Cutting Edge

Thirty-three

Lynn hadn’t been able to work out if the woman was more worried about her floor-length musquash and her sable stole or the stupid dogs. She didn’t know which might raise the woman up higher in her opinion and finally decided it was neither. How could you have respect for someone who drank Perrier out of cut glass and allowed her Rottweilers to crap on the kitchen floor rather than take them for a walk after dark? Nervous of getting mugged, she got burgled instead. “It was stripped down to the original boards in here,” she’d said, pointing at the kitchen floor, “but we had that taken up and new quarry tiles put down. So much easier. Scoop up and swab down, a matter of minutes.” Right, Lynn had thought, that and the money to pay someone to come in every morning, do it for you.

Five hundred yards away, Lynn knew there were families living in flats with rising damp, cockroaches, hot-water systems that broke down again before the repair van had reached the end of the street. “It doesn’t matter, Lynnie,” her mother had used to say, “not where you live, it’s how you live. My great-aunt brought up a family of five in two rooms with a tin bath you set down before the fire and an outside lavvie where the water froze across the bowl November to March. And you could walk into that place anytime, no warning, and not find a cup that wasn’t washed up or a half-inch of dirt on or under anything.” Well, good for Great-aunt Queenie. Knew her place and kept it spotless. Huge bosoms and facial hair; a backside that made horses tremble. Lynn would have loved to see her weighing into the hardship officer at the DSS.

She swung left off the main road and turned quickly left again opposite the disused lido, bringing the car to a halt facing the university lake. Without thinking, she had been heading, not towards her own place, not back to the station, but to Ian Carew’s. God’s gift, that’s what he thought he was. God’s sodding gift! The way he’d come prancing past her while she was sitting behind the wheel, hours watching the short length of street, front of his house. Clever bastard, just to prove he could do it, show he didn’t care. Sneaked out the back and gone off who knows where. A lot of people would have gone back in the same way, left her thinking he was inside all the while, a good boy, doing whatever good boys did. But, no, not in his nature. Cocky! Couldn’t resist letting her see him, supercilious grin on his face and knowing she’d be looking at the way the material stretched tight across his behind. Much as Lynn hated to admit it, he had a great arse!

That wasn’t what she was doing, was it? Fancying the man? Fantasizing about him? If she were, one picture of Karen Archer should do the trick.

Did you want him to have sex, make love to you?

The marks on Karen Archer’s face, the eyes that could never once return your gaze.

He said he didn’t believe me. Said I was dying for it.

The police in Devon had reported no sign of her; she still had not contacted her parents. What happened next? Posters in shopping centers and outside police stations up and down the country? An urgent message on Radio Four, between the weather forecast and the news? Or wait until a body turned up somewhere months from now? The wasteland south of Sneinton, along by the railway line. Wedged between the lock gates on the Trent Canal. Under a mulch of leaves and earth in the middle of Colwick Woods.

And now …?

Amanda Hooson had been murdered in the early hours of Saturday afternoon, exactly when Carew had apparently been out of the house she had been so uselessly watching. Common sense told Lynn that if he had had anything to do with that, the last thing he would have done was strut past and throw suspicion on himself. Not with Lynn sitting there, unwittingly providing him with an alibi.

Or would he? It depended just how clever, how cool he really was.

Lynn locked the car and walked towards the lake, not the crowds today of youngsters waiting to hire rowboat or canoe and get out on the lake; lads who splashed each other with oars, occasionally overturning their boats and falling in; couples who moored alongside the small island and made love in the undergrowth, feeding the condoms afterwards to unsuspecting ducks. A stroll around might clear her mind of this, at least, encourage her to think of other things: whatever was going on with Kevin and Debbie Naylor, whether they’d get through the year without divorce; if her mother could persuade her dad to talk to the doctor about his depression, and if ever he did what the doctor might say. There were days, Lynn thought, buying herself one of the last ice-creams of the year, when she wished she had more problems in her own life, save her worrying so much about those of others.

“I was wondering,” Resnick said, “if you had five minutes? Couple of things you could help me with. Perhaps.”

“Five pairs of hands might be more useful.” Sarah Leonard brushed an arm across her forehead; a curl of dark hair had escaped beneath the front of her blue and white cap. Something about a woman, Resnick thought, almost as tall as yourself; the closeness of the mouth. If last time she had reminded him of Rachel, now there was no such misrecognition: he knew who she was and she was herself.

