“Mind the fourth step,” Karen warned, following Lynn closely.
There was a poster stuck to the door of Karen’s room, two lovers kissing in a city street.
“Go on in,” Karen said.
It had originally been a back bedroom, a view from the square of window down over a succession of back yards, old outhouses, an alley pushing narrowly in between. Cats and rusted prams and washing lines.
The interior was a mixture of arranged and untidy: neatly stacked books alongside music cassettes, each labeled in a clear, strong hand; earrings hanging from cotton threads, red, yellow, blue; on the bed a duvet bundled to one side, as though Karen had been lying beneath it when Lynn had rung the belclass="underline" tights in many colors dangling down from the mantelpiece and the top of the opened wardrobe door, drying.
“Sit down.”
The choice was between the bed and a black canvas chair with pale wooden arms and Lynn took the latter.
The room smelled of cigarette smoke and good perfume.
“Would you like some coffee?”
There were five used mugs, one on the scarred table, three close together on the floor beside the bed, the last standing on the chest of drawers, in front of a mirror with photographs jutting at all angles from its frame. “No, thanks,” Lynn said with a quick smile. She was wondering which of the men in the photos was Fletcher.
“What d’you want to know?” Karen said.
They went through the worst first, the discovery of the houseman on the bridge, the fears that he might die, be already dead; then their arrangements for that evening, the phone call which might have been from Fletcher yet might as easily not.
“You haven’t known him all that long then?”
Karen shook her head. “Two months.” She lifted her head to see that Lynn was still looking at her, encouraging her to continue. “I went to this Medics Ball, I don’t know.” She gestured vaguely with her hand, the one not holding a cigarette. “I’d been going around with these medical students, I don’t know how that started really, except most of the people on my course are a bunch of deadheads. Either that or posers of the first order.”
“Your course?”
“English. Drama subsid. If he didn’t die before the Second World War, he didn’t exist. That’s English anyway. Drama’s not so bad.”
“Are they all men, then, the people you study?”
“Sorry?”
“Writers. You said, he.”
Karen stared at her. What the fuck? A feminist policewoman? “Figure of speech,” she said.
Lynn Kellogg nodded. “The medical students you mentioned, were they male?”
“Mostly. To be honest, I think women are pretty boring, don’t you?”
“No,” said Lynn. “No, I don’t.”
She could see the shifting look in Karen Archer’s distressed eyes, the word forming silently behind them-dyke!
“Anyway,” asked Karen, “what does it matter?”
Lynn sidestepped the question. “Before you began going out with Dr. Fletcher, you did have another boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“One or several?”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“I mean, this relationship, the earlier one, was it serious?”
Karen dropped the end of her cigarette into a quarter-inch of cold coffee. “I suppose so.”
“And the man?”
“What about him?”
“Was he serious?”
“Ian?” Karen laughed. “Only things he gets serious about are anatomy and Blackadder.”
“Is he over here?” Lynn went to the mirror, Karen almost grudgingly following. “One of these?”
“There.”
Karen pointed to a figure in a skimpy swimming costume, lots of body hair, posing at the edge of a pool with a champagne bottle in one hand and a pint glass in the other. There were three other pictures: Ian in a formal dinner jacket but wearing a red nose; Ian flourishing a stethoscope; Ian as Mr. Universe.
Wow! thought Lynn. What a guy!
“He looks a lot of fun,” she said. “Why did you stop going out with him?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“No.”
Karen shrugged and wandered over to the kettle, shaking it to make certain there was enough water before switching it on. “Sure you don’t want one?” she asked, opening the jar of Maxwell House.
“Thanks, no,” said Lynn. “What’s Ian’s last name?”
“Carew.”
“And he’s still a student here?”
“A medical student, yes. He’s in his second year.”
“But you haven’t seen him?”
“Not since I started seeing Tim.”
“Not at all?”
“I don’t know. Once, maybe.”
“How did he feel about you and Dr. Fletcher? I mean …” Karen was laughing, shaking her head, reaching for another cigarette, all at the same time. “I know what you mean. Poor old Ian was so heartbroken at being chucked, he couldn’t cope. Especially when the other man was a qualified doctor and he was only a student. So he waited for him one night and tried to kill him: jealousy and revenge.”
The kettle had begun to boil and Karen did nothing to switch it off. Lynn reached down past her and flicked up the switch, removing the plug safely, the way her mother had taught her.
“It’s the sort of thing you see on a bad film on television,” Karen said, “late at night.”
“Yes,” said Lynn. “Isn’t it?”
She turned back towards the mirror. Right across the top were the pictures of the man she assumed to be Fletcher. Young, young for a doctor, Polaroids that had been taken there, in that room, those strange reflections from the flash sparkling at the center of his eyes. Bottom left was a strip from a photo booth, one they had sat in together, goofy faces, weird expressions, only in the last were they serious, kissing.
“Have you been to see him?”
“No. I phoned. They said this afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. “After two.” She spooned milk substitute into the mug of coffee and went back to the bed, stirring carefully. “I’m a bit frightened to see him, I suppose. After what’s happened to him.” She sipped, then drank. “What he’ll look like.”
Does it matter? thought Lynn. And then, of course it does.
“You didn’t notice anybody?” she asked. “Walking to meet him. Hanging around by the bridge.”
“No one. Traffic. No one walking. Not that I saw.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure.”
“This Ian,” Lynn said, nodding over towards the photographs as she stood, “someone will most likely talk to him.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But I expect it will be done.” Lynn hesitated at the door. “If you do think of anything that might be important, give me a call.” She placed a card on the corner of the pillow. “Thank you for your time, I’ll see myself out.”
Karen stood up but made no move towards the door. Lynn hurried down the stairs, remembering which step to beware, wondering why she had felt so hostile, offered the girl so little support. What combination had it been, she wondered, walking briskly up the street, that had made her withhold her sympathy? Why had she felt jealous and superior, the feelings hand in hand?
Seven
Mid-morning. Graham Millington was sitting in a smoke-wreathed room in Walsall, watching a DI write names and dates on a white board, using his colored markers with a definite flourish. A detective sergeant stuck flags into a map of the Midlands at appropriate points and offered commentary in a flat Black Country accent. What was it the wife wanted me to pick up from the shops, Millington was thinking, mushrooms or aubergines? Millington had never been quite clear what it was you did with an aubergine. He copied information down into his notebook, glanced about him. Nine out of eleven smoking away as if their lives depended upon it. He tried to remember what he had heard on the radio earlier that week, research some Americans had been doing into passive inhalation of nicotine. God, he thought, if this goes on beyond twelve that’s likely as not another six months off my lifetime … or was it six minutes?