Lonely Hearts

Nine

If Dizzy had been human, Resnick thought, he would have spent days meandering drunkenly around shopping centers, splashed through municipal fountains with a red and white scarf dangling from his belt. He would have traveled back and forth across the Channel barricading himself behind a wall of lager cans in the ferry bar. Resnick blinked at the insistent wailing, eased his body from beneath the covers without disturbing the somnolent Miles, and barefooted to the window.

The leafless black of the tree yielded up the softer blackness of the cat. A soft thump against the ledge and yellowed eyes stared through the pane. Something hung down from the mouth, inert. Resnick pushed up the window and Dizzy moved with a quick pad across the room, tip of his tail crooked. Outside, the rain had not long ceased: sheen of water under the street light; soughing of wind.

Glancing at it, Resnick had taken Dizzy’s prey for a bat, but no, a field mouse, gray in the smudged hollow of the pillow. Its back broken, a brief trail of pink and palish yellow slipped from the puncture of its underside.

From the floor beside the bedside table Dizzy looked up at him, daring rebuke.

Resnick used a tissue to lift the mouse away. Stripped the cover from the pillow and took it to the bathroom. Pepper was curled around the lid of the laundry basket and when Resnick switched on the light, lay one paw across his eyes.

It was not yet a quarter-past four.

Resnick made tea.

He remembered his grandfather: collarless shirts and cardigans that hung past the cave of his chest; gray trousers always with a flap sewn to the front and held in place by two large safety pins. Two things he would do in the house: he would make a fire each morning in the blackened range; he would make tea. Thin fingers would rub the strands of tea between them then sprinkle them across the bottom of the enamel pan like droppings. When the water boiled, he would pour it over the leaves and let it stand. Always the pan at the side of the range, tea growing thicker and blacker. All day.

He could scarcely recall his grandfather’s voice. Little else about him. A slow-stepping figure that would move between the kitchen and the outside lavatory, where strips of newspaper, torn in two and two again, hung from a metal skewer bent into a hook. Once, on a Sunday, the rest of his family had brought a stranger home from church and Resnick had seen his grandfather struggle into a collar and tie-Resnick had used his young fingers to press the collar stud home, had twisted straight the knot of tie-and shiny coat and gone into the parlor with them, closing fast the door. From the hallway, between the banisters on the stairs, he had listened to the clamor of voices and then his grandfather, angry, bitter, and pitched oddly high, forcing out all argument.

And since he knew, then, little Polish, having stopped his ears to it, old-fashioned nonsense, Resnick had never known what those heated words were about.

Thinking back now, he did not think, in all the years they had inhabited the same house, that his grandfather had even spoken to him directly as much as a single word.

“Jesus! What’s happening to him?”

“All right, just take it easy.”

“I want to know…”

“A minute while this gets sorted.”

“Not…”

“Sir, I think you should take a look.”

Resnick looked at the warning expression on the custody sergeant’s face, the solicitor standing inside his small room, alongside the desk. A uniformed constable was bringing a prisoner out of the toilet opposite the row of three cells. Inside the nearest of those a fist was being worked against the door, a metronomic rise and angry fall. A policewoman with a shining bob of fair hair was talking softly to a young black man who was handcuffed to the radiator. Divine and Naylor were standing at the furthest end of the corridor, by the open door to the third cell. Telephones were ringing: all over the building telephones were ringing.

“Sir…”

“Okay, Sergeant.” He squeezed his way along the corridor.

He heard the solicitor’s voice calling after him and shut it out. Outside the cell, Naylor looked as pale as Divine was flushed. Ignoring them, Resnick pushed the door fully open. Tony Macliesh looked up at him from where he was sitting on the narrow bed and smiled.

Blood leaked from his left cheekbone where the skin was broken; a swelling the shape and size of a blackbird’s egg already broke the hairline over his left temple. His lip was cut. Still smiling, he stood up and a channel of blood ran from nose and chin on to his black T-shirt, his jeans, the soiled suede of his shoes.

No wonder, Resnick thought, the bastard’s smiling.

“My office.” He spoke to Naylor and Divine without looking at them, turning away. “Now.”

The solicitor was still in the custody sergeant’s office, still making the same demands. Out of sight, somebody was whistling “Moonlight Serenade.”

“Inspector…” she said.

“A doctor?” Resnick said to the sergeant.

“On his way, sir.”

“Inspector Resnick…”

“Ring through to the desk, see if someone can’t fetch Ms. Olds a cup of tea.” He glanced at the solicitor quickly. “Make that coffee.”

Resnick had only run across Suzanne Olds once before. She had been representing a thirteen-year-old on a charge of malicious wounding and had had the lad’s confession thrown out of court, and, likely, quite right too. He remembered a few things about her and one of them was that she liked to be addressed as Ms.

“I should have thought my client was the one in need…” she was saying.

“How long has Macliesh been your client?” Resnick asked.

Suzanne Olds drew back the sleeve of her beige linen jacket in order to look at her watch.

“All right. Don’t bother.” He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed an internal number. “Patel, get yourself down to the cells. I want you with Macliesh, door open, nobody in or out till the doctor gets here. Understood?”

Without waiting for a response, he put the receiver down and moved away.

“During all of which my client’s injuries will remain unattended, I suppose?”

Resnick held her gaze for one, two, three seconds before walking to the inquiry desk and returning with a first-aid box in his hand. He sorted through it in front of her, finding a cellophane envelope of plasters, a tin of Germolene, the remains of a roll of cotton wool. Patel appeared at the doorway and Resnick pushed the things into his hand. “If the doctor’s not here in the next ten minutes, see if you can do anything with these.”

