Off Minor

Eight

“Here,” the pathologist said, “take one of these.”

Resnick slipped one of Parkinson’s extra-strong mints inside his mouth, pushing it high against his palate with his tongue. It was quiet enough in the small office for Resnick to hear the tick of the old-fashioned fob watch Parkinson always wore, attached by a chain at the front of his waistcoat. Only when he had to don an apron did the pathologist remove the jacket of his three-piece suit; the only occasion he removed his cuff links, rolled his shirt sleeves carefully back up, was when his assistant was holding out a pair of flesh-colored surgical gloves.

“Quite a mess, eh, Charlie?”

Resnick nodded.

“As well we found her when we did.”

Resnick nodded again, trying not to visualize the bite marks on the body; the front of the face, one way or another, laid bare almost to the bone.

“What helped most, of course, either it’s my damned age or this has set to be one of the chilliest winters we’ve had for years. Building like that, no heating, much of the time it would have stayed the right side of forty degrees.”

They had identified Gloria Summers from her dental charts and by comparison of bones from an X-ray that had been taken a year earlier, when she had fallen and broken a bone in her right ankle. Resnick had asked her mother if she wanted to come to the mortuary and see the body and Susan Summers had looked at him with raised eyebrows and said, “Are you kidding?”

“How definite can you be,” Resnick asked now, “as to cause of death?”

Parkinson removed his bifocals and proceeded to give them an unnecessary polish. “One thing’s positive: strangulation. Without doubt the windpipe has been fractured; the other signs you’d anticipate are clearly there. Hemorrhaging in the neck, close by the hyoid bone. Some evidence of swelling in the veins at the back of the head, caused by the increase in pressure when the blood is unable to escape.”

“Then that was what killed her?”

“Not necessarily.” Satisfied, Parkinson set the glasses back upon his nose. “There is also a severe fracture at the rear of the skull, acute extradural and subdural hematoma …”

“Fall or a blow?”

“Almost certainly a blow. The way the hemorrhaging’s below the fracture. While she could have sustained a similar fracture as the result of a fall-she was only a wee girl remember-the force of that kind of accident jolts the brain hard against the skull and I’d be looking to find bleeding further forward, scarcely any underneath the fracture at all.”

Resnick crunched the last fragments of mint between his back teeth. “So, your report, which one will you be opting for, principal cause?”

Parkinson shook his head. “Either, or.” He put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, offered Resnick another mint. “Come the end of the day, I’ll be surprised if it greatly matters.”

Resnick got back to the station to find Graham Millington closeted in his office with Kellogg and Divine. Millington hadn’t quite dared to take Resnick’s chair, but hovered near it instead, as if he might be invited to sit at any moment. Divine, of course, sportsman that he was, had been working his way through Benson and Hedges Silk Cut, giving a pretty fair impression of Sellafield on a cloudy day.

“Sorry,” Millington said, straightening not quite to attention, “like open house out there.”

Resnick shook his head. “I assume you’re not in here to discuss the dinner and dance?”

“No, sir.”

Resnick wafted the door back and forth a few times, settled for leaving it partly open. “Better fill me in,” he said.

Millington looked pointedly at Mark Divine and waited for him to start. Resnick listened, observing carefully: the way Divine leaned forward, shoulders hunched as if locking into a scrum, the eagerness in his voice; Lynn, more centered on her chair, soft skepticism on her face; and Millington-outside of the moral righteousness that went with a well-tended garden and a clean shirt, whatever he might be thinking was a mystery. Aside from the fact that he’d been sergeant for too long now, couldn’t understand why the promotion he surely deserved still seemed so far away.

There was a moment after Divine had finished that they looked, all three of them, directly at Resnick, leaning back behind his desk. Outside, officers answered telephones, identifying themselves, rank and name; a single laugh, harsh and loud, broke into a racking cough; someone whistled the chorus of “Stand By Your Man” and Resnick smiled as he saw Lynn Kellogg bridle.

“He actually said that?” Resnick asked. “‘I used to watch her’?”

“Very words. Look.” He held his notebook towards Resnick’s face. “No two ways about it.”

“No chance you had a tape running?” Millington said.

Divine scowled and shook his head.

“Clearly, you think it means something,” said Resnick.

“Sir, you should have seen him. When he said it, about watching her. He didn’t mean, yes, well, I used to bump into her in the street, knew who she was. He didn’t mean I used to see her, casual-like. What he was on about was something more.”

