Cold Light (6 page)

“How do I look?”

Nancy was standing in the entrance to Dana's room in a silver crochet top, short black skirt, silver-gray tights with a pattern of raised silver dots, leather ankle boots with a slight heel. When Dana had asked her, back in mid-November, if she would like to go along to her firm's Christmas dinner and dance, it had seemed like a good idea. “Terrific,” Dana enthused. “You look terrific.”

“I feel ten feet tall.”

“Better than five feet wide like me.” Dana looked as if she had dived into her wardrobe head first and emerged swathed in color, bright yellows, purple, and green. Nancy was reminded of a parakeet with cleavage.

“No, seriously, I feel stupid.”

“You look wonderful. Every man in that room is going to take one look at you …”

“That's what I'm worried about.”

“… and be falling over themselves asking you to dance.”

Nancy was looking at herself in Dana's full-length mirror. “I look like I'm auditioning for principal boy in
Aladdin
.”

“So, fine. You'll get the part.”

Nancy recrossed the room, trying to walk small. She'd met one or two of them already, architects and such, they hadn't seemed too bad. More interesting than the people she worked with herself. “Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn't go at all. They're your friends, people you work with, I shall hardly know a soul.”

“
You're
my friend. And besides, I've told them all about you …” Nancy placed one hand over her eyes. “… and one more thing, there's no refund on the price of your ticket.”

“All right,” Nancy said, “you talked me into it. I'm coming.”

Dana lifted her watch from the dressing table and, held it closer to her face. “Taxi's here in twenty minutes.”

“I thought we didn't have to be there till eight?”

“We're meeting first for a drink at Sarah Brown's.”

“Won't it be terribly crowded?”

“All the better. Rub shoulders with the rich and nearly famous.”

“All the same,” Martin Wrigglesworth was saying to Michelle, “I think, just to be certain, I'd be happier if we could just pop him along to the doctor, let someone have a proper look at him.” From somewhere he dredged up a smile. “Better safe than sorry.”

“You don't mean now?” Michelle asked. “You want to take him to the doctor now?”

“Yes,” Martin said, clipping his biro into his top pocket. “Now.”

The taxi arrived almost fifteen minutes early and the driver wanted to charge them waiting time, but Dana soon disabused him of that. Nancy had changed out of her black skirt into a pair of loose-fitting black trousers and then back into her skirt again. She had borrowed one of Dana's topcoats, bright red wool, a regular bull's delight.

“You've got your ticket?”

Nancy patted the sequined bag she held in her lap.

“Condoms?” Dana laughed.

Nancy stuck out her tongue. “It isn't going to be that kind of night.”

Dana, sitting back in the corner of the cab, smiling. “You never know.”

Nancy did: what she had in her bag, ever hopeful, were three Lillets.

The cab swung out of the Park, into incoming traffic on Derby Road. They were approaching Canning Circus when Nancy suddenly leaned forward, asking the driver to stop.

“What's the matter?” Dana asked. “What've you forgotten?”

“Nothing.” Nancy opened the nearside door. “I'm just popping into the police station, that's all.”

“Whatever for?”

“It doesn't matter. You go on. I'll meet you at the hotel. Go straight there. Bye.”

Nancy pushed the cab door closed and stood a moment, watching the vehicle pull away, Dana's face, perplexed, staring back through the glass.

The officer on the duty desk had phoned Resnick's office to inform him he had a visitor, not quite able to keep the smirk out of his voice. It wasn't until Nancy Phelan walked in through the door to the deserted CID room that Resnick understood why.

“Inspector …”

“Yes?”

“I was here earlier today …”

“I remember.” Resnick smiled. “Not dressed like that.”

Nancy gave a half-smile in return. She had unbuttoned the borrowed red coat walking up the stairs and now it hung loose from her shoulders. “Christmas Eve, you know how it is. Everyone out on the town.”

While Kevin Naylor held the fort, Resnick had nipped home to feed the cats, brushed his best suit, ironed a white shirt, buffed his shoes, scraped a few fragments of pesto sauce from his tie. The one night of the year he tried to make an impression. “I've got changed myself,” he said pleasantly.

