Cold Light cr-6

by John Harvey

  “Oh God!” she said. “It doesn’t seem right. Doing this. Feeling this good. After what’s happened to Nancy. You know what I mean?”

  Her tears had smeared what little makeup remained on her face.

  “We don’t know,” Resnick said, “what’s happened to Nancy. Not for sure.”

  Though in their hearts, they were certain, both of them, that they did.

  “What time is it?” Dana said. In the darkness of the room, she could see that Resnick, between the end of the bed and the door, was fully dressed.

  “A little after two.”

  “And you’re leaving?”

  “I have to.”

  She sat up in bed, the edge of the duvet covering one breast. “Without telling me?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Dana stretched out an arm and Resnick sat on the side of the bed, holding her hand. She stitched her fingers between his.

  “You never did tell me,” she said, “why it was you wanted to see me.”

  “I know. I thought maybe I should leave it to another time.”

  “What was it, though?” She brought his hand to her face and rubbed his knuckles against her cheek.

  “Robin Hidden …”

  “What about him?”

  “I wanted to ask you about him.”

  Dana released his hand and leaned away. “Surely you don’t suspect Robin?”

  Resnick didn’t answer. She could see little more than the outline of his face; impossible to read the expression in his eyes, tell what he was thinking.

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “You know what had happened between them?”

  “Nancy had chucked him, yes. But that doesn’t mean …”

  “He saw her that evening, Christmas Eve …”

  “He couldn’t have.”

  “He went to the hotel, looking for her, just before midnight.”

  “And?”

  Resnick didn’t immediately reply; had said already more than probably he should.

  “And?” Dana said again, touching his hand.

  “Nothing. He saw her and drove away.”

  “Without talking to her?”

  Resnick shrugged. “That’s what he says.”

  “But you don’t believe him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think there was some kind of awful row, Robin lost his temper, and …” Dana had raised her hands as she was talking and now let them fall to her sides.

  “It’s possible,” Resnick said.

  Dana leaned towards him. “You’ve spoken to Robin, though? Talked to him?”

  “Yes?”

  “And you still think he could do something like that? Hurt her? Harm her?”

  “Like I said, it’s possible. It’s …”

  “He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. He’s just not the type. And besides, if you’d seen him with Nancy, you’d know. Whatever she thought of him, he really loved her.”

  Exactly, Resnick thought. “Sometimes,” he said, “that’s enough.”

  “God!” Dana pulled at the duvet and moved away, swiftly to the far side of the bed. “I suppose it’s no surprise, doing what you do, you should be as cynical as you are.” Barefoot, she took a robe from where it was hanging on the open wardrobe door and slipped it around her.

  “Cynical,” Resnick said, “is that what it is? Loving somebody so much you lose all perspective.”

  “Enough to want to hurt them? Or worse? That’s not cynical, it’s sick.”

  “It’s what happens,” said Resnick. “Time and again. It’s what I have to deal with.” He was talking to the open door.

  Dana took a sachet of herbal tea from the packet and hung it over the edge of a freshly rinsed mug. When she pointed at the jar of Gold Blend, Resnick shook his head. “I’ll wait till I get home.”

  “Suit yourself.” Sitting at the table, Dana toyed with a spoon, avoiding Resnick’s eye.

  Resnick was starting to feel more than uncomfortable; he wished he were no longer there, but couldn’t quite bring himself to go. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.

  “I was already upset. What happened, it made me forget it for a while, that’s all.”

  On the narrow shelf, the kettle was coming noisily to the boil. She was still refusing to look at him and still he hovered near the doorway, reluctant to leave. “Their relationship, Nancy and Robin, it was, well, as far as you know, it was sexual?”

  Dana laughed, without humor, more a simple expelling of air than a laugh. “Did I hear the usual groans and gasps through the wall? Why not? She’s an attractive woman; Robin’s athletic, a good body whatever else.”

  “It was passionate, then, between them?”

