“By jardine?”
“No, sir. One of the members of staff.”
“These complaints, were they proved?”
Khan sighed and shook his head. “Again, it’s not really clear. The man concerned claimed that a small group of the boys had a grudge against him and had made up the whole story to get at him. The medical evidence is, well, hazy at best. There was some talk of prosecution, but by then the man had resigned and in the end no charges were brought.”
Resnick sat forward at his desk. “What did Jardine have to say about all of this?”
Khan smiled. “Pretty much what you’d expect: the alleged incidents, which in any case were unsubstantiated, would have taken place before he was appointed; since he’d been in charge, there was a more open regime, staff and boys were encouraged to air their grievances in public.” Khan paused to read from his notes. “‘I give my word that no child under my care need ever have anything to fear.’ Interview with the Leicester Mercury, 1989.”
Resnick rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. “Maybe he should’ve tried telling that to Nicky Snape.”
Khan closed the folder, reversed it, and set it on the desk.
“All right, let’s have another go at Matthews. See if he’s any more willing to talk. Chances are he’s still down in Wales, but best check.”
“Sir, I wonder …”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Well, it’s just … I think if I went back to him too soon, pushed him again, all that would happen, he’d clam up even more. It might even be enough to drive him over the edge.”
“What are you saying, then? That we should leave well alone?”
“No. Just give him some more time. Even if it’s only a day or two. if we let him stew in it a little, he might even come to us.”
“To you.”
“Yes.”
Resnick sighed. Not so many hours earlier he had been making a similar request to Skelton, asking a superior officer to trust his judgment.
“Okay, forty-eight hours. Meantime plug the holes in this report. Let’s make sure if we need to use it, it’s watertight.”
Gerry Hovenden had found out that Shane had been taken in for questioning, but not that he had been released. After several hours of sitting around worrying himself half-sick, he had decided to seek out Frankie Miller and get some advice. Frank Miller, the kind of man that some people turned to when they were in a fix.
Miller worked security in the clubs, pubs; squeezed himself into a cheap dinner-jacket or a shiny fake-satin jump suit with a matte black headset crammed down onto his head like a crown of thorns and he was in business. Smiling face, raised hand-not now, sunshine, looking like that, no way, try the place down the street, patience, let’s have a little patience and an orderly line. Quite often they’d look at Frank-not so tall, more than a little overweight, out of condition, had to be pushing thirty-and think, you fat bastard, you’re not going to tell me what to do, where I can go, no way. Frank loved that. Kids giving him some mouth, showing off for the scrawny tarts they’d have up against some back wall later, a quick shag before a late-night curry and the long walk home. He loved the look on their sweaty faces when they finally gave him a push, threw a punch, and he didn’t give ground. Frank smiling before he started punching back.
Once in a while, he had to admit, things would get a little out of hand; when they did, whoever was in charge-no hard feelings, Frankie, eh? — they’d have to let him go. No sweat. There was always another pub, another door, another Saturday night. And if not … well, there were other things. Mate of a mate needing a bit of muscle, friend of a friend. He had this arrangement with a bloke who lent out money, you know, when the talking bank wasn’t talking no more, council suing for rent arrears and the bailiffs on their way in. Of course the interest was high, what did they think this was? Social fucking security or what? Frank had a way of making sure the debt was paid; or, if not, ensuring folk saw the error of their ways.
Frank Miller? Bit rough, but underneath it all, decent enough. Tell you what, any trouble, he’s the one I’d want alongside. Frankie. Good bloke, really, good bloke.
Frank was in his local pub in Heanor, not hurrying his last pint, when Gerry Hovenden came in wearing leathers, helmet in his hand.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Miller asked. “Look like the rats’ve had your balls for breakfast and now they’re startin’ on the rest.”
“It’s Shane,” Hovenden said, short of breath, near to knocking an empty glass from the table as he sat down.
“What about him?”
“The law, they’ve got him. Picked him up this afternoon.”
“What the fuck for?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, have I?”
“Then calm down. May not be anything at all. You know what coppers are like. Shane, he’s done time, right? They’ll have him in for nothing at all.”
“I know, but …”
Frank Miller’s hand clamped itself round Hovenden’s thigh, squeezing at the muscle behind the knee. “He won’t talk, your mate Shane. And if he does, without dumping himself in the shit, what can he say?”
Hovenden blinked, catching his breath, trying not to notice the pain in his leg, Miller’s thumb weeviling away against the bone.
“Trust him, don’t you?”
“Yeh, yes, yeh, of course.”
Miller released his grip and tapped Hovenden on the arm, a couple of times playfully with his fist. “Nothing to worry about, eh, then?” He lifted his pint. “I’d get you one in, only they called last orders a while back. ‘Sides, drinkin’ and driving. Don’t want you coming off that bike of yours. Loss to the human race, Gerry, you taking a tumble round Cotmanhey and fetching up in the Erewash Canal.”
Resnick hadn’t forgotten Hannah’s message: he thought he’d make himself a sandwich first and then give her a call. Indoors long enough to prize Pepper out of the vegetable steamer in which the cat had contrived to get stuck, he reversed the order and she was engaged. Oh, well. Lollo rosso, cucumber, watercress; goat cheese; a tin of anchovies which he opened, pouring off some of the oil, and then mashed the contents into a thick paste with black pepper and some dried basil; the last few pieces of sun-dried tomato fished from the jar and cut into strips. Johnny Hartman drifting through from the other room, Howard McGhee on trumpet. His friend Ben Riley had sent it out of the blue from New York. Charlie, down here on a visit. Got myself conned into seeing the new Eastwood movie and actually liked it. Well, almost. Anyway, this guy sings all over thes oundtrack and I thought you might like him. Always assuming your technology is up to it. Your friend, Ben. Ben, sounding more acclimatized with every postcard, every year. And now, Resnick’s technology was fine.
He cut bread, covered it with lettuce and the other salad things, spread over that the anchovy rnixture and sun-dried tomato, finishing up with thin circles of cheese.
While he was waiting for the grill to warm, he went back to the phone: still engaged. At the last minute he dribbled thick, green olive oil across both slices of bread and, licking his fingers clean, opened a bottle of Old Speckled Hen out of the fridge.
Johnny Hartman, deep-voiced: “They Didn’t Believe Me.”
This time when he tried the phone it rang and rang and rang.
Why couldn’t he see Shane Snape joining in with a bunch of yobs for whom queer-bashing was a legitimate sport? Trying not to get too much of his supper over the front of his shirt, he broke off a corner of crust, scraped it through the anchovy paste, and offered it to a mewing Bud. One of those coincidences: as the track ended, the telephone rang. Hannah, Resnick thought, reaching round for the receiver; Hannah calling him. Or else it could be Lynn.