Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  Straightening, Resnick glanced at his watch. Three forty-five. Little over half an hour since the call had come through. Soon there would be arc lights, a generator, yellow tape, officers in coveralls searching the ground on hands and knees. As Anil Khan, crouching, shot off the first of many Polaroids, Resnick stepped aside. The broad expanse of the Forest rose behind them, broken by a ragged line of trees. The city’s orange glow.

  “The woman as called it in,” Millington said, at his shoulder. “You’ll likely want a word.”

  She was standing some thirty metres off, where the scrub of grass and the gravel of the parking area merged.

  “A wonder she stayed around,” Resnick said.

  Millington nodded and lit a cigarette.

  She was tall, taller than average, dark hair that at closer range was reddish-brown, brown leather boots which stopped below the knee, a sheepskin coat she pulled across herself protectively as Resnick came near. A full mouth from which most of the lipstick had been worn away, eyes like sea water, bluey-green. The fingers holding her coat close were raw with cold.

  Still Resnick did not recognise her until she had fumbled in her pockets for a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, the flame small yet sudden, flaring before her eyes.

  “Eileen? Terry’s Eileen?”

  She looked at him then. “Not any more.”

  It had been two years, almost to the day, since the last time he had seen her, trapped out in widow’s weeds. Since then, the seepage that had followed Terry Cooke’s funeral had submerged her from Resnick’s sight. Cooke, a medium-range chancer who had punched his weight but rarely more – aggravated burglary, the occasional lorry hi-jack, once a pay roll robbery of almost splendid audacity – and who had ended his own life with a bullet through the brain, administered while Eileen lay in bed alongside him.

  “You found her.” Resnick’s head nodded back in the direction of the corpse.

  As a question, it didn’t require answer.

  “How come?”

  “She was there, wasn’t she? Lyin’ there. I almost fell over her.”

  “I mean, three in the morning, how come you were here? On the Forest?”

  “How d’you think?”

  Resnick looked at her, waiting.

  She gouged the heel of her boot into the frozen ground. “Business. What else?”

  “Christ, Eileen.”

  “I was here doin’ business.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Why should you?” For the space of seconds, she looked back at him accusingly.

  Resnick had talked to her several times in the weeks before Terry Cooke had died, Eileen seeking a way out of the relationship but too scared to make the move. And Resnick listening sympathetically, hoping she would give him an angle, a way of breaking through Cooke’s camouflage and alibis. Give him up, Eileen. Give us something we can use. Once he’s inside, he’ll not be able to reach you, do you any harm. In the end, Resnick had thought, the only harm Cooke had done had been to himself. Now, looking at Eileen, he was less sure.

  “I’m sorry,” Resnick said.

  “Why the hell should you be sorry?”

  He shrugged, heavy shouldered. If he knew why he couldn’t explain. Behind, the sound of transport pulling off the road, reinforcements arriving.

  “When you first knew me, Terry too, I was stripping, right? This in’t so very different.” They both knew that wasn’t so. “Besides, get to my age, those kind of jobs, prime ones, they can get few and far between.”

  She was what, Resnick thought, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Shy of thirty, to be sure. “You’d best tell me what happened,” he said.

  Eileen lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last. “This punter, he said he weren’t going to use a condom, couldn’t understand why an extra twenty didn’t see it right. Chucked me out and drove off. I was walking up on to Forest Road, thought I might pick up a cab, go back into town. Which was when I saw her. Ducked through that first lot of bushes and there she was.”

  “You could have carried on walking,” Resnick said. “Skirted round.” At his back, he could hear Millington’s voice, organising the troops.

  “Not once I’d seen her.”

  “So you called it in.”

  “Had my mobile. Didn’t take but a minute.”

  “You could have left her then.”

  “No, I couldn’t.” Her eyes fastened on his, challenging.

  The pathologist was driving slowly across the pitted surface towards them, mindful of the paint work on his new Volvo.

