Lonely Hearts

Eighteen

Was it something about his generation, the fact of living alone? He chose two potatoes from the rack and washed off the surplus dirt before beginning to peel. Most people he knew, worked with, they operated in couples: that was the way it still was. For the rest, though, finding someone or making it work, which was the most difficult? He thought of Rachel, of the two of them in the enclosed space of his car, a tiredness he had not noticed before in her eyes. Dizzy was winding in and out between his feet and he picked the animal up and set her down again across the room. All the things he might have said; the warmth of her arm through her sleeve. It’ll sort itself out. Usually, he supposed, things did.

When he reached up on to the shelf to take down the grater, he noticed that Pepper had fitted the curve of her body inside the largest aluminum pan, only the last inches of her tail curling over the rim.

No matter what, his mother had made latkes on Monday evenings, grating the potato as finely as if she had been turning a precision tool. The smaller pile of onion would stand ready in its dish, the egg beaten, oven warming. In a saucepan, thickened with flour, gravy from the weekend’s meat bubbled slowly.

Happy or miserable-mostly, Resnick realized, thinking back, resigned-his mother, once married, would have known no other option. Like her potato pancakes, regularly she made her bed and once that was done there was nothing else but to lie down in it.

Resnick gave the mixture a final stir and began to grease the bottom of the heavy frying pan. There were still a few slices of smoked Polish ham in the fridge, a spoonful of sour cream.

“Dizzy! If you end up getting trodden on, don’t blame me.”

He was sliding the spatula under the nearest latke to turn it when the phone began to ring. The outside was crisp yet not too thick and didn’t crumble when he lifted it up, set it back down.

“Dizzy!”

The cat retreated beneath the table and regarded him balefully.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Surprised that Jack Skelton had not called already, Resnick was anticipating the superintendent’s voice until his hand touched the receiver and he knew it would be Rachel. Distressed, needing to talk.

“Hello?”

It was Patel. Resnick recognized that careful voice instantly. He listened for several moments and then, “How long ago?” he asked, and, “Is she still there?”, finally, “She was certain?”

Resnick kept the phone in hand and depressed a finger to break the connection. It was he who would have to call Skelton.

“Different game now, Charlie. Different rules.”

It was still shy of seven-thirty and they were on the steps outside the station. Skelton was wearing his dark executive blue and with good reason. There was an extra shine to his shoes and a messianic glint in his eyes that made Resnick wonder if he moonlighted as a lay preacher on his days off.

“This is where we see the technology swing into action.”

“Yes, sir,” Resnick said glumly.

“Buck up, Charlie. Think where you’ll get with all this glorious back-up.”

Confused, Resnick thought.

“Come on,” said Skelton, gesturing around the corner to the car park, “I’ll give you a lift.”

In the normal run of things it would be down to the detective superintendent of CID to head the inquiry, but he had been fanned out to Cumbria to investigate an alleged conspiracy involving the sale of radioactive sheep. So Len Lawrence was going to bluff and bluster his way through running the station, while Skelton moved his family photos and running gear into the major incident room at Radford Road sub-station. No surprise that he was looking more than usually chipper.

“Who’s on, sir?” Resnick asked, as two buses, one trailing the other, brought them down to second gear.

“Tom Parker is heading up the outside team, that’s the good news as far as you’re concerned. Howard Colwin’s coming in to coordinate the inside.”

“Is that the bad?”

“Depends on your point of view. Colwin’ll run a tight ship, we can be sure of that. I’ll trust him to get an efficient routine established, see that it’s adhered to.”

Resnick allowed himself a smile. He considered Skelton to be pretty well organized, but Colwin-everything that came across his desk was dated and filed, each phone call logged, he probably had the paper clips sorted according to color and weight. Howard Colwin was the man for whom the term anal retention had been invented: he even walked into a room with his buttocks held clenched.

Tom Parker was different. Resnick spoke to the DCI by phone most mornings, keeping him up to date with what was happening. He just might be able to work some kind of deal with Parker.

“Hate all this, don’t you, Charlie?”

They were driving along by the Forest, past three-storey Victorian houses, which one of the local housing associations was busy restoring and converting into flats. To the right, down through the trees, the Goose Fair site stood empty save for a succession of small men exercising smaller dogs.

“Sometimes,” said Resnick, picking over his words, “I think it can get in the way.”

“Of real police work, you mean?” said Skelton, underlining the word ironically as he said it.

“Of the answer.”

Skelton checked his mirror, indicated, slowed, rechecked the mirror, turned into a parking space. Textbook stuff.

“I’m not satisfied we’ve got the right question yet,” Skelton said, getting out.

Resnick looked at him over the roof of the car.

“One murderer or two?”

