John Harvey - Cold Light

“Here …”

“Don’t mind, do you?”

McAllister shrugged and shook his head.

“Where’s this, then?” Divine asked. McAllister was sitting outside a cafe, somewhere warm, white shirt open over red trunks; alongside him, Nancy Phelan was smiling, holding a tall glass of something cool towards the camera. She was wearing a pale bikini top and tight shorts and she looked lithe and tanned. Divine could see why McAllister would have wanted to get involved.

“Majorca,” McAllister said.

“You went on holiday together?” Naylor asked.

“Where we met. June. She was there with that pal of hers.”

“Dana Matthieson?”

“That’s her.”

“Holiday romance, then,” Naylor said.

“How it started, I suppose. Yes.”

“Love at first bite,” Divine said, slipping a corner of the photograph back beneath a plastic banana.

“Sorry?” McAllister said.

“Nothing.”

“How long did you carry on seeing her?” Naylor asked. “Once you got home.”

“Couple of months, more or less.”

They were looking at him, waiting for more.

“You know,” he shrugged, managing to avoid looking at either of them, “way it goes.”

“She dumped you,” Divine said.

“Like hell!”

“She didn’t dump you.”

“No.”

“You dumped her.”

“Not exactly.”

“What exactly?” Divine was enjoying this.

Through one of the small windows, Naylor could see a man wheeling his bike beside a narrow strip of canal; an older man, almost certainly asleep, fishing.

“We just stopped seeing one another.” McAllister’s expression suggested they should understand, men of the world, it happened all the time.

“No reason?”

“Look …”

“Yes?”

“I don’t see the point of all these …”

“Questions?”

“Yes. It’s not as if …”

“What?”

McAllister seemed to be getting a little warm for the time of year, but then the room was small. The cuffs of his shirt were folded back just one turn. “I saw it on the news. Christmas Eve, too, it’s hard to believe. Girl like that.” He looked first at Naylor and then at Divine. “I don’t suppose you want-should have asked-cup of coffee? Tea?”

“What do you mean?” Naylor asked. “A girl like that?”

McAllister took his time. “You always think, don’t you … I mean, it might not be fair, but what you think, well, maybe they weren’t too bright, couldn’t see what was coming … You know what I mean?”

“Who are we talking about?” Naylor said.

“These women you read about, getting themselves kidnapped, attacked, whatever. Agreeing to meet some bloke they don’t know, stuff like that.” He flexed his shoulders, hands in pockets. “Try getting Nancy to agree to something she didn’t want to do, forget it.”

Divine glanced over at Kevin Naylor and grinned.

“Where were you on Christmas Eve?” Naylor asked, notebook at the ready.

“The Cookie Club.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course, I’m …”

“All evening?”

“From-oh, what? — ten-thirty, eleven.”

“And before?”

“Er, couple of drinks in the Baltimore Exchange, few more in Old Orleans, Christmas Eve, you know how it is. Fetched up at the Cookie, yes, not later than eleven. Eleven-thirty, the very outside.”

“And you stayed till?”

“One. One-fifteen. Walked home. There was a line waiting for a cab on the square, hundred, hundred and fifty deep.”

“You’ve got witnesses,” Divine asked.

“Witnesses?”

“Someone who’ll back up your story, swear you were where you say.”

“Yes, I suppose so. I wasn’t on my own, if that’s what you mean. Yes, there were people, friends. Yes, of course.”

“You’ll give us the names?” said Naylor. “So we can check.”

McAllister’s mouth was dry and his eyes were starting to sting; damn central heating. “Look, I suppose you have to do this, but …”

“When did you last see her?” asked Divine, moving in.

“Nancy?” Wetting his lips with his tongue.

“Who else?”

“Six weeks ago? No more.”

“Date, was it?” Divine was close to him now, close enough to smell the heady mix of aftershave and sweat.

“Not exactly, no.”

Divine smiled with his eyes and the edges of his mouth and waited.

“A quick drink, that was all. The Baltimore.”

“You go there a lot.”

“It’s near.”

Not to say overpriced, Divine thought. That’s if you can get someone to serve you in the first place.

“I haven’t seen her since,” McAllister said. “You’ve got my word.”

“So what d’you reckon?” Naylor asked.

They were crossing the narrow street towards the car. In front of them was the Queen’s Medical Centre and Divine had a quick memory of Lesley Bruton teasing him with her offer to model underwear. Over a day now and there’d been no fresh news of poor bloody Raju, still languishing in Intensive Care.

“Well?” Naylor was standing by the nearside door.

“No doubt about it,” Divine said. “She dumped him.”

There were times, Resnick knew, what you didn’t do was play Billie Holiday singing “Our Love is Here to Stay”; when it was self-pitying, not to say foolish, to listen to her jaunty meander through “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” because it felt as if they already had. What was okay was Ben Webster wailing through “Cottontail,” the version with Oscar Peterson kicking out on the piano; Jimmy Witherspoon assuring the Monterey Jazz Festival “Tain’t Nobody’s Business What I Do.” Or what he set to play now, Barney Kessel’s “to swing or not to swing” with its lower-case title and dictionary definitions on the cover. The tracks he liked best were up-tempo, carefree, Georgie Auld sitting in on tenor, “Moten Swing,” “Indiana.”

Bud cradled along one arm, he went down the steps into the kitchen and began opening fresh tins of cat food, pouring milk, surveying the interior of the fridge for the sandwich he was going to make himself later. It was true, it appeared, Reg Cossall was intent upon getting his name in the registrar’s book for the third time. The woman in question was the matron at an old people’s home out past Long Eaton. Bright-faced and bonny, Resnick had met her twice and she had scarcely seemed to stop laughing. “Getting set for your retirement then, Reg?” a foolhardy DC had suggested. Cossall had been all for castrating him with his reserve set of dentures.

As he ground coffee, Resnick tried to think what it was about Reg Cossall-sour, cynical, and foulmouthed-that made him such an attractive proposition. But then, Charlie, he thought, waiting for the water to come to the boil, it isn’t as if you haven’t had offers either.

Marian Witczak, waiting for him to step into her peculiar time-warp, careful not to broach the possibility herself, of course, relying on old friends at the Polish Club to do the hinting for her. And then there had been Claire Millinder, the estate agent engaged in the fruitless task of moving him out of this Victorian mausoleum into something compact and modern with a microwave oven and flush doors you could punch a hole through with your fist. “What does it have to be with you, Charlie? True love?” The last he had heard, Claire had gone back to New Zealand; there had been a card from the Bay of Plenty where she and her fruit-farmer lover were raising kiwi fruit and babies.

There was a small moan of complaint from near his feet as Dizzy hustled in on Bud’s bowl and Resnick scooped up the big cat by its belly and put him out in the garden.

Maybe it didn’t have to be true love, after all; nor love of any kind.