“Sorry,” Nancy said, “I hadn't noticed.”

“Yes, well … what exactly was it you …”

“About this afternoon …”

“Yes?”

“Like I said, nothing really happened, to me I mean. It wasn't, you know, this big traumatic thing or anything.”

“But it's on your mind all the same.”

“Is it?”

Resnick shrugged large shoulders. “You're here.”

“Yes, but that's not because of me. It's him.”

“Him?”

“James. Gary James.”

“What about him?”

Nancy fidgeted her feet on the office floor. “I'm not sure. I suppose … All it was, I had this thought, like, when I was passing, literally, going past outside … I didn't want to think that he was cooped up in here, in some cell over Christmas because of me.”

The social worker had contacted Lynn Kellogg after the doctor had carried out his examination: Karl's injuries were not inconsistent with the explanation that his mother had given—he had run headlong into a heavy wooden door. Social Services would keep a watching brief and if there was any further cause for concern … Gary James had been released a little over half an hour ago, warned as to his future behavior, and made to understand there was a possibility charges might still be brought.

“You don't have to worry,” Resnick said. “We've let him go.”

Nancy's smile was a delight to behold. “And that's the end of it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But …”

“There are other things, other issues involved.” Resnick moved towards the door and she followed him, the worn carpet muffling the clip of her heels.

“You won't be needing me again then? Testimony in court or anything?”

“I shouldn't think so. It's unlikely.”

Somehow, close in the doorway, she seemed taller, her face only inches from his own.

“Well, Merry Christmas, I suppose,” Nancy said, and for one absurd moment Resnick thought she was going to breach that distance between them with a kiss.

“Merry Christmas,” Resnick said, as she walked down the corridor. “And tonight, have a good time.”

At the head of the stairs, Nancy raised her hand and waved. “You too,” she said.

Resnick turned back towards his office, started putting out the lights.

Seven

How it worked was this: large-scale bookings were given a banqueting room of their own, smaller parties were encouraged to share. Either way the format was the same—long lines of tables on opposite sides of a central dance floor, a DJ in a cream suit waiting to slip Elvis' “Blue Christmas” in between Abba and Rolf Harris doing terrible things to “Stairway to Heaven.” Plates of food were bounced down in efficient relays; soup, egg mayonnaise, a blue ticket brought turkey, a pink, salmon; the fruit salad came with cream or without. Two bottles of wine every eight people, one red, one white; any further drinks you fetched yourself from the cellar bar. If that became too crowded, it was always possible to cross the courtyard into the main body of the hotel, pass between reception and the wide armchairs of the foyer, and use the bar there.

“All right now!” the DJ overpitched into his mike above the final scraping of plates and the rising tide of conversation. “Who's gonna be the first ones on the floor?”

“What d'you say, Charlie,” Reg Cossall barked into Resnick's ear, “we get ourselves out of here and get a real drink?”

“Later, maybe, Reg. Later.”

Cossall scraped back his chair, pushed himself to his feet. “I'll be across the other side for a bit, if you change your mind. Then, likely, I'll head down the Bell.”

Times long past, Resnick had closed too many bars with Reg Cossall to forget the mornings after. He'd stick where he was for another half hour or so, long enough to show willing, then slip away and leave them to it. He could see Divine revving up already, on his feet a couple of tables down, trying to encourage one of the new WPCs on to the floor, offering to pull her Christmas cracker.

“Come feel the noize!” called the DJ, turning the volume up on Slade and letting the decibels bounce off the ceiling.

Jack Skelton was wearing a dinner jacket, a midnight-blue bow tie; he was standing against the side wall, deep in conversation with Helen Siddons, recently promoted DCI and using the city as a stepping stone on her fast track to the top. They made an elegant pair, standing there, Siddons in an ankle-length pale green gown.

