Twenty-seven
Dana had gone to bed full of good intentions. The alarm set for seven-thirty, she was going to make an early start, get in a full day; attend to all of those things she claimed there was no time for due to her job. Well, now was her chance; she would get down to it first thing, shower, clear her head, make a list.
Idling through her wardrobe, she wondered about buying something special for tonight. Detective Inspector Charles Resnick, investigating officer, making a personal call at eight sharp. Charles. Charlie. Her hands ran down the sleeve of a silk shirt, apple green, smooth to the touch. Dana smiled, recalling how gentle he had been. A surprise. Lifting the shirt clear on its hanger, she thought about his hands against the softness of the material. Large hands. When she thought about it, now and since, it surprised her, the extent to which his initial clumsiness had disappeared. Yes, she thought, laying the shirt out on the bed. Apple green. Good. She would run the iron over it later, wear that.
In the shower she wondered if it had been right to phone him at work; not the best of times, either, from the way he had answered, a mixture of circumspect and abrupt. With some men, though, it was what you had to do. Make it clear that you were interested, what was what.
Slowly, savoring it, Dana soaped her shoulders, sides, what she could reach of her back; better to be positive, she thought, than yield the initiative from the start.
Miriam sat reading, alternating between Light in August and the New Musical Express; the earphones from her Walkman were leaking a little Chris Isaak into the CID room. At the other side of the desk, Lynn Kellogg struggled to catch up with the never-ending demands of paperwork; tried not to think about her father, just below the level of consciousness, always waiting for the phone to ring, her mother’s voice, “Oh, Lynnie …”
Divine and Naylor returned, bullish, from the Meadows. Raju had looked at the sketches drawn by Sandra Drexler and confirmed they closely matched those he had seen on one of his attackers.
“Hey up,” Divine said none too quietly, pointing across the room at Miriam. “What d’you reckon to that?”
Miriam let him know that she had heard; staring him down, she cranked up her Walkman and turned the page of the NME. Finish the singles reviews and then she’d get back to Faulkner. A seminar tomorrow about shifting points of view.
Lynn explained the process more assiduously than Miriam considered strictly necessary; but then, she told herself, quite a few of the people they had to deal with, the police, probably they weren’t any too bright.
The vehicles had been arranged in two lines, facing, and Miriam was left to walk, taking her time, between. At one point she came close to giggling, feeling suddenly like the Queen, inspecting her loyal troops in some Godforsaken scrap of land. What a farce! The more that came to light, the more you realized that life among the Royals was a cross between Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks. Without a moment’s hesitation she picked out the car. A midnight blue Vauxhall Cavalier.
Robin Hidden heard them draw up outside and almost before they had approached the house, realized who they were. Millington he recognized by name, the dapper suit, the smug smile when Robin opened the street door.
Two other officers waited behind him on the path, also plain clothes; the expression on one of them slightly mocking, as if faintly hopeful that he would panic, cut some kind of a dash, provide an excuse for a chase, a bit of action.
It was all little more than a formality, Millington explained. A witness to confirm you were where you said you were, the night your Nancy disappeared. Nothing to worry about, as long as you were telling the truth.
Harry Phelan was in the station entrance when the car arrived bringing Robin Hidden in. Two and two had rarely come together so fast to make four. Phelan managed to hold himself in check until Hidden was level with him, then launched himself forwards, landing a two-fisted blow to the back of the head, just behind the ear. Millington moved quickly, setting himself between the two of them, Phelan’s boot deflecting off his shin and catching Robin Hidden’s thigh as he fell.
Before he could do any more damage, Millington took a choke hold around Harry Phelan’s neck and dragged him back towards the uniformed officer who had run round from behind the desk, handcuffs at the ready.
“Enough!” Millington shouted just in time. “It’s okay.”
Opportunely, Divine had chosen this moment to appear. He seized Harry Phelan’s shirt with one hand, the other, bunched into a fist, raised above his face.
“Mark,” Millington said, “Let it be.”
Divine stepped back and Phelan was swung round hard and pushed against the wall, feet kicked wide, arms stretched out straight behind, cuff’s clicked tightly into place.
“Inside and book him,” Millington said, straightening his tie. “And now we’ve done our job of protecting Mr. Hidden here,” Millington smiled, “let’s escort him safely inside.”
Robin Hidden looked at the seven men standing still in a haphazard sort of a line. For some reason, he had expected to have come face to face, if not with carbon copies, then people who bore more than a passing resemblance to himself. But these-about the same height, certainly, none of them fat, roughly of similar age-in reality he looked nothing like them. He supposed that was part of the point.
“Like I said,” the officer in charge of the parade said, “pick your own place in the line.”
Seven, Robin thought, that’s the number most people choose all the time. He went over and stood between a man whose hair was more gingery than fair and another slightly taller than himself.
Number four.
“Spectacles on first, gentlemen, please.”
As Robin Hidden fumbled his glasses from their case, he observed, as if in some kind of joke, all of the other men taking out the pairs of glasses they had been given and putting them on.
Miriam took her time. Up and down the row twice as required, hesitating, asking if she might walk the line a third time. Silent as everyone waited, the officers, the solicitor watching her, the men staring straight ahead, blinking, some of them, behind unfamiliar glasses. Silent, save for the breath of the man she knew already she would choose. She had done since practically the first moment; but she was enjoying it, the drama of it, acting it out.
“Is the man you saw on the Christmas Eve present in the parade?” the investigating officer asked when, finally, she stood in front of him.
Nervous now, despite herself, Miriam nodded. “And will you indicate, please, the number of that person?”
“N-number four,” Miriam said, stammering for perhaps the first time in her life.
Twenty-eight
The blinds in Skelton’s office were drawn, closing out what was left of the winter light. Skelton’s earlier conversation with the assistant chief had made him sweat. The afternoon editions of the Post had headlined Harry Phelan’s arrest at the police station, featured a photograph of him angrily descending the steps to the street after being released. Another quotable diatribe about police incompetence, sloth. “Only time they put themselves out nowadays, something political or if it’s one of their own.”
“Questions being asked, Jack,” the assistant chief had said. “What in God’s name’s going on on your patch? You used to run such a tight ship, everything battened down. Trouble with a reputation like yours, things start to get out of control, out of hand, people notice. They want to know the reasons why. Oh, and Jack, give my best to Alice, right?”
Resnick had noticed, this past week or so, that the photographs of Alice and Kate, so prominent and exact on Jack Skelton’s desk in the past, had disappeared from sight. He was in Skelton’s office now while Robin Hidden took his statutory break, getting the superintendent up to speed.