Naylor was wondering if they were likely to get more than a good bollocking but he wasn’t worrying about it. After all, what had happened was down to Divine and if push came to shove that’s exactly what Divine could do with any ideas about loyalty in the ranks.

What was worrying him was Debbie’s announcement that morning-causing him to bite so fiercely into his toast that it disintegrated into brittle fragments-that she was four days late. Late! What was she talking about, late! Why was she talking about it at all, when normally such things weren’t even referred to? When they went shopping together in Sainsbury’s she would push her box of Tampax down to the bottom of the trolley and contrive to cover it with a packet of tagliatelle parmigiane. And that tinge of accusation in her voice when she’d said it, as if somehow he might have slipped something past her defenses.

Besides, late was hardly the word: according to Debbie’s five-year plan, anything in that line was three-and-a-half years early. They hadn’t even got as far as choosing the best-value microwave.

Mark Divine was reminded of the time he’d been carpeted by the rugby association for breaking another player’s nose in the scrum. Mouthing off at him all through the game he’d been. Needle, needle, needle. It had been easy enough for Divine to duck in close, quick yank of the hair, there, right on to his fist. Something satisfying about the sound that cartilage makes when the tissue ruptures across. Divine straightened his shoulders back as he heard Resnick approaching. Shame the bloke had been in his own team.

“What happened?” Resnick began his question as soon as the door opened and was standing behind his desk before either officer made a reply.

“Sir, Macliesh, he sort of…”

“Yes, Naylor?”

“He went berserk, sir.”

“Somebody did.”

The two men glanced at one another.

“Those injuries, sir,” said Divine. “They were self-inflicted.”

If they’ve cooked this up between them, Resnick thought, I’ll have them on a charge before they know what’s hit them.

“It’s true, sir,” Naylor said.

“True?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your prisoner suddenly ups and punches himself in the face?”

“Threw himself against the wall, sir,” Divine said quickly.

“For the sheer hell of it?”

Here it comes, Naylor was thinking. Divine was beginning to smell his own sweat.

“Naylor?” said Resnick sharply.

“Something, er, was said, sir.”

“To Macliesh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Naylor.

“Yes, sir,” said Divine.

“Some remark was made which caused your prisoner to perform an act of grievous bodily harm on his own person?”

Both men nodded, neither spoke.

“You know my next question, don’t you?” Resnick asked.

They did. Naylor looked at Divine and Divine looked with sudden interest at the notices pinned to the board behind Resnick’s desk.

“Wait outside, Naylor,” said Resnick. “Don’t stray, I’ll want to talk to you again.”

Divine knew now that it was going to be worse than anything the rugby association had dreamed up, worse even than the inquiry the time that black bastard had ended up in hospital.

“What was it that made Macliesh so angry?”

Divine wet his drying lips with the end of his tongue, but his tongue was dry too.

“What did you say that made him want to injure himself?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Divine.”

“Sir…”

“Divine, there’s youths out on the street now, down on the square. Pull up alongside them, stop them-wouldn’t matter if they had half-a-dozen gold watches up an arm, a sack swung over their shoulder with swag stenciled on it-you know what answer they’ll give you when you ask them what they’ve been up to?”

Divine tried not to look at Resnick’s face, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to avoid.

“I’m waiting.”

“Sorry, sir, I didn’t think…”

“That I wanted an answer. Of course I do, that’s what questions are for.”

Divine wriggled as if his briefs were too tight for him, his shoes too small.

“The answer?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“They’d say?”

“Nothing. Sir.”

“And do you believe them?”

Let it rest!

“Well? Do you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you know what I’m feeling now.”

“Sir, I just wanted to get some response.”

“It looks as if you succeeded.”

“After yesterday, him never opening his mouth.”

“You thought you’d change that?”

“It was only a remark, like. Something to get him going.”

Resnick didn’t take his eyes from Divine’s face now. “You said.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You said what?”

“I…said what kind of a bloke was it who couldn’t even get it up when his tart was dying for it. Sir.”

Resnick rested the side of his face in his hand for a moment and slowly sat down. He supposed callousness shouldn’t any longer surprise him. Still, for several seconds, this took his breath away.

“Sir, if I may, sir. I don’t think it was just what I said. The way he threw himself against that wall, smacking his head against it like he did.” Divine’s voice petered out. He forced himself to try again. “I was the one pulled him off, sir. Ask Naylor, he…”

“I was looking at your report the other day,” Resnick said. “Just something made me take it from the file, I can’t remember what now. There were statements from five witnesses, all attesting to the use of excessive force. A taxi driver who said he was as much a racist as the next man, but he didn’t think you ought to be able to get away with that sort of thing while you were on duty.”

Divine started counting inside his head; stopped, worried in case Resnick should see his lips moving.

“You wriggled out of that with a reprimand in private and an apology in public and the stars must have been shining out of your behind that day because there was enough cocaine in that youth’s possession to make half the city numb in its collective nose. But when you were reassigned to me I gave you fair warning. I dare say you remember?”

Divine closed his eyes without realizing what he was doing. He said, “Yes, sir. I remember.”

Resnick stood. “Outside and write it up.”

Divine continued to stand there, uncertain.

“Something else you want to say?”

Divine gave Resnick a look of incomprehension. “This Macliesh, sir. Ask me, he’s cracked. Got no need of a reason for doing anything. D’you know what he did when we were bringing him in? Pissed down Naylor’s leg!”