John Harvey - Living Proof

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.