John Harvey - Rough Treatment

“What are you saying, then? She’s just been smoking pot, cannabis?”

Skelton shook his head. “LSD. Sometimes amphetamines. Mostly LSD.”

“And you believe that’s all? You believe her?”

Skelton could still see his daughter’s face and understood that talking to him downstairs, telling him all that she had in that neat and perfect kitchen, had been the most difficult thing in the world for her to do. There must have been times, he thought, when she had longed to throw it all in my face, like a fist. But this had not been one of those times.

“I believe her,” he said.

“What I don’t understand, where did she get her hands on these drugs? It sounds as if she only has to walk in somewhere off the street and there it is. LSD. Whatever you said it was called.”

“Ecstasy.”

“What?”

“The particular drug Kate’s been taking. Been buying. It’s called Ecstasy. Apparently, the group she goes around with, it’s pretty prevalent. The done thing.”

“But where …?”

“Where not? The clubs she goes, some of them. Coaches off to Sheffield, Manchester. Something to keep them going, keep them awake.”

“And that’s why she was stealing?”

Skelton nodded. “She could hardly come and ask us for an increase in her pocket money, could she?”

“Jack.”

“I know.”

It was hard for them to look at one another; Skelton touched his wife’s arm again; held, for little more than a moment, her hand.

“You’re cold,” he said.

“What will happen?” she said.

Skelton didn’t know. He couldn’t be certain what would happen about the stealing, and anyway, that was the least of it. What he didn’t know about was addiction, how possible or difficult it would be for her to stop, always supposing that was what she wanted. And other things. No matter what he had said to his wife, Skelton couldn’t wipe his mind free of AIDS. All right, so she was unlikely to have caught it from using a dirty needle. But that didn’t rule out other ways. No matter how hard he tried to close off his mind to those, it wasn’t yet possible.

Kate.

“They’ll crucify you, won’t they?” his wife said, standing close beside where he was sitting on the edge of their bed. “Not just the local ones. All of them. They’ll love it.”

Skelton leaned his head against her hip. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s not important, what anyone says about me.” Wanting to mean it: knowing that it wasn’t true.

By the time details had filtered back from the hospital, Resnick had left his house for the station. Millington greeted him at the entrance to the CID room with a concerned face and a strong tea. It took less than five minutes to convey everything that was known.

“He’s going to pull through, Furlong?” Resnick asked.

“Looks like it, sir. Wouldn’t have stood much chance if they’d just done a bunk, that’s for certain.”

“No identification?”

Millington shifted his weight across on to his other foot. “Too early for that. Still, I don’t think there can be a lot of doubt, do you? All things considered.”

Resnick nodded agreement. The briefing was due to start in a quarter of an hour. Jack Skelton wasn’t going to be too happy that he’d pulled Patel off watch and not replaced him, beyond asking one of the night patrol cars to report the presence of Grice’s vehicle. Then that wasn’t all the superintendent was going to be unhappy about. Poor bastard! Resnick wondered if he should try and take him to one side, say something; then, what did you say, situations like that?

“Sir.” It was Naylor, face like a bleached sheet in need of ironing. He was waving a piece of computer printout close to Resnick’s nose. “Don’t know why it didn’t show before, probably asked the wrong questions; sorry, sir.”

“Come on, then.”

The DC stopped fanning the paper and held it across his chest like a shield. “I was just checking burglaries, that’s what it was, I suppose. Break-ins, security, that was the angle. I …”

“Kevin.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop fannying about.”

Naylor coughed, came close to blushing. He could hear Divine laughing at the far end of the CID room. “What I missed, Fossey was in trouble four years back. Before Sergeant Millington interviewed him. Motor accident. Someone ran into the back of him at a roundabout. Came out that Fossey was driving without insurance. He was told to report next day, but no charge was made. All blown over.”

“And now,” said Resnick, seeing the smile beginning at the back of Naylor’s eyes, “you’re going to get to the interesting part.”

“It was DI Harrison, sir. That Fossey saw.”

“Four years ago,” said Resnick. “I wonder if that was when he met Andrew John Savage? Insurance broker of this parish.”

This morning Jack Skelton looked as though he was held together by fortitude and shaving soap. His early glance seemed to say to Resnick, all right, Charlie, I know what you’re thinking, understood, but keep your distance. Resnick sat down between Norman Mann and Bill Prentiss from the Serious Crimes Squad. Tom Parker was there, exchanging pleasantries about DIY with Lennie Lawrence. Graham Millington kept opening his note book and closing it again, for all the world as if he were about to give evidence.

“Gentlemen,” Skelton said. His voice was pitched an octave lower and Resnick thought he’d aged ten years overnight. “I think you all know Bill Prentiss. Bill’s here because of some wider interest in our two rear-entry merchants. Bill?”

Prentiss was a Devonian who’d been promoted away from his home patch and kept inside his head a calendar on which he ticked off the years he could retire back there. Little place overlooking the sea near Lynmouth: on a clear day you could see the refineries at the other side of the Bristol Channel.

“We’ve got a lot of unsolved burglaries,” Prentiss said, “similar MO to your lads and stretching back, oh, six, seven years or more. Midlands, mainly, but moving up to the north-west. Nothing north of Manchester.”

“I’d always suspected that,” laughed Tom Parker. “Bloody sight more than south of Watford,” said Lennie Lawrence.

“Never got very close to them,” Prentiss went on, “never sure if that was down to their luck or whether they had themselves a good source.”

“You’re not suggesting,” interrupted Skelton, “that somehow this pair have got people across half the country peddling them information?”

Prentiss shook his head, lit a cigarette. “What seems to be the pattern, they move into an area, make connections, milk them for a year or two-not too greedy, never enough to let us get a good line on them-and then try somewhere else.”

“Last couple of years,” said Resnick, “we’ve been the lucky ones.”

“Bit like fleas,” said Prentiss, “they come and go.”

“Seasonal,” said Tom Parker.

“And we’ve got enough to tie them in with Fossey and Savage?” Skelton asked.

“Enough to bring them in and lean on them, sir,” said Millington. “I think once one of them goes, the others’ll cave in pretty sharpish.”

“What I’m still not happy about,” said Tom Parker, “is trying to fit Jeff Harrison into this.”

Resnick passed on to the meeting Naylor’s findings, Patel’s suspicions, the conclusions he had drawn himself as a result of the meeting between them.

“What I don’t see,” Lennie Lawrence leaning forward, uncrossing his legs, “is what Jeff reckoned he was getting out of this, always supposing Charlie’s right.”

They turned and looked at Resnick. “It sounds a cliché, but I think he’s disillusioned. Thinks any further promotion is blocked; considers he’s been shunted aside, whatever reason, good or bad. He’s been looking for a way out.”