“To think your people’d treat him with some understanding. And go easy when it comes to laying charges. Think about the whole picture.”
“The whole picture,” Wiggins smirked. “We’re good at that. Noted.”
“Don’t keep him locked up longer than you have to. Whatever else, ask for police bail, don’t let him fetch up inside on remand.”
“Not down to me, you know that.”
“You could help.”
Wiggins stubbed out his cigarette and stopped himself halfway through tapping out another. “Filthy bloody habit.” Thinking better of it, he lit up anyway. “All right, Charlie. No promises, but …” He got to his feet, held out his hand. “You have another word with him before you go. Make sure he’s going to play it right. Penitent and contrite. You’ve already fixed a decent brief for him, I dare say.”
After arriving at Derby police station, Resnick had put in a call to Suzanne Olds. The solicitor was waiting for him in the corridor near the custody area and the police cells. Leather briefcase, tailored suit, legs long enough to turn heads.
“You’ve spoken to him?” Resnick asked.
“It’s not easy getting him to say much at all. Except he doesn’t care what happens to him, that’s clear.”
“About this?”
“Anything.”
“You’ll change his mind.”
“I’ll try.”
Resnick shook her hand. “I owe you for this.”
“I’ll make sure you pay.”
Seven
Lynn Kellogg was waiting for him in the corridor. Since passing her sergeant’s board, she had taken to wearing more severe colors, this morning an austere mid-calf skirt and matching jacket, flat black shoes, and a blouse like sour milk. She had let her hair grow out a little, but it was still short. A little makeup around the eyes, a touch on the lips.
“My transfer, sir …”
“I thought you might have been waiting for news about Mark. Or maybe you didn’t know.”
“Yes, Graham said.”
“And you didn’t care.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No? Probably not.” He started walking and Lynn followed, hurrying into step beside him.
“I know there wasn’t any love lost between us, but that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about what’s happened.”
Just not high on your list of priorities, Resnick thought. He was surprised to be accusing her of anything less than compassion.
“He is all right?” Lynn said.
“No. No, he’s not.”
They were almost at the stairs, a dogleg that would take them into a second corridor, the entrance to the CID room immediately ahead.
“It is three weeks now,” Lynn said, “since my transfer was supposed to have gone through.”
“These things take time.”
“I know, only …”
“You can’t wait to be away.”
She found a thread, loose on the sleeve of her jacket, and snapped it free. A uniformed officer came along the lower corridor, taking his time of it, and they stood back to let him pass.
“Now I’ve made up my mind, I think it will be easier, that’s all.” She was not looking at him as she spoke, looking everywhere but at his face. “For both of us perhaps.”
The daughter he had never had, the lover she would never be. It hung between them, largely unspoken, unresolved, so tangible that if either of them had reached out they could have touched it, grasped it with both hands.
“The Family Support Unit,” Resnick said. “I’ll give them a call. See what’s holding things up.”
“Thanks.” Lynn standing there, arms folded tight across her chest.
There was a message from his friend Norman Mann of the Drugs Squad to contact him whenever he got his head above water, nothing urgent; another from Reg Cossall-a drink some time, Charlie, bend your ear. Set this bastard job to rights. Someone, Naylor’s handwriting it looked like, had fielded a call from Sister Teresa, the time and a number and a promise to call again. Two routine faxes requesting information about young people gone missing: a fifteen-year-old girl from Rotterdam, last seen on the Dover ferry, a thirteen-year-old boy from Aberdeen.
The phone rang and, picking up, he identified himself. Miriam Johnson’s clear but genteel voice was easy to recognize.
“It was your associate, Inspector, that I was hoping to speak with. I remembered something, you see, regarding the paintings.”
“DC Vincent’s not here at the moment,” Resnick said. “Will I do?”
He could nip across to Canning Circus, pick up a double espresso, and take his time strolling down through the Park, breathe some air, stretch his legs.
She had rich tea biscuits waiting for him, symmetrically arranged on a floral plate, Earl Grey tea freshly brewed. “Milk or lemon, Inspector?”
“As it comes will be fine.”
They were sitting in the conservatory at the back of the house, looking out over a hundred feet of tiered garden, mostly lawn. Near the bottom was a large magnolia tree, which had long lost its blossom. Inside the conservatory, shades of geranium pressed up against the glass, herbs, inch-high cuttings in small brown pots.
“I can’t be certain this is relevant, of course, but I thought, well, if it were and I neglected to bring it to your attention …”
Resnick looked at her encouragingly and decided to dunk his biscuit after all.
“It would be some time ago now, more than a year. Yes. I was trying to get it clear in my mind before. You’re busy, of course, all of you, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste your time, but the nearest I could pin it down would be the early summer of last year.” Her gaze shifted off along the garden. “The magnolia was still in flower. He made specific mention of it, which is why I can remember.”
She smiled and lifted her teacup from its saucer; yes, the little finger crooked away.
Resnick waited. He could smell basil, over the scent of the Earl Grey. “Who, Miss Johnson?” he finally asked. “Who mentioned the magnolia?”
“I didn’t say?”
Resnick shook his head.
“I could have sworn …” She frowned as she issued herself an internal reprimand. “Vernon Thackray, that was his name. At least, that was what he claimed.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“Mr. Resnick, if he had told me it was Wednesday, I should have looked at both my calendar and the daily newspaper before believing it to be so. Though it was …” Her face brightened and her voice rose higher. “Isn’t that interesting, it was a Wednesday. Maurice was here, tending the garden. I should never have let this Thackray into the house otherwise, not if I had been on my own.”
“You didn’t trust him? He frightened you?”
“My fears, Mr. Resnick, would not have been for myself, rather for the family silver. As it were. A metaphor. All the good things, unfortunately, had to be sold long ago.”
“Then it was the paintings, that’s why he was here?”
“Absolutely. From somewhere, obviously, he had heard about the Dalzeils and presented himself on my doorstep as a serious collector, imagining that I would be this dotty old maid, bereft of her senses thanks to Alzheimer’s disease and happy to let him take them off me for a pittance.”
Resnick grinned. “You gave him short shrift.”
“I told him I appreciated his interest but that the paintings were not for sale. That was unconditional.”
“How did he react to that?”
“Oh, by telling me how much safer they would be in someone else’s hands, how fortunate I had been not to have had them stolen. At my advanced years-he actually said that, Inspector, that phrase, my advanced years indeed-wouldn’t I be more sensible, rather than risk losing them altogether and ending up with nothing, to take what I could get for them and enjoy the proceeds while I was still able.”
Indignantly, she rattled her cup and saucer down onto the table.
“When he was saying this, did you get the impression he was threatening you?”
“Oh, no. Never personally, no.”
“But the paintings-was he implying, sell them to me or I’ll get my hands on them some other way?”