him myself. I'll bear what you've said in mind. You're right, it wants double-checking. No harm."

He moved across to the pictures of Marlene Kinoulton. "This is the woman identified by the waiter in the hotel restaurant as the one Farleigh was talking to earlier on the evening he was killed. They'd been eating at separate tables till Farleigh went over and joined her. Afterwards they went out, the waiter thinks, into the hotel bar, and although the barman confirms that Farleigh was there with a woman, sat there with her until past eleven, he wasn't able to confirm the identification. His general description of the woman Farleigh was with is close enough though, for us to take this woman, Kinoulton, very seriously.

"She is a known prostitute, here in the city, we've established that.

Also works in Sheffield, Leicester and Derby. "

"Anywhere she can get a Cheap Day Return," somebody said.

Resnick waited for the laughter, what there was of it, to fade.

"On five previous occasions, she's been issued a warning for soliciting in the big hotels. She wants finding and fast. Mark, Kevin, you're already liaising with the Vice Squad, she's your target, down to you.

As I've said, I'm talking to McKimber. The rest of you, we have to keep checking other guests at the hotel, the rest of the staff, so on. We really need another ID to back up the one on Kinoulton. Or some positive forensics. We're also going to do a little digging into Farieigh's work, appointments kept on this trip, general background.

Why he chose to stay in a hotel in the city when an hour's drive at most would have seen him home. " He looked around.

"All right.

Questions? Sergeant Millington's got your assignments. Let's be diligent. Not miss anything. Let's get this wrapped up as fast as we can. "

"You think I'm wrong?" Resnick asked. He and Skelton, out in the corridor, officers spilling past them, Voices raised from the stairs, banging of doors, the same old chanting of telephones.

No. why? "

Resnick shrugged.

"If I thought you were going down the wrong road, as your superior officer, I'd say so. Only…"

Resnick looked at him expectantly. A shout, distant, from the area of the cells, was followed by a metallic slamming sound, then silence.

Skelton stood back, nodding, still fiddling with his tie.

"Not wanting to chuck a spanner in the works, Charlie, not at this stage. But like you said, tunnel vision, it's a dangerous thing."

"Yes," Resnick said.

"Thanks. Thanks, I'll keep it in mind." i 138 Breakfast had been a rushed affair, needing to be in at the station early, make certain everything was up and ready for the briefing.

Now, Resnick stood in line behind a pair of purple-shirted tax accountants, waiting for the assistant at the deli to make him a couple of sandwiches for the drive down into the neighbouring county, something tasty on dark rye and caraway, an espresso for now and another for the journey. The tape machine in his car had been on the blink for weeks, all he'd been able to listen to was GEM-AM, recycling the glorious moments of some- body's youth, though rarely, it seemed to Resnick, his own. But now it was fixed and he could play the new to him Joshua Redman to his heart's content: "Moose the Mooche',

"Turnaround',

"Make Sure You're Sure'.

Clicking the seat-belt into place, Resnick turned the key in the ignition and switched on the stereo, tenor sax loping in at mid-tempo as he eased out into the midmorning traffic.

Twenty-six The pub was flat against the main road, a thin line of pavement all that separated its windows from the heavy lorries shuddering down towards the A5, the M69, the M6. Inside four men, worn down by middle-age, sat at four separate tables, nursing pint glasses through until lunchtime. All four looking up when Resnick entered, but none looked up for long. The landlord, restocking shelves behind the bar, paused to glance at Resnick's warrant card, listened to his question and pointed towards the stairs.

"First floor, back." If the radio had been switched on and if it had been playing David Whitfield or Perry Como, Resnick would not have been surprised.

There were three boards, bare along the landing, and each one of them creaked.

"Gerry McKimber?"

A tall man, spindly with a nose like a wedge that had been driven hard, and not quite straight^ into the centre of his face, McKimber stared at Resnick's identification, then stepped back, shaking his head.

"Christ! It's not taken her so bloody long!"

"Her?"

"I told her I'd pay, Jesus, she's knows I'll pay just as soon as I can. She knows I've lost my fucking job, for Christ's sake, what does she expect?"

"Mr McKimber?"

"I've told you…"

Mr McKimber. "

What? "

"You're talking about maintenance, child support?"

"No, I'm talking about winning the fucking pools!"

"That's not why I'm here."

"Not? Not the pools, then?" He laughed, more a bark than a laugh.

"Not here to tell me that? Half a million quid? Am I going to let it change my life?"

Resnick shook his head.

"Well, thank Christ for that.

"Cause I forgot to post the sodding coupon."

"Mr McKimber, can I come inside?"

