Lonely Hearts (2 page)

“I’m still waiting for the first time, sir,” he said.

“A wife would do things for you.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Like make sure you didn’t leave the house in the morning with breakfast on your tie.”

Resnick glanced down. “It’s not mine, sir.”

“You’ve got someone else’s breakfast on your tie?”

“Someone else’s tie.”

Skelton continued down the steps and round into the car park with a step that managed to be unhurried and urgent at the same time. Resnick wondered if the superintendent would be back in the station for the nine o’clock briefing, or whether the chief inspector would be sitting in for him. He’d rather Skelton’s briskness than twenty minutes of Len Lawrence doing his man-of-the-people act.

The CID office was L-shaped. Desks were pushed together along the center of the room, four and then six and four more around the corner; spaces left between them for access. A row of desks lined the window that ran the length of the left-hand wall. Four detective sergeants and sixteen constables used the office in shifts; somehow, between them, trying to make an impression on the five thousand plus crimes that had been reported so far that year—it was early November—and that was only one section of the city.

Resnick’s office was the missing section of the rectangle, partitioned off from the rest by chipboard and glass.

Patel had drawn the early shift, seven till three, and was bending over his desk, making final adjustments to the files that would bring Resnick up to date with what had happened through the night. One detailed the movement of prisoners, in and out of the cells on the ground floor; the other logged messages and Patel would have sorted these into local and national. And he would have put on the kettle for tea.

“Anything I ought to see urgent?” Resnick called through the open door.

“Sir, there were six robberies, sir.” Patel stood at the entrance to Resnick’s office, one file under each arm, sheets of computer paper folding back at top and bottom.

“Six? You’re going to have your work cut out.”

As officer on the early shift, Patel was responsible for all burglaries. He looked at Resnick, unable to relax, uncertain if he was supposed to smile.

“Let’s have a look, then. Before the army gets here.”

The DC placed the files on Resnick’s desk, opening each in turn. “Sergeant Millington, sir. He is here already.”

Resnick nodded. What was the matter with everybody today? Had they done something to the clocks without telling him? He was certain he’d changed all his when Summer Time had ended.

“That tea won’t mash by itself, lad,” Millington said.

Patel scuttled out and Resnick did no more than glance at his sergeant, knowing he had to finish reading the files before the meeting. Graham Millington took a cigarette from its packet, transferred it from one hand to another, put it back unlit. He could never understand it. There he was, ten years in uniform, seven as a DC; four years now since passing his promotion board to sergeant. Not only that, he had a couple of commendations and a medal for bravery, a three-piece suit that didn’t strain to fit, a wedding ring on his finger, an internal clock like Greenwich Mean Time, and a clean tie. What more did it take to make detective inspector?

“Anything the matter, Graham?” Resnick closed the files.

Millington sniffed and shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Somebody’s been busy along the back of the boulevard.”

“I just had a word with uniform. Night inspector said some kid rang in about five. Just got back from a party. Got out of a taxi and into the drive and realized the front door’s open to the wind. Takes him another five minutes to realize there’s a space where the TV used to be.”

“Anyone else in the house?”

“Family. All upstairs in bed. Fast off.”

Lucky for some, Resnick thought. “Much else missing?” he asked.

“VCR, couple of good cameras—the kid’s getting himself into a state on account his entire James Brown collection’s been lifted.” Millington sighed. “Five others so far, and there’ll be more when folk wake up to it. All the same.”

“All mourning their James Brown, eh?”

Millington felt one side of his mouth shaping into a grin and willed it to stop. He wanted to call Resnick’s bluff but didn’t quite dare. For all he knew, his superior went home and kicked back the carpet, tossed down a few glasses of schnapps and boogied the night away to “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

Bodies moved past the doorway, snatches of early conversation, a loud laugh and then a groan as Mark Divine’s voice rose above the rest, boasting about the night before to the other officers.

Resnick glanced over his shoulder at the round-faced clock between pinboard and his pair of filing cabinets: four minutes past eight.

