Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(38)

Lynn, who had arrived early and stood for several moments feeling awkward before being shown to a table off the central aisle, smiled up at Sharon welcomingly and felt a hundred per cent less attractive than she had before.

“Sorry I’m late,” Sharon said, the waiter pulling back her chair.

“That’s okay.”

“You look great,” Sharon said, settling in, Lynn sitting there in the black dress she always wore for occasions like this, the one little black dress she possessed.

“Can I get you a drink before you order?” the waiter asked.

“I look like shit,” Lynn said.

“Nonsense.”

“I’ll come back,” the waiter said.

“No.” Sharon caught his arm as he turned away. “I’ll have a margarita.”

“Certainly, will that be rocks or frozen?”

“On the rocks, and make sure they use a decent tequila, none of that supermarket stuff, okay?”

The waiter raised his eyes toward the ceiling, but not too far.

“Lynn?” Sharon asked. “How about you?”

“White wine. Just a glass.”

“Would that be dry or …” the waiter began.

“The house wine’s fine.”

“Of course.”

Sharon unclasped her bag and reached for her cigarettes. “I meant it,” she said, touching the back of Lynn’s hand. “You look fine.”

Lynn smiled thanks. “As opposed to just sensational.”

Sharon snapped her lighter shut and tilted back her head, releasing a stream of pale gray smoke. “If you’ve got it,” she laughed, “package it as best you can.”

When the drinks arrived, Sharon lifted hers in a toast. “Here’s to us. To you. Success, right?”

“I haven’t said I’ll take it yet.”

“No, but you will.”

Sharon tasted her margarita, ran her tongue around the glass to get more salt, and tasted it again. “I should have asked him to bring a pitcher.”

“You will.”

“God!” Sharon said extravagantly. “Obvious or what?” Sharon Garnett had trained as an actress, worked as a singer, gone out on the road as one of three backing vocalists propping up a former sixties soul legend whose love of the horses and amphetamines had left him little but memories of past successes and a name which could still fill small clubs in Doncaster or Rugby on a Saturday night when there was nothing major on TV. Just over a year of motorway food and finger-snapping her way through the Ooh-Ahs of “Midnight Hour” and “Knock on Wood” was enough. Sharon took up with a group of mainly Afro-Caribbean actors and found out most of what there was to know about community theater. Which is to say it’s a lot like touring with a third-rate band, the same transit vans and the same parched meals, but the pay is even worse and the audiences smaller still.

Quite what enticed her into joining the police, she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the way she’d observed the predominantly white, predominantly male officers operating in East London where she lived, or on the front line in Brixton; maybe she allowed herself to be converted by the agitprop plays she performed in community centers and church halls from Handsworth to Hyson Green. Then again, perhaps she was simply drawn by the adventure. There would be adventure …

In London, they tried to turn her into some kind of uniformed social worker and made it clear that the pathway to CID was paved with more than hard work and good intentions. Sharon applied for a transfer out and, for reasons best known to the movements of the planets rather than any observable logic, fetched up in Lincoln, which was where she met Resnick, not Lincoln itself exactly, but a pig farm not so many hectares distant, the pair of them up over their ankles in pig shit and murder.

Soon after, Sharon moved again, this time to the East Midlands, and since there wasn’t a vacancy in Resnick’s squad at the time, joined Vice, where, at least, she got to operate in plain clothes and was allowed a certain degree of autonomy. Sharon had been made up to sergeant three weeks back, and this was the first time she and Lynn, close friends over the past couple of years—about as close as Lynn allowed anyone—had been free to celebrate. One disadvantage of working Vice, like soul singing and community theater both, it did mean working a lot of nights.

But this particular night there was a double cause for pushing the boat out—Lynn, after all, had just been head-hunted to join Serious Crimes.

“How many other detective sergeants?” Sharon asked, touching her knife to the last surviving piece of her rack of lamb.

“Four altogether. Why, you thinking about applying?”

Sharon grinned and picked up the meat with her fingers. “Give it a little time.”

“That Asian bloke, Khan, the one who worked the Bill Aston investigation, he’s already in.”

“DS?”

Lynn shook her head. “DC.” There was little left to show that the salmon she’d ordered had been served with a cream and dill sauce, sautéed potatoes, a fennel and watercress salad: clean plate, Lynnie, that’s the way her mum had brought her up in the raw comforts of rural Norfolk.

“Khan,” Sharon said, chewing thoughtfully, “he’s the good-looking one, right?”

“I suppose.”