by John Harvey
“It’s true, sir,” Naylor said.
“True?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your prisoner suddenly ups and punches himself in the face?”
“Threw himself against the wall, sir,” Divine said quickly.
“For the sheer hell of it?”
Here it comes, Naylor was thinking. Divine was beginning to smell his own sweat.
“Naylor?” said Resnick sharply.
“Something, er, was said, sir.”
“To Macliesh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Naylor.
“Yes, sir,” said Divine.
“Some remark was made which caused your prisoner to perform an act of grievous bodily harm on his own person?”
Both men nodded, neither spoke.
“You know my next question, don’t you?” Resnick asked.
They did. Naylor looked at Divine and Divine looked with sudden interest at the notices pinned to the board behind Resnick’s desk.
“Wait outside, Naylor,” said Resnick. “Don’t stray, I’ll want to talk to you again.”
Divine knew now that it was going to be worse than anything the rugby association had dreamed up, worse even than the inquiry the time that black bastard had ended up in hospital.
“What was it that made Macliesh so angry?”
Divine wet his drying lips with the end of his tongue, but his tongue was dry too.
“What did you say that made him want to injure himself?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Divine.”
“Sir…”
“Divine, there’s youths out on the street now, down on the square. Pull up alongside them, stop them-wouldn’t matter if they had half-a-dozen gold watches up an arm, a sack swung over their shoulder with swag stenciled on it-you know what answer they’ll give you when you ask them what they’ve been up to?”
Divine tried not to look at Resnick’s face, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to avoid.
“I’m waiting.”
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t think…”
“That I wanted an answer. Of course I do, that’s what questions are for.”
Divine wriggled as if his briefs were too tight for him, his shoes too small.
“The answer?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“They’d say?”
“Nothing. Sir.”
“And do you believe them?”
Let it rest!
“Well? Do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you know what I’m feeling now.”
“Sir, I just wanted to get some response.”
“It looks as if you succeeded.”
“After yesterday, him never opening his mouth.”
“You thought you’d change that?”
“It was only a remark, like. Something to get him going.”
Resnick didn’t take his eyes from Divine’s face now. “You said.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said what?”
“I…said what kind of a bloke was it who couldn’t even get it up when his tart was dying for it. Sir.”
Resnick rested the side of his face in his hand for a moment and slowly sat down. He supposed callousness shouldn’t any longer surprise him. Still, for several seconds, this took his breath away.
“Sir, if I may, sir. I don’t think it was just what I said. The way he threw himself against that wall, smacking his head against it like he did.” Divine’s voice petered out. He forced himself to try again. “I was the one pulled him off, sir. Ask Naylor, he…”
“I was looking at your report the other day,” Resnick said. “Just something made me take it from the file, I can’t remember what now. There were statements from five witnesses, all attesting to the use of excessive force. A taxi driver who said he was as much a racist as the next man, but he didn’t think you ought to be able to get away with that sort of thing while you were on duty.”
Divine started counting inside his head; stopped, worried in case Resnick should see his lips moving.
“You wriggled out of that with a reprimand in private and an apology in public and the stars must have been shining out of your behind that day because there was enough cocaine in that youth’s possession to make half the city numb in its collective nose. But when you were reassigned to me I gave you fair warning. I dare say you remember?”
Divine closed his eyes without realizing what he was doing. He said, “Yes, sir. I remember.”
Resnick stood. “Outside and write it up.”
Divine continued to stand there, uncertain.
“Something else you want to say?”
Divine gave Resnick a look of incomprehension. “This Macliesh, sir. Ask me, he’s cracked. Got no need of a reason for doing anything. D’you know what he did when we were bringing him in? Pissed down Naylor’s leg!”
Ten
I’m going to find out who’s going round the place whistling the Glenn Miller songbook, Resnick said to himself, and make sure he gets some Ellington for Christmas. Maybe it was a she. Did women whistle? Times gone by, it used to be considered unladylike, especially in public. Like smoking. Now when you walked round the city center every other female you passed had a lighted cigarette in her hand. Those under twenty-five, younger. What had they been telling him on Radio Four that morning? A generation of smoking teenage schoolgirls, using nicotine to cope with the stress of having few job prospects, of contracting Aids.
Suzanne Olds was sitting on a steel-framed chair with a sagging canvas seat and she wasn’t whistling. She wasn’t twenty-five any more, either; the law was her second career-Resnick wasn’t certain what the first one had been except he thought it had something to do with marketing. Maybe she used to stand in the middle of the pedestrian precinct and solicit passers-by into giving information about what newspaper they read, the size of their feet, which brand of baked beans they bought.
“Ms. Olds.”
She stood up with a sigh of impatience and ditched the end of her cigarette into the lukewarm dregs of her coffee. People starting late on a second career didn’t like to be kept waiting.
“Sorry about the delay. At least you’ve had a chance to speak with your client.”
She had a pale leather bag, the size of a fat wallet, hanging by a thin strap from her left shoulder; she picked a matching satchel from the floor and carried it in her right hand. Keeping step with Resnick, she was not far short of his height, five-ten or even five-eleven.