“Okay, Graham,” said Resnick, standing. “Let’s get to it.”

Superintendent Skelton had not returned from Central Police Station, so, after briefing his men, Resnick had reported to Chief Inspector Lawrence, together with the uniformed inspector in charge. Both men had kept it as short as possible and by a quarter-past nine, Resnick was back in his own office, phoning through to the detective chief inspector at headquarters.

“Lively night down your way,” the DCI observed, pleasantly caustic.

“Yes, sir.”

“Getting any help from uniform on this?”

“Two men for house-to-house, sir.”

“Right you are, then, Charlie. Talk to you tomorrow. You’ll likely have a result by then.”

Resnick set the receiver down and the door to his office opened.

“Didn’t know if I should remind you,” said Graham Millington. “You’re in court this morning, aren’t you?”

Resnick closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. The door to his office closed quietly. Beyond it phones rang and were answered. Somebody swore, softly, repeatedly, and no one appeared to notice.

He had been trying to wipe from his mind the fact that he was due, that morning, to give evidence. There were cases that seemed to make no impact at all, others that brought their share of sleepless hours, and then there were those that bit deep.

This had started with a call to the station. A child’s mother had rung in, pretending to be a neighbor. She had alleged that her husband was consistently forcing their daughter to take part in sexual acts. That was what it had come down to, when all the pretence, the play-acting were over. Remembering, Resnick’s mouth went tight. It all seemed a long time ago, the first stumbled words, the investigation, the child who had sat quietly before a video camera and played with dolls.
Yes, he did, he took this and he put it there
. Seven years old. Was that what people got married for, Resnick asked? Had children?

On his way into the city center he tried not to answer the questions, tried to clear his mind of the case altogether. Once in the witness box it would come back soon enough.

There was time to walk up to the indoor market and take his usual seat at the Italian coffee stall. The girl slid an espresso in front of him without waiting to be asked and Resnick drank it down in two and ordered another.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

Resnick slid the coins across the counter and shrugged. How was it going? Phones rang and were answered. It was part of the job, it was what he did.

The courthouse had been newly built from pink stone and smoked glass, and from the foyer entrance you could watch the buses pulling out of the station and into the traffic, one every couple of minutes. Hiss of brakes, hiss of rain. Resnick turned and saw the couple, child and mother, sitting on a bench seat, clear space between them. Had he thought about it, he would have known they would be there, known he would see them, but he had stopped himself thinking about it. These things took a long time. He wondered if the little girl would recognize him and how she would react if she did.

A woman stood beside them, bending down to talk to the mother, her hand brushing the fall of the child’s hair as she straightened away. Resnick dismissed her as being a relative, put her down as a social worker, not the same one who had been at the station when they had been asking their questions.

“
Yes, it hurt me
.”

This woman was tall, tall enough; she had a way of standing that said I know who I am and what I’m doing here and if you don’t, well, I don’t give a damn. The deep collar of her camel coat was pulled high, the belt looped loosely over. Resnick caught sight of tan boots with a heel, a glimpse of blue skirt where the hem of the coat separated out.

When he realized she was looking back at him, Resnick slid one hand inside his jacket and left it there, resting on the fastened button, covering the stain on his tie.

He felt the need to walk over and talk to the mother, say something calming and trite. What stopped him was not knowing how to speak to the little girl, sitting there plucking at a button on her sleeve and tapping her toes against that newly polished floor. What stopped him was knowing that his reason for doing it was to appear sympathetic in front of the woman in the camel coat.

Rachel Chaplin rested her right hand on the back of the bench and watched Resnick walk away towards the door of the court. She didn’t know his name, but knew his rank; she knew him for a police officer. She knew that he had been looking at her and not at the clients who were sitting on the bench. When he had been about to approach them she had guessed that he had been involved in the arrest and in a moment she would ask Mrs. Taylor if that had been so. Meanwhile, she was wondering what had made him change his mind.