  “I’ll get someone to take you to the station,” Resnick said. “Get a statement. No sense you freezing out here any more than you have to.”

  Already he was turning away.

  The dead woman was scarcely that: a girl, mid-teens. Below medium height and underweight; scars, some possibly self-inflicted, to her legs and arms; bruising across the buttocks and around the neck. The thin cotton of her dress was stuck to her chest with blood. Scratches to exposed parts of the body suggested that she could have been attacked elsewhere then dragged to the spot where she was found and dumped. No bag or purse nor any other article she might have been carrying had been discovered so far. Preliminary examination suggested she had been dead not less than twenty-four hours, possibly more. Further tests on her body and clothing were being carried out.

  Officers would be out on the streets around Hyson Green and the Forest with hastily reproduced photographs, talking to prostitutes plying their trade, stopping cars, knocking on doors. Others would be checking missing persons on the computer, contacting social services, those responsible for the care and custody of juveniles. If no one had come forward with an identification by the end of the day, public relations would release a picture to the press for the morning editions, push for the maximum publicity on local radio and TV.

  In his office, Resnick eased a now lukewarm mug of coffee aside and reached again for the transcript of Lynn Kellogg’s interview with Eileen. As a document in a murder investigation it was unlikely to set the pulses racing; Eileen’s responses rarely rose above the monosyllabic, her description of van driver generalised, while Lynn’s questioning, for once, was little more than routine.

  In the CID room, Lynn Kellogg’s head was just visible over the top of her VDU. Resnick waited until she had saved what was on the screen and dropped the transcript down on her desk.

  “You didn’t get on, you and Eileen.”

  “Were we supposed to?”

  “You didn’t like her.”

  “What was to like?”

  A suggestion of a smile showed on Resnick’s face. “She dialled 999. Hung around. Agreed to make a statement.”

  “Which was next to useless.”

  “Agreed.”

  Lynn touched her index finger to the keyboard and the image on the screen disappeared. “I’m sorry, sir, but what exactly’s your point?”

  “I’m just wondering if we’ve missed something, that’s all.”

  “You want me to talk to her again?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Lynn’s eyes narrowed perceptibly. “I see.”

  “I mean, if she sensed you didn’t like her . . .”

  “Whereas she might open up to you.”

  “It’s possible.”

  With a slow shake of the head, Lynn flipped back through the pages of her notebook for the address and copied it on to a fresh sheet, which Resnick glanced at quickly before folding down into the breast pocket of his suit.

  “She’s a tart, sir. A whore.”

  If, on his way to the door, Resnick heard her, he gave no sign.

  It was a two-up, two-down off the Hucknall Road, opening into the living room directly off the street: one of those old staples of inner city living that are gradually being bulldozed from sight, some would say good riddance, to be replaced by mazes of neat little semis with miniature gardens and brightly painted doors.

  Eileen answered the bell in jeans and a baggy sweat shi
rt, hair tied back, no trace of make-up on her face.

  “Lost?” she asked caustically.

  “I hope not.”

  She stood back and motioned him inside. The room was neat and comfortably furnished, a framed photograph of herself and Terry on the tiled mantelpiece, some sunny day in both their pasts. Set into the old fireplace, a gas fire was going full blast; the television playing soundlessly, racing from somewhere, Newmarket or Uttoxeter, hard going under leaden skies.

  “Nice,” Resnick said, looking round.

  “But not what you’ d’ve expected.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Terry, leaving me half of everything. You’d have reckoned something posh, Burton Joyce at least.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yes, well half of everything proved to be half of nothing much. Terry, bless him, all over. And by the time that family of his had come scrounging round, to say nothing of all his mates, Frankie Farmer and the rest, oh, Terry owed me this, Terry promised me that, I was lucky to get away with what I did.”

  “You could always have said no, turned them down.”

