“And that’s what you were doing? What you do?”
“Of course.”
“Getting on the inside track?”
“Yes.”
“So why is it this inside track you’ve been cultivating so assiduously with Valentine hasn’t resulted in a single arrest? A single case going to court? Being proved?”
Half smiling, Finney shrugged.
“Not, surely, because you are not very good at your job?”
“Not for me to say.”
“And not because there was any advantage to you in Valentine staying free?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe he could give me information others couldn’t.” Finney tapped the edge of the file. “You see how many arrests are down to me, cases which came to court, got a result. How many dealers off the street.”
Siddons blew smoke off to one side. “Leaving the field clearer for Valentine.”
“That’s nature, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Abhorring a vacuum. Maybe sometimes it’s a case of better the devil you know.”
“What you’re saying, there was a deliberate policy, on behalf of the Drugs Squad …”
Finney held up a hand. “I didn’t say that …”
“On behalf of the Drug Squad …”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
“On what? Your own behalf, then? Unilateral. Pick up a few crumbs from Valentine, bang up a few street corner dealers, strictly small time, let Valentine go free. Is that it? Paul, is that what happened, what’s been happening?”
Finney shifted his weight, almost imperceptibly, from one buttock to the other.
“What else has been in it for you? Some other gain? I mean, I’m sure your friend Valentine must have felt inclined to show his gratitude in some way you both could understand? Or am I supposed to believe it was all in kind, I scratch your back if you scratch mine? That and the odd bowl of soup thrown in.”
“I never,” Finney said, “accepted a free meal. Not policy. Always paid my way. I expect I’ve got the receipts at home somewhere, if you’re interested, filed away.”
“Like the wives, the children, each in their own compartment, is that what you mean?”
Finney’s eyes narrowed. “You stay away from that, you hear? Steer well away. That’s nothing to do with what we’re discussing here.”
Siddons blew a lazy smoke ring. “Maybe you could tell me, Paul-I’m sure you’re familiar-exactly what the law says about bigamy?”
Finney scraped back his chair, started to stand, but she caught his sleeve. “When you were with Valentine three nights back, did he tell you he was expecting some kind of delivery the next day? Is that how come somebody knew exactly where and when to go wading in there, waving guns? Whose back were you scratching that evening, Paul, other than your own?”
Slowly, Finney released a long breath, a smile. Yes, he thought, you nearly did it that time, didn’t you? Almost got me going and no mistake. Carefully, he sat back down.
“I rather think the informal part of the proceedings is now over, don’t you? Before we go any farther, I’m requesting the opportunity to speak to my immediate superior and my Police Federation representative. Any more questions, I’m afraid they’ll have to be asked in the presence of a solicitor.”
Forty
Resnick was standing up at the bar in the Borlace Warren with Millington and Vincent, Millington describing the welter of bruises to Evan’s body, blows that had damaged him severely before those that had killed him. Officers from the Met had contacted his mother, but in her confusion she’d had no satisfactory explanation for why Evan was in the East Midlands.
Vincent was getting a round of drinks when Norman Mann pushed through the crowd and spun Resnick round by the shoulder. “If anyone had told me, you of all people, setting up one of my team behind my back. Not got the guts to tell me to my face.”
Resnick stood his ground, kept his silence: there wasn’t a great deal he could say.
“Well? What’s the matter, Charlie? Run out of halftruths, lies?”
“DCI Siddons,” Resnick said. “If there are questions you think need answering, maybe you’d be best off speaking to her.”
“What? You what?” Mann’s face contorted. “You shiftless bloody coward, hiding behind that tart’s skirts. You …” And he swung a fist.
Off balance, Resnick took the force of the blow high on his arm and it sent him stumbling back. Mann moved in for another punch, and Vincent and Millington grabbed him by the arms and held him fast.
“All right, all right. Okay. Let me go. Let me go.”
Millington glanced toward Resnick, and Resnick, straightening himself, nodded.
Freed, breathing heavily, Mann stood there a moment longer before turning on his heel and stalking away.
“Ought to control that temper of his,” Millington said. “Man of his age, overweight, drinks a bit, I dare say. Past forty.”
Resnick grinned.
“You okay?” Millington asked.
“Yes. Yes, thanks, Graham. I’m fine.”
“The way you took that shot, let him hit you, you know, sapping his strength. It was good to see.”
“Yes, well. Maybe next time I’ll try to duck.”
“Maybe next time he’ll punch straight.”
Resnick accepted Carl Vincent’s offer of a malt whisky and settled for a Laphroiag, more peaty than he was used to, but warm enough to burn away not the pain, more the embarrassment and the surprise. He tried to convince himself that Mann had been drinking too, an early belt from the bottle in his desk drawer. Something to explain a reaction so uncharacteristic, over the top. Resnick wanting to believe that rather than some more sinister implication: Norman blustering to cover up something he didn’t want to admit to, something to which he’d turned a blind eye for too long.
When he arrived home, an hour or so later, Lynn Kellogg’s car was parked in his drive, Lynn herself curled sideways across the driver’s seat, asleep.
Resnick let himself into the house, did his duty by the cats, set the kettle on to boil, and went back outside. Looking down at Lynn through the dusty glass, Resnick remembered the first time he had set eyes on her, six, almost seven years before. Lynn, redder of face, stockier, her native Norfolk burr more evident in her voice. He remembered another night, later than this, she and Naylor had been called out to a house not so many yards from where Hannah now lived. A young mother, out for the evening with a man she scarcely knew, the children, two of them, left with their grandmother across town. It was Lynn who had found-almost stumbled across-the body, the moon sliding out from the cloud in time for her to see the woman, partly clothed, stretched out beside the garden path, drying blood for ribbons in her hair.
The first dead body Lynn had seen.
Talking to her in the victim’s living room soon after the discovery, concerned to know how she was feeling, Resnick had caught her as she fell, a cup of sweet tea spilling from her hands. One side of her face had pressed, momentarily unconscious, against his chest, the fingers of one hand catching against one corner of his mouth.
A long time ago.
And now?
He realized she was stirring and took a pace away.
Rubbing her fists across her eyes, yawning, Lynn lowered the window. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to go back to the flat. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
Resnick nodded. “You’d best come on inside.”
“Are you sure it’s no bother?” But she was already getting out of the car.
They stood in the kitchen, Resnick between fridge and stove, Lynn close to the center of the room, one of the cats, curious, twisting in and out between her legs, occasionally nudging his head against her shins, the caps of her shoes. She was wearing a long cardigan, charcoal-gray, a pale-gray cotton top; navy-blue chinos, a pair of lace-up DMs that had once been bottle-green but had faded now to a chalky shade of black. Her hair was fudged up at one side where she had been sleeping.
“Do you want to talk?” Resnick said.