Cutting Edge

Twenty-three

“Dicey business, Charlie. Can’t say that I like it.”

Skelton was on the prowl. Desk to window, window to filing cabinet, filing cabinet to coffee-maker, though it didn’t seem to occur to him to offer Resnick a cup. The superintendent was so wired up himself, Resnick wondered if he’d been taking his caffeine straight, mainlining it into a vein. Truth was, likely he hadn’t done any serious exercise for a few hours, needed a five-mile run to steady his nerves.

He’d been like this after the trouble had flared up with Kate, either hyped up or flatter than a slow Sunday out in the suburbs of Bramcote, Burton Joyce. Resnick wondered again how things were with Skelton’s daughter, A levels pretty soon-was that what they still called them? — off to be a student somewhere probably. Then let Skelton try and keep tabs on her. Or maybe with the new morality they didn’t waste their energies on sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll? Straight into pension schemes and overdrafts to afford Paul Smith suits; long evenings lusting after fax machines while they listened to Nigel Kennedy or the Eric Clapton back-catalog re-released on CD. He’d been a fair guitarist once; Clapton not Kennedy.

“What are you thinking, Charlie?”

“‘Crossroads,’ sir.”

“Not bringing that back, are they? Thought it was all this Australian stuff, Neighbours and the like.”

“No, sir. ‘Crossroads.’ It’s a blues. Robert Johnson. Skip James. It’s …”

“Relevant, Charlie?”

“No, sir. Not really.”

Skelton gave him a short, hard stare and resumed pacing his office carpet. As a superintendent you get thicker pile and a choice of colors, replacement every five years if you had the right connections. The way Skelton was going, that might be something else to talk to Paul Groves about.

“It’s distracting,” Skelton said, behind Resnick now and making him turn in his chair. “That’s what worries me. Leading us away from what I think should be our main focus.”

“But if it’s there …”

“What, Charlie? What exactly?”

“If Groves and Dougherty were involved …”

“Come on, Charlie. We don’t know that.”

“Seems pretty incontrovertible Groves is gay, bisexual at least.”

“Where’s your evidence about Dougherty?”

“Close to thirty interviews, people who’ve worked with him, some of them for quite a while. Had a drink with him, socialized. Not a great deal, but a little. Never once, any talk of a girlfriend. Woman. Not once.”

“That means he’s gay?”

Resnick shrugged. What was Skelton getting so worked up about? “It’s an indication.”

“Of what? That he doesn’t like women? That he doesn’t like sex? Maybe he’s a very private person. Maybe it’s his hormones. If we all had our sexuality determined by our rate of intimacy, where would that leave us?” Skelton was back behind his desk, constructing cages with his fingers. “Come to think of it, Charlie, last couple of police functions, you haven’t brought anybody with you, the opposite sex. Not significant, is it?”

Resnick found himself wriggling a little more than was comfortable. Either Skelton was accusing him of being a long time in the closet or being innately prejudiced, he wasn’t sure which. Perhaps it was both. Or simply a game? No. The only games he could imagine Skelton being interested in had strict rules, required the utmost concentration and alertness, were important to win and absolutely no fun at all. Fun, Resnick thought, wasn’t a concept the superintendent believed in.

Poor Kate!

“I’m sure there was something going on between them,” Resnick said. “Something to make Dougherty leave early, more than this shift business. I saw Groves’s face when I suggested they might have been having a row.”

“Lovers’ quarrel, Charlie?” said Skelton dismissively.

“Could have followed him out of the bar, across the street. One thing, if Dougherty knew who his attacker was, that would explain why he was able to get close, get in the first blow.”

“From behind, Charlie?”

The thought set up possibilities neither man was prepared fully to consider. Skelton slid back one of his desk drawers and took out a blue folder, some papers clipped neatly together.

“Home Office statistics. Rise in recorded sexual offenses, five percent to twenty-eight thousand in ’89, since then more or less holding.” Skelton flipped over two pages. “Research into that extra five percent, thirteen hundred cases, between half and a third indecency charges against men. One town’s public toilets. You can imagine what the gays had to say about that. You know.” Skelton turned to another sheet, a photo copy of a magazine article. “‘The prosecution and persecution of gay men,’” Skelton read.

“With respect, sir …”

“Let the media get wind of this,” Skelton said, “they’ll have a field day. Gays carving themselves up in lavatories. The so-called silent majority will want officers on observation, armed with everything from mirrors to video cameras and everyone to the left of the Co-op Labour Party will be organizing demos and picketing police stations on behalf of their oppressed brothers.”

