Darkness, Darkness (33 page)

‘Don’t be so bloody daft!’

‘Claiming you put them under pressure . . .’

‘Pressure? What kind of pressure?’

‘Pressure to give sexual favours. Husband driving a car when uninsured. Taking paid work while claiming benefit. Breaking bail conditions. Be nice to me and I’ll make sure it all goes away.’

‘This is fucking ridiculous. Pie in the fucking sky!’

‘You might’ve tried that one on Jenny, I suppose. When you wanted her to fall into line, do whatever you were asking. Danny Ireland, for instance, reported for breaking the conditions of his bail.’

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid!’

‘What happened, Keith? Didn’t she care what happened to Danny? Not enough to get down on her knees? A quick hand job? Or was the thought of it just too disgusting? Her sister’s intended.’

All the colour had drained from Haines’ cheeks. He closed his eyes; when he opened them again, Resnick was still sitting there, waiting.

‘At first she just laughed,’ Haines said, speaking slowly, not looking at Resnick, addressing a spot on the floor. ‘Laughed in my face. And then, when I tried to . . . to get her to change her mind, she flew at me, scratching and slapping, and I pushed her – that’s all it was – I pushed her back, against this plastic, this plastic across the doorway, and she went right through and hit her head when she fell . . . hit her head on these slabs, paving slabs, they were there, waiting . . . right . . . right on the edge of one. Didn’t even cry out, just lay there, and I panicked, I don’t mind saying . . . got out of there as fast as I could . . .’

His eyes fixed on Resnick now, imploring. ‘I went back. It must have been, I don’t know, an hour later.’

‘For the money.’

‘To see how she was. I thought maybe . . .’

‘You went back for the money.’

Haines’ mouth was dry, the words sticking in his throat. ‘When I got back no doubt but she was dead. She hadn’t moved, not one inch. I think she must have been already dead when I left her. I don’t know, but that’s what . . . that’s what I like to think now.’

He wiped a hand across his open mouth; took a swig of ale and swilled it round, spat it back into the glass.

‘There was this sort of trench by where she lay. Whoever’d been working there had filled it in with hard core. Covered it with some sort of insulation.’ Desperately, he sucked in air. ‘I dug it all back out and . . .’

It was all he could say. A convulsion shook him and he clenched his arms tight across his chest. Shuddered and gripped the sides of the chair.

Resnick started to reach out towards him, then stopped. Sat there pitying him; not pitying him at all.

‘What . . .?’ Haines said. ‘What happens now?’

‘Everything you’ve told me,’ Resnick said, ‘it wasn’t under caution. It’d be inadmissible in court. I could get you to make a note of what you’ve said, but even signed and dated, just the two of us here, not take much for some clever barrister to have it thrown out, no problem. So what happens, what happens next, it’s up to you. You can drive back with me now and make a statement at the station, that might be best. Proceed from there.’

Haines didn’t answer, not immediately, leaving Resnick wondering if he’d taken in all that had been said.

‘I think,’ Haines said eventually, ‘yes, come along with you, that’s what I’ll do. Better the devil you know, eh?’

‘Fine by me.’

Haines got less than steadily to his feet.

‘I’d best go to the jakes first . . .’ He laughed. ‘Wonder I didn’t shit myself already. Then grab a coat.’

‘Keith . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll not try anything daft?’

‘Like do a runner, you mean? How far d’you reckon I’d get, my condition?’ He grinned. ‘Come and stand outside the door if you’d like.’

Resnick shook his head. ‘Don’t be too long about it.’

The shotgun was in the first of two sheds near the garden end: single barrel, 12 gauge, kept there in wait for any stray fox or weasel, anything that succeeded in burrowing beneath the wire. One of the dogs had followed him out and he nudged it away with his knee before closing the door. The box of cartridges was on the shelf above.

He took a breath.

Whatever happened, Jill would look after the dogs.

He was fingering a shell, awkward, down into the chamber when the shed door swung back open.

‘Rabbit or two, Keith? That what you’re thinking?’ Reaching across, McBride took the weapon from Haines’ faltering hands. ‘Some other time, eh?’

