Resnick shook the proffered hand without offering a name in exchange.
“And that there is Adam.” Adam frowned and turned his face away. “We don’t get many visitors, living out here. You get out of the habit of being sociable, I’m afraid. It is lovely, though. Days like this, especially. Paul says he wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Resnick followed her gaze, down across the garden and the lane to the broad field opposite, a line of poplar trees breaking the low horizon.
“You work together, do you, you and Paul? I’ve not met so many of his colleagues. Likes to keep them separate where he can, you see, work and family.”
Resnick assured her that he understood.
Laura pointed back toward the house. “I could make a cup of tea. It wouldn’t take long to get the kettle boiling.”
“No, it’s okay. Thanks, but better not. Just passing, you know how it is.”
She brushed at a strand of falling hair. “Maybe some other time.”
“Maybe.”
The boy was close against her now, thumb still in his mouth, hanging on to her skirt, and for a moment she smiled down at him indulgently. “Lord knows what he’ll be like when this one comes along.” Patting her belly. “Jealousy won’t be in it.
“I’ll tell Paul you called,” she said when Resnick was at the gate.
“Yes, please. You do that.”
For several minutes, Resnick sat in the car, windows wound down, thinking. Once or twice, he heard the boy’s voice, shrill and sweet on the air.
Finney’s house was on the edge of Sherwood, not far from the City Hospital. A two-story semi in need of some paint, net curtains at the lower windows. A cat, orange and brown, lay asleep on top of a green wheelie-bin. Resnick rang the bell and, when it didn’t seem to work, used the knocker. A woman’s voice and then a child’s. The woman opened the door just enough to show her face and little more.
“Mrs. Finney?”
“Yes. Who wants to know?” She pulled the door all the way back and came out on to the step. A small woman, maybe an inch or two over five foot, blue eyes, brittle hair. Forty, Resnick wondered? She was wearing a baggy top and jeans. “I thought you were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oxfam. One of those.” She looked at him keenly. “You’re on the Job, though, aren’t you? You can always tell.”
“Paul. I don’t suppose he’s here?”
“Is he ever?” She shook her head. “If we didn’t need the overtime, I’d tell him to chuck it in tomorrow. Get something normal, nine to five. None of this working nights, weekends.” She glanced up at him. “How does your wife cope?”
Resnick hesitated too long.
“Left you, did she? Had enough.” From inside the house, there was a clatter and a fall, followed by a child’s cry, boy or girl Resnick couldn’t tell. “I’ll be glad,” the woman said, “when she goes off to school with the others. You have any kids?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Wise. Nobody thanks you for it.” The cries got louder and she shouted back into the house, “All right, all right, I’m coming.”
“Sorry to trouble you,” Resnick said, backing away.
“No problem.”
The door closed heavily behind him and, slowing his steps, Resnick stroked the cat as he passed.
When Finney walked out of the building and across the car park that afternoon, Helen Siddons and Anil Khan were waiting for him, two other Serious Crimes officers parked nearby in case of trouble.
“Paul Finney?”
“Yes?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Siddons.”
“I know who you are.”
“Then you won’t have any objection to coming with us, answer a few questions.”
“Questions?”
“See if we can’t clear a few things up.”
“Does this mean I’m under arrest?”
“Not at this stage, no.”
“Good.” He moved between her and Khan, heading toward his car. “Because I’m off duty and I was just making my way home.”
“Really?” Siddons said. “And which home is that? Which of the two?”
Finney stopped in his tracks.
Finney was handsome in an indeterminate way, the sort of face you acknowledged and then forgot, perfect for his chosen line of work. He had quite a strong nose, brown eyes, dark hair which he wore without a parting and which hung down toward his collar a little more than was fashionable. Warm, in the room, he had removed his jacket and hung it across the back of his chair, unbuttoned the cuffs of his white shirt. Which wife, Helen Siddons wondered, had ironed that?
From time to time, Finney glanced, pointedly, at the watch on his wrist. “How much longer is this going to take?”
“That depends,” Siddons said. She was sitting across the table from Finney, a buff-colored manila file in front of her; Anil Khan sat alongside, his notebook open, the pages so far blank. There was a tape-recorder with twin decks attached to the wall, so far not switched on.
“This is informal,” Siddons had said at the beginning. “At this stage, at least. I assume you’d prefer it that way. Of course, it’s up to you. How long it takes to get certain things established.”
“Such as?”
Siddons smiled. “Drew Valentine, for starters.”
Finney didn’t miss a beat. “What about him?”
“You know him, what he does? How he-I hesitate to use the word ‘earns’-how he makes a living?”
Finney not looking at her now, bored, staring idly at the cream-painted walls. This interview room like the others, like the whole two floors of the old General Hospital into which the Serious Crimes Squad had moved, had yet to lose its surface sheen.
“Paul?”
“Mm?”
“You know what he does, Valentine?”
“Of course, it’s my job to know.” Finney looking at Siddons again, Khan, like a pet beside her. If she thought this was a way to get under his skin, the same questions over and over again, she could forget it. He knew this game, this and all the others. It was his training, too; what he did best.
Displaying a certain degree of weariness, Siddons opened the file and read through the top sheet with exaggerated care. “Can you explain,” she said eventually, “the circumstances in which Valentine, having been taken into custody on four separate occasions on suspicion of being in possession of significant quantities of a controlled substance, more than could reasonably be ascribed to his personal use, should have been set free without any charges having been filed?”
Finney shook his head.
“No?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember those incidents clearly.”
“Well, let me refresh your memory.” Siddons lifted the page from the desk. “Twenty-seventh of October 1996. Fourteenth of February 1997. Fourth of June 1997. First of April 1998.”
Finney shook his head.
“Are you telling me you don’t recall anything about those occasions?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about the most recent, April of this year?”
“Without my notebook, case notes, I’m afraid …”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
Despite himself, Finney smiled.
Siddons got up from her chair and paced the room, four paces to the rear wall, four to the side, four more to the door. Khan kept looking at Finney, the confidence behind his eyes. When Siddons sat back down, she took out her cigarettes and offered one to Finney, another excuse for him to shake his head.
“When did you last see him, Valentine? And don’t tell me you don’t remember.”
“I don’t remember.”
“It was three days ago, three nights.”
Finney allowed himself mild surprise. “It was?”
“At a restaurant, Hyson Green. The Cassava.”
“Red-pepper soup, they do a really good red pepper soup. Spicy.”
“You were there with Valentine.”
“I was?”
“Good buddies, bosom pals. You were seen on the pavement outside, back slapping, shaking hands. Best of friends.”
Finney smiled. “It’s my job.”
“Palling up with drug dealers?”
“Letting them believe that to be the case. How else are you going to find out what’s going down?”