The Yorkshire puddings had sat there in the gravy, staring backup at him like little brown diaphragms, but otherwise Sunday lunch hadn’t been too bad. Now Naylor was sitting in the living room with his feet up, listening to James Hunt and Murray Walker disagreeing about who was in pole position for the World Championship. With a murder investigation about to get underway, he was going to need what little rest he could snatch. Not so often the baby slept through an hour without waking to tears and you didn’t waste it.
Debbie came into the room but Naylor didn’t look up.
“We ought to be going soon,” she said.
No response. Mansell made as if to overtake on the inside, but at the last moment chickened out.
“Kevin.”
God! The whine in that voice!
“Kevin!”
“Yes.”
“I said …”
“I heard you.”
“But you haven’t moved.”
“That’s because I’m not coming.”
“You’re what?”
“You heard.”
“Mum’s expecting us.”
I’ll bet, thought Naylor. I can just see the corned beef sandwiches, turning up their edges in delight. He leaned further towards the screen and didn’t say anything.
“You can’t stay in all day, watching that.”
“Why not? Anyway, I shan’t be staying in. I’m going out.”
“Where? Where if it’s not …?”
“If you must know, I’m going to see how Mark is.”
“That’s right. You do.”
“I will. Don’t you worry.”
“Sooner spend time with the likes of him than with your own family.”
“It’s not my family, Debbie,” turning to face her now, splutter of engines from the set behind him, “it’s yours. She’s your mother, you go and have tea with her. Get yourself bored stupid listening to her prattle on.”
The tears were there, but she was fighting them back. Naylor was looking at her and then he was looking at the flat, painted wood of the door. When he swung back to the screen, Mansell had accelerated into the straight and was going into the final lap in second place.
Thirty-two
Lynn Kellogg had drawn the early shift and the logs were on Resnick’s desk and ready for his inspection a full fifteen minutes before he set foot in the station. Amongst the usual spate of break-ins that would require Lynn’s attention was one in which some enterprising soul had squirted WD 40 through the letter-box to stun a pair of angry Rottweilers, picked the lock, and walked away with several thousand pounds’ worth of jewelry and furs and the dogs’ studded collars as souvenirs. The distraught owner had woken to find the front door wide open and the animals wandering around the garden in a dazed state, unusually beatific expressions on their faces. The first phone call had been to the PDSA, the second to the police.
Graham Millington was in next, limping as a result of half the night cramped up in the rear of a hastily converted transit van, watching the lorry park off exit 29 through a hole the size of a new five-pence piece. He was experimentally jumping up and down in an attempt to get the circulation going when Resnick entered with a headache and a Brie and apricot sandwich he’d picked up at the deli across the road.
“Going into training, Graham?”
“Not exactly, sir,” said Millington, embarrassed, casting a sideways glance at Resnick’s feet to see if he was wearing odd socks again.
Resnick went through to his office and nodded for Millington to follow. “Good weekend?” he asked, making a space on the desk for his sandwich.
“Not bad, sir. Pretty good, really. The wife and I …”
Resnick skimmed through the night’s reports, half an ear on his sergeant’s domestic ramblings. What was it that made for a happy and lasting marriage, he caught himself asking? Perhaps it was a lack of imagination.
Lynn Kellogg brought in mugs of tea and cut the catalog of grouting and trips to the garden center mercifully short. After that lot, Resnick was thinking, it might come as a relief to be shut up in a van for six hours.
“These obs, Graham,” Resnick asked. “Any luck?”
Millington shook his head. “We were wasting our time up round Chesterfield, while they were in business outside Ashby-de-la-Zouche.”
Resnick spotted Naylor through the glass of the door and got to his feet, waving to get the DC’s attention and losing a bright sliver of apricot jam to his shirt front in the process.
“Any sign of Divine?”
“Saw him yesterday, sir,” said Naylor. Sitting in Mark Divine’s new studio apartment near the marina, watching a worn video of 9? Weeks while they worked their way through a six-pack of Carling Black Label.
“Coming in today?”
“No, sir. I don’t think so. He’s …”
“Wrong,” said Resnick. “Wrong answer. Injured in the line of duty, one thing. Getting smacked for behaving like a yob with libido problems, that’s another. Ring him now, tell him I expect to see him in thirty minutes. Here. Right?”
“Yes, sir.” Naylor went back into the main office, doing his best to figure out what a libido was; he thought that Divine had only had stitches above the eye.
Millington was midway through making a tortuous request to be relieved of working with the West Midlands Force, at least while there was so much heavy activity on his own patch, when Lynn Kellogg came back to the door. “It’s Ms. Olds, sir. Wants to see you now.”
Wonderful! thought Resnick. “Stall her,” he said. “Try and interest her in the delights of the canteen.”
“I did, sir.”
“And?”
“She laughed in my face.”
Resnick sighed. “All right. Five, no, ten minutes. Tell her it’s the best I can do.”
Lynn nodded and withdrew.
Suzanne Olds tilted back her head and released a film of smoke from between perfectly made-up lips. When Resnick was using the perfumery floor of Jessops as a cut-through, making for the market, that was when he saw women the like of Ms. Olds, perfectly groomed and hard as teak. He guessed one difference might be Suzanne Olds had the brains, too.
“Are you saying this is an official complaint?” Resnick asked.
Unnervingly, the solicitor smiled. “Not yet.”
“Maybe we should wait till it is?”
She swiveled towards him in her seat. “Police Complaints Authority, officers from an outside force, one of your own suspended. To say nothing of the possible accusations: victimization by a ranking officer, harassment, bias.”
“If, if Ian Carew was under surveillance, it was with no knowledge of mine.”
Suzanne Olds was enjoying this. “In that case,” she preened, “perhaps we should add incompetence to the list.”
“Jesus!” sighed Resnick.
“Yes?”
“It’s a game to you, isn’t it? Somewhere between Monopoly and Scruples.”
“There’s nothing funny about a citizen having his civil rights …”
“Oh, come on!” Resnick on his feet now, turning away, turning back. “Don’t give me Carew and civil rights in the same breath. It doesn’t wash.”
“Somehow he’s forfeited them? If that’s what you’re saying, I’d say it was a difficult argument to sustain.”
“Yes? Well, there’s a girl out there who had her civil rights severely curtailed when your client beat her up and raped her.”
“Wait.”
“No.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Why?”
“My client, these alleged offences, has he been charged? Never mind brought to trial, found guilty, sentenced.”
“The only reason he hasn’t, the girl withdrew the charges.”
“Maybe she changed her mind. In the light of day, decided she’d been rash, making accusations in anger. Who knows?”