Darkness, Darkness (3 page)

Fucked off and good riddance, her husband is supposed to have said in the local pub. But he’d been well into his cups by then, not to be taken too seriously.

The kids, three of them, all under eleven, had stayed with their dad for a while, then gone to live with their nan on the North Sea coast near Mablethorpe: ice creams when they behaved, donkeys on the beach, fresh air; on a good day you could even glimpse the sea itself.

A few scattered sightings, none verified, aside, there was no clear indication of where Jenny might have gone, where she might be.

Until now? Resnick wondered. Until now?

He would keep his own counsel, keep shtum: wait and see.

The work at the autopsy was painstaking and slow: no matter. After all those years beneath the ground, no need to hurry now at all. From the size and shape of the hips and pelvic girdle, they assessed the gender; from the thigh bone, the height; from the shape and size of the skull, the ethnicity; from the incomplete fusing of the collarbone and the absence of any spikes around the edges of the vertebrae, they assessed the age.

According to the forensic pathologist’s report, the skeleton was that of a female Caucasian between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight, approximately 1.65 metres or five feet, five inches tall: it had been beneath the ground in the region of twenty-five to thirty years.

There were signs of two separate fractures of the radius, the lower arm, the first of which had most likely taken place in childhood. Also, and more tellingly, there was evidence of considerable damage to the back of the skull, the pathologist confirming this to have occurred when the woman was still alive, rather than post-mortem, live bone breaking in a different way from dry.

A blunt-force injury, the pathologist concluded, most likely the result of being struck by a heavy object at least once, if not several times, and, in all probability, the cause of death.

Even so, supposition and circumstantial evidence aside, no clear identification was yet possible. Forensic examination of the teeth showed evidence of root canal treatment and a porcelain crown, but Jenny’s dental records were hard to come by. Of the three dental surgeries in the immediate and surrounding area, one had closed down fifteen years before, the building now privately occupied, with no indication of whether any records had been placed in storage or destroyed; one had moved across the county to the other side of Retford, their records, since the awkward process of transferral, only complete as far back as 1998; the third surgery was still operational, though now part of a wider consortium that welcomed private patients and promised, in a glossy brochure, teeth whitening, invisible braces and porcelain veneers, all the things that modern cosmetic enhancements can do to provide a perfect smile.

‘Oh, no,’ the receptionist said when asked. ‘Thirty years ago? No, I shouldn’t think so. All our records are computerised.’ Anything that much older than herself, her expression suggested, was difficult to imagine.

One of the partners, Chinese, an impeccable accent, public school and then the University of Buckingham, was more accommodating. Everything relating to the previous practice had been boxed up and was in storage in the basement. Of course, there could be no guarantees . . .

After several hours of searching they found a faded file, smelling of mildew and damp to the touch: a set of dental records barely legible, amongst them an X-ray showing several fillings and some root canal treatment on the first molar in the right half of the lower dental arch.

A match.

The name and address at the top of the file in neat but badly faded ink: Jennifer Elizabeth Hardwick, 7 Station Row, Bledwell Vale, Notts.

Jennifer Hardwick.

Jenny.

Lost and then found.

It gave Resnick not one shred of pleasure to learn that his educated guess as to the identity of the body had been correct. Far rather Jenny Hardwick had followed the bright lights as some had suggested, fetched up in another town, another city – another country, even – with a new identity, new family perhaps, a new life.

Hauling his mind back to the task in hand, he double-checked the list of witnesses against the statements already processed; made a note of those he thought might usefully be seen again. The couple who’d been holidaying in Florida had provided what at first had seemed like positive identification, a brace of photographs taken from across the street on their mobile phone showing one of the accused kicking the student in the head as he lay against the kerb; the range and focus, however, were such that any competent barrister appearing for the defence would challenge them successfully in court. Meanwhile, the family were discussing with medical staff at the hospital the prospect of their son’s life-support system being switched off.

