Cold Light

Twenty-four

What little had been seen of the season of goodwill was soon lost in a fog of malevolence and discontent. Uniformed officers summoned to a night club in the city, after receiving an emergency call claiming that a man had been knifed, walked into a blitz of bottles and bricks, and one hastily assembled petrol bomb was rolled beneath their car. A firefighting team arriving to tackle a blaze in the upper stories of a terraced house two streets away from Gary and Michelle found themselves pelted with rubbish and abuse by a gang of white youths, one of their hoses split by an ax, the tires of an engine slashed. The family living in the house, two of whom suffered broken limbs jumping to the ground while others, children between five years and eighteen months, suffered severe burns, were from Bangladesh.

At something short of five one morning, a young woman with a Glasgow accent stumbled into the police station at Canning Circus with blood running freely from a wound to the side of her head and one eye tightly closed. She and her boyfriend, a twenty-nine-year-old known to be a small-time dealer, had been smoking crack cocaine in an abandoned house near the Forest; she had drifted off and been woken by the sound of his fists pummeling her face. Medical examination in casualty revealed a fractured cheekbone and a detached retina in the eye.

The driver of the last bus from the Old Market Square to Bestwood Estate refused to accept the fare of a clearly drunken man who had been offering him verbal abuse and had a piece of masonry thrown at his windscreen, splintering it across. Another taxi driver was attacked, this time with a baseball bat.

A memo was passed round, offering overtime for officers willing to be drafted in to assist the Mansfield division in policing a concert by right-wing skinhead rock groups to be held in the old Palais de Dance. The event had been advertised in fascist magazines all over Europe and at least two coachloads were expected from Germany and Holland.

“Sounds like just the thing for our Mark,” Kevin Naylor remarked, passing the memo across the CID room.

“Knowing him,” Lynn said, “he’ll have his ticket already. Front row.”

Nancy Phelan’s parents made a ritual of visiting the station twice, sometimes three times a day, demanding to speak with either Resnick or Skelton to find out what progress had been made. Between times, they turned up on one or other of the local radio programs, wrote to the Post, the free papers, the nationals, petitioned the Lord Mayor and the city’s M.P. Clarise Phelan took to standing in front of the stone columns of the Council House at one end of the Market Square with a placard bearing a blown-up photograph of Nancy and underneath, My lovely daughter-missing and nobody cares.

After forty-eight hours when the temperature had risen high enough for Resnick to discard both scarf and gloves, the weather bit back. It hit freezing and stayed. Trains were cancelled, buses curtailed; cars slid into slow, unstoppable collisions which blocked the roads for hours. Understaffed, close to overwhelmed, Skelton and Resnick struggled to delegate, prioritize, keep their feet from slipping under them.

Both of Nancy Phelan’s missing boyfriends returned, shocked by what had happened, but unable to shed any light on how or why. James Guillery was stretchered off the plane at Luton Airport with a broken leg, victim not of the snow but an accident involving the chairlift and a snapped bolt. Eric Capaldi had sped in his low-slung sports car to the outskirts of Copenhagen and back. His aim had been to interview, for a potential radio slot of his own, a fifty-two-year-old percussionist who had been a counter-culture star for fifteen minutes in the late sixties and was now composing minimalist religious music for trans-European radio. After the interview and most of a bottle of brandy and to Eric’s abiding confusion, he had ended up in the percussionist’s arms and then his bed.

Robin Hidden continued to maintain that he had driven away that night without speaking to Nancy Phelan and had finally issued a statement through his solicitor saying that, as far as that particular subject went, he had nothing more to say.

As David Welch, smiling for once, had expressed it, handing Graham Millington the envelope, “Put up or shut up, you know what I mean?”

“Cocky so-and-so,” Millington thought. “Well above himself.” But he and Resnick knew only too well Welch was right. Arrest Hidden as things stood and within twenty-four hours, thirty-six at most, he would be back out on the street again and what would have been gained?

What did happen, inevitably, was that Harry Phelan got wind of what was going on. A new-found friend of a friend, drinking late one night in his Mansfield Road hotel, had told him one place to find the crime reporter for the Post was in the Blue Bell of a lunchtime, swopping yarns and enjoying a peaceful couple of pints. Next day Harry went along and stood around and by the time he’d bought his round, had heard about the young man the police had been questioning.

“Where is the bastard?” Harry Phelan had yelled later, catching Skelton coming back from one of his runs to the station. “Why haven’t you bleedin’ arrested him? Just wait till I get my hands on him, that’s all. Just wait.”

Skelton calmed him down and invited him to his office, tried to explain. “Mr. Phelan, I assure you …”

“Don’t insult me with that,” Harry Phelan said. “Assure. Look at you. Out there friggin’ about in that poncey gear, joggin’, instead of saving my poor bleedin’ kid! You-you couldn’t assure me of shit!”

