Resnick cut the remaining half of his sausage sandwich into quarters and chewed thoughtfully.
“Moved, Charlie, don’t know if I ever told you. Place out the other side of Arnold. New. You must come out some time. Bring that woman of yours. Teacher, isn’t she? Gloria’d like that. Someone new to show it off to, rabbit with. You know what they’re like.”
Resnick nodded and not so many minutes later Mann looked at his watch. “Time I wasn’t here.” He scraped back his chair, slurped down a last mouthful of tea, and started toward the door. “Drop you anywhere?”
Resnick shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
“Got you under the thumb, has she? This woman of yours. Lose weight. Exercise. Have you down the gym next. One of them standing bicycles. Treadmill. Waste of energy, Charlie. All that effort and it never gets you anywhere.”
Diane Johnson was having problems bringing the cigarette to her mouth. Her hands were shaking so much that after the fourth attempt Sharon Garnett reached across the table and steadied them with her own. For a moment, Diane looked Sharon in the eye before blinking away.
There were four of them in the interview room: Sharon and Carl Vincent, Diane and her solicitor. A wooden table, a metal ashtray, stackable chairs. Attached to the wall was a tape machine with a twin deck and, above that, a clock. The duty solicitor, dandruff, spectacles, bored, angled away from his client, legs crossed, crosshatching doodles on his pad. Sharon sat up to the table, facing Diane, Vincent alongside her, his chair pushed back, taking the secondary role.
The only window was the small square of frosted glass reinforced with wire that was set into the door. Above their heads, the single strip of neon gave off a low, off-key hum. The air was stale and second-hand.
There were lines around Diane’s eyes, small scab marks close to her mouth, dark on her dark skin. Her hair was a tangle of tight curls. It had been a long time since she had slept, slept well; a night on the skimpy mattress of the police cell hadn’t helped.
Sharon handed Diane a box of matches and she snapped the first two, finally managed to light her cigarette from the third. She drew down hard and, eyes closed, let the smoke drift from her nose. After several more drags, her hands were still shaking, but not quite as much.
“I need my medicine,” she said, a crack in her voice.
“You mean your drugs,” Sharon said.
“My medicine.”
“For which you’ve got a prescription.”
“’Course I’ve got a fuckin’ prescription.”
Sharon’s eyebrow rose.
“Temazepam, i’n’it? For my fuckin’ nerves.”
“One hundred and five capsules,” Vincent said, speaking for the first time.
“What?”
“Jellies, Diane,” Sharon said. “Over a hundred of them stuffed into a plastic bag under the front seat of the car. That’s to say nothing of the hash in the glove compartment.”
“What compartment? What car?”
“The one you and your mate, Sheena, were in when your brother got himself shot.”
Diane screwed up her face and folded her arms tight across her chest. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”
“The Temazepam or the shooting?”
“Neither.” There were goosebumps down Diane’s arms and her fingers rubbed her skin below her T-shirt sleeves.
Vincent eased forward. “Come on, Diane. You were there when it happened.”
“Yeh, well, I was out my fuckin’ head, right? No use asking me anythin’. Just forget it, right? Forget it.”
“Diane …”
“An’ I want to see my brother.”
“Jason can’t see anybody at the moment,” Sharon said. “He’s in no fit state.”
“I don’t care. I want to see him.”
“As soon as the hospital says it’s okay for him to have visitors, then you can. But for now, you know, I’ve told you, he’s still in intensive care. He’s not seeing anyone.”
“He’ll see me.”
“Diane, will you ever listen?”
“I’m his next of fuckin’ kin.”
There were tears close to her eyes. Sharon reached out for her hand and Diane pulled it away. The solicitor lifted his head from his doodling long enough to give both officers a warning glance.
“There.” Sharon took her pager from her pocket and placed it on the table between them. “The hospital, they’ve promised they’ll call me the moment Jason comes round. And when he does we’ll go straight there, you and me. You can be the first to see him, Diane, okay?”
Diane was staring at the cigarette, burning down in her hand.
“Diane? Is that okay?”
Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Yeh, I suppose so.”
“I think perhaps,” the solicitor said, leaning forward, “it would be a good idea if my client had a drink, a cup of tea.”
“Diane,” Sharon said, “would you like something to drink?”
“No,” Diane said.
Diane Johnson had been excluded from school for much of her final year-and-a-half: open insolence, bullying, bringing alcohol onto the school premises; finally, slapping her home economics teacher round the face and calling her a jumped-up white whore. She had been cautioned by the police on several occasions for suspected shoplifting, before being brought up in front of the juvenile court and given a conditional discharge on two counts of theft, another of receiving stolen goods. As she’d entered in her defense at the time, round where she lived what other kinds of goods were there?
Diane’s mother had gone off the day before her daughter’s thirteenth birthday, leaving a five-pound note in an envelope and a greeting card on which she’d scratched out Merry Christmas and scrawled Happy Birthday in its place. Two phone calls aside, during one of which her mother had seemed so wrecked by alcohol and remorse it had scarcely been possible to understand a word she’d said, Diane had had no contact with her since.
Her father, who had been pushing drugs with only moderate success for years, never close enough to the top of the chain, spending too much of the profit feeding habits of his own, was doing fifteen in Lincoln for shooting a rival dealer in the face in a dispute over territory.
Apart from Diane’s older sister, the only person in the world she had been close to, growing up, was her friend Dee Dee. And when Dee Dee fell pregnant, her father, a devout Christian, beat her with a strap, then prayed for her soul, while her mother took her to the hospital to arrange a termination. In sympathy, Diane had unprotected sex with several men until she, too, became pregnant, only to miscarry after two months. A while later, she was more successful and the baby-healthy, coffee-skinned, and strong-was named Melvin. Now Diane’s sister looked after him most of the time; it was either that or hand him over to social services. Foster parents. Children’s homes.
“While we’re waiting to hear from the hospital,” Carl Vincent said, “how about telling us whatever you can?”
“What is it?” Diane scoffed. “You an’ her together. Pair of black coppers. S’posed to make me feel better, is it. Trust you, like?” Diane laughed. “Talk about fuckin’ obvious. You must think I’m stupid or something. Mental.”
Vincent rested one forearm on the edge of the table. “Would you prefer to talk to a white officer, Diane, is that what you’re saying? I’m sure we could arrange it, if that’s what you’d prefer. Of course, what with people being busy and everything, it may take a little time, but if that’s what you really want …”
“Shove it,” Diane said. “What’s the difference? You’re all the fuckin’ same.” She took a final pull on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“How’s the baby, Diane?” Sharon asked. “Melvin, isn’t that his name?”
Diane stared back at her, saying nothing.