Still Waters

Six

They overlaid into a gray morning. Not significantly, but enough to set them at odds with the day: Hannah concerned that her attempt to interest a bunch of lower-sixth physicists in contemporary poetry would evaporate into still air; Resnick troubled by a mangle of things the stubborn heaviness of his brain would not allow him to unravel or confront. One of those mornings you knew the toast would burn, and it did.

“Maybe,” Hannah said, scraping the worst of the blackened bread into the bin, “we should go back and start again?”

Resnick swallowed his coffee, shrugged his way into his coat. “You really think that’d help?”

“With you in that sort of a mood, I doubt it.”

“I’m not in any kind of mood, I just hate being late.” Aiming for the corner of the table with his mug, he missed.

“Shit!”

Pale blue ceramic with a band of darker blue at its center, it lay in pieces on the tiled floor.

“It doesn’t matter, Charlie. Forget it.”

He looked on, helpless, as Hannah dragged the dustpan and brush from beneath the sink. The mug was one of a pair given to her as a gift. An old boyfriend, Resnick remembered, the peripatetic music teacher she was careful not to talk about too much.

“Look, I’d better get going.”

“Yes.”

Rear door open out into the small yard, he looked back: Hannah at the sink stubbornly refusing to turn her head. The way they had been last night and the way they were now-why was it always such hard work?

He was at the end of the narrow ginnel which ran between the backs of the houses when she caught him.

“Charlie.”

“Um?”

“I’m sorry.”

Relieved, he smiled and brushed a stray fall of hair away from her face. “No need.”

They stood as they were, not moving.

“Is it the job? The promotion, I mean …”

“Serious Crimes?” He shrugged and shuffled a pace or two away. “Maybe.”

“There’ll be other chances, don’t you think?”

About the same as County have, Resnick thought, of getting into the Premiership. “Yes, I dare say.”

With a small smile, Hannah stepped away. “Shall I see you later?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call.”

“Okay.”

At the corner opposite, where he had parked his car, particles of glass silvered up from the roadway like shiny sand. The wing mirror and off-side front window had been broken; nothing, as far as Resnick could see, stolen. He would not have been surprised if the engine had refused to turn, but it caught at the first touch of the ignition and, wearily, he pulled away from the curb, turning left and left again into the early-morning traffic.

Kevin Naylor had drawn early shift: a host of break-ins near the Catholic cathedral, almost certainly kids from what they’d taken, the mess they’d left in their wake; two BMWs and a Rover reported stolen from Cavendish Crescent South; one of the lock-ups back of Derby Road burned out, probably arson.

As part of an ongoing operation, Graham Millington was eagerly awaiting a further meeting with an informant on the verge of shopping the team of three who had knocked over the same post office in Beeston, three times in five days. University graduates, if the informant was to be believed, looking for a way of funding a trip across the States, paying off their student loans.

Lynn Kellogg, meanwhile, was due to interview three sets of neighbors whose houses backed onto one another between Balfour Road and Albert Grove and whose animosity-so far involving dead rodents, broken windows, all-night sound systems, and human excrement-came close to constituting a serious breach of the peace.

Carl Vincent, aside from the cases of benefit fraud and receiving stolen property that were weighing down his case file, was continuing to check through local antique shops and auction rooms, just in case whoever had taken the Dalzeil paintings had done so without either a ready outlet or any real sense of their worth.

Resnick’s regular early-morning meeting with the superintendent had been postponed; Jack Skelton was in Worcester, along with officers from forty-three other forces, attending a meeting to launch a joint investigation into the murders of some two hundred women, which, over the past ten years, had gone unsolved.

“This floater, Charlie,” Skelton had asked, glancing through the file. “Beeston Canal. Anything to add?”

Not a thing.

Now Resnick wandered out into the CID room, spoke briefly with both Millington and Naylor, glanced over Lynn’s shoulder at the report she was preparing, finally paused by Vincent’s desk and watched as the list of auction houses scrolled up the screen of the VDU.

“Any luck?”

“Nothing so far. More than half don’t seem to know who Dalzeil was. It’s like giving art history lectures by phone.” Vincent grinned. “Open University, strictly first level. But so far, no one’s owning up to being approached. Nothing that fits our bill, at least.”