Resnick was waiting at the car. McBride’s and one other parked further back down the lane, out of sight.

For a moment, Haines looked into Resnick’s face, then away.

Only his breath seemed to be moving, hoarse and ragged, through the quiet air.

SIX WEEKS LATER,
Resnick picked up the phone and it was Catherine Njoroge. Would he be able to drag himself away from whatever important work he was doing for long enough to meet her for coffee, her treat?

He said he would.

Work for him was much the same as before, a civilian investigator still, though now with an office on the upper floor. On a clear day he could see out beyond the dome at the top of the Council House and imagine the fields beyond.

Keith Haines had been remanded in custody, his trial date not yet fixed.

Spurred on by his part in the arrest of Abbas Rashidi, Andy Duncan had pleaded successfully for a further year in harness. The student, whose injuries had been such a concern to Resnick and himself, had made a better-than-expected recovery and was convalescing, prior to resuming his studies at some near future date. Rashidi was still awaiting trial, having assembled a prodigious and expensive legal team to support his expected plea of not guilty.

Resnick had just negotiated an empty bench at the edge of the square when he saw Catherine walking past the stone lion on permanent guard outside the Council House, a takeaway cup in either hand.

If he hadn’t known that her natural stride was more forceful, stronger, he might not have noticed much different about her at all. The same black trouser suit or similar, a silver instead of purple ribbon in her hair. And the eyepatch was, beyond any doubt, a stylish addition.

‘Flat white, I hope that’s okay?’

‘Fine.’

They sat for a while in near silence, comfortable, despite all that had happened, in one another’s company, watching the good folk of Nottingham go about their daily business.

‘I handed in my resignation yesterday,’ she said.

Resnick took a beat before replying. ‘You don’t think that’s a waste of a good copper?’

‘Come on, Charlie. Whoever heard of a one-eyed detective?’

‘Depends how much they can see.’

Catherine shook her head. ‘I’m going back to uni. To study law. It’s probably what I should have done all along. Needless to say, my father’s beside himself with joy. Sees me as some kind of lost sheep come back to the fold.’

‘You’ll go here or . . .?’

‘Manchester.’

He nodded. Dredged up a smile. ‘I can just see you standing up in court, sweeping all before. Black robes and that eyepatch, made for each other, I’d say.’

‘You’re a pal, Charlie. A good friend.’

‘I like to think so.’

They continued to sit, chatting easily about this and that, nothing of great importance.

‘I’ve just realised,’ Resnick said suddenly. ‘What’s different.’

‘What’s that?’

‘All this time outside, coffee, and you haven’t had a cigarette.’

‘I’ve given up.’

‘New leaf.’

‘Something like that.’

With a glance towards the Council House clock, she got to her feet. ‘Are you going back or . . .?’

‘I’ll sit here just a bit longer. Finish this.’

‘Okay.’

‘You’ll stay in touch.’

‘Of course.’

He didn’t watch her walk away.

He might wander up to Music Inn, he thought after a while. There was a new Monk album he’d seen advertised, concerts in Paris and Milan. ‘Off Minor’, ‘Straight No Chaser’, that kind of thing.

Why play the right notes . . .?

You know the rest.

So, Resnick’s last case. When I sat down with my friend, the late Dulan Barber, sometime in 1988, and began putting together the bits and pieces of Charlie’s character, it would not have occurred to either of us that he would still be around some twenty-five years later. If only just. But after twelve novels, some sixteen short stories, two television adaptations and four radio plays, to say nothing of various e-books and audio versions, he’s still standing. More accurately, sitting, and appropriately, on a bench overlooking Nottingham’s Old Market Square.

Which is where I propose to leave him, nursing a cup of takeout coffee and hankering after a fresh helping of Thelonious Monk. In one early draft, not ever properly committed to paper, I did what is I suppose the obvious – what many readers might have expected – and killed him off. No Reichenbach Falls. No return. But it just didn’t feel right.

