It was already 9:30 a.m., Fuller had been waiting since nine for his orders and, feeling tetchy, he straightened his already straight tie and tapped on Resnick’s door.
‘Enter!’ Resnick bellowed.
Resnick’s office was in its usual state of confusion. Every available surface was crammed with used coffee cups, paperwork and ashtrays full of discarded cigarette stubs; even the floor had piles of files stacked in lines. The drawers in the filing cabinet were open because they were crammed too full. Resnick stood in the center of the chaos smoking his tenth cigarette of the day, coughing his lungs up and reading a file at the same time.
Alice began sorting out the mess on his desk. She worked fast, tipping cigarette stubs and ash into the bin and collecting screwed up bits of paper from all over the room. She was there to restore order to Resnick’s disordered life so that, each day, he could see the forest for the trees. Without her, he’d simply drown in files and cigarette ash and piss everyone off even more than he already did. Alice had been with Resnick a long time and she knew the torment he’d been through; she’d been right by his side through every moment of his investigation, she’d seen him in those quiet vulnerable moments late at night and she understood exactly what he had lost when Rawlins set him up and then grassed him to the papers. Above all else, he lost his dignity and standing as an officer — and that was impossible to get back no matter how hard he tried. Most people in the station thought Alice was an angel to cope with Resnick’s mood swings and foul habits on a daily basis, but she loved working for him. He went from role model to embarrassment in the blink of an eye and, although everyone else seemed to have forgotten his spectacular early years in the force, she never would. She would be loyal till the end. And she was the only person he ever said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to.
‘Alice is taking my rubbish down to the incinerator to burn, Fuller,’ Resnick said. ‘I don’t allow cleaners in here as things may go missing, be seen by the wrong people or get into the wrong hands.’ Fuller blushed, wondering if Resnick was implying something.
As Alice cleared a space on the desk for the phone, it rang.
‘What?’ barked Resnick. He listened, growing redder by the minute and then slammed the phone down. ‘Criminal Records,’ he spat. ‘Up in arms cos I’ve “removed files without permission and without filling in the proper forms.”’ Resnick threw a crumpled piece of paper at Fuller. ‘Fill that in and send it back to the fuckin’ arseholes! And get the rest of the lads in here!’
As Fuller left the office to summon the rest of Resnick’s men, Andrews arrived with the coffees. Resnick grabbed one, lit another cigarette and began his daily routine of filling his newly emptied and cleaned ashtray. Within seconds, Fuller was back with Detectives Hawkes and Richmond. As everyone settled, Fuller completed the backdated records request sheet and handed it to Alice; she’d go down there in person and smooth things over... again.
Resnick pulled up his chair, plonked himself down in front of his lads and spread out the contents of a file onto his clean and tidy desk. Next, he opened an envelope from forensics and tipped out a bunch of large color photographs of the dead bodies from the raid, horribly mutilated, their faces burned and contorted. The worst of them showed the charred remains of Harry Rawlins, unrecognizable as a human body, apart from the bit with the watch on it.
‘She didn’t need to have him cremated, did she?’ Resnick quipped as he laid out the photographs on his desk. Leaning back in his chair he noted that Andrews looked shocked. Fuller wore his usual arrogant, unperturbed expression. Fuller was a good officer, but there was something about him that got right up Resnick’s nose; even now he was sitting there as if he had a red-hot poker up his arse. Andrews, on the other hand, who was perched on the end of a desk because he couldn’t find a chair, was an idiot. Hawkes and Richmond he knew of old; good, hard-working coppers but nothing exciting. Since returning to work from suspension, the top brass had not been so willing to entertain his officer selection requests, so he’d had to take the ones he was given.
Resnick eased his chair forward, opened the previous night’s reports and glanced over them. He lit yet another cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out toward Fuller. Tapping the report, he picked up an enlarged photo of Rawlins’s forearm and wrist watch. ‘Says here, Fuller, you think we’re spending too much time on this Rawlins business. That correct? That what you think?’
Fuller bristled and looked to Andrews for support. Resnick was on him like a flash.
‘Oi, Fuller, it’s you I’m talking to, not him!’ He stood up. ‘You think I’m wasting your time do you, Fuller? Well, let me tell you this, you narrow minded little...’ Resnick stopped himself from swearing and leaned his clenched fists on his desk to steady his anger. ‘We’ve got the case of the century, right here, and if you can’t see that then you’re even more stupid than I think you are.’ Fuller rolled his eyes and Resnick flew into a rage. ‘“Here we go again!” is that what you’re thinking? You’re all told within minutes of joining up, aren’t you? “That’s him. That’s the poor sod who was framed!” Castrated more like and who did it to me, eh?’
Fuller didn’t like being the target of Resnick’s anger. ‘One of Harry Rawlins’s mob apparently, sir,’ he said, through tight, angry lips.
‘That’s right. And not one of Harry Rawlins’s mob does so much as fart without the nod from him. It was Rawlins that did me in! And now it’s my turn to get him by the balls and wipe him out.’
Fuller looked Resnick straight in his raging eyes. ‘It’ll be a bit difficult now the man’s dead.’ The silence in the room and the stare between Resnick and Fuller seemed to last forever. In Fuller’s opinion, Resnick was a wreck and a has-been. A bright boy, groomed for promotion, when Fuller was told he was being moved to work under Detective Inspector Resnick, he’d felt shafted. Everything about the man annoyed him: his scuffed, filthy shoes, his stained shirts, the constant smell of BO, his cigarettes and yellow smoke-stained fingers... Fuller had decided he’d try and sniff out anything he could on him. It shouldn’t be difficult: everyone knew the fat man’s history. Mud sticks, Fuller thought to himself.
Resnick rammed his hands deep into his pockets as though restraining himself from thumping this insolent subordinate. When he spoke again he was calm and quiet. ‘I’m not talking about Rawlins himself, I’m talking about his system. His ledgers... which I’m well aware you don’t believe even exist, Fuller.’
Pacing up and down behind his desk, Resnick spoke fast, spitting out his words while simultaneously gulping smoke into his lungs and blowing it out through his mouth and nose.
Resnick slapped file after file of unsolved robberies onto his desk. ‘The A3 Raid, the Euston Bypass Raid, the Blackwall Tunnel Raid.’ His stubby finger prodded each file as it landed. ‘Take a look at the formation on the suspect vehicles, Fuller, each one’s identical, and each time the men got away. We’ve got nothing on any of them, not a single bloody thing.’ Resnick’s tirade was interrupted by a coughing fit, the jowls on his face shaking, a puce color rising upward from his neck. ‘An’ you can bet your sweet life, all of ’em, every single one, was instigated by Harry Rawlins! And do you know why I think that?’ Resnick paused, staring daggers at Fuller, waiting for the arrogant prick to say something smart. Wisely, Fuller chose to say nothing. ‘Cat got your tongue, Fuller?’ Resnick taunted. ‘Let me help you out. I think Harry Rawlins was behind every single one of these unsolved armed robberies, because the MO is exactly the fucking same as the job that blew him sky high! And I also think that all of these robberies will be detailed in his ledgers.’ Fuller’s greedy eyes flicked from the mess of files on the desk, to Resnick’s red, sweaty face. Resnick smiled. ‘That’s right. Dozens of crimes, just waiting to be solved. How would that look on your prissy bloody starched and ironed CV, eh?’