Cold Light cr-6

by John Harvey

  “I doubt you could have done anything,” Resnick said. “You waited to see what was going to happen, that’s more than most people would have done. But she got into the car of her own accord. There was no reason for you to interfere.”

  “But when I heard about it, on the news, back home, you know, over the holiday-I’m so stupid! — I never as much as thought.”

  “It’s okay, love,” Cossall said. “Don’t get so worked up.”

  “Tell me,” Resnick said, “about the car.”

  “Four-door saloon, blue, dark blue. Course, if I’d had any sense, if I hadn’t been so worked out about that wanker … that idiot at the hotel, I would have thought to write down the number, just, you know, in case. But it was J reg., I’m sure of that.”

  “The make?”

  “Can’t say for certain. I could probably recognize it, though, if I had the chance.”

  “Tell him about the driver,” Cossall said. “What he looked like.”

  Miriam described Robin Hidden-his height, slightly stooped posture, wiriness, spectacles-to a T. Everything except the stammer.

  “Knew he was lying,” Millington said. “Just bloody knew it.”

  “Felt it in your water, Graham?” Cossall grinned.

  They were back in Resnick’s office, while Lynn Kellogg gave Miriam a brief tour of the station, offered her a cup of tea, asked what exactly was American Studies.

  “Let’s do it carefully,” Resnick said. “No slip ups now.”

  “You’ll want an identity parade,” Cossall said, one leg cocked over the corner of Resnick’s desk. “Best have a word with Paddy Fitzgerald, see if he can’t fix that. Graham here could probably make sure young Hidden doesn’t do a runner.”

  Right, Millington thought, thanks a lot!

  “At least that hasn’t been handed over to a bunch of private cowboys yet. We catch ’em, get them into court and some half-assed security guard lets them go.”

  “It’ll take more time organizing the cars,” Resnick said. Since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, there had to be a minimum of twelve vehicles of a similar type presented to the witness.

  Cossall nodded. “Best get the car established though, hold off on pulling Hidden in for the ID; then if both come up positive, we can collar him while he’s on the premises.”

  Resnick nodded. “Let’s be about it.”

  “Talked to Jolly Jack?” Cossall asked over his shoulder, heading for the door.

  “Next thing,” Resnick said. And then, “Graham, when you go out for Hidden, under wraps as much as you can. We’re right here, this’ll be enough of a circus as it is.”

  Twenty-seven

  Dana had gone to bed full of good intentions. The alarm set for seven-thirty, she was going to make an early start, get in a full day; attend to all of those things she claimed there was no time for due to her job. Well, now was her chance; she would get down to it first thing, shower, clear her head, make a list.

  Idling through her wardrobe, she wondered about buying something special for tonight. Detective Inspector Charles Resnick, investigating officer, making a personal call at eight sharp. Charles. Charlie. Her hands ran down the sleeve of a silk shirt, apple green, smooth to the touch. Dana smiled, recalling how gentle he had been. A surprise. Lifting the shirt clear on its hanger, she thought about his hands against the softness of the material. Large hands. When she thought about it, now and since, it surprised her, the extent to which his initial clumsiness had disappeared. Yes, she thought, laying the shirt out on the bed. Apple green. Good. She would run the iron over it later, wear that.

  In the shower she wondered if it had been right to phone him at work; not the best of times, either, from the way he had answered, a mixture of circumspect and abrupt. With some men, though, it was what you had to do. Make it clear that you were interested, what was what.

  Slowly, savoring it, Dana soaped her shoulders, sides, what she could reach of her back; better to be positive, she thought, than yield the initiative from the start.

  Miriam sat reading, alternating between Light in August and the New Musical Express; the earphones from her Walkman were leaking a little Chris Isaak into the CID room. At the other side of the desk, Lynn Kellogg struggled to catch up with the never-ending demands of paperwork; tried not to think about her father, just below the level of consciousness, always waiting for the phone to ring, her mother’s voice, “Oh, Lynnie …”

  Divine and Naylor returned, bullish, from the Meadows. Raju had looked at the sketches drawn by Sandra Drexler and confirmed they closely matched those he had seen on one of his attackers.

