“Why not have a word?” Resnick said. “At the shop.”
“I have.”
“And?”
She pointed at the newspaper. “You can see for yourself how much good that did.”
“What d’you reckon, then?” Resnick grinned. “Lurk in the shrubbery, flash my warrant card at him? Performing wheelies in a confined space?”
“Go on, make a joke out of it.”
“I don’t see what else I can do.”
“You don’t pay for it, that’s why.”
“I don’t read it.”
“You don’t read anything. Aside from the back pages.”
“Better than page three.”
“The Mail doesn’t have page three.”
“Shouldn’t mind missing bits of page one as well, then.”
“God! Something has got into you this morning.”
Resnick reached for her hand. “Part of my new image.”
“Oh, yes?” Allowing herself to be pulled gently towards him. “What’s that then?”
“Ooh, you know. Light-hearted, silver-tongued.”
“Yes?” A smile brightening Elaine’s face. “Well, I don’t want to disappoint you, but you’ve still a way to go. And, no, I am not going to spend the next few minutes dallying on your lap.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s way past time I finished getting ready for work.”
“You look ready to me.”
“I said for work.”
Resnick’s kiss missed her mouth and landed between neck and cheek.
“Do you know how long I spent putting on that makeup?”
“To the second.”
“Then you know I haven’t got time to do it over again.”
Resnick grinned.
“Charlie!” She wriggled to her feet and stood over him, trying hard to look annoyed. “If that’s what you’re interested in, you should have said so an hour ago.”
“I did.”
For a moment Elaine’s expression changed. “Why didn’t I hear you?”
Resnick shook his head and looked away. “I don’t know,” he said.
The news had finished and Neil Diamond was sounding beefily cheerful in its place. Elaine walked across the room and switched off the radio. Resnick bit into cold toast. There were times when this house they had bought could feel strangely barren and still.
“Can you drop me off?” Elaine asked.
“Sure. I’m in court first thing. Shirehall.”
“How long’ve I got?”
Resnick looked at his watch. “Ten minutes.”
“Fine.”
Toast in hand, he turned to watch her go and in the doorway she swung back towards him, a smile slipping back to her face.
“Be careful, Charlie.”
“What?”
But before he could follow the direction of her gaze, the marmalade had slid from the edge of the crust down on to the welcoming width of his tie.
A little under six months ago, Elaine had taken a new job with an advertising agency which had opened new offices in one of the Victorian factories in the old Lace Market. Open-plan premises, green plants, partners with turned-back cuffs who encouraged everyone to call them by their first names. “It’s a good opportunity, Charlie. They’ve got big plans for expansion and they’re really keen to promote from inside.”
Her desk was close to one of the beautifully proportioned arched windows and, aside from her keyboard and printer and VDU, held a pair of trailing ivies, a scarlet geranium, a photograph of herself and Resnick at the party celebrating his promotion to detective sergeant, a small furry animal she had had since a baby, a pocket calculator, and a large glass ashtray-not that she smoked herself-but her boss did and since quite often he stopped by her desk rather than calling her over to his, it was only sensible to be accommodating.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you dress,” her boss, the sales director, had said, tapping ash from the end of his cigarette, “but if we saw our way to giving you an advance on your first bonus, d’you think you might see your way clear to spending it on something a little more, well, something with a little more flair?”
She hadn’t said anything about the conversation to Resnick. She’d taken the money, spent it, lied about the cost, cutting it by more than fifty percent, and still had to live with the look of incredulity on his face. “What? You spent how much? On that? To sit around at work in?”
Clothes, Resnick thought, were what you put on so as not to appear naked. They were what you covered with paper suits before stepping into a scene of crime.
For that much money they could have hired someone to repaint the outside of the house, replaced the carpet on the stairs, booked that holiday in New Orleans instead of spending a week in a self-catering cottage in Northumbria or risking coming face to face with half the rest of the local force on Majorca.
“This do you?” Resnick asked, drawing into the curb on the corner of High Pavement and Stoney Street.
“Fine.” She leaned across the front seat to kiss him deftly on the cheek. “You’re not going into the witness box in that?” she asked, looking askance at the stain on his tie.
“Don’t worry. I’ll hold my notebook in front of it.”
Elaine kissed him again and slid from the car. Resnick watched her in the wing mirror, a crisp-looking woman with good legs and brown hair, small leather bag swinging from one shoulder. When it was clear she wasn’t going to turn and wave, Resnick pulled away from the curb and continued along High Pavement towards the Shirehall.
An hour and a half later he was giving evidence against a nineteen-year-old who had walked into a second-hand jeweler’s on Castle Gate and tried to negotiate a price for a dozen items which were on the list regularly circulated by the police. The jeweler requested time to give an accurate estimate, asked the youth to come back within the hour. When he did so, Resnick and DC Rains had been waiting in the back.
“Good stuff,” Rains had said, examining a diamond clip through the jeweler’s glass. “Shame to let it go to waste. Owner’s likely claimed on the insurance already.”
Resnick chose not to hear.
“And at any time, sergeant, when you and Detective Constable Rains were taking my client into custody, were you aware of the detective constable threatening my client?”
“No, I was not.”
“You neither saw nor heard the officer propositioning my client at all?”
“I’m not sure what you …?”
“You were not in the police vehicle when Detective Constable Rains said to my client, There’s half a dozen more down to you and you’re going to cough for them or I’ll see how your balls fit inside a pair of garden shears’?”
“Those exact words?”
“Did you hear your colleague utter those words, sergeant?”
“No, I did not.”
“Not anything like them?”
“Not to the best of my knowledge.”
“But Detective Constable Rains and yourself did question my client about other alleged offenses?”
“In the course of our interview with him, yes.”
“This interview, sergeant, would this have been held in the police station?”
“Yes.”
“Not in the car?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The police car taking my client back to the station, the interview did not take place there?”
“I told you, the …”
“What was said to my client in the car?”
“I’m not sure, I mean, not exactly. But very little of consequence. As far as I remember.”
“Perhaps you would like time to refer to your notes?”
“Thank you, but there’s nothing in my notebook about any such conversation.”
“It was silent, then, the journey?”
“For the most part, as I recall, yes.”
“You were driving?”
“Yes.”
“And Detective Constable Rains?”
“Was in the passenger seat alongside me.”
“Leaning over that seat to talk to my client, who was handcuffed in the back?”
“He may have, I don’t …”
“You don’t recall, yes, sergeant, we’re getting used to your convenient lapses of memory …”
“I …”
“I put it to you, however, that you must have been aware that your colleague was leaning over towards the rear seat in which my client was traveling, both his wrists handcuffed behind his back, leaning over and telling him in no uncertain terms that if he refused to own up to at least six other cases of burglary, he would personally emasculate him?”