Cold Light

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 rebuke 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 were 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.