There were two beds pushed back against the far wall, narrow divans low to the floor, only one of them recently used. On the other, McKimber had piled, not neatly, some of his possessions, cardboard boxes, motoring magazines, clothes. A wardrobe, a table, what might euphemistically have been called an easy chair. The single window, with a view over beer crates and barrels and an outside urinal, was open a crack.

McKimber stubbed out the cigarette that had been smouldering in the ashtray and lit another. He held the packet towards Resnick, who shook his head.

"If it's not that cow, then what is it?" But then he saw Resnick's face and thought he knew.

"You've caught her, that cunt as stabbed me? You've got her, right?"

"Afraid not."

"Then what the fuck…?"

"There's been another incident…"

"Like that? Like what happened to me?"

"Similar. Enough to make us think there might be a connection. I need to talk to you again."

McKimber walked towards the window and looked down, pushing fingers back through his unkempt hair. "You know, at first she never believed me, the wife, I don't know why. It was a fight, she said, you were in a fight. Some pub or other. Same as before. Why bother making up an excuse? Why bother lying?"

^IcKimber turned back into the room, cigarette cupped in his hand.

"As if what I'd said, you know, what really opened, the hotel and that, as if somehow she'd never dave minded so much."

He went over to the bed, sat down.

"I used to get into these scrapes.

Once in a while. You know what it's like, on the road Travelling.

Well, you can imagine. Chatting Up people all day, trying to. Half the time getting doors closed in your face. Abuse. You wouldn't believe the gbuse. Come evening, had a bit of a meal, too far to go home, too tired, what do you do? Well, me, like a lot of men, I like a drink. Trouble is, when I drink I suppose I get careless 'bout what I say. Don't care who hears me, either. Gets me into trouble, I admit it The firm, they'd warned me, Gerry, this has got to stop. So many last warnings, I never believed them and then they gave me the push for something else altogether, but that's another story. "

He drew on the cigarette, releasing the smoke, slow, down his nose.

"The wife, see, she'd been on at me, an' all. Forever on at me. Just once more, Gerry McKimber, you come home looking like you've been in a brawl and you're out of my house. My house!" McKimber repeated his barking laugh.

"Not now. Not when she's crying out for me to pay something towards the sodding bills. Oh, no. Now it's our house again. Our house!"

He looked across towards Resnick, who waited, listening, prepared to listen, saying nothing.

"This business with the woman, the one as cut me, the wife, she thought I'd made it up. Of course, I never told her, what I never told her, that I was, like, paying for it, you know. Christ, I wasn't about to tell her that now, was I? Paying for it. Give her that satisfaction. No, what I said was, what I told her, this woman and I, we get talking in the bar, one thing rolls into another, I've had a few too many to know properly what I'm doing, next thing she's with me, up in the room. Would she believe that? Not for weeks would she fucking believe that, blue in the sodding face from telling her. Well, it was the truth, more or less the truth, I didn't want her mingeing on at me for something I'd never done. Jesus! When I finally get it through her thick head I'm not lying, what does the stupid cow do? Fucking slings me out!

"All my stuff, clothes, everything, out the window, out the door. Out the house. Receipts, samples. God knows what, all over the front garden, next door's, up and down half the bloody street. Some of it I never even bloody found.

"You believe me now, don't you?" I said.

"You're filth," she says.

"You're scum. You're never setting foot in this house again." The kids upstairs, hanging out of the upstairs, taking it all in. "

He ground the nub end of his cigarette into the threadbare carpet with his heel.

"What was it you wanted to know?"

Sharon Gamett had been on court for the best part of an hour and a half; two games down in the fourth set and any rhythm in her service had gone. A couple of double faults, an attempted lob off her backhand which had landed closer to the next court than the one on which they were playing, and it had been over.

"Thanks, Sharon. Good game."

"Sure," Sharon grinned.

"I was crap."

Her opponent laughed. He was a nice enough bloke, sergeant in Surveillance, wife and two-point-four kids, semi-detached south of the city at Ruddington.

"Time for a drink after?"

After? "

"Shower, change, whatever?"

"Thanks, no. Maybe some other time. I'm going to shower at home."

She was almost at her car before Divine spotted her, Divine and Naylor, leaning up against their own vehicle, taking in what there was of the sun. The rhododendron bushes thick along the perimeter of University Park behind them.

"Will you look at that?" Divine said.

"Legs that go all the way up to her arse!"

"Right," Naylor said.

"New design. Don't know if it'll catch on."

"Clever bugger!"

Naylor gave a shout and Sharon turned and saw them, no more than a couple of big kids, standing there in shirtsleeves, grinning. She wished she had stopped for a shower now, changed; aware of her sports shirt sticking to her, the sour-sweet smell of her own sweat.

"Called in at the station, said you might be here," Divine said.

Day off. "

"Win?" Naylor asked.

