Ash & Bone

28

Elder had recognised Maureen Prior's voice instantly, her tone preparing him for something bad but not for this.

'It's Katherine.'

For an instant Elder's heart had seemed to stop.

'She's been arrested.'

Of all his fears, not the one he would have most suspected, not the worst.

'Okay, Maureen,' he said now, standing close against the car park wall. 'Let me have the details.'

'She was arrested for possession.'

'Cannabis? Ecstasy? Out clubbing and -'

'No, Frank.'

'What then?'

'It was heroin.'

'Jesus!' The word expelled with a hiss of air.

Elder closed his eyes and brought his head forward against the corner of the wall. He could hear Maureen's breathing at the other end of the line.

'How much?'

'Five grams.'

'They're charging her with intent to supply?'

'Not yet.'

'Not yet? Either they have or they haven't, I don't see -'

'It's not so straightforward, Frank. There's someone else involved.'

'Okay, I'm coming up.'

'It's not my case, Frank. They're holding her at Canning Circus. I could put you in touch if you want. Perhaps if you just had a word…'

'No. I'm coming up.' Stepping back, he checked his watch. 'I can be there in a couple of hours.'

'All right. You'll call me?'

'Sure. If not tonight, tomorrow, first thing.'

'Good. And Frank…'

'Yes?'

'If you're driving, take care.'

Elder grunted and broke the connection. At least where he was, he was close to the M1, though by now the volume of traffic would be building steadily.

Sweating a little, he dialled Joanne's number.

'You've heard?' he said before she could speak.

'Of course.'

'Why didn't you call me?'

'Frank -'

'Why in God's name didn't you call me?'

He heard the clink of a glass. 'I'm sorry, Frank, I -'

'What? You didn't think I'd find out? You didn't think I wanted to know?'

'It's not that, Frank, it's -'

'How is she?'

'She's all right. I mean, I suppose she's all right. It's difficult, Frank, you don't -'

'I'm driving up, leaving now. I just wanted you to know.'

'Don't, Frank.'

'What else d'you expect?'

'She won't talk to you, you know.'

Elder wanted to hurl the phone into the far-flung reaches of the car park. Instead, he pocketed it carefully and made himself stand there for some moments, perfectly still, controlling his breathing, before reaching for his keys.

The first fifty miles of the motorway were nightmarishly slow; after that it cleared enough for him to pick up some speed, only to close down again beyond Leicester Forest East. Finally turning off at the exit for Nottingham South, he skirted the river and then drove along Maid Marian Way on to Derby Road, turning left again just past Canning Circus and into the police station car park.

There was a small fracas going on outside the entrance, a beleaguered PC standing amongst a group of angry women, doing his best to calm things down. Inside, a balding man with blood on his shirt was standing with his back against the wall, pressing a square of bandage against the gash in his head.

Elder identified himself to the officer on duty. 'I believe you're holding my daughter, Katherine.'

'Just one moment, sir.'

Elder caught the wounded man's eye.

'What the fuck you starin' at?' the man said, his accent raw from north of the border. 'You askin' for a fuckin' kickin', you.'

The noise from the street abated as the PC walked in off the pavement. 'Kenny, we can't have you hiding yourself in here all evening. You'd best get yourself off to Accident and Emergency, get that seen to.'

'No wi'out an escort, I'm not. Those are wild women out there.'

'Mr Elder?' The duty officer had returned. 'If you'll come through. The inspector would like a word.'

Elder had met Resnick once in the past four years, and then briefly. By reputation, he was a bit of an odd cove, a good thief-catcher nonetheless; not so many years before he had astonished all and sundry by taking up with a young woman from the force, some twenty or more years his junior.

'Frank.'

'Charlie.'

Resnick's grip was warm and strong, the smile quick to his face and gone; his expression as he sat back showed concern.

'You're working late,' Elder said.

'It's a poor business, Frank. Your girl. I'm sorry. Especially after what happened before.'

'Thanks.'

'I didn't know how to get in touch with you direct. I thought you and Maureen were probably still in touch.'

'She rang me as soon as she heard.'

Resnick nodded, awkward in the situation the Drugs Squad had left him to sanitise.

