by John Harvey
She lifted Sting off the stereo, settled Dire Straits in his place, and crossed to Nancy’s room. When she opened the door, the silver crochet top that Nancy had been wearing Christmas Eve was on a hanger hooked outside the wardrobe door, the short black skirt had been folded neatly across the back of a chair, her silver-gray tights were draped over the wardrobe mirror, and her leather boots were in the middle of the floor.
Cold clung to Dana’s arms and neck like a second skin.
Thirty
There was a clean suit he’d found, charcoal gray with a narrow red stripe, still in its plastic cover from the cleaner’s; a light blue shirt that didn’t need too much ironing and missing only one button from its cuffs. Near the back of the drawer Resnick found the dark blue tie that Marian had given him in desperation for a similar function two years before. Maybe three. When Resnick held it under the light there were faint spatterings of what was probably bortsch, dried into the fabric, and he scraped at these, more or less successfully, with his thumb.
Already it was ten past eight and the cab he’d ordered for a quarter to still hadn’t arrived: New Year’s Eve. Bud was nudging round his feet and he bent to scoop the small cat into the air and carried it across the room, nuzzled against his cheek. The battered album cover on the table showed a smiling Thelonious Monk waving from the back of a San Francisco tram. Scratched and worn, the pianist was noodling his way through “You Took the Words Right Out of My Heart.” Resnick remembered buying it on the way back from watching County lose a two-goal lead in the last five minutes of a game; winter it had been, frost that had never left the railings, and cups of Bovril at half-time, gripped tight to let the warmth seep into his hands. Sixty-nine? Seventy? Resnick had taken it home and played it, both sides, beginning to end, then through again, fascinated. Only the second or third Monk LP that he had owned.
He was about to call the cab company and complain when he heard the taxi draw up outside; he switched off the stereo, switched off the light, picked up his topcoat in the hail, patted his pocket for his keys. One foot into the chill night and the phone was calling him back.
“When?” he asked, interrupting abruptly. “When was this?”
The duty officer told him what she knew.
“All right,” Resnick said, interrupting again. “Make sure scene of crime have been alerted. Contact Graham Millington, tell him to meet me there. I’m on my way.”
Dana’s first instinct, after phoning the police, had been to run. Get herself out of the flat, anywhere outside, lock the doors, and wait. She had asked first for Resnick by name; being told that he was no longer there, she had explained as carefully as she could; no ordinary intrusion, no ordinary burglary. Fortunately, the officer she had spoken to had been sufficiently quick-witted to make the connections Dana left implicit.
“Please, whatever you do,” the officer had said, trying not to alarm Dana any more than she was already, “don’t touch anything.”
She felt foolish standing out in the hall, exposed in the street; after no more than a few minutes, she let herself back into the flat and tried not to keep staring at the clock. She had touched the wine bottle and her glass enough times already and, anyway, she didn’t think the police would be interested in those; pouring herself a drink, for the first time in ages she found herself craving a cigarette. Her hand shook as she brought the glass to her mouth and wine tipped over wrist and fingers, darkened the sleeve of her apple green shirt.
“God,” she said to the wails, “now I’m becoming a sloppy drunk.”
And all, she thought, well before my fortieth birthday. Reaching out to steady herself, she sat carefully down. Nancy was as many years short of thirty. Dana sighed. She had struggled to understand the implications of what had happened and then she had struggled not to. She put down the wine and looked at her watch.
There were two police cars there when Resnick arrived, successfully blocking his cab’s progress along Newcastle Drive. He wasted no time telling them to repark, ordered the one whose lights were still flashing to turn them off. Millington had got there a few minutes before him and was standing close against the entrance to the flat, earnestly talking to the officer in charge of the scene of crime team. Leaving them to it, Resnick walked quickly past.
Dana was in the center of the living room, standing, hands down by her sides. As soon as she saw Resnick she pitched against him and he caught her like he had before, only this time the circumstances were different; there were three plain-clothes men in the room readying cameras and other equipment, and all Resnick could do was hold her while she cried. Two of the men winked at one another and then they kept their eyes averted and got on with their job. The items of clothing that had reappeared would be photographed in place and then tagged and bagged for special attention, after which the rest of the flat would be dusted for prints, pored over for fibers, anything which didn’t belong. Nancy’s room and the door to the flat were prime targets, entrance and exit; however careful people tried to be, it was unusual to leave no trace. The problem would be making that trace count.
“Want me to give Lynn a ring?” Millington said at Resnick’s shoulder, eyeing the way Dana was continuing to clutch hold of him. “Bring her in to give a hand?”
“No need,” Resnick said. “Not now. She’s enough on her plate as it is.”
He spoke quietly to Dana, mouth close against her hair, and when she lifted her face towards him, he led her into the kitchen and helped her to sit down.
“Will you be okay for a minute? I ought to take a look.”
She fashioned a smile and nodded.
“I’ll be right back,” Resnick said.
He left her there and joined Millington in the doorway to Nancy’s room. From where it was still hanging outside the wardrobe, the silver top caught the flash from a camera and spun it back into Resnick’s eyes.
