“There was a noise, wasn’t there, Geoff? An awful kerfuffle. I remember we switched off the TV came out to have a look.” A big woman in her fifties, this, Cossall himself the caller, along with a young DC; their house, on the Embankment, backed onto the path near which Aston’s body had been found. “Geoff?” She seemed agitated, her hands in and out of the patch pockets of her red-and-green apron, her mind, maybe, half on whatever she had left simmering on the stove. “When was that, Geoff? Getting on for eleven o’clock is that when it was? About eleven o’clock?”
Geoff appeared in the hallway, Telegraph splaying over his hand, part of it, glasses tripped to the end of his nose.
“Yobs, that’s all they are. Plain and simple. It’s the same here every Saturday night now; come tipping out the pub, hooting and hollering and carrying on. And the kind of language they use, it beggars belief. But just yobs, nothing more. The sort your lot let have the run of the streets so the rest of us have to stay inside and lock our doors.”
What, instead of boogying off down the disco, Cossall thought, swiveling the old lady’s hips around the floor? Couple of cherry brandies and whip her back home for a little of the old adagio on the living room carpet. He doubted if their carpet had seen more than lemon-scented shampoo and a good hoovering since it had first been laid.
“And the time, sir,” Cossall asked. “Can you be a bit more precise?”
“Like the wife said, in the region of eleven o’clock. Eleven thirty. You can check your Radio Times or whatever, Match of the Day that’s what was on. That Scottish fellow, Hansen, too much of a know-all for my liking. And you can’t understand half of what he says.”
It was the same story all along: there had been a rowdy element fooling about on the Embankment between eleven and eleven thirty, but after that they had gone, made off across the playing fields towards the Meadows, several reports suggested. And good riddance. Two households mentioned a sports car revving its engine loudly at around midnight; one other seemed to recall hearing a motor bike with a faulty silencer. It could have been the same thing.
What this first trawl failed to deliver was anything that tied in with the attack on Bill Aston: but this was only the beginning, Cossall knew that. Once the pubs had been leafleted, the local media had done their work, it would be different, he was certain. A man brutally attacked only a hundred yards from houses, little more than that from a busy main road, someone must have seen or heard something, it stood to reason.
Suddenly it was warm. In Resnick’s office, at least. A large blue fly, lazy and fat, had woken from its long sleep and now buzzed the corners of the room, bumped with soft, persistent spats against the glass that looked out over nothing much.
“This is everything? There’s nothing more?” Resnick dropped the last stapled sheaf of papers down among the rest.
Khan responded to the implicit criticism by tugging at the cuffs of his shirt, sitting straighter in his chair. “The preliminary interviews, yes. Transcribed from tape.”
“Preliminary? You were planning to interview some of these again?”
“It was a contingency, sir, yes. If necessary.”
“And?”
Khan smoothed the palms of both hands along the tops of his legs; warm in there and he was starting to sweat. Soon, he thought, he would be able to smell it; how he hated that.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t fully understand what it is you’re asking,”
“What I’m asking,” Resnick trying not to sound irritable, but doing so all the same, “is were there any definite plans, did Inspector Aston intend to speak again, officially, to any of these people?”
Khan took his time; the fly, which had lain silent for a while, started up again. I shall either have to roll up that copy of the Post and kill it, Resnick thought, or prize open the window and let it out.
“No sir,” Khan finally said. “Not that I was aware.”
“No conclusions here as to why Nicky Snape took his life.”
“No, sir.”
“And no blame.”
“Sir?”
“No culpability attached to any of the staff. No blame.”
“No, sir. That’s correct.”
Is it, Resnick wondered? Maybe it is. At the fourth attempt he levered the lower half of the window far enough upwards and used the newspaper to shoo out the fly. “How do you feel about that? Did you feel everyone was being honest, telling the truth? Nothing to cover up?”
Khan’s briefs were beginning to stick uncomfortably to his skin; he had to stop himself from easing his body up from the chair and pulling them free. “Inspector, I’m not sure …”
“What I’m getting at?”
“No, no. I think I understand that. But …”
“But Bill Aston was a senior officer and he has just been tragically killed.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to be thought of as disloyal.”
“That’s correct.”
Resnick pushed enough paper aside to make room on the side of his desk and sat looking at the young officer’s face; waiting for Khan to look at him.
When he did, Resnick said, “In your own words, what this represents is the basis of a preliminary report. There’s nothing here to say that, had he lived, Inspector Aston would not have taken some of this farther. He mentioned to me, for instance, he thought supervision on the night of Nicky’s death might have been considered slack. Paul Matthews and Elizabeth Peck, I believe that’s right.”
Khan nodded, yes.
“You were present, at their interviews?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what was your feeling? Did you think they might have had anything to hide?”
“Matthews, he was nervous. Stuttering all the time, you know. Not stuttering exactly, but stumbling more, over his words.”
“And the woman? Peck?”
“Defensive. Yes, that’s what I thought. Resentful, as if we shouldn’t have been questioning her at all.”
“All right.” Resnick was back on his feet. “What you do is this. Try and find out when the Social Services Inspectorate are planning to publish their report. Given what happened to Inspector Aston, you might be able to get some idea of which way they’re shading, if they think there are any serious causes for concern. Then contact Jardine. Tell him we’ll almost certainly need to come back and talk to his people again. Try not to get his back up, get him alarmed. You could always say that there are a few odds and ends need tidying up. In the circumstances, he should buy that. Okay? You can handle all that?”
For the first time Khan felt able to smile. “Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Good lad.” And, as Khan was opening the door: “There may be no connection between the attack on Bill and any of this. Ninety-nine per cent, there is none. None at all. But we have to be sure.”
Twenty-five
Resnick noticed that Lynn seemed to be wearing more makeup, a dash of color, blue-green, above the eyes. Lipstick, not heavy, not accentuated, but there. A thin roll-neck top under a light check jacket, comfortable skirt. She took off the jacket once she’d opened the car door and draped it along the rear seat. At the passenger side, Resnick clicked his belt tight. He wondered if she might have started seeing someone again, a man; maybe she was just beginning to feel better about herself. He hoped that was the case. It was no more than she deserved.
A quick adjustment to the mirror and they were pulling out into traffic, heading down towards the city center, the southbound road out towards the bridge.
“His wife,” Lynn asked, “Bill Aston’s, what’s she like?”
Resnick described her: a shortish woman, not especially lively, but a good listener. Those occasions he had met her socially, police functions, she had kept pretty much in her husband’s shadow, but whenever he had been to the house, more relaxed, she had been the one who talked, Bill fading into the background, clearing dishes, making sure the drinks were filled.