by Harvey, John
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning I’m not so sure.’
‘The officer you reckon you saw, threw the first stone, you’d recognise him again?’
‘Maybe, aye.’
Resnick shook his head: a bloody mess.
‘Keith Haines around?’ he asked.
‘He was. Little enough he could do, once it had all kicked off.’
‘I’ll get one of my lads to help him take statements. You’ll talk to him, of course, tell him what you told me?’
‘I will . . . not as it’ll do a scrap of good.’
Diane Conway was looking better than Resnick might have feared, sitting up in bed with a pale face and bandaged head, riffling through an old copy of Cosmopolitan.
‘Just had a word with the doctor,’ Resnick said. ‘No fracture. Miracle of miracles.’
‘Get these bandages off, I should be home in a few days, so they reckon. Back at work in no time.’
‘You’ll do no such thing.’
‘I can’t just sit around.’
‘Official letter saying you’re fit to resume. Without that, I don’t want to see hide nor hair, understood? Besides, as far as carrying on’s concerned, after this, I’m afraid your cover’s well and truly blown.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He perched on the end of the bed. ‘Your version of things, we’ll need to have it in writing.’
A little apprehensively, she slid two pages of closely written A4 from between the pages of Cosmo and handed them over.
Resnick read them through once quickly, then a second time more carefully, pausing several times with questions, wanting clarification.
‘You’re certain of this?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘A uniformed officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘And . . .’ He glanced back down at her report. ‘At the time of the incident you were running away from the fighting?’
‘Trying to.’
‘And you were struck with the officer’s baton how many times?’
‘Three, sir. As far as I know. One as I stumbled and then twice more after I’d fallen. After that I must have lost consciousness.’
‘This officer, you’d be able to identify him?’
‘I’m not sure, sir. It was all so fast and until I fell my back was towards him. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay.’
Five days later, Resnick was standing before the operational commander.
‘DC Conway, Charlie. Making a good recovery, by all accounts. No lasting injury?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. Capital. All part of life’s rich pageant, eh? Going in undercover, always going to be a bit tricky. Own dangers. Nothing you won’t have warned them of, I dare say. Nothing, in this case, to tell the officer concerned she was one of ours. Part of stone-throwing mob as far as he was concerned. Avoiding arrest.’
‘He hit her three times, sir, with his baton, three times at least.’
‘Heat of the battle, Charlie. You’ve been there. Heat of the chase.’
‘A young woman, sir, unprotected, running away.’
‘Equal rights, eh, Charlie. You’re for all that, I’d have supposed. No special treatment asked for or given.’
‘Use of force, above and beyond—’
‘Charlie, Charlie. These things happen. Collateral damage. Write it off. Am I making myself clear?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘Good. And there’s no sense she’s about to do something stupid like make an official complaint of assault?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Excellent. Keep it all in-house.’
Resnick took a breath. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
‘All for now.’
He was almost at the door when the commander called him back.
‘This other business in your report, this allegation about an officer deliberately setting things in motion, acting as an agent provocateur – let’s kick that out of touch here and now. Storybook stuff, Charlie. Someone with an overactive imagination. There might be a few wild cards from outside, but none of them are going to go that far, I’m sure. Why would they? Scargill’s mob, out there flinging missiles enough of their own.’
23
MARY CONNOR’S CALL reached Catherine Njoroge just as she was leaving the ring road and heading out towards the motorway. Instead of meeting in Chesterfield, as arranged, could they meet in Nottingham instead? She had come down the evening before to visit an old school friend and ended up staying over. She hoped she’d caught Catherine in time, wasn’t putting her to any trouble.
Catherine assured her it would be fine. Where was she staying?
West Bridgford? Yes, she knew West Bridgford. The park off Central Avenue, by the new library? Of course. They could always nip in somewhere for coffee if it rained.
Mary was sitting on a bench by one of the municipal flower beds when Catherine arrived. Clouds of varying grey overhead, the sun yet to break through; the temperature, as usual lately, five degrees below the notional average. She was wearing a waterproof jacket, zipped up almost to the collar; blue jeans, faded and well worn; shoes that could have doubled for walking boots if need be. Her face was pale, dark lines around the eyes, shadow.
‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said, once Catherine had joined her. ‘I’m still a little hungover this morning. My friend and I, too much wine last night. Reminiscing.’
‘You’ve known her a long time?’
‘Since infant school, just about.’
‘She’s from Bledwell Vale, then?’
‘Not really. Her mum was a teacher, at the school. Brought Nicky – that’s her name – in with her every day. Retford, that’s where they lived.’
‘But you were close, even though her mum was the teacher, you and Nicky?’
‘More so as we got older.’ Mary smiled, remembering. ‘I say older. Eight or nine, that’s what I mean. Just kids, really. Nicky would come round mine after school to play. Her mum would pick her up later, after she’d finished all her marking, preparing lessons, whatever it was she had to do.’
