Bridge was pretty much the same age as the pair of them, fast-tracking his way up the ladder, Deputy Commissioner well within his sights. He was clean-shaven, quietly spoken, two degrees and a nice family home out at Cheshunt, a golf handicap of three. He listened attentively while Margaret outlined the relationship between Sandon and Marshall, beginning when they were stationed together in Balham, DC and DS respectively. Drinking pals. Close friends. Still close now, some few years on, Sandon apparently at Marshall’s beck and call.
‘I’m not altogether clear,’ Bridge said, when he’d finished listening, ‘if misconduct is where we’re heading here.’
‘Given the evidence-’ Margaret began.
‘Entirely circumstantial.’
‘Given the evidence, it’s a distinct possibility.’
‘Depending,’ said Kiley.
Bridge readjusted his glasses.
‘Sandon’s not just been harassing Peter’s ex-partner, he was also the officer in charge of investigating the assault on Nicky Cavanagh.’
Almost imperceptibly, Bridge nodded.
‘Which was carried out, as almost everyone in Holloway knows, by four of Bob Nealy’s sons. And yet, questioning a few of the Nealys and their mates aside, nothing’s happened. No one’s been arrested, no one charged. And Nicky Cavanagh’s still in a wheelchair.’
Bridge sighed lightly and leaned back into his chair.
‘Marshall, Sandon, Nealy,’ Kiley said. ‘It’s a nice fit.’
‘One wonders,’ Margaret said, anxious not to let the Assistant Commissioner off the hook, ‘how a case like this, a serious assault of this nature, could have been allowed to lie dormant for so long.’
Bridge glanced past his visitors towards the window, a smear of cloud dirtying up the sky. ‘The lad Cavanagh,’ he said, ‘he should’ve been black. Asian or black. There’d have been pressure groups, demonstrations, more official inquiries than you could shake a stick at. Top brass, myself included, bending over backwards to show the investigation was fair and above board. But this poor sod, who gives a shit? Who cares? A few bunches of flowers in the street and a headline or two in the local press.’
Bridge removed his glasses and set them squarely on his desk.
‘I can make sure the investigation’s reopened, another officer in charge. As to the other business, the woman, I should think it will all fade away pretty fast.’
‘And Sandon?’ Kiley asked.
‘If you make moves to get the Police Complaints Authority involved,’ Bridge said, ‘that’s your decision, of course. On the other hand, were Sandon to receive an informal warning, be transferred to another station, you might, after due consideration of all the circumstances, think that sufficient.’
He stood and, smiling, held out his hand: the meeting was over.
Whenever Kiley bought wine, which wasn’t often, he automatically drew the line at anything over five pounds. Kate had no such scruples. So the bottle they were finishing, late that Friday evening, had been well worth drinking. Even Kiley could tell the difference.
‘I had a call today,’ he said. ‘Margaret Hamblin. She managed to sit Marshall and Jennie Calder down long enough to hammer out an agreement. He makes monthly payments for Alice, direct debit, Jennie signed an undertaking to stop harassing him in public.’
‘You think he’ll stick to it?’
‘As long as he has to.’
‘You did what you could,’ Kate said.
Kiley nodded.
There was perhaps half a glass left in the bottle and Kate shared it between them. ‘If you stayed over,’ she said, ‘we could have breakfast out. Go to that gallery off Canonbury Square.’
Kiley shot her a look, but held his tongue.
Almost a year after his first encounter with Dave Marshall, Kiley was in a taxi heading down Crouch End Hill. Mid-morning, but still the traffic was slow, little more than a crawl. Outside the massage parlour near the corner of Crescent Road, two women were standing close together, waiting for the key holder to arrive so they could go in and start work. Despite the fact that she’d changed her hair, had it cut almost brutally short, he recognised Jennie immediately, a cigarette in her hand, talking to someone who might have been Della. But it was probably Della’s turn to look after the kids.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Kiley called to the driver, thinking he’d jump out, say hello, how’s it all going, walk the rest of the way to his meeting near the clock tower. But then, when the driver, questioning, turned his head, Kiley sat back again in his seat. ‘No, it’s okay, never mind.’
When he looked back, a little further down the hill, the women had gone inside.
BILLIE’S BLUES
Angels, that was what he thought. The way she lay on her back, arms spread wide, as if making angels in the snow. The front of her coat tugged aside, feet bare, the centre of her dress stained dark, fingers curled. A few listless flakes settled momentarily on her face and hair. Porcelain skin. In those temperatures she could have been dead for hours or days. The pathologist would know.
Straightening, Resnick glanced at his watch. Three forty-five. Little over half an hour since the call had come through. Soon there would be arc lights, a generator, yellow tape, officers in coveralls searching the ground on hands and knees. As Anil Khan, crouching, shot off the first of many Polaroids, Resnick stepped aside. The broad expanse of the Forest rose behind them, broken by a ragged line of trees. The city’s orange glow.
‘The woman as called it in,’ Millington said, at his shoulder. ‘You’ll likely want a word.’
She was standing some thirty metres off, where the scrub of grass and the gravel of the parking area merged.
‘A wonder she stayed around,’ Resnick said.
Millington nodded and lit a cigarette.
She was tall, taller than average, dark hair that at closer range was reddish-brown, brown leather boots which stopped below the knee, a sheepskin coat she pulled across herself protectively as Resnick came near. A full mouth from which most of the lipstick had been worn away, eyes like seawater, bluey-green. The fingers holding her coat close were raw with cold.
Still Resnick did not recognise her until she had fumbled in her pockets for a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, the flame small yet sudden, flaring before her eyes.
‘Eileen? Terry’s Eileen?’
She looked at him then. ‘Not any more.’
It had been two years, almost to the day, since the last time he had seen her, trapped out in widow’s weeds. Since then, the seepage that had followed Terry Cooke’s funeral had submerged her from Resnick’s sight. Cooke, a medium-range chancer who had punched his weight but rarely more — aggravated burglary, the occasional lorry hijack, once a payroll robbery of almost splendid audacity — and who had ended his own life with a bullet through the brain, administered while Eileen lay in bed alongside him.
‘You found her.’ Resnick’s head nodded back in the direction of the corpse.
As a question, it didn’t require answer.
‘How come?’
‘She was there, wasn’t she? Lyin’ there. I almost fell over her.’
‘I mean, three in the morning, how come you were here? On the Forest?’
‘How d’you think?’
Resnick looked at her, waiting.
She gouged the heel of her boot into the frozen ground. ‘Business. What else?’
‘Christ, Eileen.’
‘I was here doin’ business.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Why should you?’ For the space of seconds, she looked back at him accusingly.
Resnick had talked to her several times in the weeks before Terry Cooke had died, Eileen seeking a way out of the relationship but too scared to make the move. And Resnick listening sympathetically, hoping she would give him an angle, a way of breaking through Cooke’s camouflage and alibis. Give him up, Eileen. Give us something we can use. Once he’s inside, he’ll not be able to reach you, do you any harm. In the end, Resnick had thought, the only harm Cooke had done had been to himself. Now, looking at Eileen, he was less sure.