Lonely Hearts (8 page)

“You took the first solution because it was the easiest, because it has become almost axiomatic in these increasingly well-publicized cases to see the father or stepfather as the perpetrator, and because, as you so revealingly said earlier, the good relationship you enjoy with the Social Services would have encouraged you to come to the same convenient and fashionable conclusion.”

“I did not say…”

“Inspector, your evidence is now a matter of record.”

“I did
not
say that the views of any members of the Social Services…”

“Inspector, please. The court is fully aware of what it was you said.”

“Nothing was said by any outside agency that convinced us to put Mr. Taylor under arrest.”

“Then what did?”

Resnick held back his response, held his breath. He could feel the dampness of his shirt where it clung to the small of his back, the itch of perspiration beneath his arms and between his legs. “The girl,” he said clearly.

“The seven-year-old girl.”

“Yes.”

“Upset, intimidated…”

“No.”

“Asked so many leading questions…”

“No.”

“…that, like all little girls do, she gave the answer she had come to realize was wanted.”

A sound broke from Resnick’s mouth, somewhere between a roar and a laugh. “I watched,” Resnick said, “watched through a two-way mirror, watched seven-year-old Sharon Taylor sitting with a social worker and with nobody else in the room…”

“Inspector,” said the barrister, “there is no need.”

“Yes, there is!” Resnick’s hands were gripping the front of the witness stand and even from near the rear of the room Rachel could see that his knuckles were white. “There is a need.”

The judge bent towards him. “Inspector Resnick, I do realize that this is a disquieting case.”

Resnick faced the judge and when he spoke again his voice was low and even. “The only other things that mattered in the room were a microphone and two dolls.” He pointed towards the table where the dolls lay. “Those which have already been examined by the court. And what I heard and saw was Sharon Taylor using those dolls to explain what it was the accused had done to her. What he had made her do to him.” Resnick’s eyes fixed on the barrister’s face. “Her father.”

Eight

At first he thought she wasn’t there and felt a flush of disappointment that ran close to anger. It was something he almost believed he had earned, that his testimony had deserved. He had allowed himself to picture how she would be standing there, the smile coming up on her face to greet him. When would he learn to stop fooling himself?

Resnick nodded at someone he knew, skirted round a couple of solicitors, diaries out, arranging their weekly bridge game, and there she was. Off to the side, her head mostly turned away, of course, Rachel was talking to Mrs. Taylor and Resnick could imagine her tone, even and reassuring.

He slowed his pace, not wanting to reach the exit before she noticed him.

“Inspector.” Rachel left Mrs Taylor with a smile and crossed the foyer.

Resnick took his time about turning, so that Rachel was almost up to him when he looked at her.

“How are you feeling?” Rachel asked.

Resnick nodded past her shoulder. “How’s your client?”

“She’s spent the best part of the day in court, listening while a highly paid smoothie with a wig on his head does everything he can to prove she’s a vindictive and hysterical liar. How do you think she’s feeling?”

Rachel lowered her head for a moment and the corners of her mouth broke into a smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t deserve that. Mrs. Taylor’s coping pretty well. The positive thing about that kind of display is that it makes her feel angry too. Angry at what they’re trying to do to her. Whereas you…” The smile was in her eyes now. “…she thinks you’re the bee’s knees.”

“Did she say that? The bee’s knees?”

“No, I did.” She moved a half-pace towards him. “Look,” she said, touching her finger to her mouth. “Watch my lips move.”

“I’m sorry about the other evening,” Resnick said, trying not to keep watching her mouth now and finding it difficult.

“You said.”

“I hope I didn’t dig you out of bed when I phoned?”

“You did.”

“But not—what’s his name?”

“You know very well. It’s Chris. And we’re not going to start that again, are we?”

“I thought we might go and have a drink.”

“I’ve promised Mrs. Taylor I’d go along with her and collect Sharon. I ought to stay with them for a while.”

“Later then?”

Resnick watched her weighing it up, uncertain what was being held in the balance.

“Seven?” Rachel said finally.

“Okay. Where d’you want to go?”

“You’d better choose this time,” she said, amused.

