Still Waters (14 page)

So much for good intentions. Adrift in his own bed with only one of the cats for company, Resnick turned and wallowed the entire night, so that when the phone rang a little after seven, he was already up and showered, breakfasted, and feeling as if he'd scarcely slept at all.

Comforting at that bleary-eyed time of the morning to be greeted by Reg Cossall's cheery tones. “No need asking who she shagged to get the bloody job, Charlie, more a case of who she agreed to let alone.”

Resnick hadn't the faintest idea who or what he was talking about.

“Siddons, Charlie. That bloody Siddons woman. More postings already'n pricks in a second-hand dartboard, an' now she's got this fucker.”

“Helen Siddons?”

“Less you know any others.”

“DCI, Serious Crimes?”

“Another stepping stone, most likely. Six month at most. Superintendent next. Bit of a leg up, all it is for her—or leg over. Any road, Charlie, thought you'd like to know. See you for that jar some time, right?”

“Right.”

Resnick was left staring at the silent telephone. Helen Siddons had been attached to the local force a while back, already marked out for higher things; she had been enthusiastic, tenacious, nakedly ambitious; on the inquiry she and Resnick had worked together, she had proved disturbingly guilty of tunnel vision. And possibly more.

For all that Cossall's old-fashioned chauvinism could be taken with a pinch of salt, it was Resnick's experience that Siddons was not above making use of her obvious charms to cultivate friends in higher places. The clearest memory Resnick had of her was from a Christmas function almost two years before: Helen Siddons wearing an ankle-length dress in pale green and standing off to one side with Jack Skelton, the pair of them carelessly oblivious to the innuendo spreading about them as they leaned against the wall and talked, heads bowed, talked and smoked and smiled and talked some more. He remembered Skelton's wife, Alice, ignored and drunk and pawing at his knee.
What you have to see, she's not just fucking him, Charlie, she's fucking you too
.

Well, maybe …

Graham Millington was waiting to waylay him inside the CID room. “Another triumph for fair play and the powers of positive discrimination.”

“Something like that, Graham.”

Resnick closed his door firmly behind him, the kind of firmness that makes good and clear casual interruptions are unwelcome. Until that morning he hadn't realized how much he had wanted the job for himself and now … well, who did he have to blame but himself for not even trying, not applying? Helen Siddons would be a skip and a jump down the Ropewalk away, striding from room to room through the upper floor of the old hospital building that had been converted into the Serious Crime Squad's city office; likely as not, some civilian in overalls was carefully at work even now, adding her name and rank to the outside of her office door.

There was a note on Resnick's desk already: Jack Skelton's office at eleven-thirty, an informal get-together to welcome the new DCI into her post.

In Skelton's office, Helen Siddons was wearing a charcoal suit with a box jacket and a skirt that finished quite decorously a few inches below the knee. Her hair was attractively done in a French pleat, practical but not too severe, suggesting she could still let it down if the occasion demanded. Cigarette in hand, she was talking to an inspector from the Fraud Squad when Resnick came in. No more than a dozen people there so far, and among them Resnick noted Harry Payne from the Support Department, and Jane Prescott, newly promoted to inspector in Force Intelligence. Spotting Resnick, Siddons excused herself and came directly toward him, offering her hand.

“Charlie …”

“Helen, congratulations.”

“Thanks.” And then, adding a wry smile, “Bet you didn't think you'd see me again so soon.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“Lot of things we wouldn't say, Charlie, doesn't mean they don't get thought. How many dicks did it take her to get where she is today, you know the kind of thing. Not that I'd assume that of you. I think I know you better than that.”

Switching smiles, she turned as Skelton approached, the superintendent wearing his best suit too, and very smart, though his hand seemed to have slipped when he was shaving and he might have been too prodigal with the aftershave.

“Good to see you here, Charlie. There's coffee on the side. Sherry, if you'd like.”

“Coffee will be fine.” He didn't move.

“That spell Helen had with us a bit ago,” Skelton said. “Just passing through, that's what we thought, eh? Good to welcome her back like this.”