‘Eight or nine,’ Catherine said. ‘That’s around the time your mum . . . around the time she disappeared.’
‘Four days before Christmas.’ Mary shook her head. ‘That song, you know, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me. For me, it’s a little different. On the fourth day of Christmas my mother disappeared from the face of God’s earth.’
Hands to her face, she lowered her head towards the ground.
Catherine could tell she was crying; rested a comforting hand on her shoulder; left it there, slowly moved it away. Gradually, the crying stopped.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No? No, I suppose not. It’s not possible, is it, any other way?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Would you rather go somewhere?’ Catherine looked back towards Central Avenue. ‘A cup of coffee?’
‘No. No, thanks. I’d sooner stay out here. No one to see me if I start blubbing.’
Catherine’s mobile started to ring and she slipped it from her pocket, checked the caller ID and declined the call.
‘Go ahead and take it if you want,’ Mary said.
‘Not important.’
‘They’re a curse, aren’t they? Mobile phones. Blessing and a curse. Out where we live there isn’t any signal, of course. You have to drive the best part of a mile, get out on to this little hill and wave it around in the air.’
Catherine was reaching for her bag. ‘D’you mind if I have a cigarette?’
‘Not at all. I was a fearful smoker till Kevin was born. Even when I was carrying him, you know, I’d still have the odd one or two. His dad reckons it’s why Kevin’s such a bag of bones. Not a bit of flesh on him.’
‘And you? You think that’s why it is?’
‘Not at all. He won’t eat a decent meal
, that’s what it comes down to. Pushes his food around the plate and scarcely eats a thing. Fussy doesn’t come into it. His sister scoffs down twice what he does and she’s not but a slip of a thing herself. Maybe it’s in the whatever . . . the genes . . . that’s what it is.’
Catherine held the smoke down in her lungs, releasing it slowly into the air. A crocodile of small children was making its way along the path towards the library entrance, all, save the last few, holding hands.
‘Sweet, aren’t they?’ Mary said.
Catherine nodded.
‘You’ve not children of your own?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘No, not really.’ Mary’s face creased into a smile. ‘Well, maybe just a little. Smart, professional. Dedicated, I dare say, to your job.’
Catherine’s turn to smile. ‘You left out strident, sexless, feminist, probably gay.’
‘I didn’t think you were that.’
‘Which?’
‘Gay.’
‘People do. Even now. They assume. Career police officer, female. Lesbian, got to be.’
A mischievous smile came to Mary’s face. ‘I catch myself wishing sometimes I could’ve been a bit more that way inclined. Save an awful lot of trouble, wouldn’t it now? Men, for one thing. Babies, breastfeeding, nappies.’
‘Not so much the babies. Gay friends I know, they spend more time and energy trying to get pregnant than anything.’
‘Instead of the old quick shag, you mean?’
Catherine laughed. ‘Most cases, likely not an option.’
‘Not even with their eyes closed.’
Catherine laughed again.
‘I don’t know why I’m talking like this,’ Mary said. ‘Must still be the effect of the wine.’
A woman shuffled past leading a small dog, its stomach almost brushing the ground.
‘You know I have to ask you,’ Catherine said. ‘When Jenny – when your mother – disappeared, what did you think had happened?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘I thought my father – I know I shouldn’t say this, shouldn’t even think it – but I thought, you know, that he’d . . . I don’t know how to say it . . .’
‘That he’d killed her?’
‘Oh, Lord, no, not that. That somehow he’d driven her away.’
‘You don’t mean literally, literally driven . . .’
‘No, of course not. I mean forced her, I suppose, forced her to go.’
‘Can you explain?’
‘It was tense, you know? Towards the end. Those last few months. At least, that’s how it seemed. How I remember it now. Long periods of silence, nobody speaking, and then, once in a while, this awful shouting. The house suddenly full of shouting. And anger. He’d get so angry then, my dad. They both would. And it would get to the point where one of them would break something, just a cup or something, smash it, you know, on the table, throw it on the floor, and then one of them, my mum usually, would go slamming out the door.
‘That’s right, he’d say, shouting after her, go on, get out and don’t come back. And he’d swear and I’d start crying and that would only make things worse. Brian and me – he was the youngest – we’d both be crying.’
‘Not Colin?’
‘Colin always took my dad’s side against my mother. If ever there was an argument and we were there and afterwards she tried to say it would be okay, tried to say she was sorry, he just wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t let her touch him or anything. Told her he hated her, more than the once. You don’t mean that, Colin, she’d say. You don’t mean that. But I think he did.’
Catherine stubbed out her cigarette. Angled above the trees, the sun was just beginning to leak through the grey.
‘So you thought,’ she said, ‘that your dad had told her to go and not come back once too often?’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘But you thought she would come back eventually?’
‘Yes. Of course. I always, always thought that. Or that there’d be a letter, a phone call, something.’
She was crying again, not bothering to hide it this time, and when Catherine reached out for her hand she pulled it away.
