Still Waters cr-9

by John Harvey

  Lynn Kellogg, meanwhile, was due to interview three sets of neighbors whose houses backed onto one another between Balfour Road and Albert Grove and whose animosity-so far involving dead rodents, broken windows, all-night sound systems, and human excrement-came close to constituting a serious breach of the peace.

  Carl Vincent, aside from the cases of benefit fraud and receiving stolen property that were weighing down his case file, was continuing to check through local antique shops and auction rooms, just in case whoever had taken the Dalzeil paintings had done so without either a ready outlet or any real sense of their worth.

  Resnick’s regular early-morning meeting with the superintendent had been postponed; Jack Skelton was in Worcester, along with officers from forty-three other forces, attending a meeting to launch a joint investigation into the murders of some two hundred women, which, over the past ten years, had gone unsolved.

  “This floater, Charlie,” Skelton had asked, glancing through the file. “Beeston Canal. Anything to add?”

  Not a thing.

  Now Resnick wandered out into the CID room, spoke briefly with both Millington and Naylor, glanced over Lynn’s shoulder at the report she was preparing, finally paused by Vincent’s desk and watched as the list of auction houses scrolled up the screen of the VDU.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nothing so far. More than half don’t seem to know who Dalzeil was. It’s like giving art history lectures by phone.” Vincent grinned. “Open University, strictly first level. But so far, no one’s owning up to being approached. Nothing that fits our bill, at least.”

  Resnick nodded. “Okay. Stick with it for now. I’ll follow up a few things of my own.” He had a contact in the Arts and Antiques Squad at New Scotland Yard who might be able to help.

  “Sir?” Lynn Kellogg swiveled round from where she was sitting. “I couldn’t have a word?”

  “Sure. Ten minutes. Just let me make one call.”

  Back in his office, Resnick was midway through dialing the Yard number when Millington burst through from the outer office, scarcely bothering to knock. Anxiety was clear in his eyes.

  “Mark Divine, boss. Stupid bugger’s thrown a fit by t’sound of it. Gone off half cock in some nightclub. Glassed someone for starters. And there’s talk he had a knife. Right now he’s banged up in Derby nick.”

  “Christ!” For a moment, Resnick closed his eyes. “All right, Graham. I’ll get over there myself. You hold the fort here.”

  “Long as you’re sure.”

  Resnick barely nodded, hurrying to the door.

  “Sir …” Lynn was on her feet, watching her chance for pinning Resnick down about her transfer go storming past.

  I was right, Resnick was thinking, hurrying down the stairs and out through the rear exit to the car park: the whole damn squad’s falling apart.

  Divine sat slumped forward on the narrow bed, elbows on knees, head in hands. The interior of the cell had been painted a dull shade of industrial gray. The stink of urine seemed to seep through the walls.

  “How’s he been?” Resnick asked.

  “You mean since he sobered up?” The custody sergeant was singularly tall, taller than Resnick by several inches, and most of those extra inches in his neck. When he spoke, his Adam’s apple bobbed awkwardly above the collar of his uniform shirt.

  “That’s what this is then, drunk and disorderly?”

  “He should be so lucky.”

  “But he was drunk?”

  “Either that or popping Es. Regular one-man rave.”

  Resnick stood back and the sergeant slotted the key into the lock, the inward movement of the door surprisingly smooth. Divine didn’t look up straight away and when he did the jolt of recognition twisted on his face and he punched the skimpy mattress with his fist.

  “Mark …”

  Divine blinked and looked away. Bruising hung purple from his mouth and around his eyes; a cut that angled deep across his cheek had been held in place by steristrips.

  “He’s been to the hospital?”

  “Doctor saw him here.”

  “What about an X-ray?”

  The custody sergeant shrugged.

  “And the injuries, they were sustained where?”

  “Over half the city center, looks like. Two or three skirmishes in pubs before the nightclub where things really got nasty.”

  “Not here, then?”

  “Eh?”

