Cutting Edge

Twenty-nine

Cheryl Falmer looked at her watch for the second time in as many minutes and walked across to the desk to check that it was correct. She had arranged to meet Amanda on court at four and there she was, changed and ready, twenty past four and no Amanda. She was beginning to feel stupid, standing in the sports-center foyer in that skirt, pretending not to notice the rugby players staring at her legs as they came in from training.

“It is four o’clock?” she asked the woman at reception. “Badminton. Booked in the name of Hooson.”

“That’s right. Not turned up?”

“No.”

“Maybe she’s forgotten.”

Cheryl moved away, shaking her head. Amanda wasn’t the kind to forget. Not anything. Every week they’d been playing, through the last two terms of the previous year and carrying on in this. She knew that Amanda marked it down in the little diary she always carded. Green dot with a four alongside it: badminton. Blue dots for essays in. Yellow for tutorials, red for you know what. Unlike a lot of her group, Amanda was serious, organized; not a stick-in-the-mud, not po-faced like the few feminist-Leninists or whatever they were, always scowling from behind their hand-knitted sweaters and hand-rolled cigarettes; a little older, more mature, she had chosen social sciences with a purpose, not fallen into it as an easy option or an academic back door.

Even so: nearly twenty-five past and no sign.

If it had been squash, it would have been worth going on to the court by herself and thwacking the ball against the wall for half an hour. But the prospect of lofting shuttles high above the net, practicing her serve, didn’t appeal. She would go back into the changing room and get into her Simple Minds sweatshirt, her denim jacket and jeans. If she cut across between the practice pitches, it was easy enough to call by Amanda’s hall of residence and find out what had happened, what had gone wrong.

Jazz Record Requests was just finishing as Resnick entered the house. Hearing the signature tune, he assumed that Ed Silver had switched the radio on and left it playing, hardly expected him still to be there. But he was at the kitchen table, so intent upon Resnick’s battered copy of The Horn that he scarcely looked up. Miles, who had been spread the width of Silver’s bony knees, leapt off at Resnick’s approach and ran towards his bowl.

“Thought you couldn’t stand cats,” Resnick said.

“I can’t,” not looking round.

Resnick shrugged off his damp coat and leaned his plastic bag of shopping against the fridge. The other cats were there now, all save Dizzy, and Resnick ministered to them before grinding coffee for himself.

“Cup?” he asked Silver.

Silver didn’t answer.

The legs of Resnick’s trousers were wet through from the knees down, his brown leather shoes stained nearly black and he knew that when he took them off his socks would be ringed with dye and all but soaked through.

“This book,” Silver said, eyes not leaving the page, “bloke who wrote it, wouldn’t know a real musician if one jumped up and bit him in the arse.”

A novel about drugs and jazz in New York, Resnick remembered it as being romanticized but readable; at least it wasn’t Young Man with a Horn.

“This, f’r’instance. Listen to this.”

But Resnick wasn’t in the mood to be read to. He left Ed Silver competing with Radio Three and went into the bathroom. Clothes off and dumped in a corner he considered playing truth with the scales, but decided he wasn’t up to that either. In his experience, gray days such as this only got grayer. One hand holding in his paunch, he stepped under the shower. Having failed to sell the house he would have to get the bathroom retiled, cream wallpaper beginning to darken and buckle where it was exposed to the water.

“Persistent, isn’t she?”

Opening his eyes, Resnick realized that Silver was standing just beyond the open doorway, book by his side.

“Who?”

“I don’t know, do I? Same one as called before, I s’pose.”

“You suppose?”

“Sounded the same to me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Asked her if she wanted to meet me later, buy me a drink.”

Silver’s silhouette was fading behind a shimmer of plastic and steam. “What did she say?” Resnick asked.

“Unprintable.” He flapped the paperback against his leg. “Even in crap like this.”

“Did she leave a name?”

“No.”

“Number?”

“Too busy hanging up.”

Resnick tilted his face towards the stream of water and soaped his belly, buttocks, beneath his arms. He thought Silver had walked away, but when Silver spoke again, the voice was as close.

“The other call, some bloke, he said for you to ring back. Soon as you could.”

“Great.”

“What?”

“Telling me when I got in.”

“Forgot.”

“Yes. Too engrossed in that appalling book.”

“No,” Silver said. “‘S’not that bad.”

“This bloke,” Resnick said, “any chance he left a name?”

“Skelton,” Silver said. “Wrote the number down somewhere. Lessee.” He fumbled through his pockets. “Know I got it here somewhere.”

But Resnick had already switched off the water and was stepping out of the shower, reaching for the towel; the number he knew by heart.

The hall of residence was built around a central courtyard, dark pointed brick and uniform windows, a path that wound down towards it through a meadow of grass from the university itself. Only the police vehicles parked off the inner ring road suggested anything less than ideal. Resnick nodded at one of the forensic officers who was leaving, followed the directions of the constable standing inside to keep any of the curious at bay.