‘It’s all right, I’m all right, I’m . . .’ She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose, brushed the tears from her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry to put you through this,’ Catherine said, ‘but there’s just one more thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘When you thought your mum had taken your father at his word and gone, did you ever think she might have gone with somebody else?’
‘Another man, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Later, maybe. When, you know, I was older. But at the time, no, I don’t think I ever did.’
‘And when you thought, later on like you said, that perhaps it was a possibility, was there anyone in particular you thought it might have been?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘That wasn’t one of the things they argued about?’
‘Mum seeing someone else? No. It was always the strike, the Welfare, the soup kitchen, all the time she was spending with all of that. Time he thought she should have been spending at home. With him. With us. Your kids, he’d say, my dad, your so-and-so kids, it’s a wonder they still know who you so-and-so are.’
‘And did you feel that? That your mum was perhaps ignoring you?’
Mary hesitated before answering. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I did.’
Catherine walked with her to the edge of the park; brighter now – the sun had really broken through.
‘What time’s your flight?’ Catherine asked.
‘Not till this afternoon.’
‘You’ll be glad to be home.’
‘Yes, I will. But you’ll keep in touch? If you find out what . . . what happened, you’ll let me know?’
‘You and the rest of the family, as soon as ever we have something definite, yes, of course.’
‘Thank you.’
Mary forced a smile and Catherine found herself wanting to reach out and give her a parting hug but instead kept her hands by her sides.
‘Just one more thing,’ she said. ‘Your friend, Nicky, if you could let me have an address? It’s just possible we might want to talk to her – fill in some background, someone else who knew the family back then . . .’
‘Why not?’ Mary said. ‘I’m sure Nicky wouldn’t mind. And, after all, it can’t do any harm.’
24
ALL PAUL BRYANT wanted to talk about, at first anyway, was the VW T25 camper van he’d picked up second-hand. ‘Good as new, Charlie, no more than fifteen thousand miles on the clock. And a real beauty.’
Patient, Resnick allowed himself to be led through a litany of features that seemed to run from professionally lowered suspension and Porsche Fuchs aluminum wheels to an extra-long hook-up cable for campsite use and a twin gas hob and grill.
It had been late afternoon, shading into evening, when Resnick had arrived at the bungalow where Paul Bryant and his wife, Barbara, lived, some five miles outside Sheffield, not far from Hathersage and the Dark Peak. The van was parked ceremoniously out front, dwarfing the flower beds to either side.
‘All you have to do, Charlie,’ Barbara Bryant said, ‘nod your head every so often and throw in the occasional grunt of appreciation. Sooner or later he’ll wind down and you can talk about normal stuff like football or the price of a pint.’
One of the few police marriages Resnick knew that had survived; that it had was due in no small measure to Barbara’s straight talking, sense of humour and innate good sense. A youngish PC when she and Paul had met, once she had realised things were going to become serious between them, she had left the force and retrained as a nurse. Just two months ago, she had retired from her post as senior sister in the neonatal unit at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. Resnick had met her no more than half a dozen times over the years and on each occasion found her mo
re impressive than before.
‘Not so long now, Charlie,’ Paul Bryant said, settling into an armchair, ‘and we’re off down to Spain. Break the journey going down through France, bit of time in the Camargue, and then it’s the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.’
Across the room, Barbara raised an eyebrow and kept her own counsel.
‘What about you, Charlie?’ Bryant asked. ‘Got to kick it all into touch one day. What then?’
Resnick gestured with open hands. Who knows?
‘Charlie,’ Barbara said, sitting forward, ‘what happened to Lynn, I’ve not seen you since then. I’m really sorry. It must have been awful, an awful thing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And hard to move on.’
‘Yes.’
‘But we do. And you’ll stay to supper, Charlie. Lamb. I can’t imagine you’ve gone vegetarian. If Paul can prise himself up out of that chair, there’s beer in the kitchen. Or tea, if you’d rather.’
He opted for beer. Oldershaw Great Expectations from Lincolnshire.
‘Not entirely a social call,’ Bryant said. ‘That’s what you said when you rang.’
Resnick nodded. ‘Donna Crowder, eighty-seven. You were what, number two in that investigation?’
‘Yes. Rawsthorne, the late lamented, was SIO.’
Succinctly as he could, Resnick filled him in on the details of Jenny Hardwick’s murder; told him about Trevor Fleetwood and his assumptions, linking the two crimes together.
Bryant listened with interest, belatedly snapped the cap from his bottle of beer. ‘Michael Swann, there’s nothing to suggest – other than what Fleetwood says – that he might have been responsible?’
Resnick shook his head. ‘Not so far.’
‘Swann’s victims, as I remember, they were all sexually assaulted prior to being killed?’
‘Yes.’
‘All attacked in the same way?
‘With escalating severity, yes.’
‘Whereas in Donna Crowder’s case there were no signs of sexual assault at all.’
‘To which Fleetwood would doubtless say he was building up to it, becoming bolder, more excited, less in control.’