Cold Light

Fifty-one

Michelle woke to the sound of rain sweeping against the windows, the blip-blip-blip as it dripped through the gap in the roof into the plastic bucket below. Beside her, Gary’s breathing was steady and when she turned towards him, twisting her leg beneath his, she could smell cigarette smoke in his hair. Out drinking again last night. Herself, too. She couldn’t remember when they’d spent so much time at the pub. Not feeling so good about leaving the kids alone, not even for half an hour, but they’d been fast off by then and once they were sleeping they almost never woke. Besides, Gary, he’d only have got into a mood if she’d said no. Just one drink, she’d said when she’d arrived, but Brian, flash bugger, had been flush again, laughing and making a fuss of her, insisting she and Josie have Bacardi and Coke, rubbing his hand up her leg too, the moment she sat down. Gary, thank God, he’d been too far gone to notice.

Michelle was more certain than ever Brian was into something dicey. Brian and Gary both, the way they kept up the clever looks and nudges, going off into corners and getting their heads down, whispering. Not that Gary seemed to have got so much out of it, whatever it was. Some things, she thought sadly, never changed.

She looked down at Gary now, his features softened by the half-light; one of those blokes, no matter how old they got, who never really looked any different to when they were kids. The ones who were always looking the wrong way, stuck standing at the end of the wrong line. He stirred and, suddenly tender towards him, Michelle bent her head and kissed him and smiled as he flapped a hand towards his face as if at a fly. Downstairs, the baby was waking, the day’s first cry.

Michelle rolled away from Gary towards the edge of the bed.

Resnick had been unable to sleep at all. Twice he had tried, forcing himself to lay down at one and half-past three, both times getting back up after thirty minutes of flailing around, unable to clear thoughts of Lynn from his mind. Awake, he had paced distractedly from room to room, phoned, periodically, the station to see if there had been any developments, any news; in the kitchen, he had toasted bread, eaten it with cheese, strong Gorgonzola that had tasted of nothing. He had been so certain the trawl through the Open University lists would yield something. McCain and Reverdy, neither of them usual names. But blind alleys were all it had brought them, blind alleys and false trails. Wasted time.

Resnick remembered Harry Phelan’s face, distorted by anger: Forty-eight hours, that’s what they reckon, isn’t it? Forty-eight hours. If you don’t find them in that, likely they’re sodding dead! Harry Phelan, standing in an open field, while behind him, inside the waiting ambulance, his daughter’s body lay covered by a plastic sheet. Resnick willed himself not to look at the clock.

Maureen Madden, Kevin Naylor, anyone and everyone Lynn might have talked to, Resnick had quizzed them, anything she had mentioned about seeing somebody, a new boyfriend, a man. She had said something to Naylor about her car breaking down on the way back from her parents’, someone stopping to lend a hand, offering her a lift. Nothing more than that.

Resnick stood in the top room of the house, one of the cats in his arms, staring out into the rain.

Michelle had just got to the bucket in time, the water only an inch from the top. Emptying it quickly into the bath, she had replaced it before hurrying downstairs and mopping up at the back where the rain had driven in through the gaps at the edge of the door Gary had failed to fix. The cup of tea she had made herself was little better than lukewarm.

In her cot, Natalie lay on her back, gurgling away happily now she had been changed and fed.

“Oh, Karl, just look at you!”

Left in the kitchen to his own devices, he had managed to get more Rice Krispies on the floor than in his bowl. The last of the fresh milk was dribbling from its carton into the sink.

“Karl, for heaven’s sake!” The boy backed away, blinking, wearing Gary’s old County shirt, long past his knees. “Come on, mind out of the way. Let me get this cleared up before your dad comes down.”

Karl trundled into the doorway and bumped into Gary, still prizing the sleep from his eyes.

“Bloody heck, Karl! Look where you’re going, why don’t you?”

“Hang on a minute,” Michelle said. “You’ll be treading all that into the floor.”

“What the hell’s it doing there in the first place?”

“Karl had an accident.”

“Karl was a sodding accident.”

“Gary, that’s not fair!”

“Not fair, it’s sodding true, though, i’n’ it?”

“Gary, don’t. Look, he can hear.”

“So what’s that matter? Doesn’t know what we’re on about, hasn’t a clue, have you, pal?”

“Asthdent,” Karl said just inside the door. “Asthdent.”

Michelle shook her head, pushed Gary aside while she swept the remaining Rice Krispies into the dustpan.

“Make him come back here and eat it, that’s what you should do. Teach him a bloody lesson fast enough.”

Michelle shot him a look and tipped the cereal into the bin. “There’s tea in the pot. Likely cold. If you want fresh, you can make it yourself.” And she shooed Karl into the other room and closed the door behind them: let him take his rotten temper out on himself.

The cats had decided it was time Resnick saw to their welfare. Dizzy had attracted his attention, weaving in and out of his legs, nudging his head against Resnick’s ankles.

Downstairs in the kitchen, radio tuned to the World Service, Resnick had forked Whiskas into their bowls, ground the first coffee beans of the day, and looked to see what else there was for breakfast other than toast.

Near the back of the fridge he found a section of smoked sausage, which, when he held it close to his nose, failed to give off any warning signs. Using a sharp knife he sliced the sausage into rings and pushed them to one side of the board, lifted a pan on to the stove and poured in some olive oil, set the gas to low. A few cloves of garlic he peeled with his hands, making much use of his nails. An onion, and then he’d be there.

