by John Harvey
“Not exactly. They found him an office the size of a shoe box up at headquarters and gave him bits of paper to push around the desk.”
“You make it sound like occupational therapy.”
Skelton unclasped his hands and set his chair level. “Kinder than kicking him free, a few years short of his pension.”
“And you think he’s right for this?”
“Like I say, it’s a suggestion.”
Resnick remembered Aston, a tall figure with iron-gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses, ramrod straight. As a uniformed inspector, he would run his morning parades with a fine-tooth comb. Buttons smeared with Brasso, creased jackets, dirty shoes—all enough to earn a reprimand at least. Cleanliness and Godliness and the chief constable sitting up there at the Lord’s right hand. Resnick had worked with him after Aston had moved across to CID and found him thorough, painstaking, devoid of imagination. Policing changed and Aston had not. Turning forty, advancement had passed him by. Chief inspector’s posts came and went and he had devoted more and more time to his work as a lay preacher and governor of the local primary school; he had been shuffled aside.
“He’ll do a careful job,” Skelton said. “By the numbers, you know that.”
“He’ll be polite.”
“You’ll have a word with him, make sure he’s primed? You know the family pretty well.”
“Yes, I’ll tell him what I can.”
“Good.” Skelton was on his feet. “Jardine’s objections aside, you’d not really have fancied this yourself.”
“Probably not.”
“Oh, and Charlie …” This when Resnick was almost at the door. “… had a call from your mate, Reg Cossall. Setting up an operation in Radford, undercover. Fraud, theft, dealing. Drugs Squad have got their oar in, too. Wants to know if we can spare a body? Three nights or four. Somehow he’s scared up some overtime.”
Uncertain, Resnick shook his head. “We’re shorthanded as it is, you know that.”
“Charlie, it’s only a couple of nights. Divine’s kind of thing, this, isn’t it?”
Resnick shrugged. “If it’s going to be anyone, better Naylor. Then at least the money might go to good use. Divine’ll drink it away and scarce notice the difference.”
“As you say, Charlie, up to you.” Before Resnick had left the office, Skelton was reaching for the phone.
It was ten to one and Resnick was about to take a bite out of his turkey breast and cranberry sandwich when the officer on duty called up from the front desk. There were two visitors to see him, Norma Snape and her son, Shane. Naturally a big woman, Norma seemed to have suddenly shrunk on her frame. The black dress she wore hung from her shoulders like poorly fitted curtains; her face, previously full, had become gaunt. Darkness around her eyes suggested many tears and little sleep.
Alongside her, Shane was taller than Resnick remembered him, fitter; aside from frequent trips to the betting shop and pool hall, clearly he had been working out. He wore blue loose-fitting jeans and a gray sweatshirt and his fair hair had been zealously trimmed. Standing alongside his mother at the entrance to the CID room, Shane’s eyes fixed on Resnick and dismissed him as so much piss and wind.
“Let’s go into my office.” Resnick held open the door and ushered Norma towards a chair. Shane preferred to stand.
“Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee?”
No reply.
Resnick walked around his desk and sat down, Shane’s eyes following him all the way. “Norma, how’ve you been?”
“How d’you think?” Shane snapped back before his mother could speak.
“And your hand, Norma? How’s your hand?”
“Never mind her bloody hand. That’s not why we’re here.” He stared at Resnick. “My brother was in your charge and he died, that’s why we’re here.”
Resnick eased back his chair and sighed. “Not directly in my charge. The local authority …”
“Bollocks to the local authority! You arrested him.” Shane’s finger jabbing towards Resnick’s face. “You. You’re the one as dragged him out of the house, banged him up in here, got him up in court. And what happened to him, what happened to him, right, that’s down to you too. Your fucking fault!”
His fist was now little more than inches from Resnick’s face. His voice more than filled the room. Millington knocked on the door and entered without waiting to be asked. “Everything okay, boss?”
“Thanks, Graham. Everything’s fine.” Resnick didn’t look at his sergeant, didn’t take his eyes off Shane Snape.