"Not exactly."

"This bloke copped it in the hotel," Divine said.

"You heard about it?"

She nodded.

"Witness made an ID…" Naylor said, taking over. "Waiter, works in the hotel restaurant' " She's a torn," Divine said, interrupting.

"Local?"

"So it seems."

Name? "

"Kinoulton. Marlene."

Sharon wished they weren't having this conversation out there, cars driving in and out of the tennis centre behind them. Sweat growing cold.

"Know her?" Divine asked.

"I've not been here long enough to know all the girls."

"But this one, this Marlene?"

I might. " They waited.

"You know the girl I contacted you about? Doris. The one said she might have something interesting to tell me, about the night that man was knifed near the Alfreton Road? Well, turns out, as far as Marlene Kinoulton's got a best friend, she's it."

Divine grinned across at Naylor and Naylor winked back: at long last they might be getting somewhere.

Resnick had taken McKimber back through the evening in low gear, beginning to end.

"Never occurred to me at first that she was on the game. Never cottoned on. I thought, I suppose, nothing special, even so, not going to let themselves get turned into a knocking shop. But then I thought, yes, well, why not? Where all the money is, isn't it, after all? Blokes with time on their hands, money to spend."

"So, as far as you were concerned, at the beginning, it was what?

Just a casual chat? "

"Well, no, not exactly. Way she was coming on to me, right off like, knew it was more than that. But, well, like I say, I suppose I thought I'd clicked, you know. Pulled."

"And when did she make it clear that wasn't exactly the case?"

"When we got to the room."

"Once you were inside?"

"No. I was just, like, about to use the key. One of them bits of plastic, not really a key at all. She leaned past me, hand against the door.

"You know this isn't your birthday, don't you?" That's what she said. " He looked over towards Resnick.

"She was there, then, wasn't she? What was I supposed to do?"

"What kind of a woman would you have said she was?" Resnick asked.

"Based on that first part of the evening."

"Woman? She was a tart, wasn't she?"

"Yes, but before you knew that. I mean, was she pleasant, well-spoken? How did she come across?"

McKimber shrugged.

"Just sort of normal, you know."

"Intelligent? Bright?"

"Bright enough to know she had my balls in her pocket' " But, aside from what you've already said, were you surprised to find out she was apparently a prostitute? "

"Surprised?" McKimber shook his head.

"One way or another, they all are. I mean, that's the way it works. If you can get someone to pay for it, why give it away?"

Resnick showed him six sets of photographs, six different women, all similar, all with dark hair.

"Look," McKimber said, 'you're wasting your time. I've already been through this. "

"Humour me," Resnick said.

"Let's try again. Just these few."

McKimber lit another cigarette. A good minute before he answered, Resnick could see that he'd stopped really looking.

"I'm sorry,"

McKimber said.

"It isn't any good."

"You're quite sure."

"Yes, I said. The only one…"

"Go on."

"The only one it just might possibly be…"

"Yes?"

McKimber transferred the cigarette to his mouth and jabbed a finger "That one. That's the only one, if you told me I had to pick out one of these, had to, that's the only one comes close. Only one that's near." And he picked out, not Marlene Kinoulton, but the woman in the set of photographs immediately above her, gazing into the camera with a slight squint.

Divine and Naylor had driven Sharon Gamett back to her flat and waited while she had cleaned up and changed into tan leggings, a purple T-shirt, black cotton jacket. Together, Naylor driving, they trawled the red-light district looking for Marlene Kinoulton and her friend 146 Doris Duke. Nowhere to be seen. None of the girls out working claimed to have seen them for several days. A week. Sheffield, try Sheffield.

Leeds.

"Sorry," Sharon said eventually.

"We're wasting our time. We'd be better trying again later tonight. Late."

"Fair enough," Divine said and Naylor pulled in towards the kerb.

"I might have a problem," Naylor said.

"With later. I'm supposed to be off round Debbie's mum's. She's got this relation over from Canada. Nephew or something. Having a bit of a celebration."

"Sounds," Divine said with a smirk, 'like the kind of thing you wouldn't miss for the world. "

"Yes, well. I'll see what I can do."

Sharon opened the car door.

"Half ten in the Arboretum then, okay?"

"Get there first," Divine grinned, 'and mine's a pint of Kimberley. "

"You wish! I'm the one doing you a favour, remember? And mine's a Bacardi and Coke. Large. Ten thirty, right?"

Divine watched as Sharon walked away.

"Second thoughts, why don't you go hobnobbing with the in-laws after all. Leave this to me."

"Thought you were being faithful this month?" Naylor said.

"One-woman man."

"Yeah, so I am," Divine grinned, grabbing his crotch. "It's just this that doesn't understand."