  “You think so?” Eileen reached for her cigarettes, bent low and lit one from the fire. “Farmer and his like, no’s not a word they like to hear.”

  “They threatened you?”

  Tilting back her head, she released a slow spiral of smoke towards the ceiling. “They didn’t have to.”

  Nodding, Resnick began to unbutton his overcoat.

  “You’re stopping then?” Almost despite herself, a smile along the curve of her mouth.

  “Long enough for a coffee, maybe.”

  “It’s instant.”

  “Tea then,” Resnick grinned. “If that’s all right.”

  With a short sigh, Eileen held out her hand. “Here. Give me your coat.”

  She brought it through from the kitchen on a tray, the tea in mugs, sugar in a blue and white Tate & Lyle bag, three digestive biscuits, one of them chocolate-faced.

  “You did want milk?”

  “Milk’s fine.”

  Eileen sat opposite him in the second of matching chairs, stirred two sugars into her tea, leaned back and lit another cigarette.

  “The last thousand I had left . . .” she began.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Resnick said.

  “What was I doing, out on the Forest, your question.”

  “You still don’t have . . .”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Resnick sat back and listened.

  “The last thousand from what Terry left me – after I’d bought this place, I mean – this pal of mine – least, I’d reckoned her for a pal – she persuaded me to come in with her on this sauna she was opening, Mapperley Top. Money was for the deposit, first three months’ rent, tarting the place up – you know, a lick of paint and a few posters – buying towels and the like.” She rested her cigarette on the edge of the tray and swallowed a mouthful of tea. “Vice Squad raided us five times in the first fortnight. Whether it was one of the girls refusing a freebie or something more – back handers, you know the kind of thing – I never knew. Either way, a month after we opened we were closed and I was left sorting out the bills.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Maybe it’s true.”

  “And maybe it’s you.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  She gave a little snort of derision. “It’s what you do. Your way of getting what you want. Kind word here, little smile there. All so bloody understanding. It’s all bollocks, Charlie. You told me to call you that, remember? When you were buttering me up before, trying to use me to get Terry locked away.”

  Resnick held his tea in both hands, fingers laced around the mug, saying nothing.

  “Well, I didn’t. Wouldn’t. Never would. But Terry didn’t know that, did he? Saw you and me together and thought the worst. If you’d been screwing me, it wouldn’t’ve been so bad, he could have coped with that, I reckon, come to terms. But no, he thought I was grassing him up. And that was what he couldn’t live with. The thought that I was betraying him. So he topped himself.”

  Both of them knew it hadn’t been that simple.

  Tears had appeared at the corners of Eileen’s eyes and with the back of her hand she brushed them away. “I reckon there was a lot of unsolved business written off that day, eh, Charlie? Anything that Terry might’ve had his hand in and a lot more besides. A lot of your blokes lining up to pat your back and buy you a drink and help you spit on Terry’s grave.”

  Resnick waited until the worst of the anger had faded from her eyes. “I deserve that. Some of it.”

  “Yes, you bastard, you do.”

  “And I am . . .”

  “Don’t.” She stretched a hand towards his face, fingers spread. “Just don’t bother with sorry. Just tell me what you’re doing here, sitting there in my front room, taking all that shit from me.”

  Resnick set his mug down on the tray. “The girl,” he said, “the one whose body you found. I think there’s something about her you’re still keeping back.”

  “Christ!” Up on her feet, she paced the room. “I should’ve left her, shouldn’t I? Poor stupid cow. Minded my own bloody business.”

  Resnick followed her with his eyes. “Stupid, Eileen. What way was she stupid?”

  “She was a kid, a girl, I doubt she was old enough to have left school.”

  “You did know her then?”

  “No.”

  “A kid, you said . . .”

  “I saw her lyin’ there, didn’t I.”

  “And that was all?”

  Eileen stood at the window, her breath warming circles on the glass. A heavy bass echoed faintly through the side wall, the same rhythm over and again. Traffic stuttered in and out of the city along the Hucknall Road.