“Right, then. If you’re sure.” Millington slowly withdrew, leaving the door ajar.
Shane and Resnick were staring at each other and neither would look away.
“Shane …” Norma reached up with her bandaged hand and touched her eldest’s arm. “Please.”
With a flex of his muscles, Shane lowered his fist and stepped away. Resnick watched him for ten, fifteen seconds more and then, apparently, dismissed him from his thoughts. “What is there I can tell you, Norma?”
“My Nicky,” Norma said, leaning closer, “never mind what happened to him in the past, no matter how bad he got hurt, he’d always bounce back. Always. Even that time those bastards threw that petrol bomb at him. Nicky, he was laughing and joking about it while he was still in hospital. That’s why I don’t think he would ever have done a thing like that, Mr. Resnick, took his own life. It’s not the way he … not the way he was. Not unless there was good reason, something we don’t know about. Something that happened to him while he was there.”
“Norma, there’ll be an inquiry …” Behind his mother, Shane laughed a short, bitter laugh. “Two. One carried out by social services, and another which we’ll conduct ourselves.”
“Bloody whitewash,” said Shane. “That’s what that’ll sodding be.”
“You, Mr. Resnick,” Norma said, “you’ll be looking into it yourself?”
Resnick shook his head. “A senior officer will lead the team. Very experienced. You couldn’t ask for anyone to be more thorough …”
“But you knew Nicky, really knew him. This bloke, whoever he is …”
“He’s a good man, Norma. I can assure you of that. And I shall be giving him all the help I can.”
A smile showed fleetingly on her face and slipped away. “Nicky’s body, the funeral …”
“We’ll release it as soon as we can. I’ll do my best to find out today and let you know. Okay?”
For a moment, Norma let her head drop forward, eyes closed. Shane started to stay something but Resnick’s quick look told him he had already said enough. Resnick got to his feet and started around the desk to help Norma from her chair, but Shane placed himself in his way.
“Come on, Mum, let’s get out of here.”
Millington stood alongside Resnick, watching them go. “Aggravated burglary, wasn’t it? What he was up for last?”
Resnick nodded. “I believe so.”
“Next time, praise God, someone’ll send him down for a nice long time.”
Resnick turned aside, went back into his office, and closed the door. Untouched, his sandwich waited for him on his desk, but after all the empty words he had offered Norma Snape, his appetite had deserted him. He took hold of the sandwich and dumped it in the bin.
Fifteen
Resnick had a call from Bill Aston late that afternoon. For some minutes they exchanged pleasantries, gossiped about the Job. “Changed a lot since our day, Charlie. Used to be, all you did was put on that uniform, walk into a pub, anywhere in the city, people looked at you with respect. Now they’ll as like spit in your face as ask time of day.” Resnick waited for him to get to the point, smarting a little under the implication: as far as he was concerned, this was his day still.
“Thought we might have a jar, Charlie? Once I’ve got my feet under the table. One or two little things, this Snape youth, background, you could fill me in on.”
“I had the mother here today,” Resnick said. “Doesn’t s
ee Nicky as the suicidal type; not without there was a powerful reason.”
“Only to be expected, given the circumstances. Upset, bound to be. Distraught. Probably shouldn’t give her too much credence in the circumstances.”
“She’s the lad’s mother, Bill, none the less. As a family, I think they were pretty close.”
“If there’s anything nasty in the woodshed, Charlie, I’ll poke it out.”
“I told her you’d do a good job.”
“Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for that. And our little drink some evening?”
“Ring me, Bill. Any time.”
“I will, Charlie. Thanks again.”
As Resnick rode the escalator upstairs in the Victoria Centre he was thinking about what Aston had said. They were near enough of an age for him to recognize what the older man had described, the shifts and slippages of the last twenty years. And what lay ahead? Promotion into the new Serious Crimes Unit, always supposing that memoranda became reality, or a little room of his own at HQ, a rubber stamp with which he could mark out the end of his days?