  She was staring at him now, open faced. “Is that all the proof you need, Charlie? That someone’s capable of passion? Is that enough to tip the scales?”

  “I’ll call you,” Resnick said, stepping back into the hallway.

  If Dana heard him, jinking the sachet in and out of her tea, she gave no sign. Mindful of the hour, Resnick closed the door firmly yet quietly behind him.

  Twenty-four

  What little had been seen of the season of goodwill was soon lost in a fog of malevolence and discontent. Uniformed officers summoned to a night club in the city, after receiving an emergency call claiming that a man had been knifed, walked into a blitz of bottles and bricks, and one hastily assembled petrol bomb was rolled beneath their car. A firefighting team arriving to tackle a blaze in the upper stories of a terraced house two streets away from Gary and Michelle found themselves pelted with rubbish and abuse by a gang of white youths, one of their hoses split by an ax, the tires of an engine slashed. The family living in the house, two of whom suffered broken limbs jumping to the ground while others, children between five years and eighteen months, suffered severe burns, were from Bangladesh.

  At something short of five one morning, a young woman with a Glasgow accent stumbled into the police station at Canning Circus with blood running freely from a wound to the side of her head and one eye tightly closed. She and her boyfriend, a twenty-nine-year-old known to be a small-time dealer, had been smoking crack cocaine in an abandoned house near the Forest; she had drifted off and been woken by the sound of his fists pummeling her face. Medical examination in casualty revealed a fractured cheekbone and a detached retina in the eye.

  The driver of the last bus from the Old Market Square to Bestwood Estate refused to accept the fare of a clearly drunken man who had been offering him verbal abuse and had a piece of masonry thrown at his windscreen, splintering it across. Another taxi driver was attacked, this time with a baseball bat.

  A memo was passed round, offering overtime for officers willing to be drafted in to assist the Mansfield division in policing a concert by right-wing skinhead rock groups to be held in the old Palais de Dance. The event had been advertised in fascist magazines all over Europe and at least two coachloads were expected from Germany and Holland.

  “Sounds like just the thing for our Mark,” Kevin Naylor remarked, passing the memo across the CID room.

  “Knowing him,” Lynn said, “he’ll have his ticket already. Front row.”

  Nancy Phelan’s parents made a ritual of visiting the station twice, sometimes three times a day, demanding to speak with either Resnick or Skelton to find out what progress had been made. Between times, they turned up on one or other of the local radio programs, wrote to the Post, the free papers, the nationals, petitioned the Lord Mayor and the city’s M.P. Clarise Phelan took to standing in front of the stone columns of the Council House at one end of the Market Square with a placard bearing a blown-up photograph of Nancy and underneath, My lovely daughter-missing and nobody cares.

  After forty-eight hours when the temperature had risen high enough for Resnick to discard both scarf and gloves, the weather bit back. It hit freezing and stayed. Trains were cancelled, buses curtailed; cars slid into slow, unstoppable collisions which blocked the
roads for hours. Understaffed, close to overwhelmed, Skelton and Resnick struggled to delegate, prioritize, keep their feet from slipping under them.

  Both of Nancy Phelan’s missing boyfriends returned, shocked by what had happened, but unable to shed any light on how or why. James Guillery was stretchered off the plane at Luton Airport with a broken leg, victim not of the snow but an accident involving the chairlift and a snapped bolt. Eric Capaldi had sped in his low-slung sports car to the outskirts of Copenhagen and back. His aim had been to interview, for a potential radio slot of his own, a fifty-two-year-old percussionist who had been a counter-culture star for fifteen minutes in the late sixties and was now composing minimalist religious music for trans-European radio. After the interview and most of a bottle of brandy and to Eric’s abiding confusion, he had ended up in the percussionist’s arms and then his bed.

  Robin Hidden continued to maintain that he had driven away that night without speaking to Nancy Phelan and had finally issued a statement through his solicitor saying that, as far as that particular subject went, he had nothing more to say.