“How’s it been? You been having a good time?”
Long legs, a sequined silver bag, a smile.
“Well, Merry Christmas, once again. Happy New Year.”
Skirt, top, boots, tights. The skin along Resnick’s arms burned cold. “Any sign of a bag?” he asked.
“What kind?”
“So big.” He made a shape, the size of a hardback book, with his hands. “Not everyday, fancy. Silver sequins on both sides.”
“Dress bag, then.”
“If that’s what they’re called.”
“Matching the top.”
“More or less, yes.”
The scene of crime officer shook his head. “Not so far.”
Resnick asked Dana if she’d seen Nancy’s bag and she said no. The flat would have to be searched anyway, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and if it were anywhere it would be found.
“I’m going to get changed out of this,” Dana said, indicating the button-through skirt, the shiny green shirt. “I feel stupid.”
“You look fine.”
“I’m going to change anyway.”
She came back out of the bedroom wearing blue jeans and a loose white sweater, blue canvas shoes on her feet. Her hair she’d tied back with a strip of patterned cloth.
“It couldn’t have been Nancy, could it?” she asked. “Brought them back herself?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“Not likely.”
“No.”
“Then it was him.”
Resnick looked at her.
“Whoever she went off with. Whoever took her away. He was here in this flat.” Fear shivered, alive, across her eyes.
One of the scene of crime team came towards them and Resnick turned aside to speak to him.
“No sign of forced entry. Not anywhere. Most likely used a key.”
Resnick nodded. Nancy’s key would have been in the missing bag.
“Why would he do this?” Dana asked, as the officer walked away. “Why go to all this trouble? What’s the point?”
“I don’t know,” Resnick said. “Not yet. Not for certain.”
Outside, officers were knocking on doors, ringing bells, beginning to talk to neighbors, those who were still home, asking if they had noticed anything unusual, seen anyone they hadn’t recognized coming into the building, hanging about outside. Dana had been out of the flat from mid-morning until early evening; whoever had brought Nancy’s things into the flat could have done so at any point during that time. Not so far short of eight hours.
Resnick was thinking again about Nancy’s clothing, what had been returned. “How about underwear,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what she might have been wearing?”
“You mean, exactly?”
“Yes.”
Dana shook her head. “Not really.” She shrugged. “Something nice.”
“When they’re through in there, would you mind taking a look? Through the drawers. Wherever she kept things like that. You might just notice something, you never know.”
“Of course.”
“Is it okay,” Resnick asked, “if I use your phone?”
“Go ahead.”
As he dialed the number he looked back to where Dana was now sitting on the arm of the settee, hands on her thighs, wide pale face close again to tears.
Alice Skelton had been waging a silent war of attrition throughout the evening, pointedly ignoring her husband in front of the two couples who were their guests. By the start of the main course, she was well on the way to being drunk and had taken to insulting him openly.
“Jack, here,” she proclaimed, passing the redcurrant jelly, “was the man for whom the term anally retentive was invented.”
Skelton disappeared to fetch some more wine. His guests wished they could do the same.
When the phone rang a little while later, Skelton was on his feet before the second ring, praying it was for him.
“It’s probably her,” Alice’s taunt chased him from the room. “The ice maiden. Wishing you a happy New Year.”
It wasn’t; it was Resnick. Skelton listened for long enough, then told Resnick to meet him at the station as soon as he could finish up where he was.
“Something urgent?” Alice mocked. “Something they can’t possibly handle without you?”
Skelton apologized to their guests and headed for the door.
“Give her my love,” Alice shouted after him. And quietly, into the aubergine parmigiana, “The stuck-up bitch!”
“Is there anywhere you can stay?” Resnick asked. “For tonight, at least.”
“You don’t think he’ll come back?”
“No. No reason to think so, none at all. If you were really worried we could leave a man outside. I just thought you’d feel more comfortable somewhere else, that was all.”
Dana was leaning forward slightly, looking into his eyes. “I couldn’t stay with you?”
Resnick glanced around the room to see if anyone had overheard. “In the circumstances, best not.”
“All right,” Dana said. Clearly, it was not.
“Surely there’s a friend you could go to?”
“If I did stay here,” Dana persisted, “would you come back? Later?”
Resnick thought about Marian at the Polish Club, counting down the hours till midnight; thought about other things. “I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t promise. Probably not.”
Dana reached for the address book near to the phone. “I’ll find someone,” she said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“D’you want to let me have the number?” Resnick asked. “Where you’ll be.”
“There isn’t a lot of point, is there?” Dana said. He touched her arm, just below the sleeve of her sweater, and goosebumps rose to meet his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s worked out like this.”
She was just smiling, grudging, wary, as Millington approached.
“Hang on here, Graham,” Resnick said. “Make sure nothing gets missed. And see Miss Matthieson’s taken wherever she wants to go. I’m off in to see the old man.”
He paused in the doorway and glanced back inside the flat, but Dana had already moved from sight, back into her room.
Thirty-one
The station was different at night, quieter yet more intense. The blood that had been splashed across the steps and the entrance hall was fresh blood, so bright beneath the overhead lights that it glowed. A sudden shout from the cells aside, voices were muted; footsteps along the corridors, up and down the stairs, were muffled. Only the telephones, sharp and demanding, retained their shrillness.