“Which should have been afforded yesterday. Your grounds for delay are spurious at best.”
“How come you got Macliesh?” Resnick asked. “Did he ask for you personally or what?”
“Or what. I was the duty solicitor who picked up the phone. Not that that…” She broke off as Resnick thought about opening a door for her, reconsidered, waited for her to push it open for herself and followed after.
“I can’t believe your superintendent is going to apply for an extension, which means some poor fool from the Crown Prosecutor’s has got to go into court and try to wangle another three days in remand.”
“Thanks for spelling it out.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing Macliesh wheeled up before the Bench looking the way he does. Somehow I can’t see any magistrate handing him back to you so that further inquiries can be carried out.”
“If the crime under investigation is serious enough…”
“Your rights to brutalize my client become enshrined in law?”
“Any brutalization your client has suffered has been at his own hands.”
“Just try making the court believe that.” She was standing her ground now, legs apart, blocking Resnick’s path.
“The court isn’t stupid. And it won’t overlook the serious nature of…”
“Come on, Inspector. This isn’t prevention of terrorism or anything like it. No one’s accused of planting a bomb in a wall cavity or crating up bodies in the diplomatic bag. This isn’t even some
crazy, running amok with a sub-machine-gun. At best, this is ordinary, common-or-garden murder.”
Resnick looked for the irony in her eyes but it wasn’t there, only contact lenses and the vague reflection of himself, filtered through sepia.
“Excuse me, Ms. Olds.” He stepped around her and hurried on to the interview room.
It was a smaller version of his own room and the air was stale before they began. From outside the building the metallic crump of heavy machinery beat beneath the silences. Tony Macliesh smoked his solicitor’s cigarettes, taking them down to the nub end before pressing them out in the metal ashtray that was one of the room’s few adornments. His face had been cleaned up and disinfected, plastered and bandaged; now the injuries appeared even more serious, Macliesh sitting there as if waiting to be auditioned for a touring production of The Invisible Man.
He was talking now, terse and jagged, but talking.
“Tell me again what you were doing on the industrial estate.”
“I already told you.”
“I want to get it right.”
“We was sizin’ up this job.”
“The warehouse?”
“Right.”
“You and two other men? One with a Liverpool accent…?”
“I think that’s what it was.”
“Whose name you don’t know?”
“The other feller brung him along.”
“The other feller being your West Indian friend, Warren?”
“I’m not prejudiced.”
“He was the muscle?”
“He’s got biceps out to here.”
“And you were the brains?”
“I had brains enough to know we were never going to get inside there in a month of Sundays.”
“Brains enough to claim to be out there recceing the place at the same time that Shirley Peters was murdered?”
“I didn’t know nothing about that, did I?” Resnick stared at him until he turned aside and reached his hand towards Suzanne Olds, who pushed a packet of Dunhill International in his direction.
“You know, without corroboration, that alibi doesn’t mean a thing?”
“Find Warren. Ask him.”
“I’m here, talking to you.”
“Send him. Instead of all that scribbling.”
Patel barely glanced up from the smaller table, where he was writing as speedily as he could, sheets of A4 fanned out before him.
“What’s he doing anyroad?”
“Making a record of what’s said.”
“What I’m saying?”
“Yes.”
“Then I hope he’s getting it down right.” Macliesh leaned sideways and jerked a finger towards Patel. “You understand what we’re saying, pal?” He moved his head closer to Resnick. “Can he spell?”
“I thought you weren’t prejudiced?”
“That’s not prejudice. He’s a bleeding Paki!”
“DC Patel has a degree from the University of Bradford.”
“They buy ’em, don’t they?”
“Why skip, Macliesh?”
“I don’t skip.”
“You got off a train in Aberdeen.”
“I was away to my job.”
“You don’t have a job.”
“I was promised work on the rigs. I can always get work on the rigs. I’ve done it before.”
“Was this since you came out of prison or before?”
“Don’t you come clever with me, you cocky bugger!” Macliesh’s hands were knots of fist, for a moment in sight and then punched down hard into his thighs.
Suzanne Olds stared at him hard, willing him to unclench his fingers. She shook the cigarette pack at him, breaking his concentration.
“Sudden change of plan, wasn’t it?” Resnick said.
“What change of plan?” He took a cigarette and laid it down, unlit.
“Night before, you were all set up for a burglary. You and your friends, colleagues, whiling away the early evening sizing up this warehouse, and the next thing you’re off with your bag to the station, booking a second-class single to Aberdeen.”
“Fucking class makes a difference, I suppose?”
Resnick could see the violence now, jumping behind Macliesh’s eyes.
“It almost sounds, Inspector,” said Suzanne Olds, “as if you are disappointed my client thought better of committing a crime and went off in search of honest employment.”
“Almost,” said Resnick sharply, reacting against the smirk in her voice.
“But you are conceding that my client was in Lenton Industrial Estate at the time that Shirley Peters was murdered?”
“I’m not conceding anything.”