  “I said, Sergeant, those injuries to the face, no way they could have been sustained when he was in custody?”

  The sergeant held his gaze for fully ten seconds. “Didn’t exactly come quietly. Meek and mild. Might’ve taken a bit of time, getting him subdued.”

  “Time?”

  “And energy.”

  “Force then?”

  “Reasonable force, yes.”

  Resnick’s turn to stare.

  “Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984; section one hundred and …”

  “I know the section, Sergeant.”

  “I’m sure you do, sir.”

  “And I’m sure whatever happened, whatever reasonable force was used in making the arrest, it’s all been logged.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant, you can leave us now.”

  “Yes, Inspector.”

  When Resnick sat down on the bed, Divine flinched. All those months and the memory of it clear like burning, raw inside him. Cold sweats when his body turned against him, wrenching him. The shame. Like a knife inside him. Skin on his skin. Cunt and whore. Carl Vincent delicately covering him.

  “Mark?”

  Divine’s voice so quiet, even that close, Resnick could not be certain he had spoken.

  “Can I get you something? Cup of tea? Cigarette?”

  When Divine looked back at him, his eyes were bright with tears.

  Resnick’s counterpart was bluff, busy, sandy haired. Working in cities less than twenty miles apart, they knew one another by sight and reputation, little more. To Barrie Wiggins, Resnick was a bit of an oddball, soft round the edges, not the sort you’d opt to sink a few pints with after closing, swapping stories. Wiggins, Resnick knew, enjoyed a reputation for being hard as High Peak granite, the sort who still liked to be out with the lads on patrol of a Sat’day night, roll up his sleeves and pitch into a bar-room fight. One of the best-known anecdotes about him, how he got hold of some ex-miner clinging to his right to silence, slammed his head down into a desk drawer and squeezed tight till the man changed his mind. It was an anecdote that Wiggins liked to tell about himself.

  “Bloody mess, Charlie. No two ways about it. Your lad, got himself in a right bloody mess.”

  “Tell me,” Resnick said.

  Wiggins shook a packet of Benson Kingsize in Resnick’s direction, raised an eyebrow at his refusal, lit one for himself and inhaled deeply. “Leaving aside the scraps he was into in half a dozen pubs beforehand, it’s the ruckus at Buckaroos that’s the dog’s fucking bollocks.”

  Resnick had driven by the place several times in the past: a sprawling nightclub with a kicking stallion in pink neon over the door and bouncers who wore bootlace ties with their DJs.

  “None of this corroborated, of course. Not fully. Not yet. My lads out asking questions now. But the way it seems, your lad was abusive to the bar staff right from the start; he asks this girl to dance and when she says no, drags her out onto the floor anyhow. She manages to pull away and when he comes after her, lobs her drink in his face. Your boy slaps her hard for her trouble.” Wiggins tumbled ash from the end of his cigarette. “When security shows up, he sticks a pint glass in one of’em’s face.”

  “Provocation?”

  “Like I say, we’re asking questions. No problem there. More witnesses than you can shake a stick at.”

  “And the injuries?”

  “Seventeen stitches in some other poor bastard’s face. One lad with a cut across his hand, tendons severed, doubtful if they’ll mend. When the first uniforms arrive
d, that was when he pulled the knife.”

  “What knife?”

  “Stanley knife. Inside pocket of his suit.”

  “And he used it, is that what you’re saying?”

  Wiggins shook his head. “Not what we’re hearing so far.”

  “Threatened to?”

  “Apparently.”

  “It’s not possible the officers misinterpreted, heat of the moment?”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  “It’s possible, though? Couldn’t he have been handing it over?”

  Wiggins chuckled. “Blade first?”

  Resnick was on his feet, hands in pockets, pacing the room. “Divine. You know what happened to him. A few months back.”

  “I’d heard something.”

  “He was raped. Smashed round the face with a baseball bat and raped.”

