“Not hungry,” Divine said, but little by little, grudgingly, eat was what he did. Ten minutes later, Resnick’s own plate comprehensively cleared, Divine hurried through to the small toilet at the back and threw up. By the time he returned, wiping tissue across his pallid face, Resnick had a fresh mug of tea waiting, sweet and hot.
Divine lit a cigarette and almost as quickly stubbed it out.
“These conditions of bail,” Resnick started.
Fidgeting back his chair, Divine looked away.
“There’s not going to be a problem? Mark, there’s not going to be a problem?”
“Why should there be?”
“Suzanne Olds came to see me …”
“Stuck-up cow.”
“Good at her job.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“She came to see me because she was worried …”
“Well, now she can stop worrying, can’t she, ’cause you can see. Look. Look, what’m I going to do? Nip off down the South of France? Costa del Sol?”
“You went to Derby,” said Resnick, almost smiling.
“Fucking Derby!”
“You had a knife.”
“Yeah, well I haven’t got it any more.”
“Nor anything like it?”
Divine hung his head; his skin was itching and the inside of his throat felt like a length of tubing someone had been attacking with industrial cleaner. He brought the mug to his mouth and the tea burned. More than most things in the world, he wanted to pull off his clothes and lower himself into a hot bath, close his eyes.
“Tell her she doesn’t have to worry. I’ll keep clean.”
“Good.” Resnick reached into his pocket for money to pay the bill. “You okay for cash?”
Divine nodded: fine.
“Okay, I’d best be getting back. And Mark …”
“Yes?”
“If ever you need, call me, work or home, it doesn’t matter, understood?”
“Yeah. Yes, thanks.”
Hesitating just for a moment, Resnick fished out one of his cards, bent from his top pocket, and wrote his own number and then Hannah’s in biro on the back.
“Any time, right?”
“Right.”
A quick handshake and Resnick left him sitting there, cradling the mug of tea.
Jack Skelton was loitering with intent in the vicinity of Resnick’s office. Skelton, while not exactly back to the peak of fitness which once saw him running four miles each morning, had nonetheless lost the excess ten pounds the past year had seen him put on, and was looking spruce this morning in a light wool check jacket and tan slacks, hair brushed to within an inch of its life.
Following Resnick through into his partitioned room, Skelton closed the door firmly at his back.
“Announcement’s being made any day now, apparently.”
“Announcement?”
“Serious Crimes. Who’s going to be in charge, here in the city.”
“I thought Kilmartin.”
“Kilmartin’s dropped out. Rallied round up in Paisley, offered him something he couldn’t refuse.”
“Season ticket to Rangers, was it?”
“Could be.”
“And you’ve no idea?”
Skelton shook his head. “Rumors, you know how it is.”
Resnick knew.
“Should’ve put yourself up, Charlie, then we wouldn’t have all this …” The superintendent broke off, seeing Resnick smiling widely. “What? What’s so bloody funny?”
“Marlon Brando. It was on the box the other night. Where he’s a boxer, working down on the docks. I could’ve been a contender, Charlie. Sitting there with his brother in the back of a car.”
Skelton was shaking his head. “Must’ve missed it.”
Resnick, too, if Hannah hadn’t nagged on at him. Charlie, you’ll like it. Honestly. Just give it a chance.
“What about the other business?” Resnick asked. “This deal with the Yard.”
Skelton patted his pockets for his cigarettes, remembering yet again that he’d given up. “Passed it by the powers that be. Fretting about possible expenses, overtime, you know the kind of thing, but basically, yes, just so long as you don’t think they’ll give us the run-around, take all the credit, you can move ahead.”
Resnick nodded. “I thought I’d get Carl Vincent on board. He’s been following up the original theft. Even knows something about art.”
“Tend to, don’t they, Charlie. His sort. That way inclined, if you catch my drift.”
“Jackie Ferris,” Resnick said. “I’ll put her in the picture. Give her a call.”
He finally got through to her at four thirty in the afternoon, Jackie busy following up several leads that had come her way earlier in the day.
“Good,” she said briskly, when Resnick told her they could go ahead. “That’s grand.” And then, “Your pal Grabianski, my best information, he’s been cozying up to a character named Eddie Snow. Could be using him to get shot of the Dalzeils.”
“And Snow, you think he could be implicated in this forgery business?”
“It’s a strong possibility, yes.”
Resnick told her a little about Carl Vincent, his reasons for wanting to get the DC involved.
“Fine. Why don’t I come up to you this time? We can go over the ground.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why not? You can show me round the castle. Introduce me to Robin Hood.”
Sixteen
Carl Vincent was seventeen days shy of his twenty-ninth birthday; old enough still to be a DC, almost too old if you considered that he was bright, quick, good at what he did. Of course, it didn’t help that Vincent was black. In Leicester, a city with a famously large Asian population where he had served for most of his career, it had been less than convenient that he was quite the wrong shade of black, the kind whose origins trace back to the Caribbean, rather than Bangladesh or Pakistan.
Strangely, one thing that didn’t seem to have stood in the way of Carl Vincent’s promotion was the fact that he was gay. It had not been a factor simply, because, until he had transferred the thirty or so miles further north, nobody inside the Job had known. From his first posting, Vincent had established a routine which kept his private life precisely that. On those rare occasions when he visited a gay club, he was careful to ensure there were no other officers present; the one time he was spotted and later challenged, Vincent passed off his visit as work, an undercover checkup on an informer, and his explanation was accepted. He had never had a relationship with another officer; he abjured cottaging; he was not a member of the Lesbian and Gay Police Association. There was nothing in the way he walked, stood, or spoke that was in any way effeminate or camp.
But almost immediately after he had joined Resnick’s team, something occurred, a murder case they were working on, which necessitated him declaring his sexual preferences and then, more or less at Resnick’s suggestion, coming out to the whole squad.
There was a nasty irony, he thought, behind the fact that the only officer who seemed to have problems accepting his gayness was Mark Divine. An irony compounded when it was Vincent who arrived first on the scene of Divine’s attack and fought off his assailant; Vincent who covered Divine gently with a soiled sheet and held him, albeit briefly, in the cradle of his arms.
For this day’s meeting, Vincent had chosen a loose, lightweight wool suit the color of pale sand and a dark blue shirt shading toward black. He wore no tie. Fashion-conscious, Skelton would have observed: trendy. That way inclined, his sort, if you catch my drift.
Jackie Ferris had opted to travel by train and divided her journey between reading printouts from the Electronic Telegraph about a hundred and sixty-one paintings that had gone missing from the Ministry of Defence collection and the new Stella Duffy. Of the two, the Duffy had quite the best sex.
She had been to see her read once, Stella Duffy, a bookshop somewhere in Covent Garden. All red hair and floating white cotton. When one of the audience had asked her if she was worried about reactions to the lubricious love scenes, her response had been to tell the story of her mother in New Zealand, who after reading Calendar Girl, had informed her that she was going to come back to earth as a lesbian because clearly they had more fun.