What We're Writing--Debs Conjures Cocktails

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You can tell it has been a long almost-two-years since I have been out and about from what I'm writing these days. I sort of vaguely remember what it was like to get dressed up and go out for dinner and drinks with a friend, so I am living very vicariously through my characters! 

In this snippet, it's Saturday evening and  Gemma and Detective Inspector Jasmine Sidana are doing a bit of undercover sleuthing at a fancy cocktail bar in Soho. The place is entirely fictional, but, oh, did I have fun trolling through London cocktail bars and their menus on the Internet. The fictional bar is called Bottle, and the menu is a mashup of several different highly recommended London cocktail bars.

“Ladies. Welcome.” The greeting seemed oddly formal from a man wearing a simple white shirt with the cuffs rolled back. “If you’ll give me your name, I’ll see if your table is ready.”

Sidana looked taken aback. “Our table?”

He frowned. “You do have a booking?”

“I rang earlier,” said Sidana. “The young woman I spoke to said we didn’t need to book, that you wouldn’t be busy this early.”

The idea of eight o’clock as early gave Gemma pause. For her, eight o’clock meant getting the younger children into bed and starting to wind down for the evening, maybe having a glass of wine in front of the telly. She really was out of practice on the night-life front.

Their host, whom she assumed to be Jonathan Gibbs, cast an aggravated glance towards the bar, where a young dark-skinned woman with hair in elaborate coils was energetically shaking a cocktail. “That will have been Trudy,” he said. “She thinks reservations are an elitist tool.”

Gemma laughed, as she was meant to. “And what do you think?” she asked.

“I think I don’t like disappointed patrons. I’m Jon, by the way,” he added, holding out a hand to Gemma, then Sidana. “And while disappointed patrons will be inevitable later on, I think I can find you a spot now. Do you mind sitting in the window?” He gestured to a small table at the very front of the room, which offered a clear view of the foyer and to Gemma’s relief, her coat. It would also get a draft every time the front door was opened, and that no doubt explained why it wasn’t filled.

They accepted readily, and when they were seated he left to fetch menus. “Well, he’s interesting,” Sidana said quietly. “Strictly in a professional information-gathering sense, of course,” she added, completely deadpan.

But Gemma was beginning to get a hint of an unexpectedly mischievous side to Detective Inspector Jasmine Sidana. “Absolutely,” she agreed, putting on her most serious face. “Nothing to do with the cheekbones. It’s essential that we investigate thoroughly.”

Menus in hand, Jon Gibbs stopped for a whispered word with the young woman behind the bar, but if he was berating her she merely rolled her eyes and went on with her precisely executed pour.

“Take your time, ladies,” Gibbs told them when he returned with the menus. “If you have any questions, either Marie or I will be happy to answer them.” His gesture indicated the only staff member Gemma had seen other than the bartender, a tiny blond who was serving elaborate-looking cocktails to a table of four young women who didn’t look much above drinking age. Most of the other patrons were young as well, closer to twenty than thirty, in her estimate. “I’m starting to think I should have brought my Zimmer frame,” she muttered to Sidana. “This bunch should be out at a rave, not sipping cocktails.”

“It’s early, as Mr. Gibbs said. Who knows what they’ll get up to later?”

Gemma looked down at her menu and gasped. “Bloody hell. I could feed my entire family for the price of one of these drinks. How can they”—she flapped a hand in the general direction of the other tables—“possibly afford this stuff?”

“City jobs. Trust funds,” hazarded Sidana. “Or maybe they just still live at home.” Her tone was oddly mocking, but after checking Jon Gibbs’ progress around the tables, Gemma focused on the menu.

“We’d better order.” Charming line drawings of cocktails were sprinkled among the menu items, and after a moment’s perusal Gemma thought that the drawings made more sense than the print. “What on earth is forced carrot?” she asked. “And why is it in a drink?”