  “Hey up,” Divine said none too quietly, pointing across the room at Miriam. “What d’you reckon to that?”

  Miriam let him know that she had heard; staring him down, she cranked up her Walkman and turned the page of the NME. Finish the singles reviews and then she’d get back to Faulkner. A seminar tomorrow about shifting points of view.

  Lynn explained the process more assiduously than Miriam considered strictly necessary; but then, she told herself, quite a few of the people they had to deal with, the police, probably they weren’t any too bright.

  The vehicles had been arranged in two lines, facing, and Miriam was left to walk, taking her time, between. At one point she came close to giggling, feeling suddenly like the Queen, inspecting her loyal troops in some Godforsaken scrap of land. What a farce! The more that came to light, the more you realized that life among the Royals was a cross between Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks. Without a moment’s hesitation she picked out the car. A midnight blue Vauxhall Cavalier.

  Robin Hidden heard them draw up outside and almost before they had approached the house, realized who they were. Millington he recognized by name, the dapper suit, the smug smile when Robin opened the street door.

  Two other officers waited behind him on the path, also plain clothes; the expression on one of them slightly mocking, as if faintly hopeful that he would panic, cut some kind of a dash, provide an excuse for a chase, a bit of action.

  It was all little more than a formality, Millington explained. A witness to confirm you were where you said you were, the night your Nancy disappeared. Nothing to worry about, as long as you were telling the truth.

  Harry Phelan was in the station entrance when the car arrived bringing Robin Hidden in. Two and two had rarely come together so fast to make four. Phelan managed to hold himself in check until Hidden was level with him, then launched himself forwards, landing a two-fisted blow to the back of the head, just behind the ear. Millington moved quickly, setting himself between the two of them, Phelan’s boot deflecting off his shin and catching Robin Hidden’s thigh as he fell.

  Before he could do any more damage, Millington took a choke hold around Harry Phelan’s neck and dragged him back towards the uniformed officer who had run round from behind the desk, handcuffs at the ready.

  “Enough!” Millington shouted just in time. “It’s okay.”

  Opportunely, Divine had chosen this moment to appear. He seized Harry Phelan’s shirt with one hand, the other, bunched into a fist, raised above his face.

  “Mark,” Millington said, “Let it be.”

  Divine stepped back and Phelan was swung round hard and pushed against the wall, feet kicked wide, arms stretched out straight behind, cuff’s clicked tightly into place.

  “Inside and book him,” Millington said, straightening his tie. “And now we’ve done our job of protecting Mr. Hidden here,” Millington smiled, “let’s escort him safely inside.”

  Robin Hidden looked at the seven men standing still in a haphazard sort of a line. For some reason, he had expected to have come face to face, if not with carbon copies, then people who bore more than a passing resemblance to himself. But these-about the same height, certainly, none of them fat, roughly of similar age-in reality he looked nothing like them. He supposed that was part of the point.

  “Like I said,” the officer in charge of the parade said, “pick your
own place in the line.”

  Seven, Robin thought, that’s the number most people choose all the time. He went over and stood between a man whose hair was more gingery than fair and another slightly taller than himself.

  Number four.

  “Spectacles on first, gentlemen, please.”

  As Robin Hidden fumbled his glasses from their case, he observed, as if in some kind of joke, all of the other men taking out the pairs of glasses they had been given and putting them on.

  Miriam took her time. Up and down the row twice as required, hesitating, asking if she might walk the line a third time. Silent as everyone waited, the officers, the solicitor watching her, the men staring straight ahead, blinking, some of them, behind unfamiliar glasses. Silent, save for the breath of the man she knew already she would choose. She had done since practically the first moment; but she was enjoying it, the drama of it, acting it out.

  “Is the man you saw on the Christmas Eve present in the parade?” the investigating officer asked when, finally, she stood in front of him.