  As David Welch, smiling for once, had expressed it, handing Graham Millington the envelope, “Put up or shut up, you know what I mean?”

  “Cocky so-and-so,” Millington thought. “Well above himself.” But he and Resnick knew only too well Welch was right. Arrest Hidden as things stood and within twenty-four hours, thirty-six at most, he would be back out on the street again and what would have been gained?

  What did happen, inevitably, was that Harry Phelan got wind of what was going on. A new-found friend of a friend, drinking late one night in his Mansfield Road hotel, had told him one place to find the crime reporter for the Post was in the Blue Bell of a lunchtime, swopping yarns and enjoying a peaceful couple of pints. Next day Harry went along and stood around and by the time he’d bought his round, had heard about the young man the police had been questioning.

  “Where is the bastard?” Harry Phelan had yelled later, catching Skelton coming back from one of his runs to the station. “Why haven’t you bleedin’ arrested him? Just wait till I get my hands on him, that’s all. Just wait.”

  Skelton calmed him down and invited him to his office, tried to explain. “Mr. Phelan, I assure you …”

  “Don’t insult me with that,” Harry Phelan said. “Assure. Look at you. Out there friggin’ about in that poncey gear, joggin’, instead of saving my poor bleedin’ kid! You-you couldn’t assure me of shit!”

  Meanwhile, Reg Cossall and his team had interviewed one hundred and thirty-nine men and forty-three women, thirty-seven of whom had a clear recollection of seeing Nancy on Christmas Eve. Five of the women had spoken to her, eight in all remembered what she had been wearing. Seven of the men, had spoken to her, five had danced with her, two had asked her if they could give her a lift home. She had said no to them both. And both had gone home with someone else.

  As police work went it was painstaking and thorough and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Like farting down an open sewer,” Cossall said, disgusted. “Not worth parting your bloody cheeks.”

  By the time Resnick had arrived home after his night with Dana Matthieson, walking all the way across the city, down beside the cemetery to the gates of the Arboretum, through towards the site of the old Victoria railway station and up past the Muslim temple on the Woodborough Road, he had convinced himself that it had all been a mistake. Enjoyable, yes, exciting even, but certainly a mistake. On both sides.

  Naturally, he reasoned, after what had happened to her flatmate, Dana had been upset, disorientated, looking for comfort and distraction. As for himself-Jesus, Charlie, he said to the empty streets, how long is it since you went with a woman?

  Is that what it had been, then? Only that? Going with a woman?

  Suddenly chilled, he had pulled up his coat collar and shivered, remembering the warmth of Dana’s body.

  And of course, he hadn’t done as he had said, he hadn’t called. For the first couple of days, whenever the phone rang in his office or at home, he had lifted the receiver with the same strange mix of anxiety and anticipation. But it was never her. Easy to stop waiting for it to happen.

  When, finally, three days later, Dana did call, Resnick was talking to Lynn Kellogg about her application for leave, a day accompanying her father to the outpatient department of the Norfolk and Norwich.

  “An endoscopy,” Lynn said, the word unfamiliar on her tongue.

  Resnick looked at her inquiringly.

  “An internal examination. As far as I can tell they pass this thing, this endoscope up into his bowels.”

  Resnick shuddered at the thought.

  Lynn breathed uneasily. “If they suspect cancer, most likely they’ll take a biopsy.”

  “And if it is,” Resnick asked, “what kind of treatment …?”

  “Surgery,” Lynn said. “They cut it out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Resnick said. There were tears, suddenly, at the corners of Lynn’s eyes. “Really sorry.” Part way round his desk towards her he stopped. He wanted to take her in his arms, reassure her with a hug.

  “It’s all right.” Lynn found a tissue and blew her nose, leaving Resnick stranded where he was. Thank God for the phone.

  “Charlie?” said the voice at the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Dana.”

  By then he knew.

  “You didn’t call.”