He was an overweight man in his early forties, whose narrow eyes were bagged and tired, and who couldn’t find the time to drop his tie off at the cleaners.

Now Rachel Chaplin was wondering just why she was smiling.

Giving evidence, Resnick stumbled over a date and had to flick back through the pages of his notebook for verification. Yes, that did mean that the child was examined by a doctor precisely seven days after he had received the initial call. Yes, the delay was in part due to the manner in which the mother had elected to inform the authorities. Did he think that the mother had been to any degree complicit in the father’s behavior towards their daughter?

Only once did Resnick allow himself to look directly at the man standing between two officers in the dock. He had been asked to describe the accused’s emotions when faced with the offense. Had he shown unusual emotion? Had he broken down? Wept? Asked for forgiveness? He stood there now much as a man might stand, bored, in the Friday-night queue at the supermarket.

“Detective Inspector?”

Resnick’s eyes never left the father’s face as he answered. “The accused said, ‘She’s just a bloody kid!’ And then he said, ‘The lying little bitch!’”

Rachel could have been waiting for him, but she wasn’t. She was by the exit, talking to a ginger-haired man Resnick recognized as the probation officer to the court. She was talking earnestly, her oval face serious amidst curls.

“Inspector…” The soft leather bag that hung from her right shoulder hit against the glass door as she moved.

Resnick turned towards her, nodding to the probation officer as he did so.

“I won’t keep you a moment,” Rachel said. There was an uneven-ness at the bottom of her front teeth, as though a piece had been chipped away.

“I’m Rachel Chaplin, I’m…”

“You’re the Taylors’ social worker,” Resnick interrupted.

“Yes.”

The probation officer raised a hand that neither acknowledged and walked between them, down and into the street.

“How are they coping?” asked Resnick.

“In the circumstances it’s difficult to say.”

“The girl…”

A barrister hurried behind Resnick, stuffing his gown down into a sports bag as he went. The step which the inspector automatically took forward placed him close enough to Rachel Chaplin to see his reflection clearly in the red-framed glasses that she wore.

“Ask me again in six months, a year. I might have an answer for you. Ask me after the father comes out of prison, after therapy. I don’t know.” She looked away from him and then back and asked, “How are you?”

Taken by surprise, Resnick didn’t know what to say. “You seem tense,” Rachel said. “You’ve got frown lines cluttering up your eyes and you haven’t been sleeping properly.”

“I haven’t?”

“Uh-huh. You’ve probably got a bed that isn’t firm enough to take your weight and if you told me you drank Scotch before trying to sleep, I’d believe you.”

“Suppose it’s coffee?”

“The effect’s the same.”

He couldn’t decide if her eyes were more green than blue.

He said: “Is this why you called me over?”

She said: “It’s what I’ve ended up saying.”

“But when you stopped me…?”

“I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Taylor…this morning, before court, I asked her about you.”

“Yes?”

“She said how understanding you’d been.”

“Then she’s wrong,” Resnick said. “I don’t understand at all.”

Instead of leaving the building with her, the two of them walking down the steps side-by-side, Resnick was on his own. The corner outside the court was jammed with people waiting for the lights to change. He hadn’t thought about turning away from her, he had just done it.

He was heading for the underpass that would take him through the shopping precinct and back into the city center when the bleeper clipped inside his jacket sounded and sent him in search of the nearest telephone.

Three

Resnick had lived here, this part of the city, when he had been a uniformed sergeant, straining to get back into CID, eager to improve his status, move on up. Now the terraced streets had two-tone 2CVs parked at the curb and, through painted blinds, glimpses of parlor palms and Laura Ashley wallpaper: maybe he should have stuck around a little longer.

There was an ambulance outside number 37 and Resnick pulled in between it and a maroon saloon which he recognized as belonging to Parkinson, the police surgeon.

The rain had stopped but the air was still damp enough to make aging bones ache. A few people stood around on the opposite side of the street, hands in their pockets, shuffling their feet and speculating. Faces stared out from windows, several with lights already switched on in the rooms behind.