Quilted, pink, it slid around her shoulders like satin over old silk.
"Tea's ready," Marius said.
"And I found some more of those nice little cakes. The butterfly ones with the cream."
Stepping out into the main room of their small suite, Dorothy Birdwell smiled her thin-mouthed smile.
"Marius, you spoil me. You really do."
"Not really," he replied, smiling back. Not nearly enough, he thought.
"Now, dear," said Dorothy, settling carefully into a high-arched chair.
"I want you to tell me all about what happened in the bookshop. And I don't want you to miss out a single thing."
"Will you please state your name?" Lynn asked. "For the record."
88 "Vivienne Plant."
"And your address?"
"Hat seven, Ancaster Court, Baimbridge Road, Map- perley."
Like all of the interview rooms at the police station, this was small and airless and hung over with the unmistakable pall of stale cigarette smoke. Vivienne Plant, with her bright dress and upright posture, the after-image of a sneer on her well-tended middle-class face, looked impressively out of place.
"What is your present occupation?" Lynn asked.
"I'm a lecturer in Women's Studies."
"Here in the city?"
"In Derby."
"And are you married or single?"
"Neither."
"I'm sorry?"
"I have lived with the same partner for seven years; we have a three-year-old child. We are not married. Is that clear enough?"
As a manifesto, Lynn thought
"Ms Plant, you do admit the assault on Cathy Jordan…"
"Demonstration. I was making a demonstration."
"In relation to Ms Jordan?"
"In relation to her work."
"You disapprove of her books, then? You don't like them?"
"Which question do you want me to answer?"
No wonder she didn't want a solicitor, Lynn thought, she thinks she is one.
"Aren't they the same thing?" she asked wearily.
"Disapproving and not liking?"
"Yes."
"I like eating Terry's Chocolate Oranges, sometimes two at a time; I also like popping into McDonald's last thing at night for apple pie. I don't really approve of either."
Someone walked past along the corridor outside, heavy feet set down slowly and with purpose. Lynn tried not to look at her watch or the clock on the adjacent wall.
"Can you tell me," she asked, 'why you disapprove of Cathy Jordan's books so strongly? "
"Which version do you want? The fifty-minute lecture or the single-paragraph outline?"
Lynn was reminded of those times she had been lectured by her head teacher at school.
"The outline will be fine."
"Right. What I object to about her books is that they rely on an almost exclusive portrayal of women as victims, usually victims of violent and degrading assault. Their degradation and pain are in direct proportion to Jordan's profit. She's got rich on women's suffering. She should know better."
"And your intention was to teach her that lesson?"
"I thought it was appropriate."
"Covering her With paint?"
Yes, don't you? "
"Then you do admit to throwing paint over Ms Jordan?"
"I thought of it more as pouring, but yes, all right. I do."
"You assaulted her."
"Surely that's for the court to decide?"
"You want this to go to court?"
"Of course."
Oh, God, Lynn thought, spare me from people who know what's right for me better than I do myself. The whole Greenpeace, civil liberties, feminist bunch of them. "This action, was it carried out on behalf of some group or organisation?"
"Not officially, no. It was an individual act."
Vivienne Plant's shoulders braced back even further. "There was no such person."
"Ms Plant, I was there in the shop. I saw you standing in line with another woman, talking. A woman wearing a black shirt and jeans. You came into the shop together. Approached Ms Jordan together. After the incident, you ran out together. You were not acting on your own."
"Well, that's going to have to be your word against mine."
Lynn shook her head. She could have thought of places she would rather be than shut up with Ms Self-righteous, plenty of them.
"All right," she said, 'we'll come back to this again. "
"Look," Vivienne said, leaning forward, holding Lynn with her eyes, 'the responsibility for what happened is mine. Okay? But what I did, I did for all women; not just me. "
"All women?" Lynn said.
Of course. "
"I don't think so."
No? "
Lynn pushed back her chair and got to her feet.
"You didn't do it for me."
Vivienne pitched back her head and laughed.
"Well, you really do need the fifty-minute version, don't you?"
Lynn reached sideways, towards the Off button on the tape machine.
"This interview stopped at thirteen minutes past three."
Once Naylor had settled him down, assured him that in all probability he would be able to drive back to Newark ahead of the evening rush hour and allowed him to make a call to his partner, Derek Neighbour had proved a good witness. He had seen Vivienne Plant's actions clearly and described them with accuracy. Yes, she and the other woman, the one in the black shirt, had chattered away all the time they were waiting in the queue and although he hadn't heard a great deal of what they had actually been saying, the impression they gave was not of two people who have only just that moment met Absolutely not.
"So it was your impression that the two women were friends? That they knew one another quite well?"
Very well, more like. "
"And their names? Did you hear either of them address the other by names?"
"No. Come to think of it, no. Not that I can recall. I don't think they did."
"All right, Mr Neighbour. Thanks a lot. We've got your address and if we need you again-we'll be in touch."
Naylor got to his feet. Derek Neighbour continued to look up at him, uncertain.
"Was there something else?" Naylor asked.
"Something you wanted to add?"
"It's just, well, you know, the damage…"
"To Miss Jordan? Apart from the shock, I don't think it was too serious. Her clothes, of course, and…"
"No. To me. My books."
"Well, I don't know. Perhaps Waterstone's, in the circumstances…"
"You don't understand. There's a first edition of Uneasy Prey, absolutely ruined. I don't even know if I'll be able to find another one, and if I do, the cost is going to be close to three hundred pounds. More."
Three hundred, Naylor was thinking, for one book. Only a crime book, at that. Debbie's mum got through four or five a week from the library, large-print editions in the main. Bebbie reckoned she could get one finished between Neighbours and Countdown. Why would anyone pay three hundred quid for something you could get through in a few hours and never want to look at again? It didn't make a scrap of sense. * 92 "The stuff with the paint she's ready to admit to. Eager. Not that she could do anything else." Lynn was at her desk in the CID room, talking to Graham Millington. Vivienne Plant she had left to stew a little in the interview room. "The woman who was with her, though, she won't give us a thing. Denies knowing her altogether."
"No chance she's telling the truth?"
Lynn looked up at him.
"None."
"Charlie," Skelton said, 'we're not going to let this woman wrap us round her little finger, commit time and money, all so's she can garner free publicity for whatever cockamamie idea she's spouting.
Women's Studies, that's her, isn't it? Jesus, Charlie! Women's Studies, Black Studies, Lesbian and Gay Studies, what in God's name happened to good old History and Geography, that's what I'd like to know? "
Resnick couldn't oblige. Though he had recently been taken to task for carelessly using the masculine pronoun by a very intelligent and thoughtful young woman, who, it had turned out later, believed Norwich to be located in the middle of Hampshire.