  “Doesn’t excuse …”

  Resnick brought the palms of both hands down against the inspector’s desk, flat and fast. “Reasons, not excuses. Reasons. This is a serving officer …”

  “Suspended …”

  “Sick leave.”

  “Same thing.”

  Resnick let that pass. “A detective constable with a commendation for bravery …”

  “And a knife in his pocket.”

  “He’s frightened.”

  “Funny way to show it.”

  “Ever since he was attacked, frightened. Months before he’d go out at all.”

  “Ah, well, always find a reason, eh, Charlie. Search hard enough. Excuses for every fucking thing. I don’t doubt but you could find him some psychiatrist, half an hour in the witness box, make it seem as if nowt ever happened.”

  Resnick shook his head. “I just want you to understand.”

  “Oh, I understand. One of yours, Charlie, you want to do your best for him, I can appreciate that. Respect it. Good management. Good for the team. But see things from my point of view; think how the papers’d look at it, bloody television, some copper runs amok with a blade and we pat him on the head and tell him to take it easy, dole out a few aspirin.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Not what I want.”

  “What do you want, Charlie?”

  “To think your people’d treat him with some understanding. And go easy when it comes to laying charges. Think about the whole picture.”

  “The whole picture,” Wiggins smirked. “We’re good at that. Noted.”

  “Don’t keep him locked up longer than you have to. Whatever else, ask for police bail, don’t let him fetch up inside on remand.”

  “Not down to me, you know that.”

  “You could help.”

  Wiggins stubbed out his cigarette and stopped himself halfway through tapping out another. “Filthy bloody habit.” Thinking better of it, he lit up anyway. “All right, Charlie. No promises, but …” He got to his feet, held out his hand. “You have another word with him before you go. Make sure he’s going to play it right. Penitent and contrite. You’ve already fixed a decent brief for him, I dare say.”

  After arriving at Derby police station, Resnick had put in a call to Suzanne Olds. The solicitor was waiting for him in the corridor near the custody area and the police cells. Leather briefcase, tailored suit, legs long enough to turn heads.

  “You’ve spoken to him?” Resnick asked.

  “It’s not easy getting him to say much at all. Except he doesn’t care what happens to him, that’s clear.”

  “About this?”

  “Anything.”

  “You’ll change his mind.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Resnick shook her hand. “I owe you for this.”

  “I’ll make sure you pay.”

  Seven

  Lynn Kellogg was waiting for him in the corridor. Since passing her sergeant’s board, she had taken to wearing more severe colors, this morning an austere mid-calf skirt and matching jacket, flat black shoes, and a blouse like sour milk. She had let her hair grow out a little, but it was still short. A little makeup around the eyes, a touch on the lips.

  “My transfer, sir …”

  “I thought you might have been waiting for news about Mark. Or maybe you didn’t know.”

  “Yes, Graham said.”

  “And you didn’t care.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No? Probably not.” He started walking and Lynn followed, hurrying into step beside him.

  “I know there wasn’t any love lost between us, but that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about what’s happened.”

  Just not high on your list of priorities, Resnick thought. He was surprised to be accusing her of anything less than compassion.

  “He is all right?” Lynn said.

  “No. No, he’s not.”

  They were almost at the stairs, a dogleg that would take them into a second corridor, the entrance to the CID room immediately ahead.

  “It is three weeks now,” Lynn said, “since my transfer was supposed to have gone through.”

  “These things take time.”

  “I know, only …”

  “You can’t wait to be away.”

  She found a thread, loose on the sleeve of her jacket, and snapped it free. A uniformed officer came along the lower corridor, taking his time of it, and they stood back to let him pass.

  “Now I’ve made up my mind, I think it will be easier, that’s all.” She was not looking at him as she spoke, looking everywhere but at his face. “For both of us perhaps.”

  The daughter he had never had, the lover she would never be. It hung between them, largely unspoken, unresolved, so tangible that if either of them had reached out they could have touched it, grasped it with both hands.

  “The Family Support Unit,” Resnick said. “I’ll give them a call. See what’s holding things up.”

