“I shouldn’t think so, no.”
“And are you happy? Is it going well?”
Does it ever, Resnick thought, go well. He would have let it drop there, but Pam was looking at him, waiting for an answer. “It isn’t that kind of a thing, not … I mean, what you said made it sound like a proper relationship …”
“Improper would do.”
“… and I don’t think it is that. At least, not yet.”
“Not ever?”
Aside from the not inconsiderable complication of Dana being closely involved in the case he was working on, Resnick could see a number of other obstacles. Her flamboyance, her drinking-sex aside what could they hope to find in common?
“Probably not,” he said.
Pam Van Alien laughed: “Spoken like a true man,” she said.
“Let me get this,” said Resnick, reaching for the bill. “Or is that acting like a true man again?”
“Not nowadays,” Pam smiled.
“You realize,” Pam said, “that if Gary finds out I went running straight to you and told you about this morning, I’ll forfeit whatever small amount of trust I’ve built up?”
“Don’t worry. There’s no need for him to know.”
They were walking towards Holy Cross and the spot where Pam had parked her car. It was cold enough for them both to be wearing gloves.
“You’re keeping an eye on him, though?”
“Not me personally, but yes. DC Kellogg, I don’t know if you know her?”
Pam nodded. “By reputation. Maureen Madden thinks a lot of her.”
“So do I.”
They were level with Pam’s car. “Good luck,” she said. “With all of it.”
Resnick thanked her and walked away, off in the direction of Low Pavement. Key in the car door, Pam stood a while, watching him go. She hadn’t been at all sure what she’d thought of him before, didn’t think she liked him but now she thought probably she did; she could. Old-fashioned as it seemed, he was what you’d end up calling, for want of a better term, a nice man.
She opened up and slid behind the wheel.
Timing, she thought, somewhat ruefully: that’s where it lay, in the timing.
Thirty-four
Helen Siddons had chosen her clothes with care. Alienating Nancy Phelan’s parents further was the last thing she could afford. So nothing that might be considered expensive, nothing too stylish, but neither was she going to go marching in with shoulder pads and heels and a suit that shouted authority. She wore a mid-length skirt and jacket in neutral colors, a woolen scarf, and flat shoes. Her hair was neat and orderly, makeup discreet to the point of nonexistence. No perfume.
She sat with Harry and Clarise in the small lounge of their hotel, the three of them leaning awkwardly forward in worn red and gold armchairs. Clarise poured tea from a metal pot and offered round a plate of brittle biscuits. Helen, polite, deflected, as best she could, Harry Phelan’s aggression, his assertion that the police were only going through the motions. The room was heavy with the scent of furniture polish and stale tobacco smoke. Helen declined Harry Phelan’s grudging offer of a cigarette and lit one of her own. “There’s been a development,” she said.
If Resnick had been expecting a great deal from Forensic, he would have been disappointed. “What we want here,” the lab man had said, “is your average sicko. Can’t wait to toss himself off over the lot. Give me that and a little time, I could let you have more than his blood group, I could give you his telephone number. As it is …”
The best he had been able to come up with was a grease mark high on the side of Nancy’s silver top, close to the arm; some kind of oil mixed with human sweat. The sweat, of course, was most likely Nancy’s own, but they didn’t know that yet for a fact. They were doing more tests.
There had been no prints on the doors, none in Nancy’s bedroom, none anywhere. Resnick stalked the corridors of the station, waiting for something to happen.
Dana had woken in the night more times than she cared to remember, alerted by every sound. The slamming of a car door in the street outside, creak of the bed overhead, each had her gripping the edge of the duvet, adrenaline flooding her veins. By the time she climbed into her morning bath, she felt a wreck.
She was drinking herbal tea, trying to concentrate on whatever they were saying on Radio Four, when the phone broke into her already jagged thoughts.
“It’s Andrew,” Yvonne Warden said, “he’s found your little surprise package. I think signing it might have been a mistake.”
With all that had recently happened, Dana had managed to forget the tipsy message she had left for her boss on his office wall, lipsticked graffiti graphically testifying to his failed attempt at seduction.
“Oh, shit!” Dana said.
“Exactly.”
Dana was at a loss for what to say.
“I think you should give him an hour to climb down off the ceiling,” Yvonne said, “then put in an appearance. I imagine he’ll want a word with you by then.”
“I can guess which one it is.”
“Between ourselves,” Yvonne said, “showing him up for what he is, it’s not before time.”
“Christ,” Dana said, “don’t tell me he’s had a go at you, too?”
“What time,” Yvonne said, “shall I say you’ll be in? Ten? Ten-thirty?”
Dana sat for several minutes, staring at the phone. Then she pulled herself together, put on her good black trouser suit with a scarlet silk shirt, paid even more than usual attention to her hair and makeup, drank two strong cups of coffee, the second laced with brandy, and she was on her way.
“You’re looking surprisingly good,” Yvonne Warden said admiringly. “In the circumstances.”
“Don’t,” Dana said, “let the bastards grind you down.”
“He’s expecting you,” Yvonne said.
Dana smiled and breezed on through.
There was a smell of fresh paint which grew appreciably stronger when Dana opened the door. Andrew Clarke was speaking to somebody on the phone, but as soon as Dana entered he lowered the receiver and rose to his feet. Behind him a workman in blue-gray overalls was repainting the rear wall where Dana had lipsticked her graphic version of her Christmas Eve struggle with her employer. The final picture, just visible through the first coat, had a distraught Andrew, sweat flying, running down the street after her, flies agape, penis swaying limply in the wind.
“I suppose you think this is funny?”
“Don’t you?”
Behind them, the painter sniggered.
“Outside!” Clarke snapped.
“But I haven’t …”
“Out. You can finish it later.”
The painter edged past Dana wearing the smuggest of grins and left them together.
“You realize you’ve left me no alternative other than dismissal,” Andrew Clarke said.
“Resignation?”
He coughed into the back of his hand. “Very well, if that’s what you want.”
“I was thinking of yours, not mine.”
“Then you’re deluded.”
Dana smiled. “Dismiss me and I’ll bring charges of harassment and sexual assault. Be patient while I apply for another job, give me a good reference and a bonus, something equivalent to six months’ salary, say, and I won’t even post the letter I’ve got here in my bag addressed to your wife. Think about it, Andrew, think about exactly what Audrey might say and do. When you’ve made up your mind I’ll be in the library. There’s a new batch of slides that want cataloging.”
Outside the door she winked at the workman. “I think you can go back in now.”
The envelope had arrived second delivery, addressed to Superintendent Jack Skelton and marked personal. It had stayed downstairs until mid-afternoon, when the duty officer had sent it up to the superintendent’s office, along with a bundle of papers and other mail. There it remained on the side of his desk until a little before five, when Skelton pulled it out from between two Home Office circulars, and gave it a preliminary shake. The flap had been secured with two staples before being Sellotaped round. Skelton cut the tape at the edges, then pulled the staples free; when he held the envelope over his desk, the cassette slipped down into his hand.