by John Harvey
“That’s nice,” Gloria said, treating Naylor to a smile. “I always like the quiet type, they’re the ones that take you by surprise. Not like some.” Delicately, her chubby fingers lifted Divine’s remaining sausage from his plate. “All that talk and then they’re about as good for you as this poor thing. Look at it. First cousin to a chipolata.”
Resnick checked his watch; less than five minutes since he’d looked last. All the while sitting there, hoping he wouldn’t be proved right. Susan Rogel over again. Another wild-goose chase, another woman unaccounted for. Cold sleep in a shallow grave. Beside him, Millington unscrewed the top of his second thermos and held it towards him. Resnick nodded and waited while Millington half-filled the plastic cup.
Straitened circumstances, he thought it might taste better than the first time. “Wife not back into dandelion coffee, is she, Graham?”
“Gilding, sir.”
“Come again.”
“Gilding. You know, old furniture and the like. Restoration. Sent off for details of this course, Bury St. Edmunds way. Two hundred quid for the weekend. Eighty-five for the video. Daylight robbery, I told her, but, no, Graham, it’s the cost of all that gold leaf, she says …”
Controlling a grimace, Resnick sipped the coffee and continued to stare through the windscreen, letting his sergeant’s chatter fade inconsequentially into the background. He couldn’t quite rid his mind of the image of Dana, pale faced, listening to the replay of the tape. Nothing … nothing bad has happened to me, so I don’t want you to worry … Dana, listening to her friend’s voice, fears strung along the edges of her imagination. This woman, who to Resnick had been so lively, irrepressible, slumped in the chair with all the life drawn out of her. If he had no longer felt any connection between them, it was because Dana no longer had anything with which to connect. Well, partly that. Ever since that first astonishing, joyful evening, Resnick had been aware of the shutters coming down, drawn by his own hands.
“Look!” Millington said suddenly, interrupting his own conversation.
But Resnick was already looking. The green Orion had passed the Little Chef sign once, reappeared from the opposite direction less than two minutes later, and was now approaching it again.
“He’s slowing right down,” Millington said. “Go on, you bugger, turn in, turn in.”
They watched as the vehicle followed the white arrow painted on the car-park surface, drove forward fifteen feet towards the entrance, stopped, took a left, and slowly reversed into the broad space between a green 2CV and a reconditioned Post Office van.
Through the binoculars, Resnick could see the driver’s face behind the wheel, white, clean-shaven, middle-aged: alone.
“Time, Graham?”
“Four forty-two.”
Having parked the car, the man was making no attempt to move.
“Want me to check out the license plate?” Millington asked.
“Not yet. For all we know he’s got a short-wave radio scanning the police channels. Wait till he’s out of the car. And then alert Divine and Naylor first.”
Millington looked at his watch. “Four forty-four.”
Resnick nodded. “Here comes the delivery car, right on time.”
“This is it, then. What he’s waiting for.”
“Maybe. Maybe he’s just tired, taking a nap.”
“With both eyes open?”
The unmarked police car moved across the forecourt and drew to a halt as close to the main door as it could get. Resnick wiped away the first dampening of sweat. Headlights burned low against the field fence and the red tail lights blinked. The detective on the passenger side slid clear, leaned back across the seat, and lifted the black duffel bag clear.
“All right,” Millington said, “pay some bloody attention.”
Detective and duffel bag disappeared from sight.
“What’s he doing?” Millington asked.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, you bastard. Move.”
Four forty-seven and the plain-clothes man reappeared, went briskly around the back of the car, and resumed his seat; without rushing, the car drew away.
“I don’t believe it,” Millington said. “He’s not going to do a thing.”
“Yes, he is.”
Resnick held his breath as the door to the Orion opened and the driver set his feet on the tar-covered surface. “Radio, Graham.”
But Millington was already giving the signal to Mark Divine.