Skelton locked the door and Resnick followed him past the young constable on duty by the entrance.

“If you do sort something out with Parker,” Skelton said, his voice lowered, “I shan’t go against it.” He favored Resnick with a rare smile. “Still room for initiative in the computer age. Not all modules and floppy discs, eh?”

He moved briskly off and left Resnick thinking.

The briefing room was set up with a blackboard, twin flip charts on twin easels, two linked video monitors, a computer screen and printer, their controls mutually accessing via the adjacent office with the Home Office computer. Maps of the city gave the location of the murders. Photographs, black and white and colour, had been tacked to one wall. Resnick’s eyes glided over them, remembering, refusing to settle.

Jack Skelton stood behind a desk, lists and rosters spread before him. To his right, one arm crooked back on his chair, was DCI Parker: fifties, thinning hair, and gently spreading paunch. He was wearing a dark sports jacket and light trousers, one leg crossed over the other. Waiting for the superintendent to begin, he lit a cigarette and, seeing Resnick, winked.

Across from him, the other detective chief inspector, Howard Colwin, sat upright and looked directly to the front. He had less hair than Tom Parker and what there was had been greased and brushed until it looked no more than a thin line drawn tight across his scalp. His suit was dark brown with a light stripe, but his shoes were black. He breathed tightly, as if begrudging the air.

Skelton cleared his throat and looked at his watch. Resnick glanced round the room: two other DIs apart from himself, Andy Hunt and Bernard Grafton; Paddy Fitzgerald was the inspector in charge of uniforms.

“We’ll make a start,” Skelton said, lacing his hands together and pressing down so that the knuckles cracked.

Colin Rich came through the door, head turned away, finishing a conversation with someone in the corridor outside. His brown leather jacket was fashionably loose, its wide belt undone and hanging free. He wore thick green cords, cut wide at the hips, dark brown desert boots. When he realized that Skelton was staring at him, he mouthed a quick “Sir” and moved towards a seat.

“I thought perhaps the Serious Crimes Squad had decided against joining us,” Skelton said.

“We did think about it, guv,” said Rich, settling into an immediate slouch. “Only we thought you’d miss us.”

“More like you nearly missing us.”

“Sir?”

“Perhaps you were misinformed as to the time.”

Rich shook his head. “No, sorting out my team, that’s what it was.”

Skelton nodded. “Who’s sorting you out, Inspector?” Rich looked quickly at the others, pushed brown hair forward over his forehead, and grinned. “Don’t know, sir.”

“Think again, then.”

“Sorry, sir, afraid I don’t quite…”

“Who’s sorting you out, Inspector?” Skelton asked a second time.

Colin Rich wasn’t so preoccupied with himself that he failed to see which way it was going. Let them out of the station for half a minute and they reckon Montgomery’s their bloody uncle. He sat up straight. “You are, sir,” he said.

“How many men?” Skelton asked, looking down at one of the lists.

“Three, sir.”

Skelton checked, frowned, but let it go.

The CID teams led by Resnick and the other two inspectors would be five-handed: Resnick would have Millington for his sergeant, Naylor and Divine, Lynn Kellogg and Patel. There could be as many as ten or a dozen uniformed constables, depending on need-here and elsewhere. The task of routine checking, house-to-house verification, would fall in the main to them. Everything would pass through here, here and the computer room. There were a couple of uniformed officers in there, also, but most of the job was done by trained civilians, experts. Every scrap of information gathered and thought to be even marginally useful was fed in, checked through the giant Holmes computer, and for all of that information fresh action was generated. If the days were allowed to turn into weeks, the possible leads would multiply endlessly so that, even if more officers were drafted in, checking everything became less and less possible.

But, since the Peter Sutcliffe case, that had to be the way of it. If the ongoing results of that investigation into the so-called Yorkshire Ripper had been pulled together in a more readily comprehensible form, lives would have been saved, a murderer would have been stopped sooner, that was the consensus. But Sutcliffe had been interviewed by the police and talked his way clear-whatever might have been lacking there could not have been provided by high technology. And when, finally, he was caught it was as the result of a piece of common-or-garden practice, a couple of working coppers suspicious about a stolen car.

“Coincidence or otherwise,” Jack Skelton was saying, “both of these murders were turned up by members of Inspector Resnick’s team and it’s fair to say that he’s got a march on the rest of us when it comes to a sense of what’s going on. Once we’re through looking at the videos shot by scene-of-crime, I intend to ask the inspector to fill us in on background. Doubtless there’ll be questions you’ll want to ask at that stage.”

“Yeah,” said Colin Rich under his breath. “Like where’s the bloody coffee? When can we expect to get out of here and get a drink? They open at eleven.”