Cold Light

Four

“Lock the door,” he said.

“What?”

“Lock the door.”

Nancy sweating a little now, wondering what she’d got herself into. “It’s against regulations …” she began, but she could see Gary, increasingly edgy, looking round the room for something to break. Something to break over her. Quietly, she slid open the small drawer to the right of her desk and took out the key.

No sooner had the door been locked and Nancy sat back down than the phone rang, once, twice, three times; looking at Gary for a sign that she should pick it up.

“Hello,” she said into the receiver. “Nancy Phelan here.”

A pause, then: “No, I’m fine.” Glancing across the desk to where Gary was still standing. “We’re fine. Yes, I’m sure. No. Bye.”

Deliberately, she set the receiver down and, as she did so, Gary bent towards the floor and pulled the wire from its socket above the skirting.

“Well,” Nancy said, “why don’t you sit down?”

But Gary was staring round her office, taking it all in. The postcards from foreign holidays she’d Blutacked to the filing cabinet, the ivy that needed repotting near the window, the overflowing in-tray, a color photograph of her cousin’s twins. In a clear plastic container with an air-tight lid, green leaves and pieces of thin twig. Gary picked it up and shook it.

“Don’t!” Nancy cried, alarmed. Then, more quietly, “I’d rather you didn’t do that. There’s something … there are stick insects in there. Two of them. I think.”

Gary held it up to his face and gave the container an experimental shake.

“They were a present,” Nancy said, uncertain why she felt the need to explain. “A client.”

“I think they’re dead,” Gary said.

Nancy thought he might be right.

The first response car had only arrived at the Housing Office moments before Resnick walked in, strudel, cheese, and sausage in a plastic bag in his left hand. In the lobby, a young PC was talking to the security guard, another, slightly older, having problems using his two-way radio to call in. Not recognizing either of them, Resnick produced his warrant card.

“PC Bailey,” said the officer with the radio. “That there’s Hennessey.”

Not, Resnick assumed, the one that used so effectively to police the Forest midfield. He listened to a quick run-down of the situation and moved towards the stairs.

“D’you not think we should wait for some support, sir?” Bailey asked.

“Let’s see what we can do ourselves,” Resnick said. “Whoever he’s got in there might not thank us for hanging about.”

Most of those who had been queuing to be seen and a growing number from other floors had crowded into the corridor outside the locked door.

“Keep everybody back,” Resnick told Hennessey. “In the waiting room with the door shut.”

“I spoke to Nancy on the phone just after they went in,” the receptionist said. “She said she was all right.”

Resnick nodded. “Can I talk to her?”

Penny shook her head. “The line’s gone dead.”

“The man,” Resnick asked, “do we know his name?”

“James. Gary James.”

“And did he seem to be armed? Was he carrying any kind of weapon?”

“He tried to hit me with a chair.” At the thought of it, Penny’s shoulders gave an involuntary shake.

“Gary James,” Resnick told Bailey, who was already entering the name in his notebook. “Get him checked out, see if he’s known.”

“And the backup, sir?”

Resnick half-smiled. “If there’s any to spare.” Turning back to the receptionist, he asked, “Has there been any shouting from inside? Signs of a disturbance?”

“I went up to the door, close as I dared,” Penny’s voice, a little breathless, telling it. “On and on about the state of the place where he’s living, that’s all I could hear. How cold it was and damp and how it would be a miracle if his kids got through the winter without pneumonia. That was a while back, though. I haven’t heard a dickybird since.”

“Someone must have another key to the room?”

“Oh, yes. The caretaker. For the cleaning staff, you see.”

“You’ve tried contacting him?”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry. With all the fuss, I didn’t think. I can try for him now, though, to be honest, I’m not sure where he is this time of day. Somewhere with his boilers, I dare say.” She indicated the security guard, blinking behind his glasses. “Howard might know.”

“All right, ask Howard for me if he can track him down.” Resnick held his carrier bag of provisions out towards her. “And do me a favor, will you? Look after this.”

Taking the bag, Penny glanced inside. “Would you like me to pop and put them in the fridge? We’ve got a fridge.”

Resnick shook his head. “Your colleague, Nancy, what’s her other name?”

“Phelan. Nancy Phelan.”

Resnick thanked her and walked towards the door.

“You know something,” Gary said. It was the first time he had spoken-either of them had spoken-in several minutes.

“What’s that?” Nancy said.

“I know you.”

“Yes, you said. When you and your wife …”

“She’s not my wife.”

