Cutting Edge

Thirty-eight

“Don’t suppose either of you saw the match last night?” Carew said from the back. They were turning left into Gregory Street, passing the houses the health authority had built for doctors, but the doctors hadn’t wanted to live in them. “Highlights,” Carew said.

Nobody answered.

Carew was looking at the side of Divine’s face; someone had fetched him one hell of a whack.

“What happened?” Carew asked. “Your eye.”

Divine stared out through the opposite window.

“I suppose,” Carew said, “they don’t all come as quietly as me.”

“You call this quiet?” Divine said. “Haven’t shut your mouth since you got in the car.”

“It’s called being sociable,” Carew said.

“It’s called being a pain in the neck, that’s what it’s called.”

“It’s …”

Resnick laid his arm along the top of the front seat. “Sociable is what you do on day trips to Skegness,” he said. “You’ll get all the time you want to talk later.”

“I …”

“Save your breath.”

“We wouldn’t make a detour via my place?” Carew said to the back of Resnick’s head. “Pick up some other clothes?” He was beginning to think that running shorts weren’t going to be the most serviceable form of clothing.

“You have the right,” the custody sergeant said, “to inform a relative or close friend that you are being detained.” Carew wasn’t looking at him directly, but off to one side. Resnick and Divine were behind him, ten feet apart. All four men were standing. “You have the right,” the custody sergeant said, “to consult a solicitor.” He handed Carew a typewritten notice conveying the same information. “Is that understood?” the custody sergeant asked.

Carew nodded and set the notice back upon the desk.

“You also have the right to examine the Code of Practice for the Detention, Treatment and Questioning of Persons by Police Officers, should you wish.”

“I want a solicitor,” Carew said.

“You wish to inform anyone else that you are here?”

“I want to inform my solicitor.”

“Nobody else?”

“How many times,” Carew said, “do I have to tell you?”

The sergeant’s eyes met Resnick’s for just a moment then flicked back to Ian Carew’s face. “Twice, I think, will be enough.”

The first thing Suzanne Olds did when she walked into the police cell was to turn right around again and walk out. “What the hell’s going on in there?” she asked. Resnick and the custody sergeant were waiting by the sergeant’s desk; the constable who’d escorted the solicitor to the cell wavered uncertainly in her wake. “Well?”

Resnick and the sergeant exchanged questioning glances. “You tell us,” the sergeant said.

“I didn’t know,” Suzanne Olds said, “you went in for this kind of thing. I’m surprised you didn’t order him to strip and have done with it.”

“I don’t quite follow …”

“He’s in there in shorts. A skimpy pair of shorts and whatever the temperature might be outside, it’s pretty damned cold in there.”

“He has a blanket,” the sergeant observed.

“In Northern Ireland,” Suzanne Olds said, “it gets called sensory deprivation.”

“Really? Here we just call it sitting around in shorts.”

“I presume you’re intending to question him like that as well?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Resnick said. “Not as an issue.”

“You don’t think it might put my client at a disadvantage?”

“As I recall,” said the sergeant, “he’s got a good, strong pair of legs.”

“Has he complained?” asked Resnick.

“He will.”

“I’m sure of it.” The beginnings of a smile around the corners of Resnick’s mouth.

“Did he ask you for some other clothing?”

“No,” the sergeant said.

“Yes,” Resnick said. “When we were bringing him in. I didn’t think he was very serious about it.”

“Perhaps you should have thought differently?”

“If your client would like to provide us with a key and permission to enter his property, I’ll send someone round straight away. Whatever clothes he wants.”

“And a chance for you to search from top to bottom.”

“Difficult sometimes, putting your hands on the right pair of trousers.”

Suzanne Olds turned to the sergeant. “Why don’t you find something suitable he can wear? Something other than a blanket. I’ll wait with my client while you see what you can do.”