“Let me change this catheter and I’ll be with you,” Sarah said.

“Fine,” Resnick nodded, wincing a little at the thought.

“Don’t worry, I’ll wash my hands first.”

They went out into the corridor and stood at a window, looking down onto Derby Road. “I don’t know how you do it,” Resnick said.

“What? Catheters, colostomy bags, enemas, that sort of thing?”

“I suppose so. Partly, anyway.”

Sarah grinned. “It isn’t all piss and shit, you know. James Herriot without the friendly collie dog yapping encouragement round your feet. A lot of the time it’s a good laugh.”

Resnick looked back at her, disbelieving.

“The other day,” Sarah said, “this young lad on the ward. Asked one of the student nurses to fetch me over, something seriously troubling him. ‘Staff,’ he says, ‘I don’t know what to do, I’ve got this erection and it won’t go away. Can you help me do something about it?’” Sarah laughed again, remembering.

“Dare I ask?” said Resnick.

“Took him along a bucket and told him to get on with it.”

“What I wanted to know …” Resnick began.

“Not you as well?” A knowing grin, sending him up just a little.

Resnick could see his own reflection in the glass, a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure. One day, he thought, if I should ever get to know you better … “What I need,” Resnick said.

“Yes?”

“More in the nature of information.”

“Go ahead.”

“An ODA.”

“What about them?”

“What do they do? That would be a start.”

“Operating Department Assistant. Attendant. Some hospitals, they call them Anesthetist Technicians.”

“And that’s their function, assisting the anesthetist during an operation?”

“The main one, yes. Supervising the machines, making sure they’re connected correctly so that the right mixture of oxygen and gases gets through to the patient. But they can do more than that, act as scrub nurse …”

“Scrub nurse?”

“Handles the instruments during the operation, passes them to the surgeon …”

“Scalpel.”

“Scalpel. Exactly. Whatever he’s using. Hands them over, takes them back.”

“Responsible job.”

“And she doesn’t spend the day dealing with fecal matter.”

“Amanda Hooson,” Resnick said. “Don’t suppose you knew her?”

Sarah shook her head. “Should I?”

“Apparently she used to work here.”

“As an ODA?”

Resnick nodded.

“We’ve twelve theaters, fifteen to twenty ODAs. When was she here?”

“Left around two years ago.”

Sarah gave it a little thought. Below, traffic was driving into the hospital in a constipated stream. “No, I’m sorry. Though there is something about the name.”

“How recently have you listened to the news?”

Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God, it’s her.”

“Afraid so.”

“At the university, the student who was murdered.”

“Yes.”

For a moment, she rested a hand on his upper arm, a grip strong enough for Resnick to be aware of each finger separately through his sleeve. “I thought,” Sarah said, “when I heard it, a woman attacked with a knife, whatever, stabbed, I thought it isn’t, it can’t be anything to do with us here, at the hospital. She’s not a doctor, a nurse, she’s a student.”

“I know,” Resnick said. “That was what I thought, too.” He knew he didn’t want her to move away, not yet, but, of course, she did, the bounce and the snap that was there before quickly returned.

“We’ll be talking to staff about security,” Resnick said. “Officially, I mean. Leaflets, possibly, I don’t know. In the meantime …”

Sarah grinned, broader than before. “Be careful out there?”

“Sorry?”

“Hill Street Blues. The sergeant, at the end of roll call … you never saw that?”

Resnick shook his head.

“Shame. I think you’d have liked it.”

Resnick didn’t think so. Police series, films, he liked his fantasies a little less close to home.

“Sarah …”

“Um?” She was at the end of the corridor, making a fool out of whoever thought the wearing of a uniform put her on a par with all the others. Eyes, Resnick thought: why is it always the eyes?

“Inspector?”

“Thanks,” Resnick said. “Thanks for your help.”

Sarah pulled open the door. “Whoever’s doing this, catch them before they do it again.”

The way to prevent your take-away tipping over or getting thrown around the floor of the car, Lynn had discovered, was to slip the handles of the plastic bag they packed it in over the gear stick, then turn them twice, three times. One king prawn danshak with pilau rice home intact. She was so concerned about getting it across the courtyard and into the flat before it got cold that she failed to notice the figure moving forward from the shadow until it was almost at her shoulder.