So at the end of
Darkness, Darkness
he’s still alive, Charlie, and though in some ways he’s central to the novel, this time he’s more and more a witness, observing rather than influencing the action; understanding, perhaps, less and less of the world moving fast around him. And in that, I suppose, Charlie and I, we’re alike. Writers are witnesses after all, and as we get older our vision, however much we might fight against it, clouds over.

By the time this book is published, I shall have inched closer towards the end of my eighth decade than I shall be from its beginning. And there are things I still want to do. Things that don’t seem to involve Charlie.

He’ll be okay. He’s got a flat white and yet another version of ‘Blue Monk’ to keep him warm.

In the writing of this book, in particular those sections relating to the Miners’ Strike, I’m grateful to a number of people who were involved in the strike in differing ways for their comments and observations – in particular, Sylvia and Gordon Abbott, Peter Coles, Peter Jarvis and John Morgan. My thanks, also, to Graham Nicholls, for his perceptive reading of the manuscript.

For a detailed overview of the strike and its political and social background I’m indebted to the following:
Marching to the Fault Line – The Miners’ Strike and the Battle for Industrial Britain
by Francis Beckett and David Hencke (Constable, 2009);
The Enemy Within – The Secret War Against the Miners
by Seamus Milne (Verso, 2004) and
Strike – 358 Days that Shook the Nation
, a
Sunday Times
Insight Book written and edited by Peter Wilsher, Donald Macintyre and Michael Jones (André Deutsch, 1985).

For more detailed and personal observations of the strike, I’m grateful to
The Miners’ Strike Day by Day – The Illustrated Diary of Yorkshire Miner Arthur Wakefield,
edited by Brian Elliott (Wharncliffe Books, 2002) and
The 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire – ‘If Spirit Alone Won Battles’, The Diary of John Lowe
, edited by Jonathan Symcox (Wharncliffe Books, 2011); also to
Queen Coal – Women of the Miners’ Strike
by Triona Holden (Sutton Publishing, 2005),
The Cutting Edge – Women and the Pit Strike
, edited by Vicky Seddon (Lawrence & Wishart, 1986),
Never the Same Again – Women and the Miners’ Strike
, by Jean Stead (The Women’s Press, 1987) and
Hearts and Minds – The Story of the Women of Nottinghamshire in the Miners’ Strike, 1984–1985
, by Joan Witham (Canary Press, 1986).

I gained a great deal of insight from watching DVDs of Mike Figgis’s film of Jeremy Deller’s
The Battle of Orgreave
(Artangel Media),
The Miners’ Campaign Tapes
(BFI) and
Dole Not Coal – The 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, The Striker’s Story
(Compress Media).

Conscientiously, I avoided reading any fiction which uses the strike, to a greater or lesser degree, as subject or setting – though I will admit to sneaking a look inside David Peace’s excellent and incomparable
GB84
(Faber & Faber, 2004) whenever inspiration sagged. It was in the course of several conversations with David at
Quais du Polar
, the annual crime fiction festival in Lyon, that he convinced me to go ahead with the book which became
Darkness, Darkness
, and for that I’m truly grateful.

Without publishers and editors there would be no Charlie Resnick, no books. It was Tony Lacey at Viking Penguin who first said yes to Charlie and set him on his way. In the US, Marian Wood, then at Henry Holt, guided him through the first ten books with acuity and enthusiasm, and, in France, François Guerif at Rivages has been steadfast in his active support. Writers need agents, too, and I’m grateful that in Carole Blake and latterly Sarah Lutyens I have been blessed with the best combination of professional guidance and unbridled enthusiasm.

My thanks, finally, to everyone at Random House – be it sales, marketing, design or editorial – all of whom have worked hard to make this and earlier books a success – and to Mary Chamberlain, whose conscientious copy editing, book after book, has helped me to avoid the worst errors of misdating and slovenly punctuation.

Anyone who knows anything about publishing will know how very fortunate I have been to have had Susan Sandon as my editor for the past nine books; it was she who held my hand and Charlie’s to the end, encouraging, cajoling, applying just the right amount of pressure when the time was right. Susan, thank you!