“You'll be going round all the stations, I dare say,” Resnick said. “Letting them see your face.”

“I dare say. Sooner or later. Coming here was different. You and Jack, people I know. Worked with.”

“And will again, it's hoped,” Skelton said, his hand barely brushing her sleeve.

“I wonder, Jack,” she said, “that sherry you mentioned. Since this is something of an occasion …”

“Of course, right away.”

“Charlie,” she moved closer, filling the space Skelton had left, “I've a confession to make.”

“Go ahead.”

“This early visit, it's not purely social.”

“I see.” Resnick's mind was starting to race.

“Bit of a fishing expedition really. Poaching.”

“Yes.”

“Lynn Kellogg, she passed her sergeant's board a while back now, unless I'm mistaken.”

Resnick tensed. “All set to join Family Support; she's got an interview lined up the end of this week.”

Helen Siddons' face expressed clear distaste. “Come on, Charlie, she doesn't want that.”

“Not what she says.”

“A detective, Charlie, that's what she is, and a bloody good one. You know that better than anyone. What does she want with domestics and missing kids? Wiping noses and passing round the Kleenex.”

“Ask her.”

“I will. But with your permission, Charlie. Your blessing.”

Resnick shifted balance. “Far as I know, nothing to prevent you approaching whoever you've a mind to.”

“Charlie …” Now it was his arm, her fingers light on the back of his hand. “You've got to let her go some time. Fly the nest.”

He pulled back, smarting. “She's not a kid, you know. I'm not her bloody father.”

“No, Charlie. Not exactly that.”

Twenty

The trouble with south London, Grabianski had long decided, it was flat as Kate Moss. All those times his mum had walked him from common to common—Tooting Bec, Tooting Graveney, Wandsworth, Clapham—unbuckling him from his pushchair and encouraging him to run: if he hadn't tripped across an upthrust root, looked away at the wrong moment, and smacked face first into a tree, he would have raced clear off the edge of the world.

Maybe that was why, Grabianski thought, ever since he had ceased to be a child, it was hills that drew him, mountains: the Lakes, Scotland, Snowdonia, the North Yorkshire Moors. His profits had gone on treks to the Tatra Mountains or Nepal, while Grice had been flirting with non-specific urogenital diseases in Benidorm.

And up here, high to the north of the city, Highgate, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, the open spaces were compounded of fold on fold of hills, sharp rises and sudden, unexpected declines, gullies and ravines. When he broke cover beyond the wayward thicket of tangled bush and trees and strode up toward the tumulus that marked the midway point between Kenwood and Parliament Hill, he truly thought he was Lord of All.

Another brisk ten minutes south, the sweep of the city below him, and he would be descending the thin diagonal path toward the bandstand and its attendant café, the D'Auria Brothers ice-cream and catering establishment, open all year round for quality food and fresh brewed coffee, pizza and homemade cakes a speciality.

When Grabianski, exultant, pushed his way in through the glass swing doors, Resnick and a young black man he didn't recognize were sitting at one of the center tables, the young man just starting on what looked like a cappuccino, Resnick, small cup of espresso to one side, taking a plastic fork to a generous slice of raspberry and redcurrant pie.

Part of Grabianski's instinct was to turn right round again and go back the way he'd come. But he knew that whatever that might achieve, it would be temporary, an exercise in deflecting the inevitable. Instead, he positioned himself at the end of the brief queue, ordered black coffee and a slice of pizza, waited while the pizza was microwaved, and carried his tray to where Resnick and Carl Vincent were sitting.

“Good walk?” Resnick asked.

Stirring sugar into his coffee, Grabianski assured him it had been fine.

Resnick made the necessary introductions and, not for the first time in his career, Grabianski wondered at the precise etiquette of shaking hands with someone who might well be about to arrest you and have you locked away for a generous five to ten.

“Carl's helping me on this,” Resnick explained.

“This?”

“We thought, Jerzy, you might be in the mood to do a little, shall we say, trading? Man with your kind of interests—culture, ornithology—doesn't want to wither away inside.”

Grabianski broke off a section of pizza. “Never was my intention.”