'Katherine,' Elder said, 'how is she?'

'Fine. Fine, Frank, all things considered.'

'I'd like to see her.'

Resnick scraped a speck of something from the cuff of his shirt, real or imaginary. 'All in good time.'

'Christ, Charlie. That bastard Keach kept her locked up -'

'I know, I know.'

'And now you -'

'Frank, it's not so straightforward. Hear me out.'

Elder sat back with a slow release of breath. 'Is it ever?'

Resnick resettled himself in his chair. 'The car she was travelling in was stopped on Forest Road East. There'd been an incident, Cranmer Street; a firearm discharged.'

'And they thought she was involved?'

'Not really. Just stopping everyone. Routine. They'd've been off and away if Katherine hadn't given the officer a piece of her mind.'

'She'd been drinking?'

'Maybe just a little.'

'She wasn't breathalysed?'

'She wasn't driving.'

Now we're getting to it, Elder thought.

'Officers hoiked them out of the vehicle,' Resnick said, 'the pair of them. ID, the usual palaver. Phoned it all in.'

'The driver,' Elder said, 'he was known to you.'

'Rob Summers. Two priors. Nothing too serious. Possession of cannabis. Public order. Some kind of argy-bargy at the university. Demonstration.'

'I've met him. Briefly. I didn't know he had form.'

'Drug Squad, they've had their eye on him for a while now. Suspected him of handling a little cannabis, spreading it around, friends mostly. Not worth the aggravation of bringing him in.'

'And now?'

'Some consideration he might be moving up, apparently. Different league.'

'They'd like a reason to squeeze him.'

'Something of the sort.'

'And that's where my Katherine comes in.'

'When the vehicle was searched there were a little over five grams of heroin in a small leather bag in the dash.'

'You're saying it was hers?'

'Her bag, Frank. Her stuff inside.'

'She was holding it for him.'

'Likely.'

'No way he's putting up his hand?'

'What do you think?'

'And Katherine?'

'Beyond the fact that, yes, the bag's hers and she hasn't the foggiest how the drugs got inside, she hasn't said a thing.'

'And you reckon holding her overnight might make her think twice, drop him in it, this Summers, change her mind?'

'Somebody does.'

'Somebody?'

'Bland. DI.'

'Then he doesn't know her very well.'

Resnick held Elder's gaze. 'How well do you, Frank? Driving round in broad daylight with a suspected drug dealer, sizeable amount of a class A drug in her possession.'

Katherine lay curled on the narrow bed, knees drawn up and pressed against the cell wall, the collar of her oyster-coloured jumper pulled up close to her neck. If there had been a belt with her tan jeans it had been punctiliously removed. Her feet were bare.

'Kate?' His voice was loud in the fetid, airless room. 'Katherine…'

A slight tensing of her muscles and nothing more. A tray of food, uneaten, lay nearby on the floor.

'Talk to me.'

A silence, unbroken, and then, muffled by her arm, so that Elder had to strain to hear: 'What for?'

'I want to help.'

She laughed then, a harsh sound that raised her head and broke into a jittering cough. Elder moved closer and sat, perched, near the end of the bed; when his leg inadvertently touched her foot, she pulled it, sharp, away.

'You want to help,' she said, not looking at him, her voice small and dry.

Times he had sat like that when she was a child, four, rising five; his hand would touch her cheek and, as he spoke and said her name, she would slowly stroke his lower arm, her fingers smooth and warm and small. His eyes smarted with the beginnings of tears.

'Of course I do,' he said.

The laugh again, harder this time. 'You mean like you did before?'

Elder flinched as if he had been hit.

For an instant he must have looked away, because suddenly he was aware of her staring at him, her gaze, the awful flatness of her eyes.

'Katherine…' he began.

But by then she had turned again towards the wall, head buried in her arms.

Elder stayed where he was, not moving, awkward, listening to her breathe. When the custody sergeant called time, Elder bent over her once more, stopped short of kissing her, stood and turned aside, the sound of the door closing behind him like the clenching of a fist.

She's alive and you're some great hero, your picture all over the papers, all over the screen every time you turn on the bloody TV.

Joanne's words.