Lynn gasped and whirled around, bag ready as a weapon, poised to swing into her assailant’s face.

“Whoa! Steady. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Lynn recognized the voice the same moment that she saw the face. “God, sir! Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry,” Resnick said. “I thought you’d have spotted the car.”

Lynn’s breathing was less than steady. “Other things on my mind.”

Resnick pointed to the white bag. “Whatever you’ve got, think you could slip it into the oven on a low light, keep warm? By my reckoning, it’s about time you and I went for a drink.”

Some pubs you ruined by making them over, rendering them new; others cried out for ruining before a dividing wall was pulled down or four generations of tobacco smoke was sandblasted from the walls. Sometimes the result was a freshened-up local with tara-masalata or deviled prawns on, the snack menu alongside cheese and onion cobs and pickled eggs. If you were lucky.

Resnick stood with one elbow on a convenient shelf and sipped at his Guinness, watching Lynn get down half a lager like it was water, which likely wasn’t so far from the truth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not quite bringing herself to look at him, unusual for her. “I knew all the time I was sitting there it was stupid. Somehow, once it had started, especially after he’d come up to me, Carew, and done his macho bit … if I leave now, I thought, it’s because he’s intimidated me into doing so. And he’ll know it.” She drained her glass. “I wasn’t going to let him do that, sir.”

Resnick didn’t say anything until he’d fetched her another drink.

“You really think he’s done something to Karen Archer? Something more?”

“I don’t know, sir. I do think he’s capable of it.”

Resnick glanced around. “So are half the people in this bar, given the right circumstances. We don’t stick officers outside their front doors at weekends, twelve-hour watch.”

Lynn looked towards the floor: black tights, sensible shoes.

“You’ve got good instincts,” Resnick said. “A good copper. You’ve got a nose for it.”

Blood darkening the length of the landing until it stopped at the door to the small bedroom at the back of the house. The first time Lynn had interviewed William Doria in his office, something about him had prickled uneasily beneath the skin. At that time, there had been little enough reason for suspicion, a successful university academic, an expansive and loquacious man. Now, when there was more reason to regard a suspect with caution, why was Resnick holding her feelings up to question?

“Karen Archer,” he said. “I wonder if that is where we should be looking?”

“You mean the new one, Hooson?”

“The timing could be tight. We know he slipped out of the house, plenty of time for him to cut across the campus, meet Amanda, go back to her room.”

“Is there any reason for supposing he knew her?” Resnick shook his head. “She was seeing somebody, a man, we don’t know who he was.”

“But Carew, isn’t that too much of a coincidence?”

“Probably.”

“And besides, if I’m fool enough to be sitting there providing him with an alibi, why would he break it himself when he doesn’t have to?”

Resnick gave her a quick grin. “I don’t know.”

“To say nothing of talking to a lawyer, making a complaint.”

A woman in Salvation Army uniform had come into the bar selling copies of the War Cry and Resnick reached towards his pocket. “Maybe he likes drawing attention to himself, being at the center of things, simple as that.” He gave the woman fifty pence and gestured that she should keep the paper. “Unless he’s being more devious, reckoning if he acts this way, it’s going to take him out of the running.”

“Has it, sir?”

Resnick set down his half-finished glass. “I don’t want you getting into trouble on this, giving him cause to make his complaint official. And I don’t want to be left feeling foolish again, not knowing what one of my team’s up to.”

Lynn flushed, “Sorry, sir.”

“On the other hand, I’m not saying you’re wrong. Let’s keep him well in mind, see if something turns up that gives us reason for talking to him again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, best get back to that curry before it’s all dried out.”

Lynn smiled, close-mouthed. Resnick had one more swallow at his Guinness and followed her out of the pub.

He half-expected a letter from Elaine, a note; even his ex-wife herself, in the front garden of the house, waiting for what? Apologies? Reconciliation? Another burst of recrimination? Outside there was nothing, not even Dizzy, patrolling the night watch. On the living-room sofa, Ed Silver slept like a baby, wrapped in a blanket and still wearing a pair of Resnick’s shoes that were several sizes too large.