  “Thanks.” Lynn standing there, arms folded tight across her chest.

  There was a message from his friend Norman Mann of the Drugs Squad to contact him whenever he got his head above water, nothing urgent; another from Reg Cossall-a drink some time, Charlie, bend your ear. Set this bastard job to rights. Someone, Naylor’s handwriting it looked like, had fielded a call from Sister Teresa, the time and a number and a promise to call again. Two routine faxes requesting information about young people gone missing: a fifteen-year-old girl from Rotterdam, last seen on the Dover ferry, a thirteen-year-old boy from Aberdeen.

  The phone rang and, picking up, he identified himself. Miriam Johnson’s clear but genteel voice was easy to recognize.

  “It was your associate, Inspector, that I was hoping to speak with. I remembered something, you see, regarding the paintings.”

  “DC Vincent’s not here at the moment,” Resnick said. “Will I do?”

  He could nip across to Canning Circus, pick up a double espresso, and take his time strolling down through the Park, breathe some air, stretch his legs.

  She had rich tea biscuits waiting for him, symmetrically arranged on a floral plate, Earl Grey tea freshly brewed. “Milk or lemon, Inspector?”

  “As it comes will be fine.”

  They were sitting in the conservatory at the back of the house, looking out over a hundred feet of tiered garden, mostly lawn. Near the bottom was a large magnolia tree, which had long lost its blossom. Inside the conservatory, shades of geranium pressed up against the glass, herbs, inch-high cuttings in small brown pots.

  “I can’t be certain this is relevant, of course, but I thought, well, if it were and I neglected to bring it to your attention …”

  Resnick looked at her encouragingly and decided to dunk his biscuit after all.

  “It would be some time ago now, more than a year. Yes. I was trying to get it clear in my mind before. You’re busy, of course, all of you, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste your time, but the nearest I could pin it down would be the early summer of last year.” Her gaze shifted off along the garden. “The magnolia was still in flower. He made specific mention of it, which is why I
can remember.”

  She smiled and lifted her teacup from its saucer; yes, the little finger crooked away.

  Resnick waited. He could smell basil, over the scent of the Earl Grey. “Who, Miss Johnson?” he finally asked. “Who mentioned the magnolia?”

  “I didn’t say?”

  Resnick shook his head.

  “I could have sworn …” She frowned as she issued herself an internal reprimand. “Vernon Thackray, that was his name. At least, that was what he claimed.”

  “You didn’t believe him?”

  “Mr. Resnick, if he had told me it was Wednesday, I should have looked at both my calendar and the daily newspaper before believing it to be so. Though it was …” Her face brightened and her voice rose higher. “Isn’t that interesting, it was a Wednesday. Maurice was here, tending the garden. I should never have let this Thackray into the house otherwise, not if I had been on my own.”

  “You didn’t trust him? He frightened you?”

  “My fears, Mr. Resnick, would not have been for myself, rather for the family silver. As it were. A metaphor. All the good things, unfortunately, had to be sold long ago.”

  “Then it was the paintings, that’s why he was here?”

  “Absolutely. From somewhere, obviously, he had heard about the Dalzeils and presented himself on my doorstep as a serious collector, imagining that I would be this dotty old maid, bereft of her senses thanks to Alzheimer’s disease and happy to let him take them off me for a pittance.”

  Resnick grinned. “You gave him short shrift.”

  “I told him I appreciated his interest but that the paintings were not for sale. That was unconditional.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “Oh, by telling me how much safer they would be in someone else’s hands, how fortunate I had been not to have had them stolen. At my advanced years-he actually said that, Inspector, that phrase, my advanced years indeed-wouldn’t I be more sensible, rather than risk losing them altogether and ending up with nothing, to take what I could get for them and enjoy the proceeds while I was still able.”

  Indignantly, she rattled her cup and saucer down onto the table.

  “When he was saying this, did you get the impression he was threatening you?”