“Right!” Divine said in the storeroom and was on his way. Out in the main body of the restaurant, he took his time, saw the man coming towards him through the double set of glass doors. At the cash desk, he hesitated, picked up a roll of extra strong mints, and placed the money in the cashier’s hand. The man had to break step to get round him, Divine apologizing, stepping into his path by mistake, apologizing again, and heading for the door.
“Smoking or non-smoking, sir?” the cashier asked.
“I’m just off to the Gents’ first,” the man said. “But either’s fine.”
“Orion’s licensed to a Patrick Reverdy,” Millington said in the car, “address in Cheadle.”
“Long way from home,” Resnick said, glasses focused on the restaurant door.
When the man emerged from the toilet, he was still rubbing his hands together after using the dryer. Naylor was now sitting in the smoking section near the door, stirring sugar into his coffee. He watched as the man told the waitress he was expecting a friend and accepted a double seat towards the rear window. While he was waiting, he ordered a toasted tea cake and a cup of tea. Home-going traffic built up steadily on the road outside. Resnick talked briefly to Skelton, keeping him informed; at the other location, Siddons and Cossall were drawing a blank.
Another ten minutes, tea cake consumed, the man checked the time, picked up his bill, and walked between the tables towards the cashier; paying his bill, he left a fifty-pence tip on the counter, turned towards the exit, changed his mind, and turned back again towards the toilets. Naylor’s stomach muscles knotted tight.
“He’s staying too long,” said Millington, staring at his watch.
“Maybe he’s being careful,” Resnick replied.
When the man stepped back into the restaurant with the duffel bag in his hand, Naylor’s breath stopped. Nonchalant as you like with it, little swing with the right hand. “May be nothing,” the man said to the cashier, “but someone seems to have left this in the Gents’. Thought you might want to keep it safe out here. All this talk of bombs, someone might panic, stuff it down the loo.” He was holding the bag out towards the cashier, but so far she had made no move to take it. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I stuck it against my ear and had a good listen. Nothing ticks.”
Divine detained the man before he drove away and while Resnick checked back with Skelton, keeping him up to scratch, Millington came over and had a word. Nothing serious, no reason to get alarmed. The man’s driving license showed his name to be Reverdy; he’d driven there to spend an hour with a woman he’d met at last year’s Open University summer schooL “Lives in Spalding, but can’t always get away. Married, you see.”
“And you drove all the way from Cheadle?” Millington said.
“I know,” Reverdy said. “The things you do for love.”
In her car, parked at the far side of the garage on the A631, Helen Siddons set down the receiver and sighed, grim-faced. “Okay, that’s it. Let’s head back. It’s over.”
“Just so’s the day’s not a complete blow-out,” Cossall mumbled, “I suppose a quick fuck’s out of the question?”
If she heard him, Helen Siddons gave no sign.
Forty-one
Skelton was waiting for Resnick inside the double doors, falling into place alongside him on the stairs; no early run this morning, exhaustion in the superintendent’s movements, the veins that showed red in his eyes. Twice he had tried contacting Helen Siddons but her phone had been disconnected; sleepless he had lain beside the cold re
buke of Alice’s back.
“About the only thing that’s bloody clear, Charlie, one way or another, the bill for this one’s going to be firmly nailed to my door.”
Resnick shook his head. “I don’t see what else we could have done. As long as there’s still a chance the girl’s alive, we had to play along.”
At the landing, Skelton turned aside, shoulders slumped. “Half an hour, we’ll review where we are.”
But within half an hour both local radio stations had played extracts from the second tape on the air. It had been delivered by hand, a messenger with a motorcycle helmet and scarf wound about the lower part of his face, no chance of recognizing who it was. Someone in the news room had given the tape a cursory listen, switching off after several minutes when it became apparent what they’d got. After phone calls to department heads, solicitors, copies were made and sent to the police; one question asked-the assertion that an earlier tape had been received, demanding a ransom, was that true? The police spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny. That was enough.
