Leaning sideways on to the desk, Grace took off one of her high-heels and massaged the arch of her foot. She could see the young Asian talking to another man in a side office. The man was standing, listening, now sitting, pushing his chair back and getting comfortable without taking his eyes from the Asian’s face. Only once did he glance away, eyes drifting across hers, then quickly back.
Grace pushed her other shoe free and shimmied her black trousers on to the edge of the desk. Two hours it had taken her up the motorway, sodding roadworks, panting to show Shirley the new motor, watch her face as she stood there creaming herself. What Shirley wouldn’t have done for a Porsche, red and all-likely a sight more than she’d done herself. Given the chance, poor cow!
The door to the office opened and she pushed herself off the desk and started to wiggle back into her shoes. She caught the unmistakable smell of sweat and realized that it was coming off her own body.
“The Inspector would like to talk to you.”
Grace wobbled and reached out a hand to grasp Patel’s shoulder, smiling as he flinched. “Thanks, pet,” she said, jamming her heel down into her right shoe.
Resnick was standing, gesturing for her to sit down. “Miss Kelley?”
“That’s right.” She sat down, puffing the sides of her white fur out to the metal arms of the chair.
Resnick looked at her appraisingly. “Grace.”
She opened the small black bag that hung from her shoulder and took out a pack of cigarettes. “My mother had ideas above my station.”
Resnick smiled. He looks good when he smiles, she thought, younger. She stopped, waiting for him to light her cigarette, then did it herself, using a slim gold lighter which she dropped back into her bag, drawing in the smoke as she leaned her head back before exhaling.
“New Cross,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“My station. You’re supposed to say, when I say my station, you’re supposed to say…”
“What station?”
“And I say New Cross.” She wiped her left hand through a slow curve of blue-gray smoke. “Even that isn’t quite the truth. Deptford, really.” She remembered to keep her head level, hide the looseness that was starting to show beneath her chin. “D’you know London, south of the river?”
“Not really.”
“Haven’t missed a lot. I got out as soon as I could.”
“Gracefully,” Resnick smiled.
“You can’t get over that, can you?”
“Mmm?”
“The name.” She looked at the ash forming at the tip of her cigarette and Resnick fished an ashtray from a drawer and slid it towards her.
“My mum used to spend every spare minute she had at the pictures. Deptford, Lewisham. Anything with Grace Kelly in it, she’d be there, three, four times in a week. Spent half of my time as a kid, I did, sitting in Greenwich Park listening to her telling me what happened, over and over again. Fourteen Hours, High Noon, Mogambo. It was only when I saw some of them later, on the telly, I realized she’d got the plots all in a twist. That one, Dial M for Murder, where Grace Kelly’s husband’s out to…”
She leaned forward awkwardly and stubbed out the cigarette. A shiver ran through her and when Resnick saw her face again she was crying.
“…out to murder her. Jesus!” She stood up, tried to, the pocket of her coat catching on the end of the chair so that it tore when she tugged at it. “Shirley-that bastard! — I must have talked myself hoarse trying to get her to come down to London, move in with me for a bit, anything to get clear of that pig when they let him out.” She smeared tears across her makeup. “She couldn’t see it, reckoned it’d be all right, sitting around in that poxy place waiting for some bloody Prince Charming to appear at the end of the rainbow. As if he’d ever let her have a life with someone else, not while he knew where to find them. She couldn’t live with him, and he was going to make good and sure she didn’t live with anyone else.”
“Macliesh,” Resnick said.
“Who bloody else?” Grace said. And then she grabbed hold of the back of the chair with both hands and said: “I don’t suppose you’ve got a drink?”
Resnick got up and went into the main office. He took the half-bottle of Bell’s from Divine’s desk drawer and poured some into a styrofoam cup.
“I could send for some coffee,” he said.
“It’s just starting to sink in,” she said. “Delayed shock, isn’t that what they call it?”
Resnick sat back down. “I think my young DC had almost as much of a shock as you did.”
“Poor love! Don’t know what he thought I was going to do to him.”
“I meant when he found the body.”
There was a knock on the door and a West Indian constable came in carrying Resnick’s pizza.
“Equal opportunities round here, isn’t it?” she said when the constable had gone.
“Want a slice?” Resnick asked, sliding it out from the box and on to his desk.
“I don’t think…My God! Anchovies and pepperoni, that’s disgusting!”
Only slightly shamefaced, Resnick lifted a piece to his mouth, wondering if for once he would be able to eat it without getting strands of cheese stuck to his chin.
“How well did you know Shirley Peters?” Resnick asked, between bites.
“We were good mates. Good as you can be when you don’t live in the same place, not any more. I met her about six years ago. I’d been living in Birmingham and then I come over here, some sales promotion job or other, you know, poncing around between new cars in the shopping center, sticking out your tits and getting your ass felt up by the sales reps at the same time. Shirley was there too, moonlighting from the office job she had, Tony would have killed her there and then if he’d known. We just hit it off, you know, kept in touch. When she finally got rid of Tony, I came up and stayed with her for a couple of weeks.” She helped herself to some more of Divine’s whisky. “Not the place for me, though. Too quiet. Everyone’s tucked up in bed by half-twelve.”
Resnick had had too much experience outside the city’s discos at three in the morning to believe that, but he didn’t contradict her. “She was living with Macliesh then, was she?”
“Yeh, and he never liked me one little bit. I was always getting her to stand up to him, that’s why. One of those blokes who reckons he can wipe his hands all over you like you’re a box of Kleenex and goes spare if you as much as cough in front of another man. He hit her once in Tesco’s, not like a push, a real slap, hard across the face because she smiled at some feller pushing his trolley out of the way to let her past.”
“Why…?” Resnick began, but he knew the question was never any good. Why did women stick with men who knocked them around? Why did so many men get off on it, need it, the owning, the forcing, the feel of skin breaking beneath their own? In twelve hours, a little more, he would be back in court, facing a man who had abused his seven-year-old daughter as if he had the right.
“Did you ever hear him threaten her, threaten Shirley?”
“Now you’re kidding.”
“Incidents you can remember, clearly I mean. Things he said.”
“And did.”
An olive rolled off the side of Resnick’s slice of pizza. “If you wouldn’t mind coming back in the morning and making a statement?”
“Anything to put that bastard back where he belongs.” She looked at Resnick keenly. “You have got him, haven’t you? He hasn’t done a runner?”
“Only as far as Aberdeen. He’s in police custody.”
“Pity he was ever allowed out of it.” She stood up. “Pity he won’t swing.”
On the stairs, Resnick asked, “Are you all right for tonight? I mean, have you got somewhere to stay?”
The smile was almost real, but the red gloss had been wiped across one cheek and on to her teeth. “That an offer?”