Lonely Hearts (10 page)

Besides, late was hardly the word: according to Debbie’s five-year plan, anything in that line was three-and-a-half years early. They hadn’t even got as far as choosing the best-value microwave.

Mark Divine was reminded of the time he’d been carpeted by the rugby association for breaking another player’s nose in the scrum. Mouthing off at him all through the game he’d been. Needle, needle, needle. It had been easy enough for Divine to duck in close, quick yank of the hair, there, right on to his fist. Something satisfying about the sound that cartilage makes when the tissue ruptures across. Divine straightened his shoulders back as he heard Resnick approaching. Shame the bloke had been in his own team.

“What happened?” Resnick began his question as soon as the door opened and was standing behind his desk before either officer made a reply.

“Sir, Macliesh, he sort of…”

“Yes, Naylor?”

“He went berserk, sir.”

“Somebody did.”

The two men glanced at one another.

“Those injuries, sir,” said Divine. “They were self-inflicted.”

If they’ve cooked this up between them, Resnick thought, I’ll have them on a charge before they know what’s hit them.

“It’s true, sir,” Naylor said.

“True?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your prisoner suddenly ups and punches himself in the face?”

“Threw himself against the wall, sir,” Divine said quickly.

“For the sheer hell of it?”

Here it comes, Naylor was thinking. Divine was beginning to smell his own sweat.

“Naylor?” said Resnick sharply.

“Something, er, was said, sir.”

“To Macliesh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Naylor.

“Yes, sir,” said Divine.

“Some remark was made which caused your prisoner to perform an act of grievous bodily harm on his own person?”

Both men nodded, neither spoke.

“You know my next question, don’t you?” Resnick asked.

They did. Naylor looked at Divine and Divine looked with sudden interest at the notices pinned to the board behind Resnick’s desk.

“Wait outside, Naylor,” said Resnick. “Don’t stray, I’ll want to talk to you again.”

Divine knew now that it was going to be worse than anything the rugby association had dreamed up, worse even than the inquiry the time that black bastard had ended up in hospital.

“What was it that made Macliesh so angry?”

Divine wet his drying lips with the end of his tongue, but his tongue was dry too.

“What did you say that made him want to injure himself?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Divine.”

“Sir…”

“Divine, there’s youths out on the street now, down on the square. Pull up alongside them, stop them—wouldn’t matter if they had half-a-dozen gold watches up an arm, a sack swung over their shoulder with swag stenciled on it—you know what answer they’ll give you when you ask them what they’ve been up to?”

Divine tried not to look at Resnick’s face, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to avoid.

“I’m waiting.”

“Sorry, sir, I didn’t think…”

“That I wanted an answer. Of course I do, that’s what questions are for.”

Divine wriggled as if his briefs were too tight for him, his shoes too small.

“The answer?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“They’d say?”

“Nothing. Sir.”

“And do you believe them?”

Let it rest!

“Well? Do you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you know what I’m feeling now.”

“Sir, I just wanted to get some response.”

“It looks as if you succeeded.”

“After yesterday, him never opening his mouth.”

“You thought you’d change that?”

“It was only a remark, like. Something to get him going.”

Resnick didn’t take his eyes from Divine’s face now. “You said.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You said what?”

“I…said what kind of a bloke was it who couldn’t even get it up when his tart was dying for it. Sir.”

Resnick rested the side of his face in his hand for a moment and slowly sat down. He supposed callousness shouldn’t any longer surprise him. Still, for several seconds, this took his breath away.

“Sir, if I may, sir. I don’t think it was just what I said. The way he threw himself against that wall, smacking his head against it like he did.” Divine’s voice petered out. He forced himself to try again. “I was the one pulled him off, sir. Ask Naylor, he…”

“I was looking at your report the other day,” Resnick said. “Just something made me take it from the file, I can’t remember what now. There were statements from five witnesses, all attesting to the use of excessive force. A taxi driver who said he was as much a racist as the next man, but he didn’t think you ought to be able to get away with that sort of thing while you were on duty.”

Divine started counting inside his head; stopped, worried in case Resnick should see his lips moving.

“You wriggled out of that with a reprimand in private and an apology in public and the stars must have been shining out of your behind that day because there was enough cocaine in that youth’s possession to make half the city numb in its collective nose. But when you were reassigned to me I gave you fair warning. I dare say you remember?”

Divine closed his eyes without realizing what he was doing. He said, “Yes, sir. I remember.”

Resnick stood. “Outside and write it up.”

Divine continued to stand there, uncertain.

“Something else you want to say?”

Divine gave Resnick a look of incomprehension. “This Macliesh, sir. Ask me, he’s cracked. Got no need of a reason for doing anything. D’you know what he did when we were bringing him in? Pissed down Naylor’s leg!”

Ten

I’m going to find out who’s going round the place whistling the Glenn Miller songbook, Resnick said to himself, and make sure he gets some Ellington for Christmas. Maybe it was a she. Did women whistle? Times gone by, it used to be considered unladylike, especially in public. Like smoking. Now when you walked round the city center every other female you passed had a lighted cigarette in her hand. Those under twenty-five, younger. What had they been telling him on Radio Four that morning? A generation of smoking teenage schoolgirls, using nicotine to cope with the stress of having few job prospects, of contracting Aids.

Suzanne Olds was sitting on a steel-framed chair with a sagging canvas seat and she wasn’t whistling. She wasn’t twenty-five any more, either; the law was her second career—Resnick wasn’t certain what the first one had been except he thought it had something to do with marketing. Maybe she used to stand in the middle of the pedestrian precinct and solicit passers-by into giving information about what newspaper they read, the size of their feet, which brand of baked beans they bought.