“Exactly.”

“Problem is …” Vincent intruded.

“Is there a problem?”

“Those Dalzeils, clearly down to you.”

Chewing, Grabianski smiled. “A little matter of proof?”

“We know you've been asking around, looking for a potential buyer.”

“What? Snatches of overheard conversation? Scarcely illegal.”

“How about possession?” Resnick said. “Two stolen paintings.”

Grabianski laughed: this was speculation, pure and simple. They didn't have squit. “I've told you, Charlie, any time you like to turn up with a warrant, you can search my place from top to bottom. All you'll find are postcard reproductions, maybe the odd photograph.”

“Fine,” Resnick said, leaning forward, “but what about the safety deposit box?”

A piece of pizza crust found itself wedged uncomfortably at the back of Grabianski's throat; something about the expression in Resnick's eyes made him uncertain now if they were bluffing or not.

“And then there's always,” Resnick added almost nonchalantly, “the paintings stolen from the MoD.”

“What?”

“The Ministry of Defence.”

“I know what it means.”

“A hundred and sixty pieces missing altogether, though, of course, we're not suggesting they're all down to you.” Resnick smiled. “Just one or two. Your trademark, I suppose you'd say. Neat, well-planned, careful. Someone who walked right into the Ministry building, Quartermaster General's office, large as life. One or two items walked out with him.”

“
Coast Scene with Fishing Boats
, ” Vincent said, “that was one of them. “Nicholas Matthew Condy. Not a name to me, but worth close to twenty grand apparently.”

“You know who the Yard's marked down as selling that painting, Jerzy?” Resnick asked. “Your friend, Eddie.”

“Eddie?”

“Eddie Snow.”

Grabianski picked up his cup of coffee and sipped at it cautiously, mind working overtime. At the table alongside them, four Asian girls from a nearby comprehensive were arguing over their German homework, filling the air around them with tobacco smoke and laughter. A middle-aged woman with the puzzled moon face of a child was sitting with her carer, twisting a narrow length of scarf in and around her fingers in a seemingly endless pattern, tea and toast beside her untouched. Beyond the glass, solitary men and women sat with their dogs or children, and a man wearing padded cycling shorts and a maroon sweatshirt shouted into his mobile phone.

“Jerzy,” Resnick said, “we've got times, places, you and Eddie, not simply passing the time of day.”

“Acquaintance, that's all. Someone I just met. Made his money in the music business, so I've heard.”

“Made his money brokering the sale of stolen and forged works of art,” Resnick said. “Arts and Antiques Unit at the Yard's got a list long as your arm. Big business. National treasures. Sort of thing that gets taken seriously. You can bet the Yard's been working on this for a long time. When they pull it all together—and they're close—someone will be going down for a long time.”

Grabianski wished Resnick wouldn't keep going on and on about prison that way; he'd done prison and Resnick was right, he hated it like nothing else. The loss of most things he held dear, space and light and air.

“It's a fit up, Charlie,” he said. “That's all this is.” He didn't sound convincing, even to himself.

Resnick smiled, almost a grin, surprising Vincent by the extent to which he was enjoying the situation, savoring it even. “On our way down here, we called in on your pal Grice in Lincoln. Sort of early-morning wake-up call, though he'd been scrubbing out his cell a full hour by the time we were there. Asked to be remembered to you, naturally. Rot in hell, something along those lines, wasn't it, Carl?”

“Close. No love lost, that was clear.”

“Always refused to sell you out till now, Grice. Even after what you did to him. That sort of villain, old-fashioned, it's in his water. Ingrained. Never grass.”

“Kind you don't see much any more,” Vincent said, “except on the TV.”

“But now we've explained the situation, he might see his way to giving us a little help. Anything rather than doing the rest of his time; no parole, he could be looking at three more years.” Resnick looked Grabianski square in the eyes and held his gaze till the other man blinked away. “He doesn't want that. And you know, Jerzy, the number of jobs he could set at your door. Dates, addresses, times. For all he's not the brightest of men, Grice's memory seems to work a treat.”