Still Waters

Twenty-one

Sharon Garnett was dressed to stop traffic: three-inch heels and a dark red velvet dress with serious cleavage. Red lipstick that showed bright against the rich brown of her skin.

When she stepped out into Victoria Street at the point where it met Fletcher Gate, the driver of a newly delivered, taking-it-around-the-block-for-the-first-time Porsche came close to gift-wrapping it around a convenient lamppost. Even the staff at Sonny’s were impressed enough to set aside their usual sangfroid and stare.

Lynn, who had arrived early and stood for several moments feeling awkward before being shown to a table off the central aisle, smiled up at Sharon welcomingly and felt a hundred per cent less attractive than she had before.

“Sorry I’m late,” Sharon said, the waiter pulling back her chair.

“That’s okay.”

“You look great,” Sharon said, settling in, Lynn sitting there in the black dress she always wore for occasions like this, the one little black dress she possessed.

“Can I get you a drink before you order?” the waiter asked.

“I look like shit,” Lynn said.

“Nonsense.”

“I’ll come back,” the waiter said.

“No.” Sharon caught his arm as he turned away. “I’ll have a margarita.”

“Certainly, will that be rocks or frozen?”

“On the rocks, and make sure they use a decent tequila, none of that supermarket stuff, okay?”

The waiter raised his eyes toward the ceiling, but not too far.

“Lynn?” Sharon asked. “How about you?”

“White wine. Just a glass.”

“Would that be dry or …” the waiter began.

“The house wine’s fine.”

“Of course.”

Sharon unclasped her bag and reached for her cigarettes. “I meant it,” she said, touching the back of Lynn’s hand. “You look fine.”

Lynn smiled thanks. “As opposed to just sensational.”

Sharon snapped her lighter shut and tilted back her head, releasing a stream of pale gray smoke. “If you’ve got it,” she laughed, “package it as best you can.”

When the drinks arrived, Sharon lifted hers in a toast. “Here’s to us. To you. Success, right?”

“I haven’t said I’ll take it yet.”

“No, but you will.”

Sharon tasted her margarita, ran her tongue around the glass to get more salt, and tasted it again. “I should have asked him to bring a pitcher.”

“You will.”

“God!” Sharon said extravagantly. “Obvious or what?” Sharon Garnett had trained as an actress, worked as a singer, gone out on the road as one of three backing vocalists propping up a former sixties soul legend whose love of the horses and amphetamines had left him little but memories of past successes and a name which could still fill small clubs in Doncaster or Rugby on a Saturday night when there was nothing major on TV. Just over a year of motorway food and finger-snapping her way through the Ooh-Ahs of “Midnight Hour” and “Knock on Wood” was enough. Sharon took up with a group of mainly Afro-Caribbean actors and found out most of what there was to know about community theater. Which is to say it’s a lot like touring with a third-rate band, the same transit vans and the same parched meals, but the pay is even worse and the audiences smaller still.

Quite what enticed her into joining the police, she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the way she’d observed the predominantly white, predominantly male officers operating in East London where she lived, or on the front line in Brixton; maybe she allowed herself to be converted by the agitprop plays she performed in community centers and church halls from Handsworth to Hyson Green. Then again, perhaps she was simply drawn by the adventure. There would be adventure …

In London, they tried to turn her into some kind of uniformed social worker and made it clear that the pathway to CID was paved with more than hard work and good intentions. Sharon applied for a transfer out and, for reasons best known to the movements of the planets rather than any observable logic, fetched up in Lincoln, which was where she met Resnick, not Lincoln itself exactly, but a pig farm not so many hectares distant, the pair of them up over their ankles in pig shit and murder.

Soon after, Sharon moved again, this time to the East Midlands, and since there wasn’t a vacancy in Resnick’s squad at the time, joined Vice, where, at least, she got to operate in plain clothes and was allowed a certain degree of autonomy. Sharon had been made up to sergeant three weeks back, and this was the first time she and Lynn, close friends over the past couple of years-about as close as Lynn allowed anyone-had been free to celebrate. One disadvantage of working Vice, like soul singing and community theater both, it did mean working a lot of nights.

But this particular night there was a double cause for pushing the boat out-Lynn, after all, had just been head-hunted to join Serious Crimes.

“How many other detective sergeants?” Sharon asked, touching her knife to the last surviving piece of her rack of lamb.

“Four altogether. Why, you thinking about applying?”

Sharon grinned and picked up the meat with her fingers. “Give it a little time.”

“That Asian bloke, Khan, the one who worked the Bill Aston investigation, he’s already in.”

“DS?”