Radio Nottingham put the item at the top of its scheduled news; Trent interrupted its programing with a special bulletin. Each newscaster gave a brief introduction covering Nancy Phelan’s disappearance and the lack of subsequent success in tracking her down before referring to an apparently unsuccessful attempt by the police, yesterday, to apprehend a man who claimed to have kidnapped Nancy and who had made a ransom demand. The extracts from the tape which followed were remarkably similar.
The instructions given to the police were clear and precise, as were the warnings. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, these were not heeded. It was simple, you see, all they had to do, these people, was follow what I told them and then my promise could have been kept and Nancy Phelan could have been reunited with her family and friends, safe and sound. But now …
I hope you’re listening to this, Jack, I hope you’re listening carefully, you and those advising you. Remember what I told you, Jack, if anything bad happens it’s going to be your fault, your fault, Jack, not mine. I hope you can cope with that, that responsibility.
Lynn had called Kevin Naylor early and arranged for him to give her a lift. Hedged in between the traffic on Upper Parliament Street, she recounted her mishap with the car.
“Sounds as if it could’ve been a sight worse.”
“Say that again.”
“Not dead yet, then?”
Lynn touched the side of her head. “Just a little sore.”
Kevin grinned. “No, I mean chivalry.”
“Oh. No, I suppose not.”
“Seeing him again?”
She was looking through the window at the knot of people waiting to cross at the lights near the underpass, a man with a fluorescent orange coat sweeping up rubbish outside the Cafe Royal. “I shouldn’t think so.” She had no idea how strongly she believed that, nor whether she wanted it to be true.
They were drawing level with the Co-op when the news item came on the radio and Kevin reached for the switch, turning up the volume so they could hear the voice on the tape.
Robin Hidden had hardly left his flat for days. Phone calls from his office, inquiring about his absence, had gone unanswered. Mail lay downstairs beside the Thomson’s directories and the bundle of newspapers someone had once tied up with string and left, intending to take them to the recycling bin. Robin ate tinned tomatoes, cheese, muesli with powdered milk; he left the television picture on all the while, volume down, the radio just below the level of normal conversation. He did crosswords, ironed and re-ironed his shirts, scraped every vestige of mud from his boots, pored over maps. Offa’s Dyke. The Lyke Wake Walk. Wainwright’s guides to the Fells and Lakes. The Cleveland Way.
He was writing the same letter to Mark, again and again, so important to get it right. Explain. Mark was his best friend, his only friend, and he had to make him understand why Nancy had been so important to him, the ways in which she had changed his life.
That morning he had been up since shortly before six, cold out and dark. Frost on the blackened trees and thick on the roofs of cars. He drank tea absentmindedly, struggling with draft after draft, his thoughts like a tangle of wool which spooled along the page for sentence after sentence, seemingly clear, before becoming snagged impossibly down. Nancy, now and then, then and now, over and over, again and again. The only woman who, for however brief a time, had allowed him to be as he was, accepted him as a man. Who had loved him. She had loved him. Another sheet of paper was screwed up and thrown aside to join the others scattered round the floor.
Dear Mark,
I hope you don’t mind …
At the first mention of Nancy’s name, the pen rolled free from Robin’s hand. The broadcaster’s words, the voice on the tape, blurred in his mind even as he heard them, bits and pieces of a dream he had never dreamed. Almost before the item had finished, he was reaching for the phone.
Neither Harry nor Clarise Phelan had been listening to the radio at all; the first they heard of the existence of the tape was when a newspaper reporter arrived in the dining room of their hotel, where they were having breakfast, and asked for their reaction to what had happened.
“You give us a lift to the police station, pal,” Harry said, already on his feet, putting on his coat, “and I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Charlie …”
Skelton pushed his way into Resnick’s office without knocking, no gesture of recognition towards Millington, who was sitting this side of the desk.
