Линда Ла Плант - Framed

Countless times over the years Larry had tried to convince his wife — and himself — that he was a policeman only during the hours of duty. Susan didn’t believe that for a minute, but he offered proof and stood by it: his leisure interests were completely unconnected with the job, he didn’t spend his.

But when he was candid with himself, he knew no leisure regime could change what he fundamentally was. And right this very minute it had dawned on him that a certain old chestnut was true: there is no such thing as an off-duty cop. On the strength of his discovery he was prepared to give in and confess he was a copper in toto. He was Detective Sergeant Lawrence Jackson right down to the bone.

The facts spoke for themselves. He was in Marbella on the Costa del Sol at the height of the summer season; it was a blistering hot day, he was on a sun-zapped beach, there were beautiful women all around him, and what was he doing? He was lying behind his paperback playing detective with the smells.

Years ago, following a sinus washout, he had been told by an ear-nose-and-throat specialist that he had a condition called hyperosmia, which meant he was uncommonly sensitive to odors. The doctor hadn’t said whether it was to be regarded as an affliction or a godsend. Most of the time it seemed a bit of both. Today the aromas from the harbor and the surrounding bodegdnes drifted out past the stacked boats at the Club Maritimo Marbella, wafting low across the scalding sand, mingling with the clammier smells of the beach. Gently breathing the cocktail, Larry estimated that the air around his head carried major traces of Nivea, Uvistat, seaweed, and sweat, with trenchant whiffs of hamburger and car exhaust.

He lowered the book and looked around. Even though he knew he fitted this layout — thirty something in shorts and T-shirt, glazed with sun cream, recumbent under a straw umbrella, surrounded by a chaos of family beach tackle — he felt conspicuous. Spotlit, somehow. The trouble, he knew, was that he didn’t take enough vacations. Sprawling about the place, any place, just ticking over in neutral, was something he was bad at. It made him edgy. It was another kind of stress.

He propped himself on his elbows and took a deep breath, realizing that every time he got a sniff of sun-blocked skin with foody undertones he would think of this beach. He would have vivid recall of blinding sun on the shimmering sea, of hot bone-dry sand and warm lolling bodies — two bodies in particular, powerfully attractive, on loungers only five feet away, playing hell with his plans to get on with his book.

He lay down again, exhaling slowly, feeling clamped by the heat.

Eyes closed, he let the burble of beach sounds wash over him. After a minute he caught the voices of his two young sons. One was crying, the other complaining. Then he heard Susan bark one of her threats. The boys went silent. Larry looked up and saw them approach, soaked from the sea, streaming hair plastered to their heads.

“You take them in next,” Susan said.

She snatched the towel Larry held out to her and patted the blotched skin of her shoulders and arms. He remembered when he had thought her skin resembled the flawless surface of fresh cream. It was different now. Coarser. Everything was, but Susie retained a girlishness, a natural slimness that belied the fact she had had two children; she had the tight figure of a teenager, and it never ceased to attract him. He wanted to reach out to her, hold her there and then, but she was intent on drying herself from her swim.

“What’s the time?” Susan shook out her wet hair, moving on to the next question without waiting for an answer. “Have you got sun cream on?” She nodded at the boys. “Check Tony, he’s looking red.” She pulled open her big straw bag and peered at her watch in the depths. “It’s after twelve. Do you want the first sitting or the second?”

In these phases when she simply threw out statements and questions without seeming to want responses, Larry did nothing to impede her flow. He let her mutter on as he stared dispiritedly at the scatter of belongings around them, picturing the misery of lugging it all back to the hotel.

“Lunch,” Susan grunted, toweling her hair. “I’m not going through that lineup again.”

Larry took a blob of sun cream on his finger and applied it to young Tony’s nose. Susan, maintaining her forward thrust, put on her sun top and jammed a straw hat on her head. She nodded at the boys again, henlike.

“They’ll be moanin’ again in a minute.” She turned in the direction of the hotel. “You stay and keep the umbrella,” she told Larry. “These two are ice-creamed up to the eyeballs, but lunch is inclusive and I’m starving, anyway.”

“I’ll walk you up,” Larry offered.

“No.” Irritation corrugated Susan’s forehead. She pointed at something on the sand beside her bag. “There’s your wallet. Why didn’t you leave it at the hotel?” She turned away sharply, shouting at Tony, “Put your T-shirt on!”

The boy grumbled as his father knelt up and forced the shirt over his head. The older lad, John, was gawping at the seminaked girls on the loungers. Susan grabbed his arm, practically pulling him off his feet.

“He takes after you,” she told Larry, glaring at him. “Right, kids — we all set? Come on. Leave your shovels!”

She moved off across the beach toward the road, keeping to the strip of green carpet as she dragged the boys behind her. Feeling a ripple of relief — tinged, as expected, with the guilt Susan could so easily induce — Larry rubbed more sun cream onto himself, watching one of the near-nude distractions turn over. He smiled at her. For a full two seconds she stared clean through him, then propped up her book, hiding her face.

Being ignored was a rejection, he supposed; it stung like one. He wondered what it would be like when he was older, in his forties or fifties, like some of the desperate-eyed characters he could think of at the Yard. For a split second he imagined the face of the girl behind the book turning away from him with a curl of disgust at her mouth. Suddenly he was all briskness, wiping his hands on his shirt, tucking his wallet into his shorts as he bustled ahead of his thoughts. He gazed out to sea, watching nothing in particular until a sleek speedboat caught his eye, cutting a line of spume from the direction of the harbor. The engine throbbed powerfully as the craft performed an elegant curve away from the shore and back again, drawing with it a bikini-clad water-skier, twenty feet behind, her body a flawless curve as she leaned back against the pull of the rope.

Larry stood up, staring now, narrowing his eyes against the dazzling light. The man at the wheel was deeply tanned, his face shadowed by the brim of his white baseball cap. He tooled the boat casually, one-handed, an arm slung along the back of his seat. A second girl in a bikini sat on the edge, legs dangling, gold bracelets glinting, her long blond hair trailing in the breeze. He could not see the driver’s face as the brim of his cap was pulled down low.

Lucky bastard, he thought, reaching into the straw bag and pulling out Tony’s plastic binoculars. He held them to his eyes and twiddled the focusing knob. It turned with a sandy-grating sound. He took a second to find the boat again, another couple of seconds to wobble a trajectory back along the rope to the skier. The magnification was modest and the distortion put a prismatic halo around everything, but overall the view was an improvement. He watched the girl on the skis posturing as she sped through the water, throwing up a frothy trail.

He heard a small sound escape his throat. Her figure was magnificent. Lithe muscle shifted fluidly under skin with a golden tint he had only ever seen in magazine pictures. She had the kind of upmarket, superbred elegance he had conditioned himself to regard as being above his reach, possibly above his species.