Lynn shook her head. “DC.” There was little left to show that the salmon she’d ordered had been served with a cream and dill sauce, sautéed potatoes, a fennel and watercress salad: clean plate, Lynnie, that’s the way her mum had brought her up in the raw comforts of rural Norfolk.

“Khan,” Sharon said, chewing thoughtfully, “he’s the good-looking one, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot, you don’t notice these things.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Yes? How long is it since you went out with a bloke then, tell me that?”

Shifting the knife and fork together on her plate, Lynn shrugged.

“How long since you …” Lamb bone between her lips, Sharon mimed a gesture that made Lynn blush.

“Is everything finished here?” the waiter inquired, hovering at Sharon’s shoulder.

“Almost,” Sharon said, deftly tweaking away the last scrap of sweet meat between her teeth.

“Shall I bring the dessert menu?”

“Not for me.” Lynn shook her head.

“Yes,” said Sharon.

“Any coffees?”

“Black,” said Lynn.

“Later,” said Sharon.

They split the bill down the middle and ordered a cab to take Sharon home; Lynn could walk to her flat in the Lace Market in a matter of minutes.

“Seriously,” Sharon said, her taxi at the curb. “You haven’t got any doubts?”

“Not really, only …”

“Only what?”

“Helen Siddons.”

“What about her?”

“I’m just not sure; working under her, I mean.”

“She’s keen enough on you.”

“I know, I know, but …”

“It’s not because she’s a woman? You’re not one of those who doesn’t like taking orders from other women?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t think it’s that, no. It’s just … all the time she was talking to me, Siddons, trying to persuade me, buttering me up, I never quite believed what she was saying.”

The taxi-driver gave a short blast of the horn and Sharon shot him a look that stilled his impatience. “That’s not Siddons,” she said, “that’s you. You’re just not good at taking praise. Anyone tells you how good you are and you think they must be lying.”

Lynn took a step out onto the pavement. “Anyway, I promised her an answer, first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay, don’t let me down.” Sharon gave Lynn a hug and left a faint smear of lipstick across her cheek. “Either way, you’ve got to let me know, right?”

“Right.”

Lynn waited while Sharon climbed into the back of the cab, gave the driver his instructions, and then settled back, waving through the glass. Then she walked briskly down toward Goose Gate, heading home.

Lynn recognized Resnick’s car before she saw him, leaning in the half-shadow of the courtyard around which the flats were built. Her first reaction was that it was trouble, an emergency, something serious, work. But seeing his face as he moved toward her, she was less sure: Resnick, hands in pockets, the faint beginnings of a smile, which quickly changed into something more apologetic.

“Good night?”

“Fine, yes, why …?”

“Kevin said something about you going out for a bit of a do, celebration.”

Lynn’s hand wafted air vaguely. “It was just me and Sharon. Anything more, I’d’ve invited everyone.”

Resnick nodded. They stood there in the half-light, the evening humming round them, the ground, Lynn thought, tilting beneath her feet.

“You are taking the job?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good.”

“Is that really what you think?”

“Of course.”

“Before, when I was trying to get into Family Support …”

“Not the same.”

“No.”

Foolishly, Resnick looked at his watch. “I just wanted to be sure. Didn’t want to think there was any reason, anything to do with me, you and me, why you wouldn’t agree.”

“No. No. I don’t even think … I mean why …?”

Resnick didn’t know either. What was he doing there? “You’re going to accept, then?” he asked for the second time.

Lynn blinked. “Yes.”

Resnick shuffled his weight from one foot to the other, a step he’d forgotten how to make.

“Do you want to come up?” Lynn asked. “Coffee or something?”

He was almost too quick to shake his head. “No. No, thanks.”

Lynn hunched her shoulders, suddenly aware that she was standing there with just a linen coat over her short black dress. “Okay,” she said.

“Yes,” Resnick said. “Okay.”

By the time she had climbed the double flight of stairs to her landing, his car was reversing round, red brake lights flaring for an instant, before heading forward beneath the brick archway and away from sight.

Lynn opened the door and double-locked it fast behind her, sliding home the bolt. Kicking off her shoes and shucking her coat onto the nearest chair, she padded into the bathroom and began to run the shower. Three more days and then she would be reporting for duty at the far end of the Ropewalk, close to where she had been based these past four years. Almost five. Slipping the catch at the back of her dress, she pulled down the zip and let the dress fall to the floor. Moments later, naked, she looked at herself in the mirror, never quite liking what she saw. Breasts too small, hips too large. As if, she thought, it mattered, stepping into the gathering steam. As if it mattered any more.