Bud made his familiar pathetic wail and without looking Resnick used his foot to shift Dizzy from the smallest cat’s bowl.

The onion he sliced into half and half again, knife cutting down, smaller and smaller each time. By the time he had finished, he could scarcely see what he was doing for the tears. Resnick sniffed and fumbled for a handkerchief; finding none, he reached for the tea towel instead. When his eyes were clear he saw at last something he should have recognized before.

Two of the cats’ bowls were overturned as he ran to the door, Pepper leaping for safety to the refuge of the largest pan. Only with his coat on, car keys in his hand, did he remember the gas, and dash back to the kitchen to switch it off. Hearing him coming, Miles and Bud cowered in corners, Dizzy stood his ground and arched his back.

“Where’s Karl gone now?”

“I thought he was with you.”

Gary was up some steps he’d borrowed from the neighbors across the street, trying to do something about the hole in the roof. Already there’d been a stream of shouts and swearing and, from experience, Michelle knew he was about to explode. But when Michelle had come back in with the baby, Karl, who she’d thought was stretched out on his stomach watching cartoons, was nowhere to be seen.

“Gary, where …?”

“I told you, I haven’t fucking seen him!”

From their bedroom, the answer came in a scream. Karl was alongside the wardrobe when Michelle got there, continuing to scream, staring at his hands. The knife lay on the floor before him, smeared with blood.

“Oh, Jesus!”

When she ran to him, Karl turned away and threw himself against the wall.

“Karl, Karl, it’s all right. Let me see. Let me see, now, sweetheart, let me see.”

Gary stood just inside the doorway, saw the knife. “What the fuck you been doing, you stupid little bastard? What the fuck you, doing, sticking your nose where it’s got no business? Eh? Eh?”

“Gary. Shut up and leave him alone.”

“I’ll leave him alone.”

“Gary!”

He grabbed Michelle by the arm and half-pulled, half-pushed her out of the way. Karl saw the blow coming and threw up his hands, but the force of the punch knocked them aside and the fist struck the boy smack on the side of the head.

Karl let out a cry and toppled into the corner, weeping.

“Gary, you bastard! You pathetic, cowardly bastard!” Michelle had snatched the knife from the floor and set herself between father and son, handle grasped in both hands, blade pointing towards Gary’s chest. “You dare touch him again. You dare!”

Gary stared back at her, breath uneven, hands falling slowly back to his sides. What the hell did the stupid bitch reckon she was doing, turning the bloody knife on him? But when he tried moving half a pace forward, it was clear she was not about to budge. With a curl of his lip, Gary turned away. Until she had heard him lurch heavy-footed down the stairs, the slam of the front door, Michelle wouldn’t move. Only then did she drop the knife on to the bed and pick the terrified child up into her arms.

Resnick hadn’t been the only one for whom sleep had been more or less impossible. Kevin Naylor had finally given up at around three and taken the spare duvet into the front room so as not to disturb Debbie, settled down in the armchair, and watched a discussion between an American academic, who seemed to have written a book about bondage, and a fiercely unfunny female comedian, the pair of them arguing about the effects the increase in estrogen in the water was having on the male sperm count. Fifteen minutes of that and he quickly showered, changed, wrote a note for Debbie, and set off for the station.

There had to be something, something they’d overlooked. In the CID room, he began to go through Lynn’s desk, drawer by drawer, file by file, paper by paper. Almost an hour later, increasingly agitated, frustrated, he came close to missing it. The Yellow Pages scarred with the rings of numerous coffee mugs, he had gone through pretty thoroughly, but all that was marked were pizza deliveries, Indian takeaways, taxi firms. Kevin picked up the Thomson Directory that had been underneath it and gave it a quick flick through. The first time he noticed nothing, only on the second, carrying the directory across the room to add it to the general pile, did he spot the biroed asterisk, name printed at an angle in the column beside it.

SCHOTNESS STATIONERY LTD. Wholesale Supplies.

The address was a factory estate near the Clifton flyover.

The name written beside it was Michael Best.

Naylor’s fingers fumbled the numbers twice and when he did get through, the phone rang and rang.

“Shit!”

“Something a problem, Kevin?”

When he saw Resnick in the doorway, Naylor could have given him a hug. Almost. “Look,” he said, grabbing the directory from Lynn’s desk. “Look here.”

Taking the book from him, Resnick set it back down again to read it. “Good lad,” he said. “Well done.”

Naylor was too excited to blush.

Resnick checked his watch. “Too early to expect anyone there to set us straight. Meantime, what you can do is this. Names we took of everyone who was at that Christmas Eve do at the hotel where Nancy Phelan disappeared, that’s all on file?”

“On the computer, yes.”

“Right. Get it up on screen. I wouldn’t mind betting Michael Best was one of the guests.”

Across the room, Resnick picked up one of the photo-fit posters awaiting distribution. Not a perfect likeness, which was maybe why he’d not seen it immediately, but now he didn’t think there could be any mistake. “Later, then. Let me buy you a drink later.” A dark-haired man in a dress suit, his eyes pursuing Lynn down the bar.

“Sir. Take a look at this.”

Schotness Stationery were one of two small firms who had shared their celebrations on the third floor of the hotel and M. Best was listed among their guests.

Resnick was reaching for the nearest phone when it rang. It was Sharon Garnett, calling from King’s Lynn. “Just had something delivered for forwarding, addressed to you, personally. It’s a tape.”