“Gave in his notice,” Helen Siddons said, “the week after the noncollection of the ransom. Some story about his mother being ill Manchester way, Wilmslow, the personnel manager thinks she remembers. He’d been a good salesman, friendly, they’d been sad to let him go.”
“Photograph,” Cossall said, “too much to hope for.”
“Company policy is to keep one on file. McCain kept forgetting to bring one in. After a while, they got fed up asking. Figures were so far up in his area, they didn’t want to get the wrong side of him. However,” continuing among the moans and groans, “D.C. Divine described the man he saw close to in the Little Chef, the one calling himself Reverdy. According to the personnel manager, in outline it fitted him to a T. Similar height, five eight or nine, medium to slight build, sometimes she said he used to let his moustache grow a little but before it became established normally he shaved it off. McCain was seen at close quarters by two other officers-getting a photo-fit together is a priority, I think, as soon as this is through.”
“Thanks, Helen,” Skelton said. “Charlie. All right, the rest of you. Without shutting off other avenues, there’s a lot to work on here. I want every element of this Reverdy’s story checked forwards, backwards, then checked again. McCain, too. If we can clear connections between them, anything that’s more than circumstantial, for the first time we might be ahead of the game.”
Forty-eight
Lynn was in the bath, lying back, listening to GEM-AM. She had been in there long enough for the condensation that had steamed over the glass front of the wall cabinet to begin clearing, the pine-scented bubbles to all but disappear; the water was starting to feel cold. She considered running some more hot, finally decided long as she’d been there, it wasn’t time enough for the tank to have properly heated through. Another few minutes and she would have to get out. On the radio, a commercial for quick-fit exhausts came to an end and back came the music. They seemed to have been playing Everly Brothers’ songs, off and on, all evening. Another one now: “Till I Kissed You.” Her mum used to love their stuff, sing it around the kitchen when Lynn was young. Days when she still had something to sing about. She’d even been to see them once, the Everlys, her mum. Yarmouth, it would have been. Phil and Don. Hadn’t there been something about one of them being ill? Not being able to appear. Drink or drugs. Don or Phil.
Lynn pushed herself up in the bath and the water splashed, chill, around her waist. Maybe it was some kind of Everlys anniversary. Perhaps one of them had died and what she was listening to was a tribute. She hoped not, one thing her mum didn’t need, another reason to be sad. For long enough for the picture to form, Lynn closed her eyes and saw Robin Hidden’s face.
That morning, when she’d told him about Nancy’s body, he had turned gray listening to the words. Right there as Lynn stood watching, Robin, face crumpling in like a balloon losing air, the life being sucked out of him. “Why don’t you sit down?” The words stale even as she said them, stale and inadequate. “Would you like me to make some tea?” But he had, and Lynn had negotiated her way between the unwashed pots and empty packets and found the PG Tips.
“You haven’t got any milk.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I …” He had looked back at her, helplessly. He still hadn’t found the way to cry.
“You stay there,” Lynn had said. “I’ll nip down to the corner shop and get some.”
By the time she had come back, the tears had been there, clear in his eyes. They sat in the airless room, drinking tea, while he told her about the first time he had met Nancy, the time he got a cramp during his run; the first time and the last.
“I should have g-gone after her,” he said. “Instead of letting her walk off the way she did.” Panic and guilt jostled in his voice. “If I’d r-run after her it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You weren’t to know that.”
“But if I had.”
“Look, it was her choice. She didn’t want to be with you. Not any longer. If you’d gone haring after her, she wouldn’t have thanked you.”
Tears tumbled down Robin Hidden’s face. “N-now she would.”
When he sobbed, she’d gone and stood beside him, patting his shoulder, telling him it was okay to cry, feeling genuinely sorry for him at the same time as she sneaked glances at her watch.
“Don’t you think,” Lynn had said later, pieces of tissue wadded and damp on the floor, “it would be a good idea if you got out of here? Went away somewhere. You’ve got family.”
He hung his head. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Friends, then. Isn’t there this friend …?”
“Mark.”
“Yes, Mark. Couldn’t you go and stay with him? Give him a ring.”
“I suppose … Yes, I suppose I sh-should.”
“I would. If I were you. Climbing, isn’t that what you do?”
“Yes.”
Lynn had looked back once from behind the wheel of her borrowed car, half expecting to see him looking down, but between the half-drawn curtains the window had been bare. “How am I ever going to get used to it?” Robin Hidden had said. “The fact that I’ll never s-see her again. Not ever.”
Lynn realized, as she released the plug and climbed out of the bath, that she had been thinking of her father all that time; then and now. When it came to it, how would she get used to never seeing him again? At least, not alive. “Dream, dream, dream,” sang the Everly Brothers. Reaching out, Lynn switched off the radio. She was still drying herself, one foot on the side of the bath, when the doorbell rang.
Michael was standing outside, a bottle of wine wrapped in green tissue paper balancing in the palm of one hand. “I thought you’d have had a busy day. Time to relax, maybe, wind down.”
Lynn had pulled on her terry-cloth dressing gown, belted tight. She could see his eyes, quick to where it hung open a little at her breasts. That look.
“If it’s not convenient, I’ll just leave this and go, why don’t I? Early as it is, you could be ready for your bed.”
She stepped back and let him inside. “Wait a sec while I get dressed.”
Michael smiled.
“There’s a corkscrew in the kitchen,” she said over her shoulder, moving to the bedroom. “Drawer to the left of the sink.”
She put on blue jeans, a cream sweater over a cotton roll-neck, sports shoes on her feet. Michael was sitting on the two-seater settee, leafing through that evening’s Post, two glasses of red wine stood on the low table before him. “Amazes me,” he said, “the way people open themselves up like this.” The front page held a picture of a weeping Clarise Phelan being led towards a waiting car by her husband. MY AGONY by murdered girl’s mother. “I mean, wouldn’t you want to keep those feelings private?”
Lynn took her glass over to the easy chair angled towards the small, rented TV.
“I expect, though, you’ve seen some progress now, what with the poor girl’s body and all.”
“Oh, yes,” Lynn said, “as a matter of fact, we have. Quite a few new leads just today.”
“And you,” Michael tasting his wine, “you’re more at the center of things?”
“In a way, yes, I suppose I am.”
He put down his glass and crossed the room, not hurrying, smiling all the time with his eyes. As he leaned down towards her, Lynn instinctively braced herself, a vestige of fear. His mouth was strangely soft and his lips as they slid over hers were pleasantly warm and curranty from the wine. His tongue pushed gently and she let it in.
“I’ve been thinking about that for the longest time,” he said. He was sitting on the arm of the chair, leaning across her, face pressed close against her neck. “Really, the longest time.”
“A few days, that’s not so long.”
“Oh, no. Longer than that.”
She shifted her head away till she could see his face.
“You didn’t recognize me, did you?” Michael said.