“You didn’t question him about that? Try to confirm your suspicions.”

“No, sir. I thought if I did, then, I mean, he might, you know, clam up.”

“Where is he now?”

“One of the plods is treating him to a cup of tea.”

“Thinking he knew who it was, lying there underneath all that debris,” Resnick said, “that doesn’t have to be so surprising. He’d have had to be a blind man not to have read about it, seen her face. And if he knew her anyway, by sight at least, there might have been more reason for her to stick in his mind than most.”

“But this other, sir …”

“Yes, I know. We’ll talk to him again, clearly.” Resnick suddenly conscious of the churning of his stomach, just because the morning with the pathologist had turned his mind away from food, that didn’t mean his body had to agree.

“Lynn?”

“Sounds a bit odd, right enough. Then again, if there was anything iffy, would he come right out and say it?”

“Stupid or clever,” suggested Millington.

“The girl,” Resnick said to Lynn, “Sara. Did she say anything about the youth’s reactions when they realized what they’d found?”

“Only that he was frightened. They both were. It took them over an hour, you know, before they made up their minds to come in and report it.”

“Did she say which one of them was hanging back?”

“Says it was the lad, sir.”

“Mark?”

“He never said exactly, just that they spent ages wandering around; he did say as the girl was upset, that’s why they went back to his place, calm her down before walking round here.”

“All right.” Resnick got to his feet and Divine and Kellogg did the same; Graham Millington moved his arm from the filing cabinet on which he had been leaning. “Mark, have another word with him, low key. Lynn, why don’t you sit in with them? See if you can establish just what his relationship with the girl was, supposing it was any more than he’s said. And that warehouse, maybe it was a place he’s used before, somewhere handy for a bit of fun after closing. Let me know how you get on.”

Resnick’s phone rang as they were going out of the door. He lifted the receiver from the cradle, but cupped a hand over the mouthpiece.

“The girl, Lynn, she’s not still here?”

“Afraid not.”

“No matter, we can talk to her later.”

Lynn took her time about turning away again, something she had to get off her mind. “I’m not sure if this is the way we’re thinking, but if this Raymond did know Gloria Summers was in that building, wouldn’t it have been the last place he’d have taken his girlfriend for a snog?”

“Depends,” Divine said quickly, “on just how much of a pervert he is.”

“So, Raymond, how was the tea? Okay? Good. This here’s my colleague, Detective Constable Kellogg. Like I say, we won’t keep you long now, just a couple of little things we need to get sorted.”

Raymond finally left the station at seven minutes after three. His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat and he could smell his armpits and his crotch with every movement, every step. Underneath the tangle of hair, his scalp itched. Pain reverberated, sharp and insistent, beneath his right temple, causing his eye to blink.

On and on they had gone at him, mostly the man, but the woman chipping in too, all the same questions, again and again. Gloria, Gloria. How well had he known her? When he said that he watched her, what did he mean? Perhaps he used to babysit? Help her grandmother with her shopping? Do odd jobs? Collect Gloria sometimes from school? How well would he say he knew her? The mother? Gloria. Would he, for instance, describe her as a friend? Daft! How could some kid of six be his friend? All right, then, Raymond, what was she? You tell us.

He wanted to go home and wash. Take a long bath, slow. He wanted something cold to drink. He bought a can of Ribena from the cob shop over the road and walked back across Derby Road to drink it, sitting with his back against the wall of the insurance offices.

She was a kid he’d noticed first through the shock of fair hair that seemed, more often than not, to spring from her head in all directions. Blue, blue eyes. Like a doll’s. Raymond wondered why he’d thought that? Never had a sister, never had a doll in his life. Handled one: held it. Once he’d spotted her-running along the street towards him, lolly waving in her hand, her nan, her mum he’d thought it was then, calling, “Be careful, be careful! Oh, for goodness’ sake do be careful. Oh, look what you’ve done. Just look at you now.”-he seemed to see her everywhere he looked. In the Chinese chippy, on the rec, waiting at the bus stop with a hand in her nan’s, swinging from it and kicking out this leg and then that, never still. One day he realized that if he angled his head from the window at a certain angle he could see one corner of the school playground. Gloria with all her little friends, laughing and shouting, playing games, skipping, two-ball, kiss chase.