“Ms. Olds.”

She stood up with a sigh of impatience and ditched the end of her cigarette into the lukewarm dregs of her coffee. People starting late on a second career didn’t like to be kept waiting.

“Sorry about the delay. At least you’ve had a chance to speak with your client.”

She had a pale leather bag, the size of a fat wallet, hanging by a thin strap from her left shoulder; she picked a matching satchel from the floor and carried it in her right hand. Keeping step with Resnick, she was not far short of his height, five-ten or even five-eleven.

“Which should have been afforded yesterday. Your grounds for delay are spurious at best.”

“How come you got Macliesh?” Resnick asked. “Did he ask for you personally or what?”

“Or what. I was the duty solicitor who picked up the phone. Not that that…” She broke off as Resnick thought about opening a door for her, reconsidered, waited for her to push it open for herself and followed after.

“I can’t believe your superintendent is going to apply for an extension, which means some poor fool from the Crown Prosecutor’s has got to go into court and try to wangle another three days in remand.”

“Thanks for spelling it out.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing Macliesh wheeled up before the Bench looking the way he does. Somehow I can’t see any magistrate handing him back to you so that further inquiries can be carried out.”

“If the crime under investigation is serious enough…”

“Your rights to brutalize my client become enshrined in law?”

“Any brutalization your client has suffered has been at his own hands.”

“Just try making the court believe that.” She was standing her ground now, legs apart, blocking Resnick’s path.

“The court isn’t stupid. And it won’t overlook the serious nature of…”

“Come on, Inspector. This isn’t prevention of terrorism or anything like it. No one’s accused of planting a bomb in a wall cavity or crating up bodies in the diplomatic bag. This isn’t even some crazy, running amok with a sub-machine-gun. At best, this is ordinary, common-or-garden murder.”

Resnick looked for the irony in her eyes but it wasn’t there, only contact lenses and the vague reflection of himself, filtered through sepia.

“Excuse me, Ms. Olds.” He stepped around her and hurried on to the interview room.

It was a smaller version of his own room and the air was stale before they began. From outside the building the metallic crump of heavy machinery beat beneath the silences. Tony Macliesh smoked his solicitor’s cigarettes, taking them down to the nub end before pressing them out in the metal ashtray that was one of the room’s few adornments. His face had been cleaned up and disinfected, plastered and bandaged; now the injuries appeared even more serious, Macliesh sitting there as if waiting to be auditioned for a touring production of
The Invisible Man
.

He was talking now, terse and jagged, but talking.

“Tell me again what you were doing on the industrial estate.”

“I already told you.”

“I want to get it right.”

“We was sizin’ up this job.”

“The warehouse?”

“Right.”

“You and two other men? One with a Liverpool accent…?”

“I think that’s what it was.”

“Whose name you don’t know?”

“The other feller brung him along.”

“The other feller being your West Indian friend, Warren?”

“I’m not prejudiced.”

“He was the muscle?”

“He’s got biceps out to here.”

“And you were the brains?”

“I had brains enough to know we were never going to get inside there in a month of Sundays.”

“Brains enough to claim to be out there recceing the place at the same time that Shirley Peters was murdered?”

“I didn’t know nothing about that, did I?” Resnick stared at him until he turned aside and reached his hand towards Suzanne Olds, who pushed a packet of Dunhill International in his direction.

“You know, without corroboration, that alibi doesn’t mean a thing?”

“Find Warren. Ask him.”

“I’m here, talking to you.”

“Send him. Instead of all that scribbling.”

Patel barely glanced up from the smaller table, where he was writing as speedily as he could, sheets of A4 fanned out before him.

“What’s he doing anyroad?”

“Making a record of what’s said.”

“What I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope he’s getting it down right.” Macliesh leaned sideways and jerked a finger towards Patel. “You understand what we’re saying, pal?” He moved his head closer to Resnick. “Can he spell?”

“I thought you weren’t prejudiced?”

“That’s not prejudice. He’s a bleeding Paki!”

“DC Patel has a degree from the University of Bradford.”

“They buy ’em, don’t they?”

“Why skip, Macliesh?”

“I don’t skip.”

“You got off a train in Aberdeen.”

“I was away to my job.”

“You don’t have a job.”

“I was promised work on the rigs. I can always get work on the rigs. I’ve done it before.”

“Was this since you came out of prison or before?”

“Don’t you come clever with me, you cocky bugger!” Macliesh’s hands were knots of fist, for a moment in sight and then punched down hard into his thighs.

Suzanne Olds stared at him hard, willing him to unclench his fingers. She shook the cigarette pack at him, breaking his concentration.

“Sudden change of plan, wasn’t it?” Resnick said.

“What change of plan?” He took a cigarette and laid it down, unlit.

“Night before, you were all set up for a burglary. You and your friends, colleagues, whiling away the early evening sizing up this warehouse, and the next thing you’re off with your bag to the station, booking a second-class single to Aberdeen.”

“Fucking class makes a difference, I suppose?”

Resnick could see the violence now, jumping behind Macliesh’s eyes.

“It almost sounds, Inspector,” said Suzanne Olds, “as if you are disappointed my client thought better of committing a crime and went off in search of honest employment.”

“Almost,” said Resnick sharply, reacting against the smirk in her voice.

“But you are conceding that my client was in Lenton Industrial Estate at the time that Shirley Peters was murdered?”

“I’m not conceding anything.”

“Don’t you!” growled Macliesh, twisting in his chair.

“Inspector…” said Suzanne Olds, wanting to draw him off her client, wanting to push her point home.