  “I saw her a few nights back,” Eileen said. “Corner of Addison Street. Skirt up to her arse and four inch heels. She must’ve been freezing.” Her back was still to Resnick, her voice clear in the small room. “This van had been up and down, two, maybe three times. Blue van, small. Post office van, that sort of size. Just the one bloke inside. He’d given me the once over, going past real slow, the girl too. Finally he stops alongside her and leans out. I thought she was going to get in, but she didn’t. To and fro about it for ages they was before he drives off and she goes back to her stand. Fifteen, twenty minutes later he’s back, straight to her this time, no messing, and this time get in is what she does.”

  Eileen turned to face him, hands behind her pressed against the wall.

  “A few nights back,” Resnick said. “Is that three or four?”

  “Three.”

  “Monday, then?”

  “I suppose.”

  “The driver, you knew him?”

  “No.” The hesitation was slight, slight enough that Resnick, going over the conversation later, couldn’t be certain it was his imagination.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Course.”

  “And the van?”

  She shook her head.

  “The driver, though. You’d recognise him again?”

  “I don’t know. I might.”

  Resnick set the mug down on the tray, tea barely touched. “Thanks, Eileen. Thanks for your time.”

  She waited until he was at the door. “When the van came back the second time, I can’t be sure, but I think there were two of them, two blokes, the second one leaning forward from the back. Like I say, I can’t be sure.”

  The temperature seemed to have dropped another five degrees when Resnick stepped out from the comparative warmth of the house on to the street and clouds hung low overhead, laden with snow.

  The pathologist was a short, solid man with stubby fingers that seemed unsuited to his daily tasks. Despite the cold, they stood at one corner of the parking area to the building’s rear, Resnick and himself, allowing the pathologist to smoke.

  “Weather, eh, Charlie.”


  Resnick grunted in reply.

  “All right for you, up off the Woodborough Road; where I am, down by the Trent, bloody river freezes over, soon as the bugger thaws you’re up to your ankles in flood water and baling out downstairs like the place has sprung a leak.”

  “The girl,” Resnick nudged.

  The pathologist grinned. “Hamlet, Charlie. Act one, scene two.”

  “Come again?”

  “Had you down as a bit of a scholar. On the quiet at least. ‘Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.’ That poor kid, stretched out in the snow, clothes stuck to her with blood, jumped to the same conclusions, you and me, I’ll wager. Cut. Stabbed. Sliced.” He sucked noisily on the end of his cigar. “Not a bit of it. Not her blood. Different type altogether. No, she was strangled, Charlie. Throttled. Bare hands. Likely passed out within minutes, that’s one mercy. Bruising in plenty elsewhere, mind you, some consistent with being struck by a fist and some not. Something hard and narrow. Old-fashioned poker, something similar. And semen, Charlie, generous traces of, inside and out.”

  For a moment, without willing it, Resnick’s eyes shut fast.

  “Marks round her wrists,” the pathologist continued, “as if at some point she’d been tied-up. Tight enough to break the skin.”

  “Rope or metal?”

  “Metal.”

  “Like handcuffs?”

  “Very like.”

  Unbidden, instinctive, the scene was beginning to play out in Resnick’s mind.

  “One person’s or more?” he asked. “The semen.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Resnick nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Fragments of material beneath her finger nails. Possibly skin. It’s being analysed now.”

  “How close can you pin down the time of death?”

  “Likely not as close as you’d like.”

  “Try me.”

  “Twenty-four hours, give or take.”

  “So if she was killed elsewhere and then dumped . . .”

  “Which everything else suggests.”

  “She’d likely been on the Forest since the early hours of Wednesday morning.”

  “Where she was found, not unfeasible.” The pathologist stubbed out the last smoulderings of the cigar on the sole of his shoe. “Noon tomorrow, Charlie, I’ll have more for you then.”