Outside, the sun seemed to have exhausted itself early and given up. An articulated lorry carrying an assortment of toilet-roll holders, towel rails, toothbrush racks, and toilet seats had been in collision with a blue five-hundredweight van at the south-eastern corner of Canning Circus. The van had run the lights off Derby Road and gone smack into the side of the lorry, which had been crossing lanes on the opposite diagonal, the driver having taken a wrong turning in his search for Texas Homecare. A 67-year-old woman, listening to Postman Pat as she drove, anything to keep her grandson in the back from yelling on and on about his lost marble, had swerved to avoid the rear of the lorry, done so successfully, but then swiveled round in alarm as she heard her grandson fall forward from his seat. Not looking where she was going, she had driven into a brand-new caravan setting out on its first trip to enjoy the autumn in Mablethorpe. Now traffic was backed up as far as you could see on all six roads leading into the circus, and those officers who weren’t involved with sorting out the chaos were standing at the first-floor windows getting a lot of laughs out of the efforts of those who were. They were making bets, back and forth: first traffic warden to be verbally abused, first driver to get arrested, first punch to get thrown.

“To be clear,” Resnick said, “Saturday lunchtime. You went into the university, to the Buttery, the bar, to meet someone for a drink?”

“I told you.”

“Someone you didn’t know?”

“Of course I knew them. If I didn’t know them, how could I expect to meet them?”

Resnick opened his hands and examined them, palms up against the edge of the desk. “Tell me.”

Carew breathed deeply. “I didn’t know her name.”

Resnick’s gaze came up slowly from the palms of his hands to Ian Carew’s face. There was some sign of sweat at the temples and he was finding it difficult to look anyone in the room in the eye for more than seconds at a time. He was beginning to be uncomfortable, but he wasn’t uncomfortable enough. A shame the uniform trousers the custody sergeant had found for him hadn’t been tighter still, biting into the crotch.

“I bumped into her a couple of days before, in the video shop. She said she was a student, well, most people living round here, they are, one sort or another …”

“Which sort was she?”

“Sorry?”

“Student. Which sort of …?”

“English.”

“Was English or she was doing English?”

“Both. Except it’s called reading English.”

Sitting beyond the end of the desk, Divine looked up sharply. How the fuck else would you do English if it wasn’t by reading it? Stupid tosser!

“Have you remembered her name?” Resnick asked.

“I told you …”

“Oh, yes. You never knew her name.”

“It didn’t matter. It was no big deal. All I said was, if you’re not doing anything Saturday lunchtime, why don’t you meet me at the Buttery? We’ll have a drink. You can tell me what you thought of Wall Street.”

“Where?” Divine said.

“It’s a film,” said Carew disparagingly. “A video. We were in a video shop.” Pronouncing each word as if addressing someone who was hard of hearing or short of understanding.

Five minutes, Divine thought, that’s all I want with you. Five minutes. Alone. Later.

Feisty, thought Resnick, senses he’s getting pushed back on his heels and fighting back. All right, let’s see if we can’t get him to overstep it. “Did you meet her?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“Wasn’t that surprising?”

“I don’t see why.”

“Oh? Surely you expected her to come? You had asked her, wasn’t that enough?”

Carew bit back the word, Usually, looked across at Suzanne Olds instead. Sitting there with her notepad on her knee, spiky notes made with a gold-tipped fountain pen, skirt slipping back along her thigh, good legs. Maybe later, when this was over …

“Are you saying,” Resnick persisted, “you went to the bar specially to meet someone whose name you didn’t know, who you’d only seen once before for five minutes and who you didn’t think anyway was necessarily going to turn up?”

“Yes.”

“You must have wanted to see her badly, then? Wanted to see her a lot.”

“I didn’t give a toss.”

“You didn’t …?”

“One way or the other, I didn’t care. I was going anyway.”

“For a drink?”

“That’s right”

“Pretty much a habit, was it? Saturday lunchtimes? To the bar for a drink?”

“No, not really. Not often. Better things to do.”

“Not this Saturday? The one in question?”

“That’s right.”

“Besides, there was this girl to meet.”

“Yes.”

“The one without a name.”

“She wasn’t without, I just …”

“The one you didn’t really care if she turned up or not.”

“Yes!”

“So, to meet this person you scarcely knew and weren’t even bothered about seeing, to do this, you went to the trouble of climbing out through the rear of the house where you were living and trespassed across someone else’s property? Is that correct?”

“I’ve told you …”

“What have you told us?”

“Play it back, for God’s sake! I’ve told you I went out that way because there was one of your lot out the front keeping watch.”

