Cold Light (15 page)

“Mr. Hidden, this is Detective Inspector Resnick.”

A large man coming towards him, holding out his hand; the grip was firm and quick and almost before it was broken, the inspector and his sergeant pulling out their chairs, sitting down. Waiting for him to follow suit.

“Should be some tea along, any minute now,” said Resnick, glancing back towards the door.

“Likely need something,” Millington added pleasantly. “Long drive like that.”

“If you want to smoke …” Resnick said.

“Have to be your own, though,” Millington smiled. “Getting my resolutions in ahead of the New Year.”

“It's all right, thanks,” Robin Hidden said. “I don't.”

“Wise,” said Millington. “Sensible.”

There was a knock on the door and a uniformed officer came in with three cups on a tray, spoons, several sachets of sugar.

“You heard about Nancy how?” Resnick asked.

“Television news, this pub in Lancaster …”

“You'd been walking?”

“Yes, I …”

“Alone, or …?”

Robin shook his head. “With a friend.”

“Female or …”

“Male. Mark. He's …”

“Oh, that doesn't matter,” said Millington, reaching for his tea. “Not now.”

Robin tried to tear a corner of the sugar with his fingers and failed; when he used his teeth, half of the contents spilled down his arms and across the table.

“Not to worry,” Millington said. “Good for the mice.”

Robin had no idea if he were joking or not.

“Nancy,” Resnick said, “how was it you met her?” As if it were something he already knew but just couldn't call to mind.

“The marathon …”

“Local?”

“The Robin Hood one, yes.”

“You were both running?”

“N-no. Just me. Nancy was watching. Lenton Road, where it goes through the Park. I got a cramp. Really bad. I had to stop and, well, lie down, massage my leg till it went off. N-Nancy was there, with her friend, where I dropped out.”

“You got to talking?”

“They asked me if I was okay, if I n-needed a hand.”

“And did you?”

“No, but she said, Nancy's friend said …”

“Is that Dana?”

“Y-yes. She said if ever I wanted someone to rub in Ralgex, she knew someone who'd be happy to oblige.”

“Meaning herself?”

“M-meaning Nancy.”

“Took her up on it, then?” Millington smiled. He was doing a lot of smiling today; glad to be back at work, away from Taunton, back in tandem with the boss, enjoying it. “Kind of offer doesn't come every day. Not when you're already down to your shorts, I dare say.”

“I didn't take it seriously. Thought they were just joking, having me on, but before I got back in the race, Nancy said, ‘Here,' and gave me her phone number. Corner of her Sunday paper.”

“Stick it down your athletic support?” Millington wondered. “Keep warm.”

Robin shook his head. “In my shoe.”

Millington smiled again and looked across at Resnick, who was jotting odd words on a sheet of paper.

“Sh-shouldn't we …?” Robin said a moment later, glancing over his shoulder at the tape machine.

“Oh, no,” Millington said. “I don't think so. Just background this. An informal chat.”

Why, then, Robin Hidden wondered, didn't it feel like that?

Dana had been thinking about Robin Hidden that afternoon, walking in Wollaton Park, making a series of slow circuits around the lake, scarf knotted high at her neck. His body aside—and it had seemed a good body, right from their first sight of him there had been no doubt about that—she could never see the attraction. He wasn't especially interesting, no more than run-of-the-mill, a medium-grade job with the Inland Revenue, something at Nottingham 2. Evenings out with Robin seemed to consist of a visit to the Showcase to watch
Howard's End
, then rhogon josh and a peshwari nan at the curry place on Derby Road. Better still, letting Nancy cook pork and mushroom stroganoff and eating it in front of the telly, Robin blinking behind his glasses at a program about the disappearing llamas of Peru. The only time she had seen him really come to life had been when he was planning their weekend walking in the Malvern Hills, designed to get Nancy in shape, get her prepared for the mountains to come.