  “No, I’m sorry. Things have been, well, hectic.” Without meaning to, he caught Lynn’s eye.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Dana said.

  Resnick transferred the receiver from one hand to another, studied the floor.

  “Do you want me to wait outside?” Lynn said.

  Resnick shook his head.

  “I’ve been thinking about your body,” Dana said.

  Resnick, found that hard to believe. He thought about his own body as little as he could and when he did it was usually with dismay.

  “I want to see you, that’s all,” Dana said. “No big deal.”

  “Look,” Lynn was almost at the door, “I can come back later.”

  “Is this a bad time?” Dana said. “Is it difficult for you to talk?”

  “No, it’s fine,” Resnick said, waving Lynn back into the room.

  “When can I see you?” Dana asked.

  “Why don’t we meet for a drink?” Resnick said, as much as anything to get her off the phone.

  “Tomorrow?”

  Resnick couldn’t think. “All right,” he said.

  “Good. Eight o’clock?”

  “Fine.”

  “Why don’t you come here? We can go on somewhere else if you want.”

  “All right. See you then. Bye.” By the time he put down the phone he had started to sweat.

  “First-footing,” Lynn said.

  “What?”

  “You know, tall stranger crosses the threshold with a lump of coal.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “Problem?”

  Only that he’d forgotten it was New Year’s Eve. And now Marian Witczak’s voice came instantly back to him: “We will both wear, Charles, what would you say? Our dancing shoes.”

  “Double-booked?” Lynn asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry I shouldn’t be laughing.” She didn’t seem to be laughing at all.

  “This day’s leave,” Resnick said, “it’ll be tight, but no question you must go. We’ll cover somehow.”

  “Thanks. And good luck.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Dana lit another cigarette, poured herself another drink. She had already had several, finding the courage to phone him when he hadn’t phoned her. And at work. Probably she shouldn’t have done that, probably that had been a mistake. Except he had said yes, hadn’t he? Agreed to come round for a drink. She smiled, raising her glass: he was worth a little seeking out, a little chasing after. She liked
him, the memory of him: big, there was something, she thought, about a man who was big. And she laughed.

  Twenty-five

  Gary was sprawled across the settee wearing his County goalkeeper’s shirt over the top of two pullovers in an attempt to keep warm. He was watching a program about Indonesian cookery and Michelle couldn’t for the life of her see why. The extent of Gary’s cooking in the past few months had been opening a tin of beans and, five minutes later, slopping the contents, lukewarm, over burned toast and then yelling at Karl because he wouldn’t eat it. Beyond that, all Gary knew about cookery was “What’s for dinner?” and “Where’s me tea?”

  Michelle didn’t say anything; knew well enough to let him be.

  Brian’s wife, Josie, had offered to take Karl down to the Forest along with her two and Michelle had leaped at the chance. Natalie had lain, alternately cooing and crying in her cot, some twenty minutes after feeding but now she was quiet. Michelle had wiped round the sink in the kitchen, taken the rubbish out to the bin; for once in his life, Gary had grunted no instead of yes to the offer of a cup of tea and she’d taken her own upstairs to have a sort out, tidy round.

  There were balls of dust collecting at the corners of the stairs.

  In the small room at the back, Natalie was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and one leg poking through the bars of the cot; Michelle took the tiny foot in her hand and slipped it back beneath the covers. So cold! Gently, she touched her lips to the baby’s cheek and that was warm, at least. Leaving the door ajar, she crossed to the other bedroom and shivered: it was like an icewell in there.

  There were two pairs of tights hanging from the end of the bed, one of them laddered almost beyond repair. Gary seemed to have dumped bits and pieces of clothing everywhere, a shirt, pair of boxer shorts, one sock. From the state of the collar, the shirt could just about last out another day, so she hung it back inside the chipboard wardrobe they had got from Family First. Gary’s zip-up jacket, his favorite, stuffed down there on top of the shoes, getting all creased-Michelle bent down to pick it up and that was when the knife fell out.