“Field the girl’s parents for me, will you? They’re downstairs kicking up a stink and I’ve got to finish this statement for the press and okay it at headquarters.”
“I thought that was none of my concern any more. Inspector Siddons, isn’t she liaising with the Phelans? Or did I get that wrong?” There was an edge to Resnick’s voice that took the superintendent by surprise. Resnick, too.
“Christ, Charlie …”
It was the first time in memory Resnick had seen Skelton with his shirt in less than good order, his tie at half-mast. He knew he should be feeling more sorry for him than he was, but he was in the middle of a bad day, too. Not so long before he’d had Robin Hidden on the phone in tears, sobbing out every word; best part of fifteen minutes it had taken him to calm the lad down, agree to talk to him if he came in. Resnick glanced at his watch: that’d be any time now.
“Charlie, if I had the slightest idea where she was, I’d get her on to it. Truth is, so far this morning she hasn’t showed.”
With a mumbled word and a nod, Graham Millington slipped away to his own desk; he could see all too well which way this particular conversation was going and the last thing he wanted to find himself doing was trying to appease a distraught father with a build like a good light-heavyweight.
“Graham,” Resnick said.
Oh, shit! Millington thought, not quite through the door.
“Why not see if Lynn’s still around? Have a word with the Phelans together. If Inspector Siddons arrives, she can take over.”
“If I’m going to deal with it,” Millington said, “I’d sooner it was from start to finish.”
Resnick gave Skelton a quick glance and the superintendent nodded. “Fine.”
“What if they want to listen to the tape? The one with their daughter’s voice?”
“Yes,” Skelton agreed, hanging his head. “Let them hear it all. They should have heard it in the first place. I was wrong.” He looked at Resnick for several seconds, then left the room.
Helen Siddons had not been wasting her time. She had acquired the original tapes and their packaging from the radio stations and had them sent off for forensic analysis, though by then so many hands would have touched them as to render that next to useless. But it was a process that had to be gone through. In case. She had listened to the second recording and compared it to the first, taken both to two experts and sat with them, listening through headphones, each nuance, again and again.
These things they w
ere agreed upon: the northern accent identified on the first tape, less obvious on the second, was almost certainly not a primary accent. Certain elements in the phrasing, the softness of some of the vowel sounds, suggested Southern Ireland. Not Dublin, perhaps. More rural. A childhood spent there and then a move to England, the northwest, not Liverpool, but harsher-Manchester, possibly, Bury, Leigh, one of those faded cotton towns.
And the note sent in the Susan Rogel case, Helen Siddons wanted to know, was there any way of telling whether it was written by the same person?
There could be, in certain instances it might be possible, but she had to understand, written and spoken registers were so different. The farthest either of them was prepared to go, it could not be discounted the source was the same man.
For Helen that was enough. All of the suspects in the Rogel case, everyone the police had interviewed, seventeen in all, transcripts of their interviews would have to be double-checked, some would have to be contacted again if necessary She was quite convinced now, the perpetrator in both instances was the same: and, more likely than not, he was already known.
Forty-two
All day, Lynn had been aware of this uneasy sense of expectation. Through the usual raft of paperwork, the follow-up interviews on the Park burglaries, a session with Maureen Madden about an alleged rape victim who had, twice now, recanted on her evidence and who they thought was being threatened, all through the haze of sexual badinage with which Divine and his cronies clouded every day, the constant ringing of telephones, the unthinking cups of tea, she could never shake off the feeling of waiting for something to happen.
Distracted, Resnick had paused at her desk in the late afternoon, asking for news of her father, automatically passing good wishes.
“Pint?” Kevin Naylor called, putting on his coat by the door.
Lynn looked at her watch. “I’ll see.”
When finally she went down the stairs, out past the custody sergeant’s office, the entrance to the police cells, she knew it was Michael she was looking for-exchanging words with the constable at reception, kicking his heels on the street outside. He was nowhere.