  Nervous now, despite herself, Miriam nodded. “And will you indicate, please, the number of that person?”

  “N-number four,” Miriam said, stammering for perhaps the first time in her life.

  Twenty-eight

  The blinds in Skelton’s office were drawn, closing out what was left of the winter light. Skelton’s earlier conversation with the assistant chief had made him sweat. The afternoon editions of the Post had headlined Harry Phelan’s arrest at the police station, featured a photograph of him angrily descending the steps to the street after being released. Another quotable diatribe about police incompetence, sloth. “Only time they put themselves out nowadays, something political or if it’s one of their own.”

  “Questions being asked, Jack,” the assistant chief had said. “What in God’s name’s going on on your patch? You used to run such a tight ship, everything battened down. Trouble with a reputation like yours, things start to get out of control, out of hand, people notice. They want to know the reasons why. Oh, and Jack, give my best to Alice, right?”

  Resnick had noticed, this past week or so, that the photographs of Alice and Kate, so prominent and exact on Jack Skelton’s desk in the past, had disappeared from sight. He was in Skelton’s office now while Robin Hidden took his statutory break, getting the superintendent up to speed.

  “Robin,” Resnick had said, his voice reasonable, soothing, “no one’s accusing you of lying, deliberately lying. We know this has been a difficult time for you, emotionally. What was happening, the rejection, you were bound to be upset. After all, this was somebody you loved and who you thought had loved you. Any of us would find that hard to cope with, hard to handle. And there you’d been, driving round all evening, desperate to see her, going over all the things you wanted to say inside your head. And then, suddenly, there she was.”

  Resnick had held his moment; waited until Robin Hidden was looking back into his eyes. “Like I say, we’d any of us, situation like that, we’d find it hard to know how to react. Hard to remember, afterwards, exactly what we did or said.”

  Hidden’s head went down. It wasn’t clear whether or not he was crying.

  David Welch had leaned forward from the edge of his chair. “I think my client …”

  “Not now,” Millington had said quietly.

  “My client …”

  “Not,” repeated Millington, “now.”

  And not for one moment did Resnick allow his gaze to shift away, waiting for Robin Hidden’s head to come back up, blinking at him through a gauze of tears. “She t-told me,” he said, “she thought I was being s-st-stupid, p-p-pathetic. She didn’t want to talk to me. Not ever. S-she wished she’d never had anything to do with m-me, n-never seen me at all.”

  Skelton was sitting bolt upright, fingertips touching, forearms resting on the edge of his desk. “And the boy, how did he respond?”

  “Admits to getting angry, losing his temper.”

  “He did hit her?”

  “Not hit exactly, no.”

  “Semantics, Charlie?”

  Resnick glanced at the floor; from somewhere a splash of brown, dark and drying, had earlier attached itself to the side of his left shoe. “He says that he took a hold of her, both arms. I imagine he’s got quite a grip. Shook her around a bit, trying to get her to change her mind. That’s when she agreed to get into the car.”

  Skelton sighed, swiveled his chair sideways, waited.

  “They drove down towards the Castle, on into the Park. Stopped by the first roundabout on Lenton Road. What he wanted was to get her to talk about what was going on.” Resnick shifted on his seat, less than comfortable. “What he wanted, of course, was for her to change her mind, agree to keep seeing him. Anything as long as she didn’t carry on with what she was doing. Shutting him right out of her life.”

  “I love you,” Robin said. Against her will, he was holding her hand.

  Nancy looked through the side window of the car, up along the steadily sloping street, shadows from the gas lamps faint and blurred. Frost along the privet hedge. “I’m sorry, Robin, but I don’t love you.”

  “A shame she couldn’t have lied,” Skelton said.

  “She pulled her hand away and he did nothing to stop her. Got out of the car and walked back down Lenton Road; turned off right, down towards the Boulevard.”

  “And he just sat there?”

  “Watching her in the mirror.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Never saw her again.”

  “He says.”

  Resnick nodded.

