Rough Treatment

Twenty-seven

“Lager, please,” Patel said.

“Draught or bottle?”

“Er, draught.”

“Pint or half?”

“Half.”

“Didn’t think your lot drank.”

“Oh, yes, some of us do.”

“Against your religion or something, alcohol.”

Looking over his shoulder, Patel saw the man he had followed, Grice, feeding coins into a gambling-machine that flashed lights and emitted an electronic jingle. “Thanks,” he said, collecting his change, picking his glass off the counter.

Not exactly according to instructions, this, but, mild for the time of year or not, standing around was leaking the cold into his back and shoulders. Three times the elderly woman with the astrakhan collar had been back down to him, when was he going to go and arrest the man who kept looking into her bedroom with his binoculars? She didn’t feel safe taking a bath, getting undressed.

When Grice had come out, standing by one of the parked cars for a few moments, deciding whether to take it or walk, Patel had made up his mind. The target had moved off right and Patel had stayed down behind the phalanx of green bins, calling into the station, before following.

Grice had walked fast, hands jammed into his topcoat pockets, not breaking stride until he reached the pedestrian lights at the head of Castle Boulevard. Behind them, the castle itself, the rebuilt seventeenth-century version of it, held its ground high on weathered rock. Patel followed over and almost immediately right, past the Irish Center where they sold Dublin papers on a Sunday morning, where lines of mostly English students queued on a Saturday night, eager to dance and drink into the early hours.

The pub itself was on the canal, seats outside where later in the year you could watch the barges making their slow passage through the lock. Patel chose a table between the amusement-machines and the main door, the third point of a triangle. A copy of yesterday’s Post had been bunched up against the seat nearby and he opened it out, folding the sports pages to read about the cricket being played in New Zealand. Richard Hadlee, now there was a competitor: Patel had been lucky enough to get a seat on the top deck at Trent Bridge several times during the last couple of seasons, and had watched Hadlee bowl from behind the arm. Patches when the ball was moving both ways, digging in, virtually unplayable.

His man came past him and Patel prepared to finish his lager, get up and leave, but all the target did was go to the bar and order another drink. Sitting back down, he glanced at his watch, not once, twice. All right, thought Patel, he’s waiting for somebody. Good. The cricket report finished, he turned on to the classifieds. Now that house prices were stabilizing, maybe he should think more seriously about moving out from his couple of rooms, buying a place of his own, one of those terraced houses east of Derby Road, close enough so’s he could still walk to work each morning.

Patel could see the knowing smile that would come to his mother’s face, the studied look of approval on his father’s: he was settling down, not a boy any more, marriage, he needed a good woman to look after him, children.

Patel felt his blood quicken as soon as the newcomer came through the door. Medium height, slight build, eyes that were a shade nervous as they picked out the person they were looking for. A low-alcohol lager carried behind Patel and into the corner. Quick shake of hands.

Patel’s finger moved down the page. It was still possible to find something perfectly reasonable for less than forty thousand, and if his mortgage would stretch to a little more …

The new man was wearing a dark double-breasted suit, pale yellow shirt and striped tie. Patel put him at thirty-three or — four. He would have guessed somewhere along the range from car salesman to insurance; estate agent, even. But he didn’t think the hushed conversation had anything to do with surveys or searches, nor that what was passed between them-a padded envelope, the size that would fit down into an inside pocket, a sheet of paper, folded three times-had anything to do with land deeds, options to purchase.

Grice stood abruptly, moving towards the gents. Patel waited, watching the man in the suit, a small dark mustache drawn across his face like a mistake. Suddenly the man’s head turned and he was looking directly at Patel, eyes widening with interest; no, he was looking past him, a woman entering from the street, forties, short skirt and good legs. Grice almost collided with her on his way back.

The two men, both standing now, exchanged a few more sentences before Patel’s target turned towards the door and his friend sat back down.

Options jumped through Patel’s mind and he stayed put, letting Grice go. Initiative or stupidity, time would see. He went back to the property pages-Arnold, New Basford, Bulwell. The man in the suit was more relaxed now; he made a second trip to the bar and said something to the woman in the short skirt, who laughed. Sitting down again, he lit a cigarette and leaned back easily, and Patel thought he was in for a long wait. This time he would ask for a ginger ale. But no. The cigarette was pressed down into the glass ashtray, half-smoked, the glass drained as the man rose to his feet. He was out of the door and on to the pavement before Patel had nodded to the barman, crossed to the floor.

Time to see him getting into a black Ford Escort, stabilizer at the rear, car phone, sun-roof, hardly a patch of dirt on the wheels. Unable to follow, Patel took out his notebook and wrote down the number.

Resnick was back in his office in time for Patel’s call. No way of knowing whether Grice had gone back to the flat or if Grabianski had left in the meantime. There were other things to do, shifting priorities, and to keep Patel watching a potentially empty set of rooms was wasteful. Come back in and get together with Naylor over the VDU.

“Coffee,” Resnick called out into the CID room. “Black and now.”

The adrenalin was pumping and he knew they were close; just unsure as yet exactly what they were close to, how big.

“Jeff,” he said into the phone. “Charlie Resnick.”

“Thought you’d been avoiding me,” said Harrison, caustic yet wary.

“Snowed under.”

“You and me both.”

“Still game for that drink?”

“Seven suit you? Seven-thirty?”

