“All I’m asking, sir, is permission to scratch around a little.”
“Charlie, we’ve got paperwork like dogs have fleas,” said Parker.
“I won’t use the whole team,” said Resnick.
“Too bloody right!”
“You’re a wonder for following hunches!” said Skelton, slapping his arms across his chest. “Even when they’re not your own.”
“She’s got the makings of a good copper,” said Resnick. “I think she deserves this one.”
“Just a couple of officers, Charlie.” Skelton was striding away again, leaving the others in his wake. “We can’t spare any more. We shouldn’t.”
“No, sir.”
“And the minute it looks like a dead end,” said Parker, “we’re out.”
“Yes, sir.”
They were back at the station when across their shoulders the first few flakes of snow began to fall.
“Kellogg’s report aside,” said Jack Skelton, letting Tom Parker go on into the building ahead of them, “have you got anything else making your blood pump a little faster?”
“Not really, sir.”
Skelton stood there, snow fluttering against his face, and waited.
“One of the names on the list,” Resnick said. “The women our professor admitted to meeting…I know her.”
Twenty-Five
The white and red horizontal stripes of the Polish flag hung across the porch window, facing outwards onto the uneven paving of the drive. The house, a Victorian delight of turrets and arches, stood back from the road behind sixty feet of dark shrubs and rose bushes pruned almost to the roots. To the left of the porch was a trio of narrow stained-glass windows one above the other, predominantly blue and green. Above the cracking wood of the door, a larger panel of colored glass, rectangular, depicted the Annunciation. Lace, rich and yellowing, shielded the interior from casual sight.
Resnick pressed the smooth white circle of the bell and heard it sound, off-pitch and distant.
He didn’t think he had spoken to Marian Witczak for more than two years, probably hadn’t seen her in eighteen months. In the days of his marriage, Resnick’s wife had feigned at least a fondness for the dances which the Polish community organized regularly on a Saturday night. On his own, what was there to do other than join one of those tight male circles where one pair of arms, at least, was always within reach of the bar? Or stand eating smoked ham and pieroqi, pretending not to notice the church matrons pointing him out encouragingly to their stubbornly unmarriageable daughters. Besides, so much had changed: now a dance there was not so different from the Miners’ Welfare, the British Legion.
A key was turned, bolts were slid back, top and bottom, finally a chain was loosed. Marian looked at him in surprise, confusion, pleasure.
“I thought you were from the auction rooms. I am expecting…But, no, it is you.”
Resnick grinned a little self-consciously. They were the same age, Marian and himself, a matter of some months’ difference, yet she always made him feel like a small boy who had come cap in hand to beat the carpets, sweep the leaves.
“I do not read the newspaper, of course, but I have seen your picture. You are always descending steps, Charlie, after giving evidence against some dreadful man. You always look so sad and angry.”
“I don’t like having my photograph taken.”
“And this job that you do-do you like your job?”
“I remember you used to make good coffee, Marian.”
“Ah, this is why you are suddenly here?”
Resnick shook his head, smiled. “No.”
“Of course,” the muscles of her face tightened, “the knock on the door. I do not forget.”
“Marian, it’s a November morning in England. I’m not the Gestapo.”
“Oh, yes,” stepping back to let him enter. “The English way. What is it? An Inspector Calls?”
“That was a long time ago.”
She closed the door behind him. “Yes,” she said, turning the key in the lock, “now you have guns.”
Resnick turned and looked at her. “Marian, I suspect we always had guns.”
The fireplace was carved black marble, inset with deep pink and white, and more than six feet across, almost as tall. The center had been covered with tiles and a fifties’ gas fire burned low, frugal and utilitarian. Three armchairs and a chaise longue were covered in dark floral brocade and draped with antimacassars. An arrangement of dried flowers stood in a glass vase at the center of a low table. Around the walls, stained oak bookcases held a mixture of leather-bound books and old orange Penguins. Above these the walls were hung with photographs: General Sikorski, Cardinal Wysznski, a villa overlooking the Mazurian Lakes, a family group picnicking on the lawns in front of the Wilanow Palace.
Resnick didn’t need to walk over to the piano at the rear of the room to see that the music that was open there was Chopin, some polonaise or other, probably the A flat major, the only one he knew.
Marian came in with the coffee in a dented enamel pot, ardently polished; there were small white cups, bone china, sugar in a bowl with tongs. She was wearing a stiff green dress, belted tightly at the waist, flat shoes in soft green leather. She had quickly pulled her hair back and tied it with a length of white ribbon. Her eyes were dark, her cheekbones high and hard against her skin so that her cheeks seemed pinched and hollow. She was what would once have been called a handsome woman; maybe in her circle she still was.
“After the war,” she said, “only one thing changed. When they came in the night and hauled you from your beds, they were no longer German.”
“Marian,” Resnick said, “that was forty years ago.”
“When we were born, you and I.”
“Then how can you say you remember?”
For a moment she glanced at the walls. “We know these things, Charles, because they happened to our families, our people.” She smiled at him, indulgently. “Does it have to be with your own ears, your own eyes?”
Resnick looked away from her, down at the coffee, black in the cup. “I think, yes, it does.”
“They should, I think, have christened you Thomas.”
There was nothing he could say. Thomas the apostolic detective: give me the evidence, where’s the evidence? Dead without a body?
Marian spooned sugar into her cup, one, two, shiny silver spoonfuls.
“But your family had already left for this country and you, Charles, you have assimilated to perfection.” She balanced cup and saucer in the palm of one hand, stirring with care. “No longer Mass at the Polish church, communion; no longer the socials and the dances. You speak with no trace of accent, we are waiting only for you to change your name.”
Resnick tasted the coffee, thick like bitter treacle. Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock chimed, several seconds later another, and another.
“You’re not selling up, moving?”
“How could I ever?”
“You said you were expecting someone, something to do with an auction.”
“Oh, one or two pieces, nothing special; but the rooms upstairs, they are so rarely used. People used to come and stay, many people, and now…This is a large house to keep, there are many bills and I am alone.” She looked at him sharply. “You know what this is like.”
Resnick nodded. “The reason I came…”
“I know.”
He sat further back in the chair and waited.
“As I have said, the newspaper I will not read myself, but a friend, she told me, you are asking questions of those like me who are-the expression-lonely of heart.”
“I saw your name, on a list…”
“A list?” she said, a hint of alarm.
“We have been checking everyone who has placed advertisements, responded; checking and cross-checking…I didn’t want to send a stranger to see you.”
“You are kind.”
“I was surprised…”
“That I would do this?”
“That you would look outside the community.”