Resnick nodded. “Okay. Stick with it for now. I’ll follow up a few things of my own.” He had a contact in the Arts and Antiques Squad at New Scotland Yard who might be able to help.

“Sir?” Lynn Kellogg swiveled round from where she was sitting. “I couldn’t have a word?”

“Sure. Ten minutes. Just let me make one call.”

Back in his office, Resnick was midway through dialing the Yard number when Millington burst through from the outer office, scarcely bothering to knock. Anxiety was clear in his eyes.

“Mark Divine, boss. Stupid bugger’s thrown a fit by t’sound of it. Gone off half cock in some nightclub. Glassed someone for starters. And there’s talk he had a knife. Right now he’s banged up in Derby nick.”

“Christ!” For a moment, Resnick closed his eyes. “All right, Graham. I’ll get over there myself. You hold the fort here.”

“Long as you’re sure.”

Resnick barely nodded, hurrying to the door.

“Sir …” Lynn was on her feet, watching her chance for pinning Resnick down about her transfer go storming past.

I was right, Resnick was thinking, hurrying down the stairs and out through the rear exit to the car park: the whole damn squad’s falling apart.

Divine sat slumped forward on the narrow bed, elbows on knees, head in hands. The interior of the cell had been painted a dull shade of industrial gray. The stink of urine seemed to seep through the walls.

“How’s he been?” Resnick asked.

“You mean since he sobered up?” The custody sergeant was singularly tall, taller than Resnick by several inches, and most of those extra inches in his neck. When he spoke, his Adam’s apple bobbed awkwardly above the collar of his uniform shirt.

“That’s what this is then, drunk and disorderly?”

“He should be so lucky.”

“But he was drunk?”

“Either that or popping Es. Regular one-man rave.”

Resnick stood back and the sergeant slotted the key into the lock, the inward movement of the door surprisingly smooth. Divine didn’t look up straight away and when he did the jolt of recognition twisted on his face and he punched the skimpy mattress with his fist.

“Mark …”

Divine blinked and looked away. Bruising hung purple from his mouth and around his eyes; a cut that angled deep across his cheek had been held in place by steristrips.

“He’s been to the hospital?”

“Doctor saw him here.”

“What about an X-ray?”

The custody sergeant shrugged.

“And the injuries, they were sustained where?”

“Over half the city center, looks like. Two or three skirmishes in pubs before the nightclub where things really got nasty.”

“Not here, then?”

“Eh?”

“I said, Sergeant, those injuries to the face, no way they could have been sustained when he was in custody?”

The sergeant held his gaze for fully ten seconds. “Didn’t exactly come quietly. Meek and mild. Might’ve taken a bit of time, getting him subdued.”

“Time?”

“And energy.”

“Force then?”

“Reasonable force, yes.”

Resnick’s turn to stare.

“Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984; section one hundred and …”

“I know the section, Sergeant.”

“I’m sure you do, sir.”

“And I’m sure whatever happened, whatever reasonable force was used in making the arrest, it’s all been logged.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Sergeant, you can leave us now.”

“Yes, Inspector.”

When Resnick sat down on the bed, Divine flinched. All those months and the memory of it clear like burning, raw inside him. Cold sweats when his body turned against him, wrenching him. The shame. Like a knife inside him. Skin on his skin. Cunt and whore. Carl Vincent delicately covering him.

“Mark?”

Divine’s voice so quiet, even that close, Resnick could not be certain he had spoken.

“Can I get you something? Cup of tea? Cigarette?”

When Divine looked back at him, his eyes were bright with tears.

Resnick’s counterpart was bluff, busy, sandy haired. Working in cities less than twenty miles apart, they knew one another by sight and reputation, little more. To Barrie Wiggins, Resnick was a bit of an oddball, soft round the edges, not the sort you’d opt to sink a few pints with after closing, swapping stories. Wiggins, Resnick knew, enjoyed a reputation for being hard as High Peak granite, the sort who still liked to be out with the lads on patrol of a Sat’day night, roll up his sleeves and pitch into a bar-room fight. One of the best-known anecdotes about him, how he got hold of some ex-miner clinging to his right to silence, slammed his head down into a desk drawer and squeezed tight till the man changed his mind. It was an anecdote that Wiggins liked to tell about himself.