  Skelton was back on his feet, desk to wall, wall to window, window to desk, pacing it out. “She’s gone without trace, Charlie. Good looking young woman. You know what it’s like, cases like this. Spend more time than you can afford checking on sightings by every loony and short-sighted granny from Ilkeston to Arbroath. This time it’s like a desert out there. No bugger’s seen a thing.”

  Back by his desk, Skelton picked up his fountain pen and unscrewed the cap, glanced at the nib, replaced the cap, put the pen back down. Resnick shuffled around on his seat, clasped and unclasped his hands.

  “Nine times out of ten, Charlie, it’s not some wandering nutter, spends his hours poring over true-life stories of serial killers like they’re the lives of the saints. You know that as well as me. It’s the husbands, boyfriends, the frustrated wives.”

  The drawer to which the pictures of Alice had been consigned was close to Skelton’s right hand.

  “You’re right to tread careful, Charlie, God knows. But let’s not let him get the upper hand, think he can play with us as he likes, little here, little there. We’ve got him this far, Charlie, let’s not let him slip away.”

  Twenty-nine

  Dana had spent the best part of the day shopping and had stopped off at the Potter’s House for a coffee on her way home. Liza, her neighbor from the flat above, Liza of the pinched laugh and squeaky bed, was sitting at a table upstairs. She had been for a tan and wax session and was recovering with a pot of Earl Grey and a slice of coffee and walnut cake. A magistrate’s clerk, Liza was filling in time before it was safe to go round to the house of the sixty-four-year-old chairman of the bench with whom she was having a furtive affair. When he had called on Liza once and Dana had opened the house door to him by mistake, she had thought he was collecting for Help the Aged. Now whenever the bed creaked over her head, Dana held her breath and waited for the call to emergency services, the sound of the ambulance siren approaching.

  Dana persuaded Liza to order a fresh pot of tea and joined her in a relaxing gossip about winter cruises to warmer climes and the painful necessity of maintaining a neat bikini line. By the time they parted, Liza to visit her clandestine lover and Dana to lug her bags of shopping the remainder of the way back to Newcastle Drive, it was almost six o’clock.

  Dana had opened her packages, put her new blouse carefully away, folded her new Next underwear inside the a
ppropriate drawer, slipped the Sting CD on to the machine and started it playing. Poor old Sting, she wished he could stop worrying about the world and write another song like “Every Breath You Take.”

  The bottle of chardonnay she was saving for later safe in the fridge, she opened a Bulgarian country white she had bought at Safeway, fancying a little something to take the edge off the waiting. One mouthful made her realize that she should have something to eat as well. Tipping the contents of a carton of potato and watercress soup into a pan to heat through, she found the last of the Tesco muffins at the back of the freezer and sliced it in two ready to toast.

  She ate the soup in the kitchen, thumbing through some old travel brochures; before she had finished her second glass of wine she had got as far in the quick crossword as three across, nine down and it was still well short of seven o’clock. Over an hour to go and that was if he arrived on time. In desperation, she phoned her mother, who, thank heavens, was out. Oh well, Dana thought, when all else fails, run a bath.

  Undressed, she picked up the Joanna Trollope paperback a friend had given her for Christmas, the gift tag poking out so she could remember who to thank. The mirrors were already hazed in steam as, with a gasp of pleasure, Dana settled herself in. She read a chapter of the book, scarcely taking it in, dropped it over the side, and closed her eyes. Charlie, she decided, was almost certainly a figment of her imagination. At least, the Charlie she had rolled around with, cuddled up to in her bed, the one who had stared at her with shocked and startled eyes the moment before he came.

  It was half-past seven by the time she climbed out and began to dry herself. In the circle she had cleared with her towel in the glass, Dana caught herself wishing, not for the first time, that she could lose six or eight pounds.

  When she tried it on with her new skirt that buttoned down the side, the apple green shirt looked exactly right. What it needed, of course, was a different pair of tights. Nancy had a pair, she remembered, dove gray, that would be perfect. Well, of course, had she been there she would have said go ahead.