Sidana was frowning over her own menu. “That sounds more appealing than falernum, whatever that is. Look, here’s one with vodka and English tea, which doesn’t sound too bad until they add cream and prosecco. And is there really such a thing as Parmigiano liqueur?”

I have to admit that some of these drinks may be more fun to read about than to actually drink.  (I think you could call this "armchair drinking." I did find out what falernum was, however, and it sounds much nicer than you would think. 

What do you think, REDS and readers? Are Gemma and Sidana cut out for undercover?  Will they manage to get through the evening unscathed? (And relatively sober.) And what sort of weird vicarious details are you enjoying in books these days?

(A bit of Soho in the evening, along with the taxi Gemma and Jasmine will need to get home...)
 

 

What We're Writing--Debs in Discovery Mode

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The last time it was my What We're Writing day I was in London. It was my last week, and I posted about what I was doing and seeing. Well, now I have to admit that I spent my entire time in London in an absolute panic, unsure where and what exactly I should be researching, and afraid that I would get home and find that I'd done all the wrong things. Then, somehow, somewhere over the Atlantic, I let it go. There were no more decisions to make, and I started to remember all the  interesting tidbits I'd learned, and the unexpected gems I'd discovered that might fit into the book. 

I visited some old favorites, too, places I knew I would use, like this delightful pub in Holborn just down the street from Duncan's police station.

Here's a short scene set there, early in the book. 

Duncan Kincaid stretched the paperwork kinks from his neck and took an appreciative sip of beer. The Victorian pub in Lamb’s Conduit Street was beginning to fill up with Friday happy hour drinkers, most of whom seemed to be refugee staff from Great Ormond Street Hospital across the street. Kincaid himself was on his way home from Holborn Police Station, but had agreed to meet his detective sergeant, Doug Cullen, for a quick debriefing on an interview Doug had taken that afternoon in Theobald’s Road. The team was tidying up a few loose ends from a case, the knifing of an elderly Asian shop owner during the robbery of his corner shop. The assailants had been vicious but not too bright—balaclavas had covered their faces, but not the distinctive tattoo on the knife-wielder’s hand, caught clearly on the shop’s CCTV. The pair had spent the meager proceeds of the robbery on six-packs of lager bought in a shop in the next road, this time without their masks.

It was the sort of senseless crime that made Kincaid feel weary. Taking another sip of his pint, he glanced at his watch. Doug was late. The young woman sitting alone at the next table seemed to mimic him, checking her own watch, then her mobile, with a frown of irritation. In spite of the blustery November evening, the room was warm from the fire and she had shrugged off her fur-trimmed anorak to reveal hospital scrubs. Their pale green color set off her dark skin and the dark twists of her curls. A doctor, he thought, as the nursing staff were usually in uniform rather than scrubs, and he revised his guess at her age up a few years. When she tucked her mobile back in her bag, he looked away, aware that he’d been staring.

The door nearest the fire swung open, bringing a blast of cold, damp air and a flurry of brown leaves. The young woman looked up, her face brightening, but it was Doug Cullen, his anorak and fair hair beaded with moisture, his cheeks pink from the cold. Oblivious to her disappointment, Doug slid into the chair opposite Kincaid and pulled off his spattered glasses. “Bugger of a day,” he said, wiping the lenses with a handkerchief. He nodded at Kincaid’s glass. “Whatever you’re drinking, I could use one.”

    “Bloomsbury. And my shout,” Kincaid told him, standing. As he made his way to the crowded bar, he saw the young woman begin to gather her things. When he turned back a few minutes later, pints in hand, she had gone.

(Check my hyphens!! They are probably all wrong!)

I realize this is not the first time I've introduced a character in a bar! But where do people's lives interconnect? In London, it might be your local shop or market, or the tube train you take every day-- or it very well might be your local pub. And Duncan is people watching, a natural indulgence for a detective, and I suspect for most of us.

Reds and readers, do you make up stories about strangers? Have you ever had anything you've imagined turn out to be true?