“Things deteriorated,” put in Resnick.
“Quite. Nevertheless, by this time he’d given up being a Peeping Tom for more legal diversions.”
“I think I can guess,” said Resnick.
“He wrote off to two-dozen women in the space of three months and five of them agreed to meet him. One of these he passed up on, hasn’t said why. One look at her outside the wherever it was and he scarpered. But the other four-well, they’re still being interviewed, though none of them seem to have been in any doubt that they’d got themselves saddled with a right funny one. We should have full statements by this time tomorrow.”
“Sounds interesting, sir,” agreed Resnick, almost reluctantly.
Skelton stood up behind his desk, tapping the end of his pen lightly against it. “Tell you something you’ll likely find even more interesting, Charlie.”
“Yes, sir?”
“The fifth woman, the one he walked away from, according to him she was Shirley Peters.”
The melody of “Moonlight Serenade” was unmistakable. Resnick zipped himself up and ran the tap as the toilet flushed and Graham Millington emerged, still whistling.
“It is you,” Resnick said, drying his hands.
“Sir?”
“Glenn Miller all over the place.”
“Yes, sir.” Millington squinted at his mustache in the mirror; why did it always seem fuller on the left than the right, no matter how carefully he trimmed it? “I’ve got this tape I play in the car.”
“Don’t you get fed up with it?”
“No, sir. That is, I don’t know really.” He shrugged, waiting for Resnick to finish with the roller towel. “Never thought about it, I suppose.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Sir?”
“Think about it. For the sake of the rest of us.”
“Right, sir.” What is he on about, thought Millington, bemused. What’s Glenn Miller got to do with anything?
“Anything fresh on your wrestler?” Resnick asked. They were heading back towards the CID room.
“Not yet, sir.”
“Tell you what to do,” said Resnick.
Millington stopped outside the door and waited.
“DI Grafton’s pinning his hopes on a one-time psychiatric patient who ducked out on a date with Shirley Peters. See if you can get a word with him, find out why.”
Millington shrugged. “Didn’t fancy her.”
“Or he’s lying about walking away from her without as much as a hello.”
“I’ll get on to it, sir,” said Millington, pushing open the door.
“Sooner rather than later.”
Instead of following his sergeant into the office, Resnick turned down the stairs in the direction of the street.
Once you’d tossed out the junk mail, there wasn’t a great deal left. Resnick ignored the persistent cries of his cats long enough to grind some coffee and dump it in the filter. A bit of Basie would serve to cleanse the good Major from his mind: there wasn’t a moon in the sky anyway, just a drizzle of rain, falling like fine gauze through the dark.
“Dizzy! Eat that fast and you’ll have indigestion the whole evening.”
There was a letter from a long-stay prisoner he’d nicked and seen sent down to Parkhurst, two sides of recycled paper explaining how he’d found peace through Buddha, though it hadn’t done anything about the quality of the food. In a brown envelope, a second reminder about his subscription to the Polish Association. Resnick lifted his elbows and flexed his shoulders backwards, seeking to do something about the stiffness along his spine. He took his coffee black with a shot of Scotch, carrying it, along with the remaining letter, to his favorite armchair. The postmark was local, the writing small enough to have had the postman reaching for his spectacles. Resnick slit the top of the envelope open with the end of his spoon.
Dear Charles,
I am not certain if forgetting the enclosed was a trick of the memory, or merely a straightforward attempt to ignore my own sentimentality. In either case, be so kind as to destroy it when it is of no further use to you.
Sincerely,
Marian Witczak
Resnick slipped the card from beneath the paperclip which held it to the sheet of writing paper. It was cream in color, an expensive, satiny surface, smooth to the touch. Pepper burbled at the side of the chair and jumped on to Resnick’s lap where he turned twice and settled.
My Dear Marian,
I can only hope uour evening was as pleasant as mine. I cannot recall attendinq a concert with a companion who was both as charming and as apposite as yourself!
Let us both look forward to the time when the future presents us with as suitable an occasion for mutual delight and stimulation.
In friendship and admiration-
William Doria
A quarter of an inch from the bottom of the card, a horizontal line was broken at its center by the embossed burgundy letters W.J. Doria. Above, the writing was in matt black ink, so studied that each word seemed drawn rather than written. The circles of the os and as were beautifully rounded, precise and not extravagant; only in the capitals was there a flourish, a sense of abandonment-the way the lower stroke of the L swerved beneath the rest of Let, the sweep of the W in his own name, continuing until it almost met the D of Doria, dipping to dot the is along the way.
When Resnick had stared at the card long enough, he reached sideways towards his coffee cup, disturbing a disgruntled Pepper, who jumped clear of his legs in disgust.
He was bringing the cup to his lips when the phone rang, startling a splash of lukewarm coffee over the front of his shirt.
“I was about to ring off.”
“Sorry. I was busy pouring coffee over myself.”
“I hope you didn’t miss your tie.”
“No chance,” said Resnick, rubbing at it with his free hand.
“Just want to be able to recognize you when I see you.”
“I thought you’d given up on me.”
“I had.”
Resnick shifted his weight from one foot to the other, switched the receiver from left to right. Was she serious?
“I’ve been trying to phone you,” Rachel said. “Either you’re somewhere else and nobody knows when you’ll be back, or they don’t know where you are anyway.” She paused. “Charlie, you haven’t given instructions that I’m to be given the runaround, have you?”
“Why would you think I’d do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I was sure you’d call me and you didn’t.”
Resnick didn’t say anything.
“You didn’t try me at home, did you?”
“You told me not to.”
“I know.”
“What’s wrong with…?”
“I think it’s time we went out to dinner, Charlie.”
He was smiling. “You think so.”
“Don’t you?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“It’s twenty-past seven.”
Resnick looked across the room. “Is that relevant?”
“It is if you’re going to meet me at eight-thirty.”
“Tonight?”
“You haven’t already eaten, have you?”
“No, but…”
“Fine. I get to choose the restaurant.”
“How come?”
“I’m paying.”
“Oh, no. If we’re…”
“Charlie, just listen to me. It’s a celebration. My treat. All right?”