“Don’t you!” growled Macliesh, twisting in his chair.
“Inspector…” said Suzanne Olds, wanting to draw him off her client, wanting to push her point home.
“There’s the matter of witnesses,” Resnick said.
Macliesh twisted back again. “I’ve given you witnesses.”
“Names.”
“Aye, names.”
“Names of people who can’t be found.” Macliesh swore and pushed his chair away from the table. At Resnick’s back, Patel tensed with apprehension.
“Inspector,” Suzanne Olds said forcefully, claiming his attention, “is it likely that my client would voluntarily confess conspiracy to burglary and name his accomplices in that conspiracy if it were untrue?”
“Which would you rather stand charged with, Ms. Olds? Conspiracy to commit a crime that didn’t take place or a murder that did?”
“No one in this room is charged with murder,” she said.
Macliesh had his arm towards Resnick, finger poking the space between them, his voice drowning his solicitor out. “I didn’t fucking murder anyone!”
“Did you love her?” Resnick asked.
Macliesh looked at the wall.
“Even after she threw you out?”
“She never threw…”
“I’ve talked to her mother, Macliesh. She got sick of you hounding her and hitting her and when you were out of the way she put your stuff in the street and changed all the locks.”
Macliesh said something beneath his breath nobody in the room could catch.
“Not that that was sufficient for you to understand. Phone calls, intimidation, threats of violence…”
“There was no threats of bloody violence!”
“Then a lot of people are lying.”
“They’re always lying!”
“You used your fists against her…”
“That’s not…”
“Used your fists against her when you were together…”
“That’s not true!”
“Signed statements. You beat her up whenever you felt like it, whenever you thought she’d stepped out of line, and in the end the only thing left for her to do was to get a court order made out against you coming anywhere near her.”
Macliesh crumbled a cigarette between his fingers. “That vicious whore put her up to it!”
“Who’s that, Macliesh?”
“That stupid tart, always putting ideas into her head.”
“You mean Grace Kelley?” Resnick asked.
“You sodding know I do!”
“Miss Kelley says that in addition to being violent, you were unreasonably possessive. That even after Shirley Peters had made it clear that in her eyes your relationship was over, you still continued to make it difficult for her to meet other men.”
Macliesh twisted round in his chair, wrenching his head from one side to the other.
“You were jealous, weren’t you, Macliesh?”
“Stuff it!” Macliesh hissed.
“You couldn’t live with the thought of her seeing other men.”
“Stuff it!”
“Didn’t like the idea of her being alone with them.”
Macliesh sat with his head back, mouth open, working at the stale air.
“The chance of her fancying them. Loving them.�
��
Macliesh’s chair went cartwheeling backwards and Suzanne Olds let out a shout and her pen went skittering across the floor.
“Letting them love her.”
Macliesh’s shoulder hit the wall and then the side of his fist, flat of his hand, fist again.
“Difficult inside,” Resnick went on as if Macliesh was still sitting across the table from him, “inside, when she never came to visit you. Lincoln.”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” Macliesh screamed.
“Thinking about it.”
Macliesh hit the wall first with both hands, fingers spread wide, then with his head.
“Difficult not to let those pictures keep forming.”
Again, and there was blood beginning to seep out on either side of the bandages.
“Inspector!” shouted Suzanne Olds. “I insist that this is stopped.”
“‘You as much as sniff another man,’” said Resnick, on his feet now, “‘and I’ll bloody strangle you.’”
Macliesh charged blindly, knocking the solicitor sideways and almost to the ground. His knee banged into a chair, his hip went hard against the table’s edge. He was already stumbling when he made his lunge at Resnick, who sidestepped him with the contempt of a man outwitting an unfocused bull.
“‘I’ll bloody strangle you,’ you said, and that was what you did.”
Resnick’s voice was strong and clear in the confines of the room. Patel had Macliesh’s arm high up behind his back and was forcing the side of his face down against the table. Graham Millington came through the door fast, drawn by the noise, and stood there staring.
“Charge him,” Resnick said.
Suzanne Olds was standing with her body bent forward, arms crossed tight across her chest. She was shaking.
“The murder of Shirley Peters.”
Eleven
The house was paid for: not much more than two up and two down, extension built on the back, kitchen and bathroom, garden the size of a snooker table with grass it took Luke about two days to reduce to mud. But no mortgage. He’d settled that, the one thing he did settle, prissying about with lawyers, bank managers, and bits of paper. “I’ll make sure things are right for you, Mary, you and the children. You’ll not want.”
Not want. Made him sound like one of those hymns she used to sing at Sunday school. He will lay me down in green pastures. Well, Highland Crescent wasn’t exactly green pastures, but aside from the rates, insurance, the normal bills…she knew families who were paying out as much as two hundred a month to the building society. Linda, who worked on electrical, almost two hundred and fifty theirs came to, outgoings, with the loan for the new furniture. Pounds. She didn’t know how they managed. She found coping difficult enough herself, and that was without splashing any around; if they went and stayed in that caravan at Ingoldmels another summer she’d push the wretched thing into the sea.