Resnick allowed a small silence to collect around them. Beyond it a car went by, all of its windows presumably down, loudspeakers blaring. From further along the corridor, not quite decipherable, the familiar cadence of swearing. Telephones, their urgencies overlapping.

“If he had motivation, sir. Groves. Opportunity.”

“Yes,” said Skelton, subdued now. “I agree. We have to check it out. But, Charlie, low profile, low key, be careful who you use. And remember, if there is anything in it, where does that leave us with the attack on Fletcher? The hospital, Charlie, I still think that’s where we’ll find our answers.”

“Yes, sir,” Resnick said, getting to his feet.

“The wrong kind of publicity, Charlie,” Skelton said as Resnick reached the door, “it can only get in the way.”

Patel was worrying over the information that had come back from the hospital, fussing with the computer, opening files, finding facts to cross-reference, and concluding there were too few. If there was a clear link between Fletcher and Karl Dougherty he couldn’t pin it down. Aside from the obvious; apart from the fact that they had survived. In Dougherty’s case, just. His condition was still giving cause for concern.

Naylor and Lynn Kellogg were talking into telephones, opposite ends of the office.

“Nobody tramps the streets with a pram for eight hours,” Naylor was saying. “Nobody in their right mind.”

“And when she made this application,” said Lynn Kellogg, “did she say what she was going to do?… Mm, hm. Mm, hm … And did she say where?”

Resnick stood for a while behind Patel’s desk, looking at the characters springing up on the green screen. Names, dates, times. It should all be checked against a list of patients Fletcher would have had dealings with, patients from Bernard Salt’s list, but that list was slow in coming. The consultant’s secretary had greeted Patel’s request like an invitation to perform a particularly unsavory sexual act.

If Skelton was right and the hospital was where they were going to get their answers, they would have to do better than this.

“I would go back there, sir,” Patel said. “But with the best will in the world, I don’t think it would make a lot of difference. She is a very determined lady.”

Resnick nodded. The sort that, generations back, would have traveled across the Sahara by camel without ever breaking sweat or needing to urinate behind the nearest pyramid; who held the Raj together in the face of disease, the caste system, and the occasional difficulty in getting a fourth for bridge.

“If you might call her yourself, sir,” Patel suggested.

“I’ll get the super to do it.”

“I don’t know,” Naylor was saying. “As soon as I can. What does it matter anyway, if you’re not going to be there?”

“Thank you,” said Lynn. “If she does get in touch, you’ll let me know?”

Resnick watched as Naylor slammed down the phone and left the office with a speed that nearly left a startled DC, who happened to be coming through the door, minus an arm. Resnick looked questioningly towards Lynn Kellogg and slowly she shook her head. The number of times Resnick had seen it happen: young officers who think a kiddie is all they need to bring them and their young wives back together.

He headed for his office and Lynn followed him.

“Karen Archer, sir. I’ve checked with the university. Seems she saw the student counselor and was advised to take some time off. Compassionate leave, sort of thing. The department secretary assumed she’d gone home to her parents, but didn’t know for sure. I’ve tried to contact them and can’t get any response.”

“You’re worried?”

“Just a feeling, sir.”

“She had obviously moved out, though. Signaled her intentions.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not as if Carew’s gone after her again, no suggestion of that?”

Lynn shook her head.

“The concern is, then, what? She might have harmed herself?”

“Something like that, sir. Rape. The way Maureen Madden explained it, at least if she’d agreed to press charges, that would have been acknowledging what happened and saying that it wasn’t her fault. Not leaving her trying to suppress it or feeling guilty.”

“Her parents. Where do they live?”

“Devon, sir. Close to Lynmouth.”

“Put through a call to the local station. Ask them to contact the parents if they can.” He looked across at her, a stocky, earnest woman with worried, sympathetic eyes. “Take it from there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before Lynn had left his office, Resnick was getting himself put through to Skelton. The superintendent brought his rank and authority to bear on Bernard Salt’s secretary, who promised she would have the necessary information available by the end of the day. Resnick thanked him and checked that he could pick it up himself. He had another call to make that would take him close.

A little after five, Resnick was standing in the back garden of the Doughertys’ house in Wollaton, balancing a cup and saucer in his left hand. The sky was losing light and across a succession of privet hedges bungalows were falling into silhouette. Inside, in the kitchen, Pauline Dougherty was washing their best dinner service, the one that had been a wedding gift, for the second time.

“I’m sorry,” Resnick said to William Dougherty, who was standing to his left, staring at some non-existent blemish on the lawn, “but there’s something I have to ask you about Karl. Something personal.”