He stepped off the escalator and walked towards the market, nodding in the direction of the dozen or so elderly Poles who stood in their gray raincoats and shiny shoes, reminiscing about the good old days fifty years or more before. Resnick’s father, had he lived, would have been among them, stooped by now and shrunken, an exile from the country of his childhood, the country of his youth.
Resnick entered the market past the corner music stall where the Tremeloes’ Greatest Hits were permanently on offer at a special marked-down price. Ahead of him, shoppers hesitated before slabs of local cheddar and blue stilton, mushrooms and courgettes, potatoes—reds, whites, and the first Jersey Royals—Granny Smiths from France and New Zealand, strawberries from Israel and Spain, thick-stalked cabbages in lustrous green grown no more than a mile or two up the road. Deeper into the market, incongruously, bottles of perfume could be bought, machine-made Nottingham lace, electrical gizmos and Hoover bags by the dozen, kids’ shirts and jeans for which Council clothing vouchers were gratefully accepted.
Resnick was heading for the Polish deli, where the cheesecake stared back at him like a government health warning, threatening to push him that extra ten pounds over on the scales. The approximate ideal weight for a male with your bodyframe is … Resnick didn’t want to know. He made his purchases—several of the salamis sliced thin, a loaf of crusty rye bread with caraway, sour cream—and carried them over to the Italian coffee stall. Someone had left a Post on the counter and he skimmed through it while waiting for his espresso. Sea fishing gear had been stolen from a shed, thirty-two prize-winning budgies from a garage; a masked burglar had sat comfortably on a seventy-nine-year-old woman’s bed and chatted with her for thirty minutes before making off with her jewelry. He had asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee and when she declined, said he would make her tea instead. It was almost enough to make crime seem cozy, the stuff of Ealing comedies and Dixon of Dock Green. Except that Resnick knew what had happened when Nicky Snape had broken into the Netherfield home, and it hadn’t been a friendly bedside chat, a pot of tea. Doris Netherfield might be stable and responding to treatment, but her condition was still serious; her husband was nursing his injuries at home, and Nicky Snape had been found hanging from a bathroom shower. That was in the paper, too, front page. ALLEGED AGGRESSOR FOUND DEAD. Resnick’s own name was in paragraph three.
Setting down the espresso, the assistant tapped the paper. “Good riddance, no?”
“No. Not at all.”
The assistant shrugged, uncomprehending, took Resnick’s money, and turned away to serve an attractive young mother, well-built, bright-eyed, kids fidgeting on stools at either side of her, taking the occasional kick at one another behind her back. “Cut it out, you two. I’ll not tell you again.” Automatically, Resnick’s eyes went to her left hand, third finger. No dad at home, presumably, whom she could offer as a threat. A good thing or bad? He wasn’t sure.
“Another, Inspector?”
Resnick pushed the empty cup away. “No thanks, not today.”
He was almost out of the market when he saw her, in the center row near the exit, buying flowers.
Hannah Campbell had left her VW in the underground car-park and taken the lift to Tesco’s, where she had compromised her usual healthy purchases with a Sarah Lee ready-baked Pecan Nut Danish Pastry, an impulse for which she had felt more than a twinge of guilt at the checkout. The two bags of groceries she had locked into the boot of her car, before going up to the market for vegetables, salad stuff, and cheese. It was the sign announcing wreaths and floral tributes that stopped her in her tracks.
Of course, what had happened to Nicky—rumors, innuendo, the story imperfectly patched together piece by piece—had been all over the school the entire day. Shock and genuine sympathy in the staff room had been shot through with a malicious righteousness which had made Hannah heave. Smug elegies of the I-told-you-so variety. At least one overheard remark about Nicky’s positive contribution to classroom overcrowding.
Floral tributes and wreaths: Hannah asked the aproned woman in charge of the stall about the price of a bouquet. Lilies, those nice carnations, daffs, they’re lovely this time of the year. Resnick stood at the end of the aisle, watching her, hair falling across her face as she bent forward towards the flowers; if he went to speak to her, what would he say? Far easier to walk away.
He was downstairs, hesitating outside HMV and considering a quick foray through their meager jazz section, when Hannah spotted him.