“D’you know the Partridge?”

“Mansfield Road?”

“That’s the one.”

Nodding, she turned away and walked back to where Mrs. Taylor was waiting. Resnick figured he would have ample time to check back at the station and find out what progress Millington had made with Macliesh. In all likelihood, he’d been bearing down on him so hard that by the time Resnick arrived there’d be a confession, signed, sealed, and witnessed. It might be enough to earn the sergeant his promotion and get him off Resnick’s back.

On his way to the street, Resnick checked his watch. If he was lucky there’d just be time to nip home and feed the cats as well.

“Bloody hopeless!”

Graham Millington was sitting on the center block of desks, one foot pushed out against a convenient chairback; he had a plastic cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other and looked as though he’d thrown his clothes in the tumble drier without bothering to get out of them first.

“Thought you’d given up,” Resnick said.

Millington stared down at his hands. “Which one?”

“Can I have a word, boss?” The late-shift sergeant was hovering close to Resnick’s shoulder, three plastic bags and a half-dozen ten-by-eight photographs in his hands.

“Come on in.”

Ten minutes later, when Resnick and the sergeant emerged, Millington was still in the same position.

“Are we drinking Divine’s Scotch again?” Resnick asked.

Millington nodded.

Resnick took the bottle from the drawer, thinking as he did so that come January First he would have to say something to Divine about his taste in calendars. Surely he wasn’t the only one in the office who found month after month of jutting breasts objectionable? Maybe he should have a word about it with Lynn Kellogg.

He tipped a little of the whisky into the sergeant’s cup.

“How about you, sir?”

Resnick shook his head. “Later.” And then: “I take it he didn’t break down and reveal all.”

“I was the one fit for sodding breaking down.”

“How come?”

Millington looked at him. “What d’you think it’s like spending the entire afternoon with a man who won’t answer a single question?”

“Quiet?” Resnick said quietly.

Clever bastard! Millington thought.

“Why isn’t he talking?” Resnick asked.

“If he won’t open his bloody mouth, how’m I supposed to know?”

“Take it easy, Graham.”

“Sorry, sir.” Millington levered himself off the desk, started feeling in his pockets for his cigarettes. “It’s so bloody infuriating. Sitting there listening to the clock ticking round. You want to reach across the desk and shake it out of him.”

Resnick took the cigarette out of Millington’s fingers and slid it back into the packet for him; the packet he dropped down into the side pocket of the sergeant’s rumpled jacket.

“You didn’t?” Resnick said, only just a question.

Millington shook his head. “I think he’d have been more than happy if I had. Had a go at him, I mean.”

“Pretty cool for a man who’s supposed to have a violent temper.”

“Perhaps he’s only tough with women.”

Resnick felt an echo of something inside himself, too distant to be clear what it was. “Maybe,” he said.

“The one thing he did say,” Millington began.

“Yes?”

“When Divine and Naylor were taking him through to the cells.”

“Yes.”

“He said, ‘I know that cow set me up for this and I’ll fucking kill her!’”

“Who did he mean?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Who d’you think he meant?”

“The girl’s mother?”

“Probably,” Resnick said, but he was thinking about Grace Kelley.

Across the room a phone rang and Millington picked up the receiver, “CID.” Then, “Right, sir. Yes, sir. The superintendent,” he said to Resnick. “Will you pop up and see him before he goes?”

Resnick was already on his way.

The newspaper was spread across the superintendent’s desk, open at the report of the trial. Most of page two and a run-on to page three: child abuse was still big news. Resnick looked down at an out-of-date press photograph of himself, blurred and upside down.

“Not a very good likeness.”

“No, sir.”

“And the report—any more accurate, would you say?” Resnick lifted the paper from the desk and skimmed it through. Skelton studied the station roster on the side wall. You could have fitted Resnick’s office into the superintendent’s several times and still had room to do fifty push-ups during the lunch break. Rumor had it that an overzealous inspector had come bursting in one day and found Skelton standing on his head beside the filing cabinets. But that was only rumor.

“Yes, sir,” Resnick said, replacing the newspaper. “I suppose it’s fair.”