Yet Nancy had seemed happy with him, content anyway, more than with the others. Eric, who, when he wasn't whisking her round motor accessory shops on a Sunday to buy bits and pieces for his car, used to drag her off to the back rooms of pubs to listen to bands with names like Megabite Disaster. Or that weirdo Guillery, who wore combat boots and woollies his mum had knitted him and persuaded Nancy to go to horror movies, where they sat in the front row and ate popcorn. Once, according to Nancy, after they'd gone to bed together—a strange experience in itself, apparently, though she wouldn't go into detail—Guillery had insisted on reading her his favorite bits from something called “Slugs” while he stroked her inner thigh with his big toe.

All of them, though, were preferable to that smartarse McAllister they'd had the misfortune to meet when she and Nancy had both been under the influence of too much sun and Campari. She'd even fancied him herself, God help her! A Paul Smith T-shirt and a subscription to
GQ
—would have been a yuppie if he'd known what it meant. A brain the size of a mangetout out of season and, though she'd never actually asked Nancy, most likely a dick to match.

A pair of Canada geese rose up from the far side of the lake, completed a lazy circle above the trees, and skidded back on to the icy water near where she stood. Hadn't she read somewhere that they'd stopped migrating and there were council workmen in some London park going out at dawn to shoot them? She couldn't recall if that were true or why it might be.

Nor why it was that Nancy, who was bright and certainly good-looking, anything but lacking in confidence, had so much trouble finding a man who was any kind of a match? By the time you got to her own age, you could start to say they had all been snapped up or they were gay, but Nancy, still in her twenties, seemed, nevertheless, to go from one near-disaster to another.

Maybe that was what had made Robin Hidden so appealing: the oddest thing about him was probably that he laced his hiking boots up the wrong way. Was that what Nancy had been doing? Cutting her losses and thinking of settling down? Babies and Wainwright's guide to the White Peak with Mr. Dependable?

“Serious, then, Robin, is it? Between the two of you, you know?”

“I—I'm not sure I do.”

“Not just fooling around.”

“No.”

“True love, then?”

Robin Hidden blushed. There was half an inch of tea, cold, at the bottom of his cup and he drank it down. “I love her, yes.”

“And does she love you?” Resnick asked.

“I don't know. I think so. But I don't know. I think she doesn't know herself.”

“You'd say you were close, though?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Close enough to spend holidays together, for instance?”

“Yes, I think so. C-certainly, yes. We went …”

“Not Christmas Day, though?”

“Sorry?”

“You hadn't planned to spend it together, Christmas Day?”

“No, I was going to … usually, I went to my parents', they live in Glossop, and Nancy, she wanted to keep D-Dana company. D-didn't want her to be on her own.”

“You went on from Glossop up to the Lakes, then?” Millington asked. “Boxing Day?”

“Early. Yes.”

“And you drove up to your parents' when? Christmas Eve?”

“No.”

“Not Christmas Eve?”

Robin Hidden swallowed air. “C-Christmas D-Day.”

“So you were here on Christmas Eve?” Resnick asked, leaning forward a little, not too much. “In the city?”

“Yes.”

“Strange, isn't it,” Millington said, almost offhandedly, “you didn't see one another, you and Nancy, Christmas Eve? Specially since you weren't going to be together Christmas Day. Close like you were.”

Sweat trickled into Robin's eyes and he wiped it away. “I asked her,” he said.

“To see you Christmas Eve?”

“She said no.”

“Why was that?”

Robin wiped the palms of his hands along his trouser legs.

“Why did she say no, Robin?” Resnick asked again.

“We'd h-had this, well, not row exactly, discussion, I suppose you'd say, a couple of days before. She'd said, Nancy had said, let's go out to dinner, somewhere nice, special, my treat. It wasn't easy, getting a booking, you know what it's like, Christmas week, but we did, that place in Hockley, fish and vegetarian, it's called … it's called … stupid, I can't remember …”

“It doesn't matter,” Resnick said quietly, “what it's called.”