“DI in shot,” grinned the scene-of-crime officer with the video camera. Resnick held his ground while the man zoomed in hard on the bed and then out. Stick a camcorder in their hands and suddenly they’re Alfred Hitchcock.

“Sorry, sir,” said Resnick. “Came as soon as I could.”

“Not to worry, Charlie.” Skelton dropped the pair of white cotton pants he was holding into a plastic envelope and left it to be labeled and sealed. “Just about through.”

The room looked as if it had been in the eye of a storm. Bookshelves had been torn from the walls, books strewn over the ground. Bedclothes were almost anywhere but on the bed. Shoes, a sports bag, articles of clothing; a tube of toothpaste caught inside a trainer. A4 file paper bearing orderly writing in purple or green ink, diagrams designed to give comparative readings in levels of employment, take-up of housing benefit.

“Lucky the girl found her when she did,” Skelton said, crossing towards him. “Even so, she lost one hell of a lot of blood.”

Resnick hadn’t needed telling, evidence of it enough on the striped duvet, sheets of paper, a pillow; a splash of it like paint someone had flicked against the porcelain of the sink.

“This done after or before?” Resnick asked, still surveying the mess.

“During. She put up quite a fight.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

Skelton shook his head. “Let’s go outside.”

They stood in the courtyard, two middle-aged men in raincoats, Skelton still wearing his gloves, heads together, talking. From different parts of the building, a handful of students stared down at them through glass. Not long from now, Skelton was thinking, my Kate could be one of these. He did not allow himself to think she could have been the one they were discussing.

“How long,” Resnick was asking, “between when it happened and she was found?”

“Not less than two hours, likely not more than three. She was due to play badminton, four o’clock. When she didn’t show, her friend came looking for her.” Skelton glanced at Resnick and then off towards the middle distance, trees glimpsed against the horizon, dark against darkening clouds. “She was found around half four. Last anyone had seen her before that, as far as we can tell, far as we’ve been able to check, about half twelve she walked up that path to the university.”

“No one saw her come back?”

“Apparently not.”

Resnick turned in the direction of the room. “No matter how quick that all happened, somebody must have heard.”

Skelton shook his head.

“There must be-what? — sixty students living here. More.”

“Most of them home for the weekend. Those that weren’t, out somewhere. Shopping in the city. Working in the library. Just out.”

“Any sign of the weapon?”

“Not so far.” Skelton stood looking out across the slope of meadow. “If it’s out there somewhere, we’ll find it but it’ll take time.”

“The wounds,” Resnick said, “were they …?”

“Not too similar to the hospital incidents, if that’s what you’re thinking. More random. Frenzied. Whatever she was cut with, my guess is that it was a heavier instrument altogether, a thicker blade.”

Or whoever attacked her was angrier, more frightened. Frenzied-the superintendent didn’t throw words like that around carelessly. Resnick looked directly at Skelton and Skelton read the question in his eyes.

“I don’t know, Charlie. From the visual evidence alone, it was impossible to tell. But only the upper half of her body was clothed.”

“She could have been dressing when whoever it was broke in.”

“Or while he was there.”

Both men knew the other alternative. Until she was well enough to give an account of what had happened, or there had been time to examine all the evidence more closely, reconstruct as best they could what had taken place, they would not know.

“God help me, Charlie,” Skelton said, “I know nothing good can hope to come of this, but something’s been nagging away at the back of my brain denying any connection with all that other business; this isn’t another Tim Fletcher, another Karl Dougherty. Poor woman, at least she was a student and not a nurse.”

“Was, sir?”

Skelton lowered his head. “Figure of speech, Charlie, slip of the tongue. Let’s pray it’s nothing more than that.”

Resnick nodded. Amen to that.

Patel was sitting in the common room opposite Cheryl Falmer, notebook on his lap. The curtains had been drawn part way across and no one had thought to switch on the lights. It had been made clear to her that she could make her statement later, when she was feeling stronger, after she had recovered from the shock. But if you waited for that, you might be waiting forever.

Patel had been patient, letting the words fall out in broken clusters, content to piece them into sentences, a picture, a sequence of events. First she had knocked on the door, knocked again and turned to go away, and for no reason she could think of now she had gone back and tried the handle. She did this and then she did that. Yes, Amanda had been inside.

“Would you like me to get someone to take you home?” Patel asked, when the story was finally told.

Cheryl shook her head. “I think I’d like to sit here for a little longer.”

“All right.” Patel nodded understanding and sat with her, waiting as the shadows claimed the room.

The faces had disappeared from the windows. Lights burned behind several, illuminating photographs of families and boyfriends, posters for Greenpeace. A few TV sets or radios had been switched on. Those students who were in residence either sat on their beds stunned or got ready to go out for the evening. Saturday night. The search for a weapon had been abandoned and would be resumed at first light. Resnick had no excuse for not returning to his car and as he did so he was intercepted by a constable who had just taken a message on his personal radio: Resnick knew from the officer’s expression that Amanda Hooson was dead.