From his seat, Resnick glanced around, concerned that Skelton's wife might be sitting in need of company. What he saw were Kevin Naylor and his wife Debbie, smiling into one another's eyes, holding hands. Second honeymoon, Resnick thought, and not before time. Like a lot of marriages in the force, this one seemed to have been disintegrating before his eyes. It was more than a sign of the times; even when families had seemed more stable and relationships didn't come with their own sell-by date, police divorce figures had been high. How many times had Reg Cossall bought the CID room cigars and signed his name in the registrar's book? Two? Three? And rumor had it he was trying for one more. Resnick sat back down. Either you were like Reg or you tried once and when that was over, shut the doors and threw away the key.

Which is it with you, Charlie?

He could see Skelton's wife Alice now, three rows down, tilting back her head as she finished her wine, reaching out to refill the glass, tapping a cigarette from the pack on the table before her, small gold lighter from her bag, the head tilting back again as she released a swathe of gray smoke, feathering past her eyes.

“Alice?” He stood alongside her, waiting for her to turn.

“Charlie. Well … how nice. A social call?”

Resnick shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “I saw you …”

“On my own? A damsel in distress. Alone and palely loitering.”

There was a whoop from the dance floor, an attempt at a Michael Jackson going badly out of control, legs and arms akimbo.

“For heaven's sake, sit down, Charlie. You're like a spare prick at a wedding.”

Resnick took the chair beside her, calculating how much she had likely drunk, how soon before leaving she'd got started. In all of their infrequent social meetings, stretching back ten years, he had never heard her raise her voice or swear.

“Send you over, did he, Charlie?”

Resnick shook his head.

“Keep an eye on me. Get me talking. Do me a favor, Charlie, keep her happy. Give her a bit of a spin, out on the floor.”

“Alice, I don't know—”

Her hand, the one not holding the glass, was on his knee. “Come on, Charlie, don't play naive. We know what it's like, all boys together, doesn't matter how old. You cover my back, I'll cover yours.” She drank and exchanged the glass for her cigarette. “That's what it all comes down to, Charlie. In the end. The covering of backs.”

Smoke drifted slowly past Resnick's face. At the edge of his vision he could see Jack Skelton leaning lightly against the farthest wall, Helen Siddons turned towards him, both heads bowed in conversation. As Resnick watched, Skelton's hand moved towards his jacket pocket, inadvertently brushing the DCI's bare arm on its way.

“Aren't you drinking, Charlie?” Alice Skelton held the bottle towards him.

Resnick nodded back to where he'd been sitting. “I've got one over there.”

“Abstemious, too. Abstemious and loyal. No wonder Jack's so keen to keep you where you are.” She emptied the bottle into her glass, little more than the dregs.

“I'll get you another …”

Her hand had moved from his leg but now, as he made to rise, it was back. Resnick was starting to sweat just a little; just as some would be clocking Skelton and Siddons, how many were noticing himself and Skelton's wife, putting the numbers together to see how well they fit?

“Alice …”

“What you have to see, she's not just fucking him, Charlie, she's fucking you too.”

“Alice, I'm sorry …” He was on his feet, but she still had hold of him, fingers pressing hard behind the knee. Squeezing past on the other side of the table, one of the civilian VDU operators laughing on his arm, Divine caught Resnick's eye and winked.

“What do you need to know, Charlie?” He had to bend towards her to catch what she was saying above the noise; didn't want her raising her voice any further, shouting it out. “Rules of evidence. How much proof d'you need? Catching them doing it, there in your bed?”

“I'm sorry, Alice, I've got to go.”

He prized away her hand and pushed his way between the backs and chairs, the laughter, all the huddled promises and thoughtless betrayals hatching on the night.

Lynn Kellogg was wearing a strapless dress, royal blue, and had done something to her hair Resnick had not noticed before. The man in the dress suit, between them at the crowded bar, was clearly taken. “Let me get those.” Smiling, twenty-pound note in his hand. “No, thanks. You're all right,” Lynn said, turning away. “Later, then?” “What?” “Let me buy you a drink, later.” She shook her head and pushed through the crowd.

Resnick watched her go over to where Maureen Madden was standing, Maureen wearing a dark frock-coat and jeans, looking more like a country singer on the loose than the sergeant who supervised the rape suite. Reg Cossall was shouting at him from the far end of the bar and waving his empty glass.