John Harvey - Ash & Bone

'Hello, Frank.' He swung his legs round slowly and smiled. Something colourless with tonic sat within reach on the floor. 'Just holding the fort till you arrived.'

Elder said nothing. Brittle, anonymous jazz played faint through speakers unseen.

Joanne stood close against the glass, smoking a cigarette.

Opening the front door to him, she had turned her head from the kiss Elder had aimed, maladroitly, at her cheek.

'Can I get you anything, Frank?' she said now.

He shook his head.

She was wearing a silver-grey metallic dress that shivered when she moved. Make-up, even expertly applied, hadn't been able to disguise the dark skin heavy below the eyes.

'It's a good thing you came, Frank,' Miles said. 'A good thing. Get this sorted before it goes too far.'

How far was that? Elder wondered.

'These past weeks,' Miles said, 'she's been out of control. Running wild.'

'Don't exaggerate,' Joanne said.

'You wouldn't know, Frank,' Miles continued, ignoring her. 'No way you could, not living where you do. But she's been doing just as she likes, out all hours. Seventeen, I know, Frank, a young woman, but even so. Rolled up here drunk more than a few times, smelling like I-don't-know-what, some poor sod of a taxi-driver outside waiting to get paid. I've tried talking to her but she won't listen. And, besides, you might not think it's my place.'

'All that happens,' Joanne said, 'you end up losing your temper.'

'Sometimes she's enough to make a saint lose his temper.'

'You would know.'

'Okay, okay.' Miles raised both hands in resignation. 'I'll off out and get a drink, let you two talk amongst yourselves. Good to see you, Frank.'

Elder nodded.

Whistling softly, Martyn Miles slipped his feet into a pair of soft leather shoes, pulled on his leather coat, expensive and black, and left the room. Neither of them spoke until they heard the front door close.

'Sit down, Frank. Are you sure you won't have a drink? I'm having one.'

'Okay, a small Scotch'll be fine.'

'I'll see what there is.'

'Anything.'

She poured herself a large white wine, Elder a more-than-decent measure of good malt.

'She's not here, then?' Elder said. 'Katherine?'

'She came in an hour ago, changed her clothes and went out again.'

'She knew I was going to be here?'

'I told her.'

'And you don't know where she went?'

Joanne shook her head.

Elder sipped his Scotch. 'You said she was seeing someone.'

'Rob Summers.'

'Someone she knew from school, or…?'

'He's not a boy, Frank. In his twenties, maybe more.'

'You've met him, then?'

'Not met exactly.'

'And the two of them, it's serious?'

'If it was, it wouldn't be so bad. It's more casual than that, as far as I can tell. His whim, I dare say. When she's not with him, she's hanging round with all manner of riff-raff. Punks and Goths and God knows what. The kind you see lolling around the Old Market Square.'

'Jesus,' Elder said.

'I am worried about her, Frank. You know, drugs and everything.'

'She's got a level head on her.'

'You think so?'

Elder got up and paced from wall to wall. 'That psychiatrist she was seeing…'

'Psychotherapist.'

'You haven't talked to her, I suppose?'

'Katherine stopped going to her a good few months ago.'

Elder stopped close to where she was sitting on the settee. 'It's a mess, isn't it? A fucking mess.'

Reaching up, she took hold of his hand and, for a moment, until he pulled it away, rested her head against his arm.

Elder spent the night in one of the small hotels out on the Mansfield Road, took one look at the breakfast and opted instead for a brisk walk into the city centre, a coffee sitting hunched up against the window in Caffe Nero, scanning the front page of the paper someone had left behind.

The Old Market Square had been titivated since Elder had seen it last. The grassed areas towards the Beastmarket end had been landscaped and some of the old benches had been replaced. Katherine was sitting between two men of indeterminate age, bearded, shaggy-haired and scruffily dressed, cans of cheap lager in their hands. It was not yet ten in the morning.

A girl in a beaded halter top and skintight jeans, her face festooned with studs and rings, sat cross-legged on the ground.

A third man with a blond pony-tail, wearing jeans and a stained Stone Roses sweatshirt, stood with one foot balanced on the end of the bench, watching Elder as he approached.

Elder stopped a short distance away.

'Kate…'

Not looking up, Katherine continued, carefully, to roll a cigarette.

'Katherine, we have to talk.'

'Sod off,' one of the seated men said.

Katherine brought the roll-up to her mouth and licked along the edge; pulling clear a few stray strands of tobacco, she took a disposable lighter from her pocket and lit the cigarette, drawing the smoke down into her lungs. One more drag and she passed it to the man on her left.

'Katherine,' Elder said again, his voice raised and impatient.

'Leave me alone.'

'I can't.'

Elder moved closer and the pony-tailed man swung his foot down from the bench and stood in his way.

'He's police,' one of the men on the bench said. 'Fuckin' law.'

'Not any more,' Katherine said.

'Who is he then?'

'My father. He thinks he's my father.'

'Katherine

'She doesn't want to talk to you,' the pony-tailed man said. 'Can't you see?'

'Get out of the way,' Elder said.

The man grinned and stood his ground. 'Make me.'

Fists clenched tight at his sides, Elder wanted to take a swing at the sneering face and punch it as hard as he could. Instead, with one last glance at Katherine, he walked away to the sound of their jeers.

What the fuck, Elder thought, as he crossed South Parade and on to Wheeler Gate, what the fuck am I doing here? What's the point of all this? A waste of fucking time. He was no more than a stone's throw from the railway station before he stopped and turned around.

For the next two hours, he stood in shop doorways, sat on the stone steps in front of the Council House, shared a desultory conversation with the Post seller near the corner of King Street and Long Row. He bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee in Pret A Manger and sipped the coffee slowly through the lid.

The way Katherine was sitting now, arms tight across her chest and wearing only a thin sweater, he thought she must be cold. Perhaps if he bought coffee for her, some hot tea or soup… but he did neither, continued instead to watch and wait, knowing that she didn't want him anywhere near but unable now to drag himself away.

He remembered her as a young girl, a child, tears flooding her eyes, screaming 'I hate you!' at the top of her lungs and then, moments later, allowing him to fold her inside his arms and kiss the top of her head, the warmth of her hair.

As the bells chimed the quarter hour, a man crossed towards where Katherine was sitting.

Instinct prickled the skin on Elder's wrists and the backs of his hands.

He was not a big man, around five seven, slightly built, denim jacket, jeans, check shirt, basketball boots, fair hair flopping forward over his face. He spoke to several of the small group gathered round the bench, stepping back a pace or so to talk to the pony-tailed man, who had wandered off earlier and then returned. Katherine he ignored, but Elder had noticed the way she had become more alert at his approach, her back more upright, fingers combing through the rough shag of unkempt hair.

Five minutes, more, and as if noticing her for the first time, he offered Katherine a cigarette and lit it from his own. Another few minutes and she was standing at his side, both of them talking now, quite animatedly. Three buses went past in slow convoy, hiding them temporarily from Elder's view, and when he saw them again they were walking towards the fountains, passing in between, his hand coming to rest across the top of her shoulders as they moved past one of the stone lions guarding the Council House before turning right into Exchange Arcade.