Where Jenny Hardwick was concerned, the coroner would have been informed and arrangements made for an inquest to be opened and then adjourned while an inquiry would be set up to investigate the circumstances of her death; that responsibility, Resnick imagined, passing either to the cold case unit based out near Hucknall, or the now regionalised Serious Organised Crime Unit, comprising officers from four counties – Notts, Leicestershire, Derby and Northants – its local headquarters a brisk walk away through Forest Fields and down into Hyson Green.

Either way, it was no concern of his.

ANXIOUS NOT TO
wake him, Jenny started to squeeze slowly out from beneath the weight of her husband’s arm. She was almost free when, with a grunt, he turned his face towards her, mouth open, the stink of beer stale on his breath. Lifting his arm quickly then, and sliding away to the edge of the bed, she pulled the T-shirt she wore as a nightgown briskly up over her head.

‘Where you offta?’ he asked blurrily.

‘Nowhere. Go back to sleep.’

‘Whatever time is it?’

‘Five, somewhere round there. A quarter past.’

‘Come on back, then. Come back to bed.’

‘I can’t. You sleep.’

Falling back with a grunt, he closed his eyes.

The boards were cold beneath her feet.

She pulled on jeans, sweaters, one over another, a pair of thick socks. She could hear footsteps passing by outside, muffled voices, the first of the men setting off for the pithead, the day’s picket.

By the time she’d found her boots and pulled them on, her husband was beginning to snore. In the back room, all three kids were still fast off, the youngest, Brian, making small sucking sounds around his thumb; Mary, the girl, clinging to a ratty old bear by its one remaining ear. Colin lay on his back, mouth open, snoring lightly, a perfect version of his father in miniature.

Jenny went quickly down the stairs and out of the house.

Frost glistens on the tops of the cars parked further along the street. Her soft grey breath swirls on the air. Ahead of her a door opens and a man steps out, his face illuminated for a moment by the light from the hall – no one she knows. A dozen or more of the Yorkshire pickets have been billeted in the village for a week now, others in the villages around; some are camping out, it’s said, in the fields close by. Since the police had begun blocking the roads and turning back vehicles heading south, the strategy had changed; stopping the movement of coke and coal, forcing the Notts pits to close, still a priority. Over fifty per cent of Nottinghamshire miners, closer to sixty, are as yet refusing to support the strike, continuing going into work. Despite any arguments Jenny has so far been able to muster, her husband still one of them.

There are more bodies now, falling into step around her, men mostly but a good scattering of women; faces amongst them she recognises, local, faces she knows from evenings in the pub, the Welfare, the gates of the school.

A woman with a scarf wound close around her head veers in her direction, touches her arm.

‘Jenny, that you?’

‘Either that or me ghost.’

‘Not seen you out before.’

‘No, well, thought maybe it was time.’

‘Your Barry . . .?’

‘Don’t ask.’

It is the best part of a mile from the village, the road winding gradually uphill; forty or fifty of them by now, others joining, stragglers; a few in cars, but mostly on foot. Up ahead, the pithead lights show clearly, and beneath them, in silhouette, a line of uniformed police stretched across the entrance, shoulder to shoulder, waiting.

Voices around Jenny rise louder the closer they come and she can feel the anger growing around her. Men calling out, laughing some of them, joking, laughing but angry all the same. One or two more she recognises clearly now; Peter Waites from the strike committee raising both arms aloft, stepping out in front, leading.

‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, Out, Out!’

‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, Out, Out!’

They are almost up to the police line now and she can read the expressions in the officers’ faces: wary, some of them, the younger ones, afraid almost – she hadn’t realised they’d be so young, still wet behind the ears – others cocky, chock full of themselves, eager for it all to kick off; but most of them blank, staring out over the heads of whoever is confronting them as if they aren’t there.

A shout goes up from the back, followed swiftly by another: the first of the buses carrying the men reporting for work is coming. As if at a signal, the line of police begins to move forward, pushing the crowd back, and for the first time Jenny realises just how many there are, how many reinforcements waiting behind.

