“I recognized you from the newspaper,” Doria explained. “Your photograph, a while ago now. A case involving the abuse of a young child, I believe. Sad, naturally, but in so many ways symptomatic of our time.”
Did that, then, make it any less sad, Resnick thought?
The last few supporters moved around the corner from sight.
“But now, of course,” said Doria, “your energies are being expended elsewhere, the deaths of those two unfortunate women.” His eyes flickered. “And now the revelation is imminent, the victim, I see, is soon to be brought to justice.”
“The victim?”
“It must always be, Inspector, the perpetrator in such cases, violence against the person, these women, that child, they are also the victim.” But not the abused, Resnick thought, not the dead. “Perhaps you don’t agree?”
“I hadn’t realized your field was sociology, Professor,” Resnick said.
“Neither is it and I find I have little sympathy with the view that would seek to discover the cause for aberrant behavior in unemployment and overcrowding.”
“Then where would you look?” Resnick asked.
Without hesitation, Doria set his index finger over his heart.
“Inside us,” he said. “Those needs whose expression of necessity subverts the rules of community, of family, all of those patterns by which we live.” Doria barely paused. “But now, Inspector, I have scripts waiting to be assessed and you and I, I think, go in different directions. It was a pleasure to have met you.”
Resnick stood his ground as Doria turned confidently away and walked south along London Road towards Turner’s Quay and the river.
Thirty-Two
“So what are you saying, Charlie, that he confessed?”
Skelton stood against the window, a silver rind of moon over his left shoulder. So far it was a clear morning, bright and cold, no sign of rain. Resnick had scarcely slept; had been at the station well before the first shift came on duty.
“Not in so many words.”
“Not in any words.”
“He said…”
“Charlie, you’ve already told me, three times. I know it off by heart. And it still doesn’t mean what you want it to mean.”
He stood there, thought Resnick, telling me: those needs whose expression of necessity subverts the rules of community, of family, all of those patterns by which we live.
“He gave you a theory, Charlie. Like any other tuppenny-ha’penny academic. It only takes a dolphin to be washed up on a beach somewhere in the world for some expert to inform us that they’re doing it to warn us we’re damaging the ecology of the planet. Child abuse has become a growth industry for sociologists and child psychologists from Aberystwyth to Scunthorpe. Do you know how much a QC gets paid to chair a panel which will take two years to tell us what was right before our eyes in the first place?
“We’re surrounded by people with theories for all and sundry, Charlie, and the best we can hope to do is steer a course between them and use their knowledge when we’ve told them exactly what we want and nothing more.”
“With respect, sir, I don’t think this is the same. It isn’t abstract. He knew what he was saying, Doria, knew who he was saying it to.”
“Now what, Charlie? He was watching for you, waiting for you? Maybe he went to the match for the express purpose of seeking you out, striking up a conversation? Great shot! That bloke’s a load of rubbish! Oh, by the way, I’ve got this confession I want to make if you can hang on till they’ve taken this corner.”
Facetious sod! thought Resnick. His All-Bran can’t be working.
“I don’t think it’s impossible, sir,” he said.
Skelton moved towards his desk. “I know it’s not easy to find acceptable reasons for watching that miserable team, but this might be taking it a bit far.”
Resnick turned and started towards the door, smarting under his superior’s sarcasm.
“Inspector…” Skelton began,
“What about the girl?” Resnick asked, stopping, his voice unusually loud. “Oakes-what about her? We’ve her description of…”
“A bit of rough, isn’t that what they call it, Charlie? You’re always so much more in tune with these terms than I seem to be. If we started pulling in every bloke who treated his wife like that, we’d have more inside than out on the street. And don’t waste that look of disapproval, I’m not condoning anything, you know that. I’m saying there’s a certain kind of world out there and we’re paid to work in it. Unfortunately, we have to live in it, too.”
“Yes, sir.” Resnick spoke flatly, looked back at Skelton tight-lipped.
The superintendent drummed his fingers across the papers on his desk before sitting down. “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“And there’s nobody still wasting their time round the campus, playing at being students?”
“No, sir.”
Skelton lowered his head. Dismissed, Resnick opened and closed the door with respect.
“Someone asking to see you, sir.”
Resnick snapped at Naylor so sharply that the DC collided with the door when he withdrew.
Certain that nothing now was going to make the day better, Resnick finished what he was doing before quitting his desk. There seemed to be more than usual activity around him, but he felt no part of it. Better to push away at the routine, keep his head down, sooner or later he’d stop feeling sorry for himself. Just about the last thing he wanted to do was talk to another human being. And he knew that it was neither of the people he would have been interested in seeing: had it been either Doria or Rachel he felt he would have known. It was Marian Witczak.
She was wearing a burgundy cape and her hair was tied back into a bun. She looked like Resnick’s idea of a piano teacher with perfect pitch and a mother in a nursing home in the country.
She waited until she was sitting opposite Resnick, until she had made a slow and careful survey of his office, until she had politely declined coffee, before taking an envelope from her bag and placing it on the desk before him.
Like somebody depressing middle C.
Resnick looked at her questioningly for a moment.
“Open it.”
The card was the same as he had seen before, the same color, size, texture.
My Dear Marian,
I am beginninq to regret, quite strongly, that so many months have elapsed since we met. I find I am in urgent need of mature and stimulating company and conversation.
I wonder if you can bring yourself to overlook my inexcusable tardiness in communicating and agree to spend an evening with me?
Shall we say this coming Saturday?
Your sincere friend-
William Doria
Neatly printed, below the embossed name, were his address and telephone number.
“I discovered it when I went downstairs,” Marian said. “It had been put through the letter-box early this morning.”
Or very late last night, thought Resnick.
“It was certainly delivered by hand. You see, it bears no stamp.”
Resnick read the note through again, as Marian would have said, searching for clues. He could find none.
“I thought-after the interest you showed before-I thought, Charles, that you would wish to know of this.”
“You’re right,” said Resnick. “I’m grateful.” And then, “What do you intend to do about what he says?”
“My first intention, this will not surprise you I think, was to tear this up, this beautiful calling card. My second, and I do not think this will surprise you either, was to accept.” She looked at Resnick, as if waiting for a comment that didn’t come. “Do you think I am foolish?”
“Not necessarily.”
“That I have no pride?”
“Certainly not that. I know you have.”