And the sentence?
“Stunned. Just stunned.”
At the leniency of it? The severity? The smile?
“And when your husband is released, Mrs. Taylor, are there any circumstances in which you might have him back?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s too early to say. I’m not saying I never would, but now…My daughter and I have got to get on with our lives.”
Three years, Resnick thought, and he’ll be out on parole in two. Some probation officer with the task of resettling him back into society, his debt paid. The possibility of returning him to the family home. Sharon almost ten, almost grown. All of them together, hour-long sessions in a windowless room, therapy. “I’m not saying I never would…” What did Resnick want? Castrate the bastard! There would be those in prison who would be less uncertain: they would take the smile off his face and no mistake.
Yes, it hurt me.
He pushed the paper aside again and stood up. An eye for an eye, is that what he wanted? If ever he had got close to Taylor after his arrest, alone with him, how hard would it have been not to take a swing at him? In court he had wanted to catch hold of him and shake him to make him understand what it was he had done. Resnick didn’t think Taylor knew, really knew, but then, as he had said to Rachel, it was beyond his understanding also. All of it. That girl…
Carole’s son had taken a rucksack and his father’s dog-eared copy of Kerouac and set off round the world. However far he got, a place was waiting for him to study medicine the following autumn. “I think he’ll be a better doctor because of it,” Carole had said. “I truly do. And as for being worried, of course, I’m his mother, but, heavens, you can’t fuss about them all their lives, can you? Or all of your own. Besides, he’s got his head screwed on…and his credit card.”
Rachel doubted if Kerouac had stuck his thumb in the air with an American Express card in the back pocket of his jeans.
There was a poster of James Dean on the wall, another which proclaimed I Ran the World. In the corner of the room, opposite the window and close to the head of the single bed, stood an anatomical model, one half of the body lifted away to expose the pale coils of plastic bowel, the workings of a plastic heart.
Rachel was trying not to stare at it. When she heard the footsteps on the carpeted stairs, she opened the file close by and picked up her pen.
“Rachel?” A soft knock at the door.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in a minute?” The door was opening.
“For goodness’ sake, Carole,” Rachel smiled. “It is your house.”
“Conditioned response,” Carole said. “Mark had me knocking on his door and waiting to be admitted the day he got to secondary school.”
“Not all parents would have paid much attention.”
“I think they should. Don’t you?”
“We all need our own space.”
Carole glanced back over her shoulder. “Somebody’s here to see you.”
Chris Phillips stood waiting in the living room. The lines around his eyes were heavy and dark and his face was devoid of color.
“Carole says we can talk in here.”
“Talk?”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Carole said, passing behind Rachel’s back. Rachel stood at the entrance to the room, not yet going in. “I’ve got the dog in the car,” Chris Phillips said.
The trumpet, tightly muted through four bars of introduction, pianist quietly chording behind; the same phrase repeated, inverted, the last note fading into the fall of wire brush against the snare and there, tight to the beat, Billie’s voice.
I need your love so badly
The last word of the line is broken by the way she phrases, by the first of the saxophone’s cold spirals, grace notes that glide and lift around her without ever once touching.
I love you oh so madly
When she was ten years old she was abused by her stepfather; within too short a time she had left home and was selling her sex on the streets. This is 1954 and she is turning forty but not very far. Dead in a hospital bed she will have a police guard close by and the money for her next fix of heroin tied to her wasted leg.
But I don’t stand
A ghost of a chance with you
Twenty-Three
So much for the obvious. Photographs of Mary Sheppard and Shirley Peters were taken round to all of the clubs, pubs, and restaurants within a mile radius of the city center; officers also checked with staff at all four of the cinemas and both theaters. One theater usher, three bar staff, the relief DJ at Madison’s and the assistant manageress at the Odeon were sure they remembered seeing Mary Sheppard on the night that she was murdered. Pretty sure. Well, of course it was dark, bright, there was an awful crowd, I was rushed off my feet. After more questioning, two of the bar workers and the woman from the cinema were sticking to their guns. According to them she was accompanied by a tallish man with long hair wearing a dark hip-length coat, alternatively by someone of medium height, balding, a gray check sports jacket, and blue jeans, or a man quite a bit older with a local accent and a beard.
No one recollected seeing Shirley Peters on the date that she was killed; no one once she had left from outside her house in a taxi, other than the driver himself, who claimed to have dropped her on the north side of the main square outside Pizzaland. According to the staff who’d been on shift at the pizza place that evening, she hadn’t eaten there. They were certain enough to be believed. Several people did recognize Shirley’s picture, however, but none could tie it in with the date in question.
Who was she here with?
“In a crowd, crowd of girls, you know the way it is.”
“Never with a man?”
“Yeh, sure, with a man? Which man? Come on, just men. Yes, men. Nothing funny, you know, just it never seemed to be the same man. Yeh, shame, she was all right. Fun, you know. Fun.”
One of those who reacted positively to Shirley Peter’s photograph was Warren. Resnick dropped in at the gym and found him working out on the heavy punch bag.
“Getting ready for a fight?” Resnick asked.
“Mug’s game.” Warren straightened and swung his head towards Resnick, spraying sweat.
“I thought maybe your friend the cuts man had talked you into it. He seemed to think you’d be something special.”
“Something special for him to practice on, fine. But no, thanks.” He flexed his shoulders and started to arch his back, moving his legs a little on the spot, limbering down. “You’re not still running around after that Macliesh business?”
Resnick shook his head. “Shirley Peters.”
“Shirley?”
“You identified her.”
“Right,” said Warren, realizing. He rubbed at his head with a towel. “Couple of places I’m on the door, she used to go down a few times. I mean, enough so’s I knew the face, but no more than that. Like I said to your bloke, I never knew her name, nothing about her.”
“Nor who she went around with?”
Warren let the towel fall across his shoulders, shook his head. “Not the one bloke. Least, I don’t think so.” He began wiping at the sweat glistening on his thighs.
“You know she was a friend of Grace Kelley’s?”
Warren looked puzzled.
“From London. Came up to see Shirley but too late. She stayed around long enough to enjoy the hospitality of a mutual acquaintance of ours.”
“Georgie Despard?” grinned Warren.
“The same.”
“Small world,” said Warren, still grinning.
Resnick nodded. “Thanks for your time.”
“That I’ve got plenty of.” Warren looked across the room at the assorted pullers and pushers and pounders. “Any day you want to come down and work out for an hour…”
“Thanks. I’ll think…” He stopped, a thought striking him. “Don’t suppose you know a Geoff Sloman by any chance?”