Reg Cossall was waiting for him in his office, using an empty coffee mug as an ashtray. With a degree of show, Resnick unfastened the window catch and lifted the lower frame high, before sitting down and gesturing with a hand to indicate Cossall should do the same.
“This could be nothing, Charlie …”
“I doubt that, Reg. If you thought that, you’d not be here.”
Cossall smiled his quick, lopsided smile and retold the story of his meeting with the publican on London Road, gracing it with not a few embellishments of the scatological kind. A canny copper, Reg, Resnick was thinking, a man content to wear his prejudices on his sleeve, a glint in his eye like steel as if daring rebuke. Someone like Aston-similar age, equal seniority-they had been able virtually to discard, lost in the shuffle. But Cossall was too valuable, his experience too wide and his arrest rate too high.
“I checked back with the chap on the Embankment who’d been moaning on about having his Saturday night soccer disturbed. He’s still not positive, but the youths he saw creating a disturbance, they could be the same ones from the pub. Only could, mind. There’s a couple of other reports I’m having checked now, might get confirmation.”
Resnick turned it over. A strong possibility, it was true. “This fight in the pub, fracas, whatever. No way we can place any of them with something like a baseball bat?”
Cossall narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “’Fraid not. But it’s got to be a runner, my way of thinking. Specially since we’ve got Jack-shit else. These blokes, kids, not much more, out on the street, all pumped up from the scene in the pub, tanked up too. Maybe Bill said something to them, you know how he was. Bit high and mighty, holier than thou, could’ve told them to keep their mouths down, behave. I can see that, see him doing that, can’t you?”
Yes. Yes, Resnick could. He’d been in contact with Bill’s Sunday school manner more than a few times. He’d had more than a tendency towards sermonizing, had Bill. “You want to chase it down, Reg, or what?”
Cossall leaned back, cigarette spooling up smoke from between the fingers of a crooked hand. “Like I said, there are a few things I’m checking into. But keeping on top of all that stuff the computer’s spewing out doesn’t leave a lot of time.”
“I’ll have a word with Graham, see if he can help. But this landlord, you think leaning on him some more might loosen his tongue? You think he might know exactly who these youths are?”
“He might. And I’ll do what I can.” Cossall winked. “Within the rules.”
“Divine’s got a mate with the Football Intelligence Unit,” Resnick said, as Cossall walked towards the door. “Might be a contact worth following up. These lads might well be known to them by the sound of it.”
“If they are,” Cossall grinned, “I doubt they’ll be County supporters, eh? Need to be drawing your pension, don’t you, ‘fore they’ll as much as let you in the ground?”
With a sly laugh, Cossall was on his way, leaving Resnick standing beside his desk, picturing the group of young supporters at the last match he had attended. They had been lined up at the back of the stand, Union Jack draped from the wall behind them, raised fists clenched towards the opposition, one of them shielding his face inside a balaclava. He could hear their shrill young voices, lofted in anger. “No surrender! No surrender!”
It had looked more like news footage from Northern Ireland, a Loyalist rally, than an otherwise tame end-of-season encounter near the foot of the Endsleigh League First Division.
Two of the phones in the CID room were in use as Resnick walked through, late for his meeting with Khan, and when the third phone rang it was Lynn, on her way back in, who picked it up.
“Lynn Kellogg, CID.” Working on auto-pilot, not over-friendly today. And then, as she held the receiver towards Resnick. “For you.”
He pointed towards his watch and shook his head.
Lynn brought the receiver back towards her and asked who was calling. “Hannah Campbell,” she said, mouthpiece covered now with her hand.
Surprised at hearing the name, Resnick felt himself beginning to flush. He started towards the desk but stopped short, changed his mind. “Tell her,” he said, “I’ll call her later.”
“Later this afternoon or …?”
“Probably this evening.”
She was looking at him now, interested. “Shall I get a number?”
“No,” Resnick over his shoulder, departing. “It’s all right. No need.”
Lynn asked anyway, a matter of procedure. Resnick was already descending stairs, two at a time, angry with himself for feeling embarrassed, remembering without pleasure what it had felt like to be twenty-three or — four.
For his meeting with Resnick, Khan had worn a blue-black blazer, lightweight wool, tan trousers, highly polished brown shoes. His tie, a deep, dull red, almost rust, was one that Jill had given him a month after their second date and the first time they had slept together.
“What’s this all about?” he had asked, amused.
“Call it an anniversary, if you like.”
“Starting off as we mean to carry on, is it?”
“Something like that.”
One month later he had given her a pair of minute white bikini briefs, with tiny bows at the sides, blue, he had said, to match her eyes.
She had punched him, surprisingly hard, on the arm; so hard the bruise didn’t fade for days. “My eyes are brown.”
Khan laughed. “How should I know? One way or another, they’re usually closed.”
This time he had caught the fist inside his palm. They were sitting in Jill’s living room, TV and stereo both switched off so that they could hear any of her kids, if they woke and decided to come downstairs.
Khan was thinking about that now, what had happened next, how it was possible, right down to those last moments, to stay quiet, when he saw Resnick hurrying up the short flight of steps and through the door leading into reception. He had imagined they would talk there, one of the rooms, temporarily spare, at central station, but Resnick insisted that they walk the short distance to the market, Resnick not really wanting to talk until he had downed his first espresso and ordered a second. Khan, not a great drinker of tea or coffee, content to sit and watch, watch and wait, the hubbub of trading all around them.
“Okay,” Resnick finally said, “how far’ve we got?”
Khan told him that Phyllis Parmenter had given him a hundred reasons why she could not conceivably reveal the Inspectorate’s findings ahead of publication, then hinted quite heavily that in her view there had been no serious lapses in security, nor any reasons other than the balance of his own mind why Nicky Snape had taken his own life.
“And Jardine?”
“Defensive, basically. One minute almost aggressive, the next not able to do enough to help.”
“Then he’d no objections to our re-interviewing the two staff on duty that evening?”
“None, but …” Khan smiled, “… Paul Matthews is off sick, quite serious, Jardine says, doesn’t know how long that might go on, and the woman, Elizabeth, er, Peck, she’s on annual leave.”
“Since when?”
“This last weekend apparently.”
Resnick’s second espresso gave hot chase to the first. “Come on,” he said, getting to his feet. “I think we should pay Mr. Jardine a call.”
“D’you want to ring him first? I could …”
But Resnick was already on his way. “Let’s make it a surprise.”
Sounds of Blur and Nirvana, identifiable to Khan if not to Resnick, squeezed from beneath a dozen doors. To the accompaniment of swearing and laughter, two youths played pool in one of the larger downstairs rooms, others sitting around watching, waiting their turn. In the television room, on a large-screen monitor, bought from the proceeds of the recent car boot sale and a sponsored run, another few were deep in shabby armchairs with a video recording of the previous season’s Forest highlights. Good job it’s not County’s, Resnick thought, scarcely have time to settle back before you’d be reaching for the remote control, pressing rewind.