“If it’s a matter of finding a hotel…”
She touched his arm, but for no more than a moment. “I’m used to finding hotels.”
There were two half-drunken lads at the desk, nothing over their short-sleeved check shirts in spite of the weather; their eyes followed her to the door and they were about to come out with some remark until one look from her made them feel almost as young as they were and they stayed quiet.
“What time d’you want me in the morning?”
Resnick shrugged, aware that the desk sergeant was watching him with amusement. “Half-nine, ten.”
“Goodnight, Inspector. Thanks for the drink.”
The sergeant was still looking at him. “You owe me two-fifty for the pizza,” he said.
Resnick nodded and went back up the stairs.
Rachel Chaplin was in bed when the phone rang. Phillips called her from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s for you.”
She came down wearing a sweatshirt and leg warmers, at least she hadn’t been asleep.
“What time is it?” she asked, taking the receiver.
“Nearly twelve,” Phillips said, walking away.
“Hello,” Rachel said into the phone. “Who is this?”
Resnick said, “I figured the chances were we’d bump into one another tomorrow and I just, well, I didn’t want it to be awkward, that’s all.”
He didn’t say anything else.
Rachel hung up the phone.
Phillips looked over from where he was writing a final draft of his report, head angled to one side as if to say, who was that?
“Nobody important,” Rachel said, and went back upstairs to bed.
Seven
Mark Divine sat in the reception area across from an inquiry desk that had been enclosed with contiboard, leaving space for a sliding glass window that would have admitted a man’s head but not his shoulders. Not without the head being pulled very hard. Jutting out from beneath the window was a Formica-topped counter edged with cigarette burns. Posters asking for information about missing children had been pinned to the walls beside and behind the wooden bench on which Divine sat, thumbing through the pages of the Sun. Fifteen, no, twenty minutes they’d been kept hanging about and not so much as a cup of tea.
Kevin Naylor came through the door past the desk and Divine folded his newspaper and stood up. “About time,” he said.
“Macliesh, is he…?”
“I thought that’s what you’d been to find out.” Naylor shook his head. “I was on the phone.”
“Reporting in?”
“No. Debbie. Thought I’d give her a quick call, that’s all.”
Divine grunted as he sat back down and shook open the paper. “Afraid she’ll disappear or something?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If she doesn’t hear your voice, she’ll go up in a puff of smoke.”
“Don’t be soft.”
“Me? Soft? You’re the one who has to phone his missus every other five minutes.”
“I don’t have to phone her at all.”
Divine turned a page, then another. “No, you don’t have to call, of course you don’t. What d’you find to say to one another all the time, that’s what I’d like to know?” He grinned up at Naylor. “That lovey-dovey, newly wedded, darling I’m missing you I can’t live without you mush, is it? Sweetheart, I’m lost without…”
“Stuff it, Divine!” Naylor lashed out with his arm and knocked the paper from Divine’s hands.
“Oooh, now, now!” Divine smirked.
“I said, stuff it!”
Divine was on his feet with dangerous speed and looking at Naylor hard.
“Up here we usually leave that kind of thing to the customers,” said a uniformed sergeant from the window.
Naylor lowered his eyes first and the two men stood apart.
“You’re here for Macliesh, aren’t you?”
They nodded.
“Come through with me and I’ll take you down to the cells.”
The custody sergeant was sitting behind a small curved counter, a leather-bound book open in front of him, lines ruled and crammed with letters in black ink. Behind his right shoulder was a dark green board on which arrivals and departures were chalked in and out. The smell, freshly splashed disinfectant overlaying the sweetness of sewage, came up the steps on the cold air.
“These two are for Macliesh.”
“Aye.”
Aside from the allegations they’d heard and that single photograph, neither Naylor nor Divine had any clear idea of what to expect of Macliesh. So when he walked slowly up the stone steps they were surprised to find that he was slight. Seemed it, until they saw the tightness of the muscle on arms almost without body hair, the flatness of his stomach. Not a pound of spare flesh on him.
“That all he was wearing?” Divine asked.
A gray pullover without sleeves, a black T-shirt beneath it; jeans from which the belt had been removed, worn-down scuffed shoes without laces.
A hold-all was pulled up from behind the counter, an envelope opened and its contents tipped out: some coins, stub of pencil, a five-pound note, a watch on a clear plastic strap.
The officer held out a pen.
Naylor signed for the belongings and they were returned to the envelope, the envelope pushed down under the zip of the holdall. Naylor signed again and the sergeant handed him the custody record. “Go careful with him.”
The sergeant clicked one cuff over Macliesh’s right wrist, the other to Divine’s left.
“Shit!” hissed Divine as it pinched skin.
“Sorry,” said the sergeant with a grin and loosened the ratchets before locking it fast again.
“Right, then?” asked Naylor.
The sergeant nodded as Naylor and Divine took their prisoner out to the waiting car; they weren’t going to get much out of him on the drive back home. Smiling, he used a bright yellow duster to wipe Macliesh’s name from the board.
“At which point did you establish that the woman who first reported the alleged offense was not, in fact, a neighbor but the girl’s mother?”
Resnick had briefed Millington on the procedure to be followed when Macliesh arrived: made sure he would be at the station to interview Grace Kelley and take her statement. He would far rather have been there himself anywhere rather than back in court under cross-examination.
“Inspector?”
Resnick finished checking his notebook. “Three days after the initial report.”
“Three days?”
“Detective Sergeant Pierce went back to the home with DC Kellogg and on that occasion Mrs. Taylor agreed that she had made the allegations herself. Then, after some discussion, she further agreed to bring her daughter in for a medical examination.”
“And this examination, Inspector, where did this take place?”
“At the City Hospital.”
“Who was present at this examination?”
“A consultant pediatrician, the police surgeon, Mrs. Taylor of course, and the social worker assigned to her case.”
“But not Mr. Taylor?”
Resnick shook his head. “No.”
“Not the child’s father?”
“No, for obvious…”
“Your mind was already made up. As to his guilt? Yourself and Social Services between you had determined…”
“Nothing,” Resnick interrupted.
The defense counsel smiled. “You would say that you enjoy a good relationship with the Social Services department, Inspector?”
Resnick wanted to shift his gaze to where he knew Rachel Chaplin was sitting. He knew she was wearing a dark blue suit with a fine stripe running through it, the jacket tucked in slightly at the waist, padded at the shoulders. A pale blue blouse was buttoned high at her neck. Today her hair had been pulled back off her face to be held by matt silver combs.
“Given that our aims are not always identical, I’d say, yes, it’s a good working relationship.”
He was looking directly at the defense counsel, face giving nothing away. The barrister hesitated, drawn to pursue the issue of aims, wanting to, but not allowing himself, plowing on instead.