“Take the scenic route,” said Sergeant Hatchley. “We’re not in a hurry.”
Instead of going east to the A1 at the roundabout by the Red Lion Hotel, Susan headed southwest along the edge of the Dales through Masham, Ripon and Harrogate.
Hatchley didn’t smoke at all during the journey, though he insisted she stop once at a café in Harrogate for a cup of coffee, during which he chain-smoked three cigarettes. It was very different from travelling with Banks. For a start, Banks liked to drive, and with him there was always music, sometimes tolerable, sometimes execrable. Hatchley preferred to sit with his arms crossed and look out of the window at the passing scenery, no doubt with visions of bare breasts flashing through what passed for his mind.
She wished she didn’t have to work with men all the time. One crying jag or sharp response, and it was PMT; a day off for any reason meant it was “that time of the month.” She had to put up with it without complaint, just take it all in her stride.
Maybe she was being unfair, though. Hatchley aside, the men she worked with were mostly okay. Phil Richmond, with whom she spent the most time, was a sweetheart. But Phil was leaving soon.
Superintendent Gristhorpe frightened her a little, perhaps because he made her think of her father, and she always felt like a silly little girl when he was around.
Banks, though, was like an older brother. And, like a brother, he teased her too much, especially about music when they were in the car. She was sure he played some terrible things just to make her uncomfortable. Right now, though, as she approached the busy Leeds Ring Road, she would have welcomed something soothing to listen to.
Susan was building up a nice collection of classical music. Every month, she bought a magazine that gave away a free CD of bits and pieces of the works reviewed. It provided a breakdown of what to listen for at what points of time – like “6:25: The warm and sunny feeling of the spring day returns,” or “4:57: Second theme emerges from interplay of brass and woodwinds.” Susan found it very helpful, and if she liked the part she heard, she would buy the complete work, unless it was a lengthy and expensive opera. At the moment her favorite piece was Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. She knew Banks would approve, but she was too embarrassed to tell him.
Susan went on to think about her talk with Tom Rothwell by the river, and about the agonies he must be going through. It was hard enough being homosexual anywhere, she imagined, but it would be especially tough in Yorkshire, where men prided themselves on their masculinity and women were supposed to know their place and stick to it.
There was a prime example of Yorkshire manhood sitting right next to her, she thought, all Rugby League, roast beef and pints of bitter. And she couldn’t imagine what he could find offensive about her perfume. It certainly smelled pleasant enough to her, and she used it sparingly.
The traffic snarled up on the Ring Road, and Hatchley sat there with the tattered Leeds and Bradford A to Z on his lap squinting at signs. He was the kind of navigator who shouted, “Turn here!” just as you passed by the turning. After several misdirections and a couple of hair-raising U-turns, they pulled up outside candidate number one, a newsagent’s shop at the edge of a rundown council estate in Gipton.
Two scruffy kids swaggered out as Susan and Hatchley went in. The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. She was pale as a ghost and skinny as a rake. Her hair, brown streaked with silver, red and green, teetered untidily on top of her head, and unruly strands snaked down over her white neck and face, partly covering one over-mascaraed eye.
She looked as if she had a small, pretty mouth underneath the full and pouting one she had superimposed with brownish purple lipstick. Susan also noticed a pungent scent, which she immediately classified as cheap, not at all like her own. The girl rested her ring-laden fingers with the long crimson nails on the counter and slanted her bony shoulders toward them, head tilted to one side. She wore a baggy white T-shirt with “SCREW YOU” written in black across her flat chest.
“Mr. Drake around, love?” Hatchley asked.
She moved her head a fraction; the hair danced like Medusa’s snakes. “In the back,” she said, without breaking the rhythm of her chewing.
He moved toward the counter and lifted the flap.
“Hey!” she said. “You can’t just walk through like that.”
“Can’t I, love? Do you mean I have to be announced all formally, like?” Hatchley took out his identification and held it close to her eyes. She squinted as she read. “Maybe you’d like to get out your salver?” he went on. “Then I can put my calling card on it and you can take it through to Mr. Drake and inform him that a gentleman wishes to call on him?”
“Sod off, clever arse,” she said, slouching aside to let them pass. “You’re no fucking gentleman. And don’t call me love.”
“Who have we got here, then?” Hatchley stopped and said. “Glenda Slagg, feminist?”
“Piss off.”
They went through without further ceremony into the back room, an office of sorts, and Susan saw Mr. Drake sitting at his desk.
Below the greasy black hair was the lumpiest face Susan had ever seen. He had a bulbous forehead, a potato nose, and a carbuncular chin, over all of which his oily, red skin, pitted with blackheads, stretched tight, and out of which looked a pair of beady black eyes, darting about like tiny fish in an aquarium. His belly was so big he could hardly get close enough to the desk to write. A smell of burned bacon hung in the stale air, and Susan noticed a hotplate with a frying-pan on it in one corner.
When they walked in, he pushed his chair back and grunted, “Who let you in? What do you want?”
“Remember me, Jack?” said Hatchley.
Drake screwed up his eyes. They disappeared into folds of fat. “Is it…? Well, bugger me if it isn’t Jim Hatchley.”
He floundered to his feet and stuck out his hand, first wiping it on the side of his trousers. Hatchley leaned forward and shook it.
“Who’s the crumpet?” Drake asked, nodding toward Susan.
“The ‘crumpet,’ as you so crudely put it, Jack, is Detective Constable Susan Gay. And show a bit of respect.”
“Sorry, lass,” said Drake, executing a little bow for Susan. She found it hard to hold back her laughter. She knew that old-fashioned sexism was alive and well and living in Yorkshire, but it felt strange to have Sergeant Hatchley defending her honor. Drake turned back to Hatchley. “Now what is it you want, Jim? You’re not still working these parts, are you?”
“I am today.”
Drake held his hands out, palms open. “Well, I’ve done nowt to be ashamed of.”
“Jack, old lad,” said Hatchley heavily, “you ought to be ashamed of being born, but we’ll leave that aside for now. Girlie magazines.”