Skelton made a sound pitched somewhere between a cough and a grunt. “It doesn’t usually serve our purposes to become combative in court.”

“He was trying to steamroller me. Make an impression in front of the jury.”

“Which you didn’t want him to do. Unopposed.”

“He’d been practicing this one in front of the mirror. Look sharp, score points, and bugger the truth.”

“You’ve got the monopoly, have you, Charlie?”

Resnick didn’t answer.

“Emotionally involved, Charlie?”

“Yes, sir,” Resnick said. “Of course I am.”

Skelton’s eyes grazed the picture of his wife and daughter, safe in their silver frame. “How about the jury? Any idea which way they’ll go?”

Resnick thought about their faces, solemn, apprehensive: the bald man in the sports jacket who made notes with a ballpoint pen on the back of an envelope; the woman who gripped her handbag tighter during portions of the evidence and whose lips moved rapidly, silently, as if in prayer.

“I don’t know, sir.”

Skelton slid back in his chair and stood up, a single fluid action. He had been in the building for close to nine hours and his clothes looked as if they’d come from the dry cleaners within the past twenty minutes. Sensible shoes, sensible diet: Resnick didn’t suppose Skelton ever left the house without first buffing up his brogues and enjoying a smooth bowel movement.

“You’ve seen Macliesh?”

“Not yet, sir. I was just talking to Millington.”

“Frustrating afternoon.”

Resnick nodded.

“I can’t delay on intimation much longer. There was the threat against a witness, the custody sergeant heard that as well, loud and clear. But I can hardly claim that we’re securing evidence by questioning—not expeditiously, at any rate. Come morning, we’re going to let him make his call and he’s got to have a solicitor. If he refuses to request one, we’ll take whoever’s duty solicitor on call.” He nodded briskly and Resnick stood up.

“All right, Charlie. You’ll be looking after things here in the morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Try talking to Macliesh yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and Charlie?”

“Sir?”

“Do you ever do anything—in the way of exercise?” Resnick looked at the superintendent a shade blankly. Weekend before last he’d lugged that Hoover all over the house, up and down stairs, rooms whose only function was to gather dust and the dried remains of dead birds. Was that the sort of thing Skelton meant?

“No, sir,” he said. “Not really.”

“Maybe you should.” He looked appraisingly at Resnick’s figure. “You’re starting to look a little plump.”

The pub was round a couple of corners from Central Police Station and Resnick had sometimes used it when he was stationed there. The road that led away from it, up the hill towards the cemetery, was a mixture of pork butchers and Chinese restaurants, secondhand shops with rusting refrigerators and Baby Bellings in the window and a dozen paperbacks outside in an apple box, ten pence each. Its clientele was a mixture of locals who lived in the narrow terraced streets that spawned off to either side and students stretching out their polytechnic grants or in for a quick half before or after their adult education classes opposite.

Rachel Chaplin was already there, sitting at the rear of the right-hand room, squeezed up into a corner of the upholstered bench that ran along the wall. She had a book open on her lap, a glass of white wine close by her hand. The buttons at the front of her blue suit jacket were undone. All she has to do is sit there, Resnick thought, all she has to do to make me feel like this.

Rachel was aware that he’d arrived before she glanced up, felt his eyes upon her, just as she had before. The way she’d known in court that turning towards her was what he had wanted to do. She finished the sentence she was reading, lifted the wine and soda towards her mouth.

A group of kids from the poly pushed past Resnick as he walked towards where she was sitting. One of the girls—short skirt, gray, up around her hips over ribbed tights—collided with him and moved, giggling, away. He was nothing to her: an older man filling space. Sexless.

Was that how she saw him? Rachel thought. Even in his best courtroom suit, his trousers were bagged at the knee, the knot of his tie had become twisted round so that the short, thinner end hung down in front.

“Sorry I’m late.” Resnick found space beside her. “Work.”

His leg touched hers lightly and pulling it away he banged against the table, not hard. “It’ll thin out in a bit. A lot of these’ll be off to the WEA.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “I used to go to yoga.”

Seeing his expression, she continued, “It’s okay. I didn’t live up to the stereotype very well. Packed it in after the first three weeks.”