“Bloody mess, Charlie. No two ways about it. Your lad, got himself in a right bloody mess.”

“Tell me,” Resnick said.

Wiggins shook a packet of Benson Kingsize in Resnick’s direction, raised an eyebrow at his refusal, lit one for himself and inhaled deeply. “Leaving aside the scraps he was into in half a dozen pubs beforehand, it’s the ruckus at Buckaroos that’s the dog’s fucking bollocks.”

Resnick had driven by the place several times in the past: a sprawling nightclub with a kicking stallion in pink neon over the door and bouncers who wore bootlace ties with their DJs.

“None of this corroborated, of course. Not fully. Not yet. My lads out asking questions now. But the way it seems, your lad was abusive to the bar staff right from the start; he asks this girl to dance and when she says no, drags her out onto the floor anyhow. She manages to pull away and when he comes after her, lobs her drink in his face. Your boy slaps her hard for her trouble.” Wiggins tumbled ash from the end of his cigarette. “When security shows up, he sticks a pint glass in one of’em’s face.”

“Provocation?”

“Like I say, we’re asking questions. No problem there. More witnesses than you can shake a stick at.”

“And the injuries?”

“Seventeen stitches in some other poor bastard’s face. One lad with a cut across his hand, tendons severed, doubtful if they’ll mend. When the first uniforms arrived, that was when he pulled the knife.”

“What knife?”

“Stanley knife. Inside pocket of his suit.”

“And he used it, is that what you’re saying?”

Wiggins shook his head. “Not what we’re hearing so far.”

“Threatened to?”

“Apparently.”

“It’s not possible the officers misinterpreted, heat of the moment?”

“Come on, Charlie.”

“It’s possible, though? Couldn’t he have been handing it over?”

Wiggins chuckled. “Blade first?”

Resnick was on his feet, hands in pockets, pacing the room. “Divine. You know what happened to him. A few months back.”

“I’d heard something.”

“He was raped. Smashed round the face with a baseball bat and raped.”

“Doesn’t excuse …”

Resnick brought the palms of both hands down against the inspector’s desk, flat and fast. “Reasons, not excuses. Reasons. This is a serving officer …”

“Suspended …”

“Sick leave.”

“Same thing.”

Resnick let that pass. “A detective constable with a commendation for bravery …”

“And a knife in his pocket.”

“He’s frightened.”

“Funny way to show it.”

“Ever since he was attacked, frightened. Months before he’d go out at all.”

“Ah, well, always find a reason, eh, Charlie. Search hard enough. Excuses for every fucking thing. I don’t doubt but you could find him some psychiatrist, half an hour in the witness box, make it seem as if nowt ever happened.”

Resnick shook his head. “I just want you to understand.”

“Oh, I understand. One of yours, Charlie, you want to do your best for him, I can appreciate that. Respect it. Good management. Good for the team. But see things from my point of view; think how the papers’d look at it, bloody television, some copper runs amok with a blade and we pat him on the head and tell him to take it easy, dole out a few aspirin.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. Not what I want.”

“What do you want, Charlie?”

“To think your people’d treat him with some understanding. And go easy when it comes to laying charges. Think about the whole picture.”

“The whole picture,” Wiggins smirked. “We’re good at that. Noted.”

“Don’t keep him locked up longer than you have to. Whatever else, ask for police bail, don’t let him fetch up inside on remand.”

“Not down to me, you know that.”

“You could help.”

Wiggins stubbed out his cigarette and stopped himself halfway through tapping out another. “Filthy bloody habit.” Thinking better of it, he lit up anyway. “All right, Charlie. No promises, but …” He got to his feet, held out his hand. “You have another word with him before you go. Make sure he’s going to play it right. Penitent and contrite. You’ve already fixed a decent brief for him, I dare say.”

After arriving at Derby police station, Resnick had put in a call to Suzanne Olds. The solicitor was waiting for him in the corridor near the custody area and the police cells. Leather briefcase, tailored suit, legs long enough to turn heads.

“You’ve spoken to him?” Resnick asked.

“It’s not easy getting him to say much at all. Except he doesn’t care what happens to him, that’s clear.”

“About this?”

“Anything.”

“You’ll change his mind.”

“I’ll try.”

Resnick shook her hand. “I owe you for this.”

“I’ll make sure you pay.”