“Inspector Resnick?”
Seeing her reflection in the shop window, he smiled.
“It sounds silly,” Hannah said when he was facing her, “calling you inspector like that. Like something out of a play. J. B. Priestley. You know, An Inspector Calls.”
Vaguely, Resnick thought that he might. “Charlie, then,” he said.
“That’s your name? Charlie?”
He nodded—“Yes”—and shifted the bag he was carrying from hand to hand.
“Somehow I never think of policemen doing their own shopping.”
“Someone has to.”
“I suppose so.” She smiled. “I know.”
He looked at the flowers she was carrying; didn’t know what more to say. “Well …” A lurch to the left, not really a step away.
“I nearly phoned you,” Hannah said, “earlier today.”
“How come?”
“What happened to Nicky. I just …” She pushed a hand up through her hair and stepped back, almost into a pushchair that was being steered past. “I don’t know, I wanted to talk about it, I suppose.”
“To say what exactly?”
She just smiled, just the eyes this time. “That’s it, I don’t really know. That’s why in the end I didn’t phone.”
“There probably isn’t a great deal I could tell you …”
“No, of course not. I understand.”
“But if …”
“Yes?”
For the first time he smiled, his whole face relaxing into it, opening wide.
“You haven’t got a few minutes now?” Hannah asked.
Resnick shrugged, glanced towards his watch without registering a thing. “Why not?”
She led him to the food court, where they bought cappuccinos in waxed paper cups and carried them towards the raised section of seating at the center. He found it strange to be in the company of this woman he scarcely knew, a good-looking woman, casually but nicely dressed, a large bouquet of flowers in her hand. For no discernible reason, a phrase from “Roseland Shuffle” sprang into Resnick’s head, Lester Young soloing against Basie’s sprightly piano.
“Is this okay?” Hannah asked, looking round.
“Fine.”
She set the flowers down carefully on the seat alongside. “I was going to take them to Nicky’s mother,” she said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“I didn’t realize you knew him that well.”
&nb
sp; “I didn’t. Not really. To be honest I don’t think anyone at the school did, not in the last couple of years anyway. He was scarcely there.” She sipped at her coffee and cradled it in her hands. “It’s awful to say it, but I’d go into my English class, the one Nicky was supposed to be in, and if I saw he wasn’t at his desk I’d be relieved. It’s not that he was disruptive exactly. Not all the time anyway. Mostly, he’d just sit there and let it wash over him. Never say a word. But occasionally he’d latch onto something, some idea of his own, at a complete tangent from what the rest of the class were doing, and keep on and on about it, question after question, till it was all I could do to get the lesson back on track.”
Hannah stopped and drank a little coffee, looked across into Resnick’s patient face, the skin that wrinkled past the corners of his eyes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let that matter. The plan for my precious lesson, I mean. Aim, method, conclusion. Perhaps there were more important things.”
“My guess, by the time he got to you, there’d not have been a great deal you could do.”
Hannah gave a wry smile. “Give me a child until he’s seven, isn’t that what the Jesuits say? Or is it nine? Either way, they’re probably right, don’t you think? Or in your book, are criminals born and not made? Nature or nurture, Charlie, which are you?” Even as she said it, she was surprised at the ease with which she used his name.
He had noticed a green fleck in her right eye, close to the iris, and was trying not to stare. “Some people,” he said, “they’ll engage in criminal behavior no matter what. Maybe it’s psychological, something in their genes, deep in their childhood, who’s to say? But average, run-of-the-mill crime, you just have to look at the figures. Unemployment, housing …” Resnick gestured with the palm of one hand. “… worse those problems are, higher the rate of crime.”
“Tell that to the government,” Hannah said sharply.
Resnick tasted his coffee; despite the paper cup, it was better than he’d thought. “This last election,” he said, “local. How many? Sixteen Conservatives kicked out. For Labour almost a clean sweep. Fifty seats on the council now to one Tory, couple of the other lot. I’ll be interested to see, by the year’s end, how much difference it’s made.”