Cold Light cr-6 Read online

  “Is there an address, then,” Skelton asked, “where we can contact you?”

  Harry Phelan gave them the name of a small hotel on the Mansfield Road.

  “You’ll have to forgive him,” Clarise said through her tears. “He’s upset, that’s what it is.”

  Harry bustled her into the corridor, slamming the door shut behind them.

  Skelton and Resnick sat for some little time, avoiding each other’s eye, saying nothing. Skelton tried a mouthful of tea, but it was cold. When Resnick moved, it was to look at his watch. “Little under ten hours to go.”

  Skelton raised an eyebrow.

  “Till it’s forty-eight,” Resnick said.

  Divine and Naylor visited Patrick McAllister together. His address was in Old Lenton, a factory that once had made fruit machines and which since had been transformed into an apartment block for upwardly mobile singles and young couples passing through. McAllister was waiting for them at the head of the stairs, khaki chinos and artificially faded check shirt, deft handshake, blokes-together smile. Happy to invite them inside.

  They asked him questions as they looked around.

  Sure, McAllister said, he knew Nancy Phelan. Had done. Been out with her quite a few times, matter of fact. Clubbing, you know, pictures once or twice, evening or two in the pub. Nice girl, lively, spoke her mind. Liked that about her. Couldn’t stand women who sat there all night, no more than half a dozen words to their name and two of those, please and thanks.

  There were photographs on the wall in the small living room, McAllister with various young women; others clamped to the front of the fridge by magnetic fruit, raspberries, pineapples, and bananas. Divine lifted one of those clear and took it towards the 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.”

  Sixteen

  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.

  He poured himself a small scotch, a bottle of fifteen-year-old Springbank single malt he’d won in the CID raffle, and took it, together with his black coffee, into the front room.

  Pam Van Allen’s number was in the phone book. Turning down the stereo, he dialed. What had it been? Certainly less than a year ago, walking into that wine bar opposite the snooker hall, their first and last meeting: alone at a table close against the wall, an open book and a glass of wine, perfectly self-contained. He knew that calling her now was a mistake, crass, stupid, but before he could break the connection, she had answered.

  “Hello?” The tightness of her voice there in just that word.

  “Oh, Pam Van Allen …?”

  “Yes?”

  “Charlie Resnick.”

  “Who?”

  “Detective Inspector …”

  “What gives you the right to call me at home? And today? This is a public holiday.”

  “I know and I’m sorry, but if it wasn’t important …”

  “Get to the point, Inspector.”

  “Gary James, he’s one of your clients, I believe …”

  “And I’ll be in my office tomorrow morning. As long as you’re not trawling for information to which you have no right, you can contact me there.”

  And the conversation was over. Resnick eyed the receiver as though it might have been some way responsible for Pam Van Allen’s anger, then placed it carefully down. Not much of a whisky man, nevertheless he downed it in one. With a mock-cheery coda, Barney Kessel’s “Twelfth Street Rag” pranced to a close. In the room it was silent. Resnick stroked Pepper, knuckle of one finger behind its ear, until the cat began to purr.

  He was back in the kitchen, shaving several-day-old Stilton on to a mixture of duck meat and tomato, when the phone rang.

  “I’m sorry about that. You caught us in the middle of an almighty row.”

  The “us” resonated in Resnick’s mind. “That’s okay,” he said.

  “But then,” Pam Van Allen continued, “it is Boxing Day.”

  He thought if he could see her she might almost be smiling. “Well, is it all right now, to talk, I mean? If you’re in the middle of something …”

  “It’s fine. Seconds are out, I think. I’m in the bedroom. Getting my second wind.”

  Resnick tried to picture it; tried not to.

  “You wanted to say something about Gary James?”

  “More ask something, really.”

  “Ah-huh.”

  “Share some information …”

  “Share?”

  “Of course.”

  This time he heard her laugh. “A little early for New Year’s resolutions, isn’t it, Inspector?”

  “Charlie.”

  “What?”

  “It’s my name.”

  “Inspector comes more easily to the tongue.”

  Sidestepping his best intentions, Resnick’s mind hopped into the unseen bedroom. Was she really resting, pillows propped up behind her, legs stretching slimly before her? Jesus, Resnick thought! What is the matter with me?

  “Share away,” Pam said.

  He told her about the incident at the Housing Office, about Nancy Phelan’s disappearance, Lynn’s suspicions about the injuries to Karl’s face.

