“It doesn’t matter,” Resnick said quietly, “what it’s called.”
“I suppose I was excited,” Robin said, “you know, about us. I thought she’d made up her mind. Because she hadn’t seemed certain, one time to the next, like I said before, what she felt, but I was sure, since she’d made such a thing out of going there, she was going to say she felt the same as me. I w-was p-p-positive. I said let’s go out again, Christmas Eve, r-really celebrate. She said she was sorry but she realized she wasn’t being f-fair to me, leading me on; she didn’t want to see me again, ever.”
Robin Hidden lowered his face into his hands and behind them he might have been crying. Reaching out, Resnick gave his arm a squeeze. Millington winked across at Resnick and got to his feet, signaling he was going to organize more tea.
Nineteen
Robin Hidden’s car was parked close against the side wall, steeply angled across from the green metal post which had the security camera bolted near the top. He had bought it nine months before, the deposit borrowed from his parents when his father’s redundancy money had finally come through. The remainder he was paying off over three years at a reasonable interest.
“A bit on the large size, isn’t it, son,” his dad had asked, “should have thought one of them compact jobs, two doors, Fiesta or a Nova, more the kind of thing for you. More economical, too.”
But Robin had fancied something comfortable for cruising along the motorway, weekends; throw your walking gear in the back and you were away. Friday nights, once the traffic had fallen off, setting out for Brecon Beacons, Dartmoor, Striding Edge. Travel back on Sunday with a minimum of stress. If a friend or two from the office fancied coming along, which occasionally they did, no problem, plenty of room.
After a little shopping around, he’d tracked this one down to a garage on Mapperley Top, one owner only, sales rep it was true, but one advantage of all that high mileage was it kept the price down within reason. “No,” he had told his father, just this past couple of days, “good investment, that. No doubt about it.”
Resnick and Millington saw it first on the monitor, black and white, picture vibrating a touch as the camera shivered in the wind. From just outside the rear door of the station, the vantage point of the top step, they could see the way the dirt of its recent journey had risen in waves above the car’s wheels, had been smeared by inefficient wipers across the windscreen in faint curves. The aerial, partly withdrawn, was bent over near the tip. A good car, though. Reliable. Robin Hidden’s Vauxhall Cavalier, J registration, midnight blue.
They had left him alone in the interview room, door wide open. Just a few minutes, sir, if you wouldn’t mind hanging on. The tea was strong and this time there were biscuits, digestives, and a chipped lemon cream. He could walk out and down the stairs and be in the street in moments. There was nothing they could do to stop him. Surely. Here of his own volition. Anyone with information …
Footsteps approached along the corridor and, automatically, he sat straighter in his chair, brushed biscuit crumbs from his thighs. The steps carried on past.
“It’s over then, is it?” his friend Mark had asked. “You and Nancy?”
Oh, yes. It was over.
“So what are you telling me, Charlie? You’ve got a suspect or not?”
“Early days, sir.”
Skelton frowned. “Try telling that to the girl’s father.”
“Better than giving him false hope.”
Skelton sighed, turned towards the window, checked his watch. The car that was to drive him to the Central Station and the afternoon press conference would appear at any minute, up the hill from the city.
“You’re saying about the Cavalier …?”
“It could be the one.”
“Could?”
“No way I can be sure. But the shape, the color …”
“The registration?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Jesus, Charlie!” The superintendent moved round from behind his desk, shook a clean handkerchief from his pocket, cleared his nose, glanced quickly at the contents of the handkerchief before slipping it back.
“How about-a friend of the missing woman, providing useful background information?”
“Say that and it’s like breathing murder suspect down the back of their necks. They’ll have his picture on the front pages by tomorrow’s first editions.”
Skelton sighed again. “You’re right. Better to say nothing. Let them think we’re bumbling around, slow and steady, chasing our tails. Till we’ve got something more.”
Resnick nodded, headed for the door.
“Gut feeling, Charlie?”
“Ditching him the way she did, she hurt him more than he’s letting show.”
“Enough to want to cause her harm?”
“Sometimes,” Resnick said, “it’s the only way people think they’ve got of making the pain stop.”
“I don’t want to say it,” Mark had said. They were out on a ledge overhanging a valley swathed in mist. Mars bars and a thermos of coffee laced with scotch. Careful not to stop for too long and let the muscles seize up.
“Then don’t,” Robin had said.
“You should never have got mixed up with her in the first place.”
“Mark, come on …”
“Well, she wasn’t exactly your type.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“That was why, wasn’t it. Because she wasn’t some Ramblers Association groupie who couldn’t see beyond the next youth hostelling weekend in the Wrekin, She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever been with before and I’m not likely to find someone like that again.”
Mark tipped the flask high over the cup, shaking out every last drop. “Girls like her, two a penny.”
The way Robin had looked at him then, rearing up, for all the world as if he might have thrust out an arm, sent his friend hurtling from the ledge.
“Hey!” Mark had shouted, swinging back, alarmed. “Don’t take it out on me. I’m not the one led you on and then said, thanks very much, goodbye. That was her. Remember? If you want to take out your anger on someone, take it out on her.”
And Robin had stood close to the edge, very close, staring down. “I’m not angry with Nancy. What right have I got to be angry with her?”
“Mr. Hidden?” Millington said. “Robin?” He’d been so bound up in what he was thinking, remembering, he hadn’t noticed the sergeant coming back into the room. “There are just a few points we’d like to clarify,” Millington said. “If you can spare us the time.”
Robin Hidden barely nodded, blinked, and turned his chair back in towards the table. Millington closed the door and waited for Resnick to sit down before crossing to the tape machine.
“I thought this was the same as before? Just a few things, you said.”
“So it is,” Resnick said.
Millington took hold of the tab between forefinger and thumb and pulled, freeing the tape from its wrapping, did the same with a second, slotted them both into place. Twin decks.
“For your protection,” Resnick said. “An accurate record of what you’ve said.”
“Is that what I need?” Robin asked. “Protection?”
“This interview,” Millington began, sitting down, “is being recorded on the twenty-seventh of December at …” Checking his watch, “… eleven minutes past two. Present are Robin Hidden, Detective Inspector Resnick, and Detective Sergeant Millington.”
“What we’re interested in, Robin,” Resnick said, “is where you were, late on Christmas Eve.”
It was a slow day in Fleet Street. No coded messages from the IRA to Samaritans’ offices, giving details of bombs left outside army barracks or in shopping centers; no cabinet ministers with their fingers caught in the Treasury till or the knickers of women other than their wives; no photographs of starving children newsworthy enough after the Christmas overkill; no gays to bash, no foreigners to trash, no sex, no drugs, no rock ‘n’ roll.