“Well, whatever.”

“Me and Michelle, we’re not married.”

“When you and Michelle came in before, you said that was when you saw me.”

“But that’s not what I mean. Nothing to do with being here. This place. I mean I know you, from before.”

Nancy didn’t think so.

“From school. We were at the same school. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Top Valley. You were two years above me. Yeh. You went around with-what’s his name? — Brookie. Him and my brother, they was mates.”

Malcolm Brooks. Brookie. Watching him play pool in the pub, evenings, sipping a rum and coke, and waiting for him to drive her home. He’d park his old man’s Escort round the back of Tesco’s till Nancy told him how she’d catch it if she was in late again. She hadn’t thought of Brookie in years.

“Nancy,” said Resnick’s voice through the door. “Nancy, are you all right in there?”

Gary reached across faster than she could judge and caught a hold of her hair. “Tell him,” he snarled. “Tell him it’s okay.”

“Nancy, this is the police. Detective Inspector Resnick, CID.”

“Tell him,” Gary said, twisting her hair in his hand. “Tell him he’d better sod off and leave us alone.”

“Hello? Inspector?” Her voice muffled, difficult to judge the tone. “Listen, there’s nothing for you to be concerned about. Really.”

Nancy angled her eyes towards Gary, wanting him to look at her. The way he had hold of her hair, tugging against the roots, it was all she could do not to cry.

“Are you sure?” Resnick asked, face all but resting on the cream paint of the door. Nothing solid about it at all, a couple of good whacks and it would be down. “You sure everything’s okay?” Listening hard, Resnick could only hear his own breathing. “Nancy?”

She was staring into Gary’s face, willing him to let her go.

“Nancy?” Resnick knocked on the center of the door, not hard, even so it moved a little against the frame.

With a look and a sigh, Gary leaned away, loosening his grip on her hair. She read the look and it was that of someone realizing they were deep into something from which there was no easy way out.

“We’re talking,” Nancy said, raising her voice, never taking her eyes off Gary. “About a problem Gary has with his housing. There was just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“And Gary,” Resnick said. “Let me hear your voice, will you? Just say something. Say hello. Anything.”

Gary said nothing.

Bailey beckoned Resnick back along the corridor. “James, sir. Quite a tasty little record. Petty stuff as a juvenile. Supervision orders. Right now he’s on probation. Aggravated assault. Actual bodily harm. Troops are on their way.”

“What it seems to me, Gary,” Nancy was saying, “the sooner this is over, the less trouble for you.”

“Oh, yeh,” Gary said, lip curling. “I can see you being worried about that-trouble for me.”

“Gary,” she said, “I am. Really, I am.”

“Nancy,” Resnick said from outside, “as long as everything’s all right in there, do you think you could unlock the door?”

She was looking across at Gary, the sweat was beginning to stand out like pimples on his skin and his eyes refused to hold her gaze. Nancy had thought not to leave the key in the lock and now it lay at the end of the table between them, eighteen inches from her right hand. And his. She began to crab her fingers towards it and then stopped, reading his intention clearly.

“No,” Nancy said, voice raised but even, “I don’t think I can. Not right now.”

Bailey signaled that reinforcements had arrived outside the building; soon Resnick would hear their feet as they charged the stairs.

“Gary,” he said, “this is your one and only chance. Come on out of your own free will before we have to come in and get you.”

“You see,” Nancy said, leaning her face towards him, pleading.

“I don’t know,” Gary said, licking sweat from the soft hairs sprouting round his top lip. “I don’t fucking know.”

His voice was trembling and he reminded Nancy of the way her younger brother had looked caught stealing from their mother’s purse, all of nine years old. Slowly, very slowly, so that he could see what she was doing, Nancy took the key between forefinger and thumb, stood, and walked the four paces to the door.

“Okay, Gary?” she asked, glancing round.

When she turned the key and pushed the door wide, they were inside in a flash: Bailey and Hennessey and two others, grabbing Gary as he tried to move, hands, arms, swinging him hard about and forcing him up against the wall, feet kicked wide, legs spread, arms yanked back and round, the cuffs as they went on biting at his wrists.

“Are you all right?” Resnick asked, touching Nancy lightly on the shoulder.

“I kept telling you, didn’t I? I’m fine.” She stood aside, arms folded across her chest, her breathing going ragged now and seeking to control it, turning her head as Gary was hauled out into the corridor, no longer wanting to look into his face, see his expression as they bundled him away.