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“Inspector, please. The court is fully aware of what it was you said.”

“Nothing was said by any outside agency that convinced us to put Mr. Taylor under arrest.”

“Then what did?”

Resnick held back his response, held his breath. He could feel the dampness of his shirt where it clung to the small of his back, the itch of perspiration beneath his arms and between his legs. “The girl,” he said clearly.

“The seven-year-old girl.”

“Yes.”

“Upset, intimidated…”

“No.”

“Asked so many leading questions…”

“No.”

“…that, like all little girls do, she gave the answer she had come to realize was wanted.”

A sound broke from Resnick’s mouth, somewhere between a roar and a laugh. “I watched,” Resnick said, “watched through a two-way mirror, watched seven-year-old Sharon Taylor sitting with a social worker and with nobody else in the room…”

“Inspector,” said the barrister, “there is no need.”

“Yes, there is!” Resnick’s hands were gripping the front of the witness stand and even from near the rear of the room Rachel could see that his knuckles were white. “There is a need.”

The judge bent towards him. “Inspector Resnick, I do realize that this is a disquieting case.”

Resnick faced the judge and when he spoke again his voice was low and even. “The only other things that mattered in the room were a microphone and two dolls.” He pointed towards the table where the dolls lay. “Those which have already been examined by the court. And what I heard and saw was Sharon Taylor using those dolls to explain what it was the accused had done to her. What he had made her do to him.” Resnick’s eyes fixed on the barrister’s face. “Her father.”

Eight

At first he thought she wasn’t there and felt a flush of disappointment that ran close to anger. It was something he almost believed he had earned, that his testimony had deserved. He had allowed himself to picture how she would be standing there, the smile coming up on her face to greet him. When would he learn to stop fooling himself?

Resnick nodded at someone he knew, skirted round a couple of solicitors, diaries out, arranging their weekly bridge game, and there she was. Off to the side, her head mostly turned away, of course, Rachel was talking to Mrs. Taylor and Resnick could imagine her tone, even and reassuring.

He slowed his pace, not wanting to reach the exit before she noticed him.

“Inspector.” Rachel left Mrs Taylor with a smile and crossed the foyer.

Resnick took his time about turning, so that Rachel was almost up to him when he looked at her.

“How are you feeling?” Rachel asked.

Resnick nodded past her shoulder. “How’s your client?”

“She’s spent the best part of the day in court, listening while a highly paid smoothie with a wig on his head does everything he can to prove she’s a vindictive and hysterical liar. How do you think she’s feeling?”

Rachel lowered her head for a moment and the corners of her mouth broke into a smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t deserve that. Mrs. Taylor’s coping pretty well. The positive thing about that kind of display is that it makes her feel angry too. Angry at what they’re trying to do to her. Whereas you…” The smile was in her eyes now. “…she thinks you’re the bee’s knees.”

“Did she say that? The bee’s knees?”

“No, I did.” She moved a half-pace towards him. “Look,” she said, touching her finger to her mouth. “Watch my lips move.”

“I’m sorry about the other evening,” Resnick said, trying not to keep watching her mouth now and finding it difficult.

“You said.”

“I hope I didn’t dig you out of bed when I phoned?”

“You did.”

“But not-what’s his name?”

“You know very well. It’s Chris. And we’re not going to start that again, are we?”

“I thought we might go and have a drink.”

“I’ve promised Mrs. Taylor I’d go along with her and collect Sharon. I ought to stay with them for a while.”

“Later then?”

Resnick watched her weighing it up, uncertain what was being held in the balance.

“Seven?” Rachel said finally.

“Okay. Where d’you want to go?”

“You’d better choose this time,” she said, amused.

“D’you know the Partridge?”

“Mansfield Road?”

“That’s the one.”

Nodding, she turned away and walked back to where Mrs. Taylor was waiting. Resnick figured he would have ample time to check back at the station and find out what progress Millington had made with Macliesh. In all likelihood, he’d been bearing down on him so hard that by the time Resnick arrived there’d be a confession, signed, sealed, and witnessed. It might be enough to earn the sergeant his promotion and get him off Resnick’s back.

On his way to the street, Resnick checked his watch. If he was lucky there’d just be time to nip home and feed the cats as well.

“Bloody hopeless!”

Graham Millington was sitting on the center block of desks, one foot pushed out against a convenient chairback; he had a plastic cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other and looked as though he’d thrown his clothes in the tumble drier without bothering to get out of them first.

“Thought you’d given up,” Resnick said.

Millington stared down at his hands. “Which one?”

“Can I have a word, boss?” The late-shift sergeant was hovering close to Resnick’s shoulder, three plastic bags and a half-dozen ten-by-eight photographs in his hands.

“Come on in.”

Ten minutes later, when Resnick and the sergeant emerged, Millington was still in the same position.

“Are we drinking Divine’s Scotch again?” Resnick asked.

Millington nodded.

Resnick took the bottle from the drawer, thinking as he did so that come January First he would have to say something to Divine about his taste in calendars. Surely he wasn’t the only one in the office who found month after month of jutting breasts objectionable? Maybe he should have a word about it with Lynn Kellogg.

He tipped a little of the whisky into the sergeant’s cup.

“How about you, sir?”

Resnick shook his head. “Later.” And then: “I take it he didn’t break down and reveal all.”

“I was the one fit for sodding breaking down.”

“How come?”

Millington looked at him. “What d’you think it’s like spending the entire afternoon with a man who won’t answer a single question?”

“Quiet?” Resnick said quietly.

Clever bastard! Millington thought.

“Why isn’t he talking?” Resnick asked.

“If he won’t open his bloody mouth, how’m I supposed to know?”

“Take it easy, Graham.”

“Sorry, sir.” Millington levered himself off the desk, started feeling in his pockets for his cigarettes. “It’s so bloody infuriating. Sitting there listening to the clock ticking round. You want to reach across the desk and shake it out of him.”

Resnick took the cigarette out of Millington’s fingers and slid it back into the packet for him; the packet he dropped down into the side pocket of the sergeant’s rumpled jacket.

“You didn’t?” Resnick said, only just a question.

Millington shook his head. “I think he’d have been more than happy if I had. Had a go at him, I mean.”

“Pretty cool for a man who’s supposed to have a violent temper.”

“Perhaps he’s only tough with women.”

Resnick felt an echo of something inside himself, too distant to be clear what it was. “Maybe,” he said.

“The one thing he did say,” Millington began.

“Yes?”

“When Divine and Naylor were taking him through to the cells.”

“Yes.”

“He said, ‘I know that cow set me up for this and I’ll fucking kill her!’”

“Who did he mean?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Who d’you think he meant?”

“The girl’s mother?”

“Probably,” Resnick said, but he was thinking about Grace Kelley.