“Detective Constable Kellogg. And you didn’t want her to see you leave the house.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“If what you had in mind was as innocent, as casual as you’ve said, why didn’t you simply come out of your front door like anyone else?”

“Anyone else doesn’t have a bloody policewoman parked outside the door!”

“Did that annoy you?”

“You know damned well it annoyed me. You know damned well I complained.”

“It made you angry?”

“You bet it made me angry.”

“So when you went out the back, letting DC Kellogg believe you were still inside the house, that was in the way of putting one over on her?”

“Yes, if you like.”

“Teaching her a lesson.”

“Yes.”

“Bit of a habit with you, isn’t it? Teaching women a lesson.”

Suzanne Olds was fast to her feet. “Inspector,” she said, “I want to talk to my client, please. Privately. Now.”

Out on the circus, the lorry driver and the owner of the blue van had got into an altercation about lane and blame. One of the more maternal of the traffic wardens had offered to look after the little boy while his grandmother made her statement and the boy had taken a bite out of her calf. When the AA man with a tow truck tried to attach the crane to the rear of the van, its owner backed off from his argument with the driver of the lorry to ask him politely what in fuck’s name he thought he was doing. The AA man said if he needed to ask that there must be a six-inch square vacuum in the center of his head where his brain was supposed to be. The van owner punched him in the face, whereupon he was promptly arrested by Ginger Houghton, who had been standing less than six feet away, watching. The crane was set in place, the back of the van swung round a shade too quickly so that the doors swung open and cartons of cigarettes began to tumble out.

“Any idea where your DS is?” Houghton asked from the door of the CID room.

“Sorry,” answered Patel from the midst of a half-ream of computer printout.

“Only when you see him, tell him we’ve got a vanload of fags he might be interested in, bloke in the cells he might want to talk to.”

The sun might have packed it in for the day, that didn’t mean it was getting any cooler. It was muggy instead. Suzanne Olds had removed her suit jacket and the cotton of her blouse was sticking to her; anywhere else, any other time she might have slipped into the ladies and removed her tights, but not now, not today.

“The name wasn’t Amanda?” Resnick asked.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“How can I be? I don’t know what it was. That’s the point.”

“Then it could have been?”

“Yes. I suppose so. It could have been anything.”

“Amanda Hooson.”

Carew scraped his chair until it was at right angles to the desk.

“Do I have to answer that?” he said, looking at Suzanne Olds.

“You already have.”

“Right.” Carew looked back towards Resnick. “Right?”

Resnick nodded at Divine and Divine slid a 10" x 8" from inside a paper wallet and set it center table. “No,” Carew said, barely looking. “That’s not her.”

“Not?”

“The girl I was meeting. That’s not her.”

“One o’clock.”

“What about it?”

“Saturday. The Buttery. One o’clock.”

“What?”

“You were meeting her?”

Carew was half out of his seat, eyes fixed on Suzanne Olds who shook her head and slowly he sat back down.

“Amanda,” Resnick said again.

“Inspector,” said Suzanne Olds, closing her notebook, fastening her fountain pen. The watch on her wrist was gold and told the phases of the moon. “My client has been questioned now for a little over two hours. He’s entitled to refreshment, a break.”

“Amanda Hooson,” said Resnick flatly.

“No,” said Carew, “I don’t know her. No. No. No. No.”

Resnick glanced at Divine, who reached into the wallet and removed a slim black book inside a plastic wallet and handed it to Resnick, who unfastened the wallet and lifted out the diary and opened it at the page marked by a thin strip of light brown thread and, placing it on the desk in front of Carew and pointing, read: Buttery. 1pm. Ian.

“I insist,” Suzanne Olds said, still pointing at her watch, standing now alongside her client’s chair. “I really must insist.”

“You know how many men there must be at the university called Ian?” Carew asked. “Never mind the medical school. Have you got any idea?”

“I wonder,” asked Resnick, feeling oddly relaxed now, “how many of those lans bothered to avoid police surveillance on Saturday lunchtime in order to go for a drink?”

“Inspector!”

“I wonder how many of them, within the last ten days, have been given an official police warning after attacking and in all probability sexually assaulting a young woman?”