  There was silence at the other end of the line, Pam Van Allen thinking. “You want to know what I think he’s capable of?” she said eventually.

  “I want to know anything that might be useful.”

  After more consideration, Pam said: “I’ve got time for him, Gary; he gives one kind of impression, but he’s not as bad as you might think. It would have been easy for him to have left Michelle alone with those two kids, lots of men in his place would. It’s not even as if they were married. But he’s not like that, Gary. Not irresponsible. Not really. But the situation he’s in, no work and not for lack of trying, precious little money, a house that either wants a small fortune spending on it or knocking down, it’s no wonder he gets frustrated and that the frustration shows. And he has got a temper. He is physical. The education he had, it’s all he can be.”

  She gave Resnick time for that to sink in.

  “So if you’re asking me, could he have struck out at that lad of his, I’d have said he could; just like being kept sitting around at Housing could get him banging the odd chair about. None of it’s premeditated, though, and that’s what I can’t see. Gary bearing that kind of a grudge, planning something out, some kind of revenge, waiting to carry it out.”

  Resnick thought a few moments more, weighing up what Pam Van Allen had said. “Thanks, I appreciate that. I value your opinion. I’ll pass it on to my DC.”

  “Glad I could help.” There was another pause in which Resnick struggled for the right thing to say and he was sure she was about to say goodbye. Instead she said, “Last time we spoke, you said something about a drink or something, after work.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “You said you’d get back to me. You were going to think about it.”

  With a smile in her voice, she said, “I lied.”

  “I see.”

  “But I’m thinking about it now.”

  “And?”

  “Can I call you? Next couple of days?”

  “Of course.”

  Muffled in the background, Resnick could hear another voice raised. “Round two,” Pam Van Allen said, and for the second time that evening broke the connection.

  Gary’s pal from up the street had knocked before nine, on his way to the corner pub. “Spent up,” Gary had said, but Brian pulled a twenty-pound note from his back pocket and flourished it with a whistle. “Jammy bugger!” Gary had exclaimed. “Where d’you get that?” “Sharon’s gran,” Brian grinned, “sent it her for Christmas.” Michelle had almost said something, but she bit her tongue instead. No sense in risking an argument. Not another. “Not be late,” Gary had said, and off they’d gone, wide-eyed and laughing, a couple of great kids.

  As well he left when he did, really, because within fifteen minutes Karl started screaming from upstairs, some kind of nightmare, and Michelle had to go up and comfort him, take him a drink, and sit with him awhile until he was ready to go back to sl
eep. It was cold in there, not as cold as the night before, but still Karl’s legs were like ice under the covers and, too early to carry him downstairs for the night, she put him in their bed, hers and Gary’s, and doubled the blankets round him. Natalie woke soon after and Michelle changed and fed her and sat with her down on the sofa, Natalie asleep against her breast while she watched a comedy show with Bobby Davro.

  The clock said five to ten and despite what Gary had said she knew he wouldn’t be back till chucking-out time. Gone. She made up her mind that by then she would have the children tucked up down here, the kettle on in case Gary fancied a last-minute cup of tea, and be ready herself for bed.

  At least Gary didn’t get riled up when he had a drink or two inside him, not the way it was with some. Didn’t get randy, neither. She’d heard from Brian’s wife about him stumbling home late, not able to get the key in his own front door, but still expecting her to do it with him the minute he got into the house. What Gary did was fall asleep. Get a bit cuddly first, he would, snuggling up to her back and mumbling away, nothing she could ever understand, and then after a while he’d roll on to his back, fast off. Sweet, he looked then, lying there with a sort of smile on his face, young, too, really young.

  The news was on now, Michelle thinking she would get up and switch it over, switch off. But little Natalie’s head was just so, her breath warm close against Michelle’s skin. Missing since before Christmas, the newscaster said, and there was a photograph of her there, dark hair, down past her shoulders, the woman she and Gary had been to see together at the Housing, the one who, after a lot of prodding and pushing and form-filling, had found them the place they were now. Nancy Phelan.

  Michelle was on her feet, pacing, the baby whimpering a little, upset at being disturbed. All of the questions that policewoman had been asking. Have you seen her? When have you seen her? At the Housing Office? Not later? Not later?

  The news had moved on to another item, a tanker aground somewhere north of Scotland, but Michelle could still hear the newscaster’s words: last seen late on Christmas Eve, shortly before midnight.

  Gary standing up to her, the policewoman. “I came in and I never went out. Not till morning. Right?”

  Michelle’s hands around the baby were clammy and cold.