Resnick surprised himself by saying, “Yes.”
He didn’t want the smell of cigarette smoke interfering with his lunch.
Suzanne Olds bit lightly down into the flesh inside her lower lip and dropped the pack from sight.
“Congratulations, Inspector.”
“What for?”
“Sidetracking me.”
“Is that what I’ve done?”
“I came here to talk about last night’s murder.”
“I don’t understand. Someone’s retained you…?”
She shook her head, vigorously this time. “Tony Macliesh is still my one and only client in this matter.”
“Then…”
“And he was arrested on the basis of emotional hearsay evidence, a quick and convenient culprit against whom you had and continue to have nothing that goes beyond the purely circumstantial. There is nothing which points to my client being at or near the scene of Shirley Peters’s death or which links him directly and specifically to what was a violent and sexual attack. An attack which has been followed by another, more brutish than the first, in which my client could have played no part since he is being held in police custody.”
Resnick was on his feet. “Ms Olds, there has never been any suggestion of linking Macliesh with Mary Sheppard’s murder.”
“Exactly. There is a sadistic killer out there, preying on defenseless women and instead of tracking him down you are clinging blindly to the wrong man.”
Resnick leaned forward until Suzanne Old’s perfume was inescapable. “I’ll try to put this as clearly as I can. What we have here are two quite separate murders, quite distinct. The means of death, the modes of killing are absolutely different, no connection. Neither is there any connection between the victims, other than the fact that, yes, they were female, and, yes, they were living alone-not living, that is, with a man.” He straightened up. “Two murders, two cases, two inquiries, two murderers, ultimately, two convictions. As you will know, we currently have someone under arrest for the first murder; and, as you have said yourself, there is no way in which that suspect could have been involved in the second.”
Resnick sat down. “I hope, for Macliesh’s sake, you’ve got something better for him than this by way of his defense.”
Suzanne Olds got up and walked out. This time no pose; she didn’t even think to close the door.
“Divine! Naylor!”
The uniformed constable who had nipped up with the brown paper bag from the deli got caught between them.
“Regular sandwich there, sir,” said Divine.
“Two, I hope,” said Resnick, putting the bag down on his desk. “What luck?”
“We found him, sir, Warren,” Naylor said eagerly.
“And?”
The two DCs exchanged glances. “He does a bit of working out there, sir, keeps an eye on the gym, weights and that.”
“Evenings, he works as a bouncer round the clubs.” Resnick was getting impatient; his sandwiches were getting stale. “Can we get to the point, gentlemen?”
“Yes, well, the point is, sir…”
“The point is…”
“The point is he’ll only speak to you, sir.”
“Fine,” said Resnick. “So where is he?”
Another quick look flicked between the two men.
“At the gym, sir, Victor’s…”
“It’s in one of those old warehouses…”
“I know where it is. Where’s this Warren? If he wants to speak to me, I’m here. Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“We suggested it, sir,” said Naylor, fidgeting a little on his feet.
“Uh-huh.”
“He didn’t take to the idea, sir.”
Resnick rubbed at the far corners of his eyes and switched his attention to Mark Divine. “You told him this was a murder inquiry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he still refused to co-operate?”
“No, sir. I mean, not exactly. He did say he would talk to you, sir. Didn’t seem to have any problems with that at all. It was just the matter of his coming into the station.”
“Busy, was he?” said Resnick. Suzanne Old’s scent had cleared sufficiently for him to be able to make out the caraway embedded in the rye, the richness of the mustard. “Too busy watching over all those weights?”
“He was on the Nautilus machine, sir. What he was pushing…”
“Not like you, Divine, to miss an opportunity to be persuasive.” Divine fiddled with the knot of his tie; Naylor, meanwhile, had finished with the basic foxtrot and was progressing to something with more than a tinge of paso doble.
“He was a big feller, sir.”
“Arms out to here.”
“You’ve seen them body-builders.”
“Almost unnatural.”
“Besides,” said Resnick, interrupting them. He wouldn’t be able to requisition another piece of carpet for another three years. “You didn’t want to antagonize him, make him into a hostile witness. Didn’t want to risk starting up violence in a public place.”
“Yes, sir,” said Divine.
“No, sir,” said Naylor.
“At the gym all afternoon, is he?”
“Till four, sir,” Naylor said.
Resnick glanced across the desk. “You two had lunch?”
They had not.
“When you get back from the canteen, get back in touch with Liverpool CID. Run down that description Macliesh gave us of his other so-called co-conspirator. See if they can’t come up with some faces. And run this Warren through the computer. Sharpish.”
Resnick was just crunching through the first of the gherkins when his phone rang. Vinegar splashed on to his hand and started to trickle between thumb and forefinger towards his wrist.
“Millington, sir.” It was one of those connections that sound like they’ve been routed via both Poles.
“You still at the Sheppard house?”
“Sir.”
“And?”
“I think I’ve found something interesting, sir. I thought, if you weren’t snowed under, you might pop out.”
“You’re the one who sounds snowed under, Graham.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“Don’t be. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He replaced the receiver with one hand, lifted the chicken and cheese to his mouth with the other. “I’m off out to the Sheppard place,” he announced to the office. “Tell Patel to hang on to the Ex as long as he can. I’ll try and get to the gym on the way back.”
He took the stairs two at a time, brown paper bag swinging from his left hand.
“Bad manners to talk with your mouth full,” observed Naylor. He didn’t say it very loud. The last time he’d done it at home-pork chops and apple sauce done in the oven, roast potatoes and parsnips-Debbie had given him a proper going-over. She wasn’t going to come rushing home to cook him a meal just for him to spit it out all over the tablecloth.
Oh, God! Why did he have to think about Debbie?
When he’d raised his eyebrow inquiringly that morning, the way she’d shaken her head, the expression in her eyes, it was almost as if she was pleased nothing had happened. Although he knew them off by heart, Naylor looked across at Divine’s girlie calendar and recounted the days.
Fifteen
Rachel Chaplin shared her office with one of the other seniors, a room no wider than the average double bed and not a lot longer. Papers spilled out from in-trays and spread randomly across both desks, photocopied articles with the relevant passages highlighted, claim forms for necessary travel, memos. While you were out… Whoever had decided that pink was a good color for memo pads?
While Carole, her colleague, had spent the bulk of the morning trying to arrange for an eighty-two-year-old man with two replacement hips to be transferred from a geriatric ward into a nursing home, Rachel had been sorting out emergency fostering for Luke and Sarah Sheppard. Trying to.
“No, the boy is seven and the girl’s four. No, no, she’s got a nursery place. Not the same building, but close. Um, five, ten minutes walk, no more.”
“You don’t have any idea when a vacancy might occur? Yes, I do realize what it depends upon and without wishing that to happen. Yes, I see, in a coma for four days and the doctor has no idea…Yes, that’s right, if you would, please ring me. Right.”