John Harvey: Cutting Edge

Not this particular morning.

“I’ve mashed already.”

Bloody hell! What was he doing here? Hadn’t noticed his car downstairs. Resnick sitting at one of the desks in the middle of the CID room, not even in his own office, chair pushed back on two legs and reading the paper. He wasn’t supposed to be here for half an hour yet.

“You can pour us a mug if you like. Milk, not too much, no sugar. Couple of juicy break-ins waiting for you, by the look of it. Just carry on as if I wasn’t here.”

Resnick turned another page of the Independent , dreading the obituaries these days, always another film star you’d lusted over in your youth, another musician you’d heard and now would never get to see. DC Divine walked past him, draped his jacket over the back of his chair and turned the corner to where the teapot was waiting.

Well short of nine the CID briefing was over and Resnick was back in his office, a partitioned rectangle with rotas pinned behind the desk and filing cabinets alongside. A number of the other officers were at their desks, finishing up paperwork before setting off. Mark Divine was already out knocking on doors, ringing bells, examining broken catches, faulty locks, standing straight-faced as homeowners practiced on him the exaggerated claims they would foist on their insurance companies by first-class post. Diptak Patel, thermos flask, telephoto lens, Milky Ways, and binoculars, was behind the wheel of a stationary Fiesta, watching a clothing warehouse on the Glaisdale Park Industrial Estate. His highlighted copy of Benyon’s A Tale of Failure: Race and Policing was in the glove compartment for when this, the third successive day of obs, became too boring.

Lynn Kellogg, hair cut newly short and sporting a certain amount of shine from a henna rinse, was allowing Karen Archer an extra half-hour’s rest before calling to ask questions about last night. Kevin Naylor stood at the back of the lift making its way up to the ward where Tim Fletcher was now a patient; the last time he’d been in the hospital had been when Debbie had been giving birth and if he were silent enough, he could still hear her voice as she screamed for Entonox, an epidural, anything to stop the pain.

Resnick’s DS, Graham Millington, knocked on his door before leaving for a liaison meeting with officers from the West Midlands. A spate of organized thefts of cigarettes and liquor, lorries hijacked or broken into at service areas where they had been parked, had spread from the West Midlands to the East and back again.

“If this takes as long as it might, sir, OK if I nip straight home? Wife’s got her Spanish class, starting tonight.”

“Thought it was Russian, Graham?” said Resnick, looking up.

“New term, sir. Thought she’d have a go at something different.”

Resnick nodded. “Right. Ring in if that’s what you’re going to do. You can fill me in in the morning.”

He watched through the glass of the door as Graham Millington automatically adjusted his tie and gave a quick downward tug at the front of his jacket. If he wasn’t necessarily going to be the brightest over at Walsall, at least he could be the best pressed. Cleanliness and godliness: a drawer full of perfectly folded shirts and seven pairs of well-buffed shoes set you right on the road to heaven. Millington’s father had worked all his life for Home Brothers and at weekends been a lay preacher for the Wesleyan Methodists.

Resnick checked his watch and collected his files. If he failed to knock on the superintendent’s door by a minute short of nine Jack Skelton would count him as late.

“Charlie. Maurice.”

Skelton nodded at Resnick and the uniformed inspector in charge, Maurice Wainwright, recently down from Rotherham and still with a little coal dust behind the ears.

“Have a seat.”

While Wainwright was making his report, Resnick kept his attention on the superintendent’s face. Since Skelton’s daughter had run wild not so many months back, shoplifting, truanting, acquiring a taste for Ecstasy, the lines around his eyes had bitten tighter, the eyes themselves more ready to flinch. A man who no longer knew where the next blow was coming from. Resnick had wanted to talk to him about it, allow the senior man the chance to unburden himself, if that were what he wanted. But Jack Skelton kept offers of help and friendship at a careful arm’s length; his response to the rupture of a life that had seemed so symmetrical was to withdraw further, redraw the parameters so that they seemed even more precise, more perfect.

“How’s the house-hunting coming along, Maurice?” Skelton asked, the inspector’s report over.

“Couple of possibles, sir. Wife’s coming down for a look at weekend.”

Skelton pressed together the tips of his spread fingers. “Sort it soon, Maurice. Down here with you, that’s where they should be.”

Wainwright glanced across at Resnick. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“So, Charlie,” said Skelton, replacing one sheet of paper square on his blotter with another. “This business at the hospital, doesn’t look like your ordinary mugging?”

“Had nigh on fifty pounds on him, small wallet in his back pocket. One of those personal stereos. Credit cards. None of it taken.”

“Lads out for a spot of bother, then, drunk. Lord knows they need little enough reason, nowadays. Wrong place at the wrong time, wrong face, that’s enough.”

“Possible, sir. You do get them using the bridge on the way back from the city. Anyone who’d tried a couple of clubs after the pubs’d chucked out and found themselves turned away, they might have ended up there around that time.”

“No reports?”

“Nothing obvious, sir. I’m getting it double-checked.”

“We know there was more than one assailant?” asked Wainwright.

Skelton shook his head. “We know nothing. Except that he was badly cut, lost a lot of blood. Blow or blows to the head. More than one looks the most likely, either that or someone pretty strong and fit.”

“And presumably not pissed out of his socks,” Wainwright said.

“Someone with a reason, then, Charlie,” said Skelton. “Motivation other than robbery, if we can leave that aside.” The superintendent uncapped his fountain pen, made a quick, neat notation and screwed the top back into place.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to talk to the victim this morning, sir. Any luck, he’ll be able to tell us something. And we’re having a word with the girl who found him.”

“Chance, was that?”

“Girlfriend, sir. On her way to meet him, apparently.”

“Funny time of night.”

“Funny hours.”

“Worse than ours,” said Wainwright.

“It would be useful if we found the weapon,” said Skelton. “Attack like that, especially not premeditated, likely to have thrown it.”

“Maurice has sent a couple of men out,” said Resnick, with a nod of acknowledgment in Wainwright’s direction. “Pretty wide verges either side of the bridge, front of the hospital to one side and all that warren of university buildings on the other. A lot to search.”

Skelton relaxed his frown sufficiently to sigh. “As you say, Charlie, the poor bugger on the receiving end, he’s our best hope.”

A more superstitious man than Resnick would have been crossing his fingers; touching wood.

Since being carried into the hospital in the middle of the previous night, Tim Fletcher had encountered a considerable amount of hospital practice from the receiving end. After some cutting away of clothing, preliminary cleaning of the worst affected areas-right leg, left arm, face and neck, both hands-pressure bandages had been applied in an attempt to staunch further bleeding. A drip had been set up to replace the lost blood with plasma expanders. Those were the essential emergency procedures: the ones which kept him alive.