“Jesus! What’s happening to him?”
“All right, just take it easy.”
“I want to know…”
“A minute while this gets sorted.”
“Not…”
“Sir, I think you should take a look.”
Resnick looked at the warning expression on the custody sergeant’s face, the solicitor standing inside his small room, alongside the desk. A uniformed constable was bringing a prisoner out of the toilet opposite the row of three cells. Inside the nearest of those a fist was being worked against the door, a metronomic rise and angry fall. A policewoman with a shining bob of fair hair was talking softly to a young black man who was handcuffed to the radiator. Divine and Naylor were standing at the furthest end of the corridor, by the open door to the third cell. Telephones were ringing: all over the building telephones were ringing.
“Sir…”
“Okay, Sergeant.” He squeezed his way along the corridor.
He heard the solicitor’s voice calling after him and shut it out. Outside the cell, Naylor looked as pale as Divine was flushed. Ignoring them, Resnick pushed the door fully open. Tony Macliesh looked up at him from where he was sitting on the narrow bed and smiled.
Blood leaked from his left cheekbone where the skin was broken; a swelling the shape and size of a blackbird’s egg already broke the hairline over his left temple. His lip was cut. Still smiling, he stood up and a channel of blood ran from nose and chin on to his black T-shirt, his jeans, the soiled suede of his shoes.
No wonder, Resnick thought, the bastard’s smiling.
“My office.” He spoke to Naylor and Divine without looking at them, turning away. “Now.”
The solicitor was still in the custody sergeant’s office, still making the same demands. Out of sight, somebody was whistling “Moonlight Serenade.”
“Inspector…” she said.
“A doctor?” Resnick said to the sergeant.
“On his way, sir.”
“Inspector Resnick…”
“Ring through to the desk, see if someone can’t fetch Ms. Olds a cup of tea.” He glanced at the solicitor quickly. “Make that coffee.”
Resnick had only run across Suzanne Olds once before. She had been representing a thirteen-year-old on a charge of malicious wounding and had had the lad’s confession thrown out of court, and, likely, quite right too. He remembered a few things about her and one of them was that she liked to be addressed as Ms.
“I should have thought my client was the one in need…” she was saying.
“How long has Macliesh been your client?” Resnick asked.
Suzanne Olds drew back the sleeve of her beige linen jacket in order to look at her watch.
“All right. Don’t bother.” He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed an internal number. “Patel, get yourself down to the cells. I want you with Macliesh, door open, nobody in or out till the doctor gets here. Understood?”
Without waiting for a response, he put the receiver down and moved away.
“During all of which my client’s injuries will remain unattended, I suppose?”
Resnick held her gaze for one, two, three seconds before walking to the inquiry desk and returning with a first-aid box in his hand. He sorted through it in front of her, finding a cellophane envelope of plasters, a tin of Germolene, the remains of a roll of cotton wool. Patel appeared at the doorway and Resnick pushed the things into his hand. “If the doctor’s not here in the next ten minutes, see if you can do anything with these.”
Naylor was wondering if they were likely to get more than a good bollocking but he wasn’t worrying about it. After all, what had happened was down to Divine and if push came to shove that’s exactly what Divine could do with any ideas about loyalty in the ranks.
What was worrying him was Debbie’s announcement that morning-causing him to bite so fiercely into his toast that it disintegrated into brittle fragments-that she was four days late. Late! What was she talking about, late! Why was she talking about it at all, when normally such things weren’t even referred to? When they went shopping together in Sainsbury’s she would push her box of Tampax down to the bottom of the trolley and contrive to cover it with a packet of tagliatelle parmigiane. And that tinge of accusation in her voice when she’d said it, as if somehow he might have slipped something past her defenses.
Besides, late was hardly the word: according to Debbie’s five-year plan, anything in that line was three-and-a-half years early. They hadn’t even got as far as choosing the best-value microwave.
Mark Divine was reminded of the time he’d been carpeted by the rugby association for breaking another player’s nose in the scrum. Mouthing off at him all through the game he’d been. Needle, needle, needle. It had been easy enough for Divine to duck in close, quick yank of the hair, there, right on to his fist. Something satisfying about the sound that cartilage makes when the tissue ruptures across. Divine straightened his shoulders back as he heard Resnick approaching. Shame the bloke had been in his own team.
“What happened?” Resnick began his question as soon as the door opened and was standing behind his desk before either officer made a reply.
“Sir, Macliesh, he sort of…”
“Yes, Naylor?”
“He went berserk, sir.”
“Somebody did.”
The two men glanced at one another.
“Those injuries, sir,” said Divine. “They were self-inflicted.”
If they’ve cooked this up between them, Resnick thought, I’ll have them on a charge before they know what’s hit them.
“It’s true, sir,” Naylor said.
“True?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your prisoner suddenly ups and punches himself in the face?”
“Threw himself against the wall, sir,” Divine said quickly.
“For the sheer hell of it?”
Here it comes, Naylor was thinking. Divine was beginning to smell his own sweat.
“Naylor?” said Resnick sharply.
“Something, er, was said, sir.”
“To Macliesh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Naylor.
“Yes, sir,” said Divine.
“Some remark was made which caused your prisoner to perform an act of grievous bodily harm on his own person?”
Both men nodded, neither spoke.
“You know my next question, don’t you?” Resnick asked.
They did. Naylor looked at Divine and Divine looked with sudden interest at the notices pinned to the board behind Resnick’s desk.
“Wait outside, Naylor,” said Resnick. “Don’t stray, I’ll want to talk to you again.”
Divine knew now that it was going to be worse than anything the rugby association had dreamed up, worse even than the inquiry the time that black bastard had ended up in hospital.
“What was it that made Macliesh so angry?”
Divine wet his drying lips with the end of his tongue, but his tongue was dry too.
“What did you say that made him want to injure himself?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Divine.”
“Sir…”
“Divine, there’s youths out on the street now, down on the square. Pull up alongside them, stop them-wouldn’t matter if they had half-a-dozen gold watches up an arm, a sack swung over their shoulder with swag stenciled on it-you know what answer they’ll give you when you ask them what they’ve been up to?”
Divine tried not to look at Resnick’s face, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to avoid.
“I’m waiting.”
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t think…”
“That I wanted an answer. Of course I do, that’s what questions are for.”
Divine wriggled as if his briefs were too tight for him, his shoes too small.
“The answer?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“They’d say?”
“Nothing. Sir.”
“And do you believe them?”
Let it rest!
“Well? Do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you know what I’m feeling now.”
“Sir, I just wanted to get some response.”
“It looks as if you succeeded.”
“After yesterday, him never opening his mouth.”