John Harvey - Cold Light

“Shall you catch him, d’you think?”

Resnick took his time about answering. “Yes,” he finally said, thinking on balance that he meant it.

“Nothing will happen to him, will it? Even if you do. Some crackpot with a bunch of letters after his name’ll stand up in court and spout something and they’ll shut him away in some hospital for ten years and then let him back out.”

Resnick didn’t reply.

“If you do set hands on him,” Harry Phelan said, voice flat as before, “for pity’s sake keep me clear of him. Because if you don’t I’ll not be responsible for what happens.”

After a few more minutes, Resnick turned side on and looked at Harry waiting till the other man returned his gaze; then, together, the two of them set off back across the field.

Sharon Garnett was waiting for him back at the car, slightly tense, legs a little apart, her face set with determination. Resnick thought it likely he was about to get another lecture. “I was wondering,” she said, “you ever have vacancies in your team?”

Resnick took a moment to collect his thoughts, not what he had been expecting. “From time to time,” he said, “people get promoted, transferred.” He didn’t tell her that not so very long back one of his men had been stabbed to death when he sought to break up a scuffle between youths in the city center.

“What happened here,” Sharon was saying, glancing back across her shoulder to where the body had been found, “I did all right, didn’t I?”

Resnick nodded. “I should think so, yes.”

“So if I were to apply,” the slow smile starting up again near the edges of her mouth, “I could rely on you for a recommendation.”

“After what you said before, I’m surprised you’d even think about working with me.”

She stepped back and gave him a slow once-over, amused. “Basically, sir, I’d say you were okay. You just need somebody around to give you a bit of a nudge.”

Resnick held out his hand. “Thanks for the help. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Right,” said Sharon, “maybe you will.” And she turned to get back to her own business, too much to do to stand there and watch him drive away.

They were heading east, back through Newark towards the city and not a decent passing space in sight. Frustrated behind the wheel, Millington chewed instead mint after extra-strong mint, never letting them remain in his mouth long before crunching them between his teeth.

“Drop a plumb-line down from the first ransom drop to the second,” Resnick said, “what do you get?”

Millington flicked on the indicator, changed down ready to overtake. “Long as it had a kink in it, where we’ve just come from.”

Resnick sighed and shook his head. Out through the nearside window, a farmer was forking feed from the back of a tractor, cattle making their way towards it, waveringly across cold land.

“I wonder what it’s like,” Resnick said. “To be in Harry Phelan’s position. Something you must have half-known all along, there in the back of your mind, and then … Jesus, Graham! Dug up in a ploughed field. How the hell d’you begin to live with that?”

Millington didn’t know. Tight on the wheel, his hands were smeared with sweat. How could either of them really know? Two middle-aged men, neither of whom had ever fathered a child.

Resnick got through to the station on the car phone and asked for Lynn Kellogg. Briefly, he filled her in on what they’d found. “Get yourself over to Robin Hidden soon as you can,” he said. “Take Kevin along if he’s free. Best if Hidden hears it from you if you can get to him in time. He’s going to have the media crawling all over him any time.”

“Right,” Lynn said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“And, Lynn. That friend of his, up in Lancaster or wherever, suggest he goes up there for a bit, keeps his head down.”

“Right.”

Millington cursed quietly, forced to pull in behind a high-sided lorry which the single carriageway left him no room to overtake. Fingering another mint from the packet, he offered one to Resnick, who shook his head.

The phone sounded and it was Lynn calling Resnick back. “Just to be clear, when I talk to Hidden. We’re no longer looking at him as a suspect here?”

“No,” Resnick said. “Just another victim.”

When Millington dropped him off at the London Road roundabout it was so gloomy the floodlights at the County ground, some quarter of a mile up the road, could scarcely be seen.

“Tell Skelton I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“He’s going to love that,” Millington said. Resnick didn’t care; this was something he had to do himself. Climbing the slight hill towards the Lace Market and turning left on to Hollowstone and up towards St. Mary’s Church, he stepped into the full force of the wind. There was a hole in the stone wall a third of the way up the hill, giving way to a space large enough for a short man to stand up in. Two figures were huddled inside, newspaper and cardboard around their legs and feet; Resnick guessed another three or four had slept there that night.

When he turned right in front of the church, there was Andrew Clarke’s red Toyota illegally parked outside the architects’ office, Clarke’s name, the senior partner, in tasteful lower case on the glass beside the door.

Yvonne Warden was chatting to the receptionist at the desk, fresh cup of coffee in her hand, green plants luxuriating quietly to either side. Framed photographs of office blocks and hotels the firm had designed hung from the wall, alongside copies of the original plans.

“If you want to see Andrew,” she began, “I think he’s still in a meeting …”

“It’s all right,” Resnick said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Dana was at her desk in the library, looking through a box viewer at a slide of one of Philip Johnson’s Houston buildings, a high-rise version of one of those gabled houses she’d fallen in love with by the canals in Amsterdam. A shame, she was thinking, Johnson never got to follow through on his design for a Kuwaiti Investment Office opposite the Tower of London that was a replica of the Houses of Parliament, twice life-size. At least the man had a sense of fun.

She looked around at the soft click of the door and when she saw it was Resnick she said hi and smiled, but halfway out of her chair the smile died.

“It’s Nancy, isn’t it?”

He nodded and held out both hands, but she turned aside and walked towards the window; stood, resting her head against it, eyes closed, holding on. The glass was cold against her face.

Resnick didn’t know any other way to do this. “Her body was found early this morning. She’d been buried in a field. She’d been strangled.”

Dana jolted, as if a current had passed through her, and her forehead banged against the window hard. Carefully, Resnick eased her back against him, until she was leaning against his chest, her hair soft on his face. Her breathing was like rags.

“Do her parents know?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God!” Slowly this time, Resnick still holding her, the top of her body arched forward until the crown of her head was once again against the glass. Someone came into the room and, on a look from Resnick, went quickly away again. “She was so … beautiful,” Dana said.

“Yes, she was.”

Dana turned, shaking, into his arms and Resnick held her, trying not to think about the time. By now Skelton would be taking counsel, issuing orders, readying himself for a press conference. As the senior officer present when Nancy Phelan’s body had been lifted from the ground, Resnick himself would have to go before the television cameras before the day was out. From the square, faint, came the sound of the bell on the Council House ringing the hour.