“Difficult. You can’t make it around nine?”

“You still go to the Partridge?”

Not since I was there with Rachel, Resnick thought. “Yes. Nine o’clock, then.”

Harrison grunted and broke the connection. Resnick had the list underlined in his head: Skelton, Lennie Lawrence, Tom Parker, Norman Mann-and Graham Millington, else he’ll feel left out, stepped over. He was dialing the first number when he saw Lynn Kellogg through the glass at the top half of the door, the expression on her face.

“I didn’t know, sir.”

“Course you didn’t. How could you?”

“Had no idea.”

“I know.” She sat there with elbows to her knees, head down, face resting against the palm of one hand. Unusually for Lynn, she didn’t want to look at him. “Even if you had …”

She shook her head.

“Her father…”

“Not here, sir. Not in the building. I don’t know …”

“No.”

Resnick was on his feet, moving around the desk. Naylor appeared at the door with his coffee and Resnick waved him away. “Sounds to me as if you did well …”

“No!”

“What you were there for.”

“But it wasn’t, was it? Organized gangs, that’s what I’ve been looking out for, wasting my time. Not one kid.”

“Lynn.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, her cheeks more flushed even than was usual. “Yes, sir?”

“Is she downstairs?”

Lynn nodded. “I didn’t know whether to send for her mother or not. The superintendent …”

“I’ll go down.” Resnick opened the office door. “You all right?”

“Thanks, sir. I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll write up your report?”

“Now, sir.”

“Naylor’s got some coffee out there, have it with my compliments.”

He went out and left her sitting in his office, seemingly staring at the elaborate duty-rota fixed to the wall behind his desk. Before quitting the CID room he signaled to Naylor to take the coffee through.

He hadn’t seen Kate in person since she was thirteen years old. Only the scrubbed face on the superintendent’s desk, blank and smiling. Today he expected somebody much older, more mature, but the face that swung up at him from behind the white of the custody sergeant’s shirt was every bit as young as he remembered it. Different, though. Eyes rubbed raw and cheeks swollen with crying.

“Hello, Kate.”

She blinked at him, another in a succession of police officers.

“You probably don’t remember me …”

“No.”

“Let’s go upstairs.” Shrugging, she stood. “That okay?” he said to the sergeant.

“Help yourself.”

“Are you taking me to my dad?” Kate asked on the stairs.

“Not yet,” Resnick said. “When he comes back.”

“He doesn’t know yet?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“He’ll kill me, won’t he?”

Resnick found a smile in his eyes. “I doubt that.” On the landing he said, “Fancy a cup of tea, coffee?”

She shook her head.

“Come and watch me, then. I just gave mine away.” They sat in the canteen. Kate relented and had a tea, spooning so much sugar into it, she couldn’t stir it without the liquid swimming over the edge and running on to the edges of her jumper, but she didn’t seem to care or even notice.

“Haven’t got a cigarette, have you?”

Resnick shook his head. Did her father approve of her smoking, he wondered, before realizing what an asinine thought it was.

After twenty or so minutes of difficult silences and desultory conversation, most of it Resnick’s, Lynn Kellogg waved at him from the doorway. Jack Skelton had returned.

Lynn waited outside with Kate while Resnick knocked and went in. Skelton had hung his suit jacket on the hanger behind the door and had yet to gain his desk.

“Charlie. What can I do for you?”

There was warning there already in the concern that sat on Resnick’s face, the lack of any ready reply. Skelton eased back his chair and remained standing.

“Don’t beat around the bush, Charlie.”

“It’s your daughter, sir, Kate. She’s …”

“She’s all right?”

“She’s outside.”

Skelton started towards the door, stopped close to where Resnick was standing. The two men looked at one another and it was Resnick who looked away.

“She’s in trouble, then?”

“Yes, sir. She … DC Kellogg, she was on duty at the center. Kate …”

“Christ,” breathed Skelton. “She’s been caught shoplifting.”

Resnick nodded. “Yes.”

“She’s here? Here now?”

“Outside.”

“God, Charlie.” Skelton’s fingers rested on Resnick’s arm as the life seemed to pass from his eyes. Turning back to his desk, the spring had gone from his step, his shoulders, ever straight, slumped forward.

“There’s no question?”

“She’s admitted the offense. On the way in.”

“I see.”

“Others, too. It seems … seems to have been going on some little time.” The occasions he had been forced to do this, parents called unknowing to the door, mistaking him for a Jehovah’s Witness, some cowboy wanting to set slates back on the roof; their minds still swimming with whatever they’d been watching on TV. Slowly dawning: I’ll kill the little bastard, what’s he been up to now? Belligerence. Anger. Tears. My Terry, he’s off t’youth club, I know for a fact. My Tracy … My Kate.

Skelton didn’t say anything, sat there trying not to stare at the family photos, precise and particular on his desk.

“You’ll want to see her, sir. Before she’s interviewed. Makes a statement.”

“All right, Charlie.” He looked poleaxed. “Just give me a couple of minutes, will you? Then ask DC Kellogg to bring her through.”

Resnick nodded and went towards the door. It seemed a strangely long way and all the time he was expecting the superintendent to call him back, say something more, though he didn’t know what that should be. But there was nothing further. Resnick opened the office door and closed it again behind him.

“A couple of minutes,” he said to Lynn.

“Right, sir.”

When he looked at Kate, she turned her head away.