“I suppose I was excited,” Robin said, “you know, about us. I thought she'd made up her mind. Because she hadn't seemed certain, one time to the next, like I said before, what she felt, but I was sure, since she'd made such a thing out of going there, she was going to say she felt the same as me. I w-was p-p-positive. I said let's go out again, Christmas Eve, r-really celebrate. She said she was sorry but she realized she wasn't being f-fair to me, leading me on; she didn't want to see me again, ever.”

Robin Hidden lowered his face into his hands and behind them he might have been crying. Reaching out, Resnick gave his arm a squeeze. Millington winked across at Resnick and got to his feet, signaling he was going to organize more tea.

Nineteen

Robin Hidden's car was parked close against the side wall, steeply angled across from the green metal post which had the security camera bolted near the top. He had bought it nine months before, the deposit borrowed from his parents when his father's redundancy money had finally come through. The remainder he was paying off over three years at a reasonable interest.

“A bit on the large size, isn't it, son,” his dad had asked, “should have thought one of them compact jobs, two doors, Fiesta or a Nova, more the kind of thing for you. More economical, too.”

But Robin had fancied something comfortable for cruising along the motorway, weekends; throw your walking gear in the back and you were away. Friday nights, once the traffic had fallen off, setting out for Brecon Beacons, Dartmoor, Striding Edge. Travel back on Sunday with a minimum of stress. If a friend or two from the office fancied coming along, which occasionally they did, no problem, plenty of room.

After a little shopping around, he'd tracked this one down to a garage on Mapperley Top, one owner only, sales rep it was true, but one advantage of all that high mileage was it kept the price down within reason. “No,” he had told his father, just this past couple of days, “good investment, that. No doubt about it.”

Resnick and Millington saw it first on the monitor, black and white, picture vibrating a touch as the camera shivered in the wind. From just outside the rear door of the station, the vantage point of the top step, they could see the way the dirt of its recent journey had risen in waves above the car's wheels, had been smeared by inefficient wipers across the windscreen in faint curves. The aerial, partly withdrawn, was bent over near the tip. A good car, though. Reliable. Robin Hidden's Vauxhall Cavalier, J registration, midnight blue.

They had left him alone in the interview room, door wide open. Just a few minutes, sir, if you wouldn't mind hanging on. The tea was strong and this time there were biscuits, digestives, and a chipped lemon cream. He could walk out and down the stairs and be in the street in moments. There was nothing they could do to stop him. Surely. Here of his own volition. Anyone with information …

Footsteps approached along the corridor and, automatically, he sat straighter in his chair, brushed biscuit crumbs from his thighs. The steps carried on past.

“It's over then, is it?” his friend Mark had asked. “You and Nancy?”

Oh, yes. It was over.

“So what are you telling me, Charlie? You've got a suspect or not?”

“Early days, sir.”

Skelton frowned. “Try telling that to the girl's father.”

“Better than giving him false hope.”

Skelton sighed, turned towards the window, checked his watch. The car that was to drive him to the Central Station and the afternoon press conference would appear at any minute, up the hill from the city.

“You're saying about the Cavalier …?”

“It could be the one.”

“Could?”

“No way I can be sure. But the shape, the color …”

“The registration?”

Resnick shook his head.

“Jesus, Charlie!” The superintendent moved round from behind his desk, shook a clean handkerchief from his pocket, cleared his nose, glanced quickly at the contents of the handkerchief before slipping it back.

“How about—a friend of the missing woman, providing useful background information?”

“Say that and it's like breathing murder suspect down the back of their necks. They'll have his picture on the front pages by tomorrow's first editions.”

Skelton sighed again. “You're right. Better to say nothing. Let them think we're bumbling around, slow and steady, chasing our tails. Till we've got something more.”

Resnick nodded, headed for the door.

“Gut feeling, Charlie?”

“Ditching him the way she did, she hurt him more than he's letting show.”

“Enough to want to cause her harm?”

“Sometimes,” Resnick said, “it's the only way people think they've got of making the pain stop.”

“I don't want to say it,” Mark had said. They were out on a ledge overhanging a valley swathed in mist. Mars bars and a thermos of coffee laced with scotch. Careful not to stop for too long and let the muscles seize up.