Skelton surprised Resnick by not being in his own office, but in the CID room, standing over by the far wall in front of the large map of the city. He was wearing a dark blazer and light-gray trousers instead of the normal suit. Unusually, the top button of his shirt had been unfastened above the knot of his tie. He didn’t speak as Resnick walked in and when he did, instead of making a remark about what had happened, he said, “Since you and Elaine were divorced, Charlie, d’you ever catch yourself wishing you’d married again?”
Taken aback, uncertain how to respond, Resnick went over to where the kettle stood on a tray, lifted it up to check there was enough water inside, and switched it on at the wall.
Skelton was looking at him still, waiting for an answer.
“Sometimes,” Resnick finally said.
“I’ll be honest,” Skelton said. “Living the way you do, on your own, I thought you were a miserable bugger. Night after night, going back to that place alone. Last thing I reckoned I’d want to be, living like that.”
“Tea?” Resnick said.
Skelton shook his head and Resnick dropped a single tea bag into the least stained of the mugs.
“You get used to it, I suppose,” Skelton said. “Accommodate. Learn to appreciate the advantages. After a while, it must be difficult to live any other way.”
There were footsteps in the corridor outside and Resnick turned to watch Helen Siddons push open the door and walk in. Whichever occasion she had been called from had scarcely been informal. Her hair had been pinned up high and she was wearing a dress not unlike the one Resnick remembered from Christmas Eve, except this was blue, so pale it seemed almost all the color had leaked out of it. Somewhere along the way she had changed into flat shoes and the raincoat round her shoulders could have been a man’s.
“I asked Helen to join us,” Skelton said. “Her experience might be useful here.”
What experience? Resnick caught himself thinking. “Kettle just this second boiled,” he said. “If you want some tea.”
“When Helen was on secondment to Bristol and Avon she was involved in that Susan Rogel business, you remember?”
Something about a woman whose car was found abandoned on the Mendip Hills, somewhere between Bath and Wells. No signs of a struggle, no note, nothing to explain the disappearance; if there had been foul play, no body had been found to substantiate it, no evidence either.
“I thought the suggestion was she’d taken off of her own accord,” Resnick said. “Wasn’t there some kind of affair that had got out of hand?”
Helen Siddons drew a chair out from one of the desks and Skelton moved to help with her coat. “She’d become involved with her husband’s business partner,” Helen said. “They ran an antiques business, branches all over the south west.” She took a cigarette from a case in her bag and Resnick half expected Skelton to lean over and offer her a light but he allowed her to do it for herself. “Seems that the husband knew what was going on, had done for some while, but hadn’t said anything as the business was in a pretty shaky state and he didn’t want to rock the boat any more than it was already.” She arched back her long neck and released smoke towards the ceiling. Skelton was staring at her like a man transfixed. “When it became clear they were going to go bust anyway, he gave his wife an ultimatum. Stop seeing him or I want a divorce. The wife, Susan, she would have
been happy to jump the other way but faced with the possibility her lover backed off. Preferred to carry on sneaking around, didn’t want to get married and make it all respectable, settle down.” It was the slightest of glances towards Skelton, probably no more than coincidental. “All this had made Susan ill, she’d seen a doctor, was taking all kinds of pills for stress, depression, whatever. There’s a suggestion, unproven, that she made at least one attempt on her own life. We do know that on more than one occasion she told a girl friend that she couldn’t be doing with either man any more. She just wanted to get out.”
“So she staged this business with the car as a red herring and headed for Spain or wherever?” Resnick asked. “That’s the assumption?”
Helen tapped ash into the metal waste-bin near her feet. “A lot of the evidence pointed that way. There was a suitcase and clothes missing from home and her passport wasn’t found. But I never believed it.”
“Why not?”
Behind blue-gray smoke, Helen Siddons smiled. “Because of the ransom demand.”
If she hadn’t had all of Resnick’s interest before, she had it now. “I don’t remember anything about a ransom,” he said.
“We asked for a media blackout and got it.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening here?” Resnick asked. “With Nancy Phelan? Ransom?”
Helen Siddons took her time. “Of course,” she said. “Don’t you?”
Half an hour had passed. More. From somewhere Jack Skelton had magicked a half-bottle of Teacher’s and they were drinking it from thick china mugs. Somehow the clock slipped past midnight without any of them noticing and no toasts were offered up. Ash sprinkled here and there down the pale blue of Helen Siddons’ dress as she talked.
Painstakingly, she took them through the Rogel case, stage by stage. When the first ransom note had been delivered, pushed through the door of the missing woman’s parents’ house in the early hours of the morning, it had gone unnoticed for the best part of a day, the envelope pushed between a pile of old newspapers and unsolicited catalogs. When a follow-up phone call was made, at four o’clock that afternoon, Susan Rogel’s mother had had no idea what it was referring to, took it as some kind of sick joke and hung up. By the time the second call came through, though, they’d found the note. It was asking for twenty thousand pounds in used notes.