Flesh Wounds by John Lawton

Author:John Lawton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2005-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

51

Troy was late getting to the Café Royal. Kitty/Kate was waiting, sipping at her Earl Grey, nibbling a slice of Battenberg, surrounded by the results of a day out with her sisters – ‘packages from Liberty’s, packages from Harrods, headscarf for the sister, knickers for the wife . . . Close your eyes, my darling, as the gentlemen pass by . . .’

Her mood was good, the therapy of shopping – she smiled at Troy, stood up to give him a smackeroo on the lips and beckoned to a waiter. By the time he could sit down Troy felt smothered: Kitty’s kisses, a sea of tissue paper unwrapped around him, and a busy young man setting tea and cake before him. There was nowhere to rest an elbow, no obvious way through the smallness of small-talk.

Kitty rattled on about her sisters, the generosity of her mood persisting without bitchiness to the point where, if he had been able to concentrate, he might have concluded that she was once again a Londoner, if only for a day, was once again the ‘sparrer’ from Jubilee Street, now the weight of being Mrs Cormack was off her, if only for a day – but he could stand it no longer.

‘We have to talk,’ he said, halfway through an account of Reenie trying on something meant for a woman half her age and size.

‘There you go again. That phrase. OK. Don’t listen to me. Just spit it out. Be brutal. See if I care.’

She did care. As he told her, care etched itself into every line in her face. By the end she was a simmering volcano, on whose rim he perched with precarious toehold. ‘And you didn’t tell me? My husband sets a private eye on me and you don’t bloody tell me?’

‘Not Cal. The Deeks.’

‘Do you think that matters? Weeks you say, weeks with this jerk following me around, spying on me, and you don’t tell me. You shit, you complete and utter shit!’

‘You may be right. And if he hadn’t been found murdered last night I might not be telling you now. But he has been murdered, and I cannot not tell you, and you have to make a statement.’

‘What?’

‘Rork came here to follow you and Vince Christy. When you seemed to have nothing to do with—’

‘Seemed! I did have nothing to do with the slimy bastard. He called me up at Claridge’s and I blew him out of the water!’

‘Then you have to say so. You see, Rork was following Danny Ryan, not just you.’

‘And the Yard think Danny did this?’

‘I don’t know what they think, but you have to tell them what you know. We both do. I have to make a statement to Jack Wildeve at six today.’

‘I don’t know anything. I never saw or heard of this Rork fellow. All I know is my husband and my lover – if I can grace you with that term – conspired to treat me like a ten-dollar hooker in a crappy gumshoe novel.

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