Lynn turned sharply. “And you think it was worth it?”
“Yes, on balance I do.”
“Did he?”
Resnick hesitated. “I think so. But truly, no, I don’t know.”
“He didn’t say.”
“Oh, he moaned. Complained. I won’t lie to you, there were days when he said he wished they’d let him die; he wished he were dead.”
“And yet you can still say it was right? For him to go through all that discomfort, the pain, the … loss of dignity, all for what? A few extra months?”
Resnick drank some more coffee, giving himself time. “There were things he was able to say, we were able to say to one another, I think they were important.”
“To you, yes?”
“Lynn, listen, you’ve got to realize, hard as it might be, this isn’t just about him. About your dad. It’s about you too. Your life. If he … if he dies, whenever he dies, one way or another you’ve got to find a way of living with that. And you will.”
She let herself cry now and he stood close to her, a hand on her shoulder and for a short while she rested her head sideways against his arm, so that her face lay on his wrist and hand.
“Thanks,” she said then and got to her feet and blew her nose and wiped her eyes and carried the empty cups and the plates back into the kitchen and rinsed them under the sink. “We’d better be going,” she said. “It’s not as if there’s nothing to do.”
Cossall was pacing the corridor, drawing heavily on his fifth or sixth cigarette of the morning. “Charlie, in here. You’ve got to hear this.”
Resnick checked with Millington that everything was proceeding smoothly, then followed Cossall to the interview room, getting the details on the way.
Miriam Richards had been employed at the hotel on Christmas Eve, casual work as a waitress with which she augmented her student grant. On this particular evening she had been assigned to one of the larger banqueting rooms, shared for the occasion by the senior management of one of the larger department stores and an ad-hoc group of dentists, dental nurses, and technicians. At a little after half past eleven, Miriam had been clearing away the last of the coffee cups when a man had slid his hand between her legs, pushing the black skirt she was forced to wear hard between her thighs. No way it was any kind of an accident. Miriam had swung round, told him to keep his hands to himself, and slapped her right hand across his face. There was a cup and saucer in it at the time. The man screamed and landed with a jarring thump on his knees; amidst a lot of blood were the fragments of not one, but two broken teeth. Miriam thought there was poetic justice in this, until she found out the man worked not with fillings but furniture.
Of course, at first he denied as much as touching Miriam, never mind goosing her; all he would eventually admit as a possibility was that, being a little the worse for wear for drink, he had lost his footing getting up and reached out to steady himself.
“Bullshit!” Miriam declared resolutely, the term sounding somewhat at odds with her Cheshire accent. But she was doing American Studies and took the aculturation seriously.
When the member of the hotel’s management team instructed her to apologize, she told him in no uncertain terms where to put his skirt and apron. She was on her way out of the hotel, irritable and prepared to walk back to her digs in Lenton, when she saw a car pull up beside a woman just in front of her. The driver shouted a name out of the window, jumped out when the woman didn’t stop, ran after her, and grabbed her arm.
Miriam had held back for a while, worried in case what had just happened to her was about to happen to someone else. But after a few minutes of raised voices, mostly his, a little arm tugging, the woman shrugged her shoulders and seemed to change her mind. Anyway, she walked around to the passenger side of the car and got in, the driver followed suit, and they drove off, turning left down the hill.
“Descriptions?” Resnick asked.
Cossall grinned. “Talk to her yourself.”
Miriam was wearing a blue denim jacket with a button reading Spinsters on the Rampage on one lapel, a larger one, Hillary for President, on the other. She wore a faded denim shirt and a yellow roll-neck under the jacket, black wool leggings, and Doc Martens. She greeted Resnick with a wary half-grin.
“I’m sorry to ask you all this again …”
“S’okay.”
“But this woman, the one you saw get into the car, how old would you say she was?”
Miriam rolled her tongue and Resnick realized she was chewing gum. “Could have been a couple of years older than me, not a lot more.”
“Early twenties, then?”
“Yes.”
“And she was wearing?”
Miriam glanced over at Cossall before she answered. “Like I said, silvery top, matching tights, short black skirt; she had this red coat across her shoulders. Bit posey, I thought. Still …” She looked from Resnick to Cossall and back again. “It’s her, isn’t it? The one who’s missing. Jesus Christ, I could have done something, stopped it.”
“I doubt you could have done anything,” Resnick said. “You waited to see what was going to happen, that’s more than most people would have done. But she got into the car of her own accord. There was no reason for you to interfere.”
“But when I heard about it, on the news, back home, you know, over the holiday-I’m so stupid! — I never as much as thought.”
“It’s okay, love,” Cossall said. “Don’t get so worked up.”
“Tell me,” Resnick said, “about the car.”
“Four-door saloon, blue, dark blue. Course, if I’d had any sense, if I hadn’t been so worked out about that wanker … that idiot at the hotel, I would have thought to write down the number, just, you know, in case. But it was J reg., I’m sure of that.”
“The make?”
“Can’t say for certain. I could probably recognize it, though, if I had the chance.”
“Tell him about the driver,” Cossall said. “What he looked like.”
Miriam described Robin Hidden-his height, slightly stooped posture, wiriness, spectacles-to a T. Everything except the stammer.
“Knew he was lying,” Millington said. “Just bloody knew it.”
“Felt it in your water, Graham?” Cossall grinned.
They were back in Resnick’s office, while Lynn Kellogg gave Miriam a brief tour of the station, offered her a cup of tea, asked what exactly was American Studies.
“Let’s do it carefully,” Resnick said. “No slip ups now.”
“You’ll want an identity parade,” Cossall said, one leg cocked over the corner of Resnick’s desk. “Best have a word with Paddy Fitzgerald, see if he can’t fix that. Graham here could probably make sure young Hidden doesn’t do a runner.”
Right, Millington thought, thanks a lot!
“At least that hasn’t been handed over to a bunch of private cowboys yet. We catch ’em, get them into court and some half-assed security guard lets them go.”
“It’ll take more time organizing the cars,” Resnick said. Since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, there had to be a minimum of twelve vehicles of a similar type presented to the witness.
Cossall nodded. “Best get the car established though, hold off on pulling Hidden in for the ID; then if both come up positive, we can collar him while he’s on the premises.”
Resnick nodded. “Let’s be about it.”
“Talked to Jolly Jack?” Cossall asked over his shoulder, heading for the door.
“Next thing,” Resnick said. And then, “Graham, when you go out for Hidden, under wraps as much as you can. We’re right here, this’ll be enough of a circus as it is.”