‘Hang on!’ a woman standing close beside her says. ‘Hang on to my arm!’

The front line of police divides, forcing them back to either side, making a passageway for the buses to pass through. People around her are pushing back, thrusting her forward, an elbow sharp in her side, and from somewhere the first stone.

To a great cheer, a policeman’s helmet goes flying.

‘Scab! Scab! Scab!’

‘Out! Out! Out!’

As the first bus draws near, fists pummelling against the windows and the shouting rising to a crescendo, spittle running down the glass, the faces of the men inside remain immobile, staring forward, her husband’s not one of them, not one she can see.

‘Judas! Fucking Judas!’

Three busloads altogether and nothing they can do to stop them.

‘Bastards! Blackleg fucking bastards!’

As soon as they pass through, the gates are closed behind them: the tension seeping slowly away, like water through muslin. A last stone, thrown in the direction of the retreating phalanx of policemen, falls nowhere near. All the energy draining from her body, Jenny turns aside. What have they achieved? They’ve achieved nothing.

She knows there is neither use nor ornament to that way of thinking.

‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie . . .’

Back home, her children will be waking.

CATHERINE NJOROGE WAS
Kenyan by birth, her family having migrated to England when she was eleven, uprooted by the violent disturbances that followed the re-election of Daniel arap Moi to the presidency. After excelling at school, where she’d acquired the most English of accents – now given some character after time spent living in the East Midlands – she had gained a 2.1 in politics and history at the University of Nottingham, missing a first by 0.3 of a percentage point. Uncertain what to do next, which path to follow, Catherine had wavered for several months before joining the graduate recruitment programme of the Nottinghamshire Police. Her parents had been less than happy.

Her mother was a doctor, her father a lawyer, and they had hoped their daughter would be looking for job opportunities in the professions. The civil service, perhaps, or politics itself. Diplomacy. There was even the possibility of following her father into the law. Something worthy of her talents and reflecting the family’s place in the community. Worthy in a wider sense, also. Her father, especially, had always drilled into her an awareness of her responsibility towards others, those less fortunate, less privileged than herself.

‘It’s your fault, Daddy,’ she had said, smiling through his disapproval. ‘You shouldn’t have brought me up with such a strong sense of duty.’

Now here she was, at thirty-three, a detective inspector in CID, promoted to that rank eighteen months previously. Just recently she’d been transferred to the East Midlands Serious Organised Crime Unit, physically no more than three-quarters of a mile from where she’d previously been stationed, but a move away from officers with whom she’d got used to working to a more disparate group drawn from four counties, a different environment, a new chain of command.

Her immediate superior was a Leicestershire man, Martin Picard, a detective chief inspector no more than two years older than Catherine herself and sincerely dedicated to his own advancement. In command of the unit, and the subject of Picard’s not infrequent sniping, was Andrew Hastings, a detective superintendent with a total of some twenty years’ experience, fifteen of those in Nottingham.

Running a relatively high-powered, prestigious unit was both a testimony to the regard in which Hastings was generally held, and a tribute to the years he’d spent in careful service. Never the most dashing of senior officers, nor the most publicity conscious, Hastings was viewed, above all, as well organised and reliable, if, to all intents and purposes, a little dull. Exactly what was needed to steer what some still saw as an experiment, foisted on all four forces by the need to economise as much as by the sharing of expertise.

Two days after the identification of Jenny Hardwick’s body, Hastings summoned Martin Picard to his office.

‘Major inquiry, this, Martin, media interest by the shedload already – lass’s body being found way it was, down there thirty year near as damn it. Just up your street, I’d’ve thought.’

‘Why us?’ Picard asked, cautious. ‘More the cold case unit, surely?’

‘Maybe. But with things kicking off around the strike again the way they are – all this talk about the IPCC taking another look at how it were policed – them upstairs are getting their bollocks in a right shemozzle. Handled by us, makes it look like we’re taking it more serious. Less likely to drop bloody ball.’