Meanwhile, Reg Cossall and his team had interviewed one hundred and thirty-nine men and forty-three women, thirty-seven of whom had a clear recollection of seeing Nancy on Christmas Eve. Five of the women had spoken to her, eight in all remembered what she had been wearing. Seven of the men, had spoken to her, five had danced with her, two had asked her if they could give her a lift home. She had said no to them both. And both had gone home with someone else.

As police work went it was painstaking and thorough and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Like farting down an open sewer,” Cossall said, disgusted. “Not worth parting your bloody cheeks.”

By the time Resnick had arrived home after his night with Dana Matthieson, walking all the way across the city, down beside the cemetery to the gates of the Arboretum, through towards the site of the old Victoria railway station and up past the Muslim temple on the Woodborough Road, he had convinced himself that it had all been a mistake. Enjoyable, yes, exciting even, but certainly a mistake. On both sides.

Naturally, he reasoned, after what had happened to her flatmate, Dana had been upset, disorientated, looking for comfort and distraction. As for himself-Jesus, Charlie, he said to the empty streets, how long is it since you went with a woman?

Is that what it had been, then? Only that? Going with a woman?

Suddenly chilled, he had pulled up his coat collar and shivered, remembering the warmth of Dana’s body.

And of course, he hadn’t done as he had said, he hadn’t called. For the first couple of days, whenever the phone rang in his office or at home, he had lifted the receiver with the same strange mix of anxiety and anticipation. But it was never her. Easy to stop waiting for it to happen.

When, finally, three days later, Dana did call, Resnick was talking to Lynn Kellogg about her application for leave, a day accompanying her father to the outpatient department of the Norfolk and Norwich.

“An endoscopy,” Lynn said, the word unfamiliar on her tongue.

Resnick looked at her inquiringly.

“An internal examination. As far as I can tell they pass this thing, this endoscope up into his bowels.”

Resnick shuddered at the thought.

Lynn breathed uneasily. “If they suspect cancer, most likely they’ll take a biopsy.”

“And if it is,” Resnick asked, “what kind of treatment …?”

“Surgery,” Lynn said. “They cut it out.”

“I’m sorry,” Resnick said. There were tears, suddenly, at the corners of Lynn’s eyes. “Really sorry.” Part way round his desk towards her he stopped. He wanted to take her in his arms, reassure her with a hug.

“It’s all right.” Lynn found a tissue and blew her nose, leaving Resnick stranded where he was. Thank God for the phone.

“Charlie?” said the voice at the other end of the line.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Dana.”

By then he knew.

“You didn’t call.”

“No, I’m sorry. Things have been, well, hectic.” Without meaning to, he caught Lynn’s eye.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” Dana said.

Resnick transferred the receiver from one hand to another, studied the floor.

“Do you want me to wait outside?” Lynn said.

Resnick shook his head.

“I’ve been thinking about your body,” Dana said.

Resnick, found that hard to believe. He thought about his own body as little as he could and when he did it was usually with dismay.

“I want to see you, that’s all,” Dana said. “No big deal.”

“Look,” Lynn was almost at the door, “I can come back later.”

“Is this a bad time?” Dana said. “Is it difficult for you to talk?”

“No, it’s fine,” Resnick said, waving Lynn back into the room.

“When can I see you?” Dana asked.

“Why don’t we meet for a drink?” Resnick said, as much as anything to get her off the phone.

“Tomorrow?”

Resnick couldn’t think. “All right,” he said.

“Good. Eight o’clock?”

“Fine.”

“Why don’t you come here? We can go on somewhere else if you want.”

“All right. See you then. Bye.” By the time he put down the phone he had started to sweat.

“First-footing,” Lynn said.

“What?”

“You know, tall stranger crosses the threshold with a lump of coal.”

“Oh, God!”

“Problem?”

Only that he’d forgotten it was New Year’s Eve. And now Marian Witczak’s voice came instantly back to him: “We will both wear, Charles, what would you say? Our dancing shoes.”

“Double-booked?” Lynn asked.

“Something like that.”

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t be laughing.” She didn’t seem to be laughing at all.

“This day’s leave,” Resnick said, “it’ll be tight, but no question you must go. We’ll cover somehow.”

“Thanks. And good luck.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow.”

Dana lit another cigarette, poured herself another drink. She had already had several, finding the courage to phone him when he hadn’t phoned her. And at work. Probably she shouldn’t have done that, probably that had been a mistake. Except he had said yes, hadn’t he? Agreed to come round for a drink. She smiled, raising her glass: he was worth a little seeking out, a little chasing after. She liked him, the memory of him: big, there was something, she thought, about a man who was big. And she laughed.