Cutting Edge (8 page)

The door at the top could have been locked, likely would have been if someone had not removed the bolt. Wonder, thought Resnick, exactly when that was done.

He pushed the door open and stepped through, turning left so that the hospital lay behind him, the bridge stretching out ahead. The occasional vehicle now, headlights sliding down the glass panels as they sped along the ring road, north or south. Resnick stood quite still, listening to the muted thrum of engines, concentrating on the double doors at the far end, the bridge spanning six lanes of highway, those doors a long way off.

Do people feel unhappy only during office hours?
Black print on white paper, Blu-tacked to the wired glass.
Phone NITELINE 7 p.m. to 8 a.m
. Resnick tried to imagine being trapped in there, terrified, desperate to escape. He began to walk, slowly, towards the other side, the smell of rubber clearer with every step.

Whoever had seen Fletcher, followed him, what had determined his choice? Being there, now, the middle of the night, Resnick found it difficult to believe in a chance attack. Whoever had stalked the exhausted houseman almost the length of the bridge had done so for a reason. Resnick needed to believe it had been personal. He hesitated for a moment, staring down. He had to believe that, cling to it, knowing that if it were not true, there was somebody still out there, somewhere in the city, who had wreaked terrible havoc on Tim Fletcher’s body for reasons that only a psychologist might ever understand. And who might do the same again.

City Life
, read the poster facing Resnick as he went through the double doors. A bicycle had been left chained to the railings on the broad platform, two-thirds of the way down the steps. The air that touched Resnick’s hands and face was surprisingly cold, driving up from the flyover. Something caught his attention, low by the wall of the first building and he brought up the torch.

It was only boxes, crammed with computer printouts: metallurgy, something close. Resnick switched off the torch and stood them, feeling the adrenalin in his body. Seek and you shall find. He crossed back over the ring road, stepping easily over the metal safety barriers at the center.

Sitting in the car, he dribbled the last of the coffee into the plastic cup. There had been no mistaking his ex-wife’s voice on the phone, nor, in those few not-quite-coherent sentences, the mixture of resentment and pleading he had thought forgotten.

Eleven

He had the kind of profile that could have been selling aftershave; thick hair, naturally curly and dark, a hunk wearing a black vest and loose-fitting sweatpants with a draw-string waist. He was wearing a pair of running shoes that had cost him close to eighty pounds, but that didn’t mean he was running. He had walked down the street and now he stood outside Number 27 and rang the bell. When nothing seemed to happen, he hit the door with the flat of his hand, enough to make it shake. Pushing back the letter flap, Ian Carew called Karen’s name.

A couple of minutes and he saw her through the couple of inches of door: salmon socks, double-knit and large and folding loosely back down her calves; hem of a white T-shirt bouncing as she came down the stairs, enough to give him a glimpse of expensive underwear, beige lace and broderie anglaise. There was a large Snoopy in relief on the front of the shirt. Carew let the flap snap into place and stood back.

Not far.

“What …?”

He stepped in without speaking, anger in his face, forcing her back along the threadbare carpet at the other side of the mat.

She looked at him and shook her head and for a moment he thought she was going to bite down into her lower lip, like a child. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and there was sleep in the corner of her eyes.

A woman walked past on the opposite side of the street, Asian, wearing a purple and gold sari and pushing a pram, twins. Karen didn’t think she’d ever noticed Asian twins before.

Carew moved forward, blocking her view.

“Good at it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Natural. Comes natural. Something Mummy fed you along with the milk.”

“Now you’re being stupid.”

“And don’t do that!” His hand was on her face before she could move, fingers squeezing against the sides of her jaw, forcing her mouth slightly open so that she could no longer bite the soft flesh inside her lip.

“Lying,” he said. “That’s what you’re good at. Lying. ‘No, Ian, there isn’t anything wrong. I’m not seeing anybody else, of course I’m not seeing anybody else.’ Weeks until I found out.”

Karen turned her head aside, laughed dismissively. “Is that what this is all about?”

“What do you think?”

“Tim.”

“Gets himself mugged and you send the police round after me.”

“Oh, Ian.”

“Oh, Ian, what?”

She didn’t want this conversation, didn’t want this to be happening. She might have guessed that cow of a policewoman would put two and two together and come up with the wrong answer. Probably she should have warned him, but she hadn’t. Now he was there in the house, angry, and she didn’t think she could make him leave against his will, not by herself. She didn’t think there was anybody else in the house.

“Look,” Karen said, “let me get dressed. It won’t take a minute.”

Carew didn’t move.

Shrugging, she turned and went back upstairs, conscious that he was following her, looking at her legs.

“Mind the …”

“I remember.”

The room was much as he’d remembered it as well, clutter and last night’s cigarette smoke. It had almost been enough to put him off her, the way, after a meal, after the cinema, after sex, she would automatically light up. Cheap. Expensive to look at but cheap underneath. He watched as she pulled on a pair of faded blue jeans and exchanged her socks for a pair of sports shoes, white with a pink trim.

She picked up the kettle. “Tea?”

“When did I ever drink tea in the mornings?”

Karen spooned instant coffee into mugs, relieved that he seemed to have calmed down, feeling safer now that he was almost friendly, wanting to keep him that way, only not too much. Carew watched her as the water boiled, lounging with one of his bare elbows against the wall, posing.

“I should be really pissed off with you,” he said, as she spooned sugar into her own mug, ready.

“You mean you’re not?”

“I ought to be.” Not leaning any more now, standing close as she lifted the kettle, almost touching her, touching her. “Desperate without you, that what you reckoned? Thought of someone else in there with you, in bed, picture of it driving me insane?” His knee was resting against the back of her thigh, knuckles sliding gently up and down her arm.

Karen moved away, turning back towards him at arm’s length, offering him the coffee.

“Thanks,” smiling through the faintest shimmer of steam.

Smug bastard! Karen thought. “It was the police who asked me about you,” she said. “I didn’t mention your name.”

“I have been thinking about you, you know.”

“I doubt it.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s because you’re here. If you weren’t here, you’d be thinking about running, getting drunk, lectures, somebody else.”

“Well,” he said, reaching for her, hands up under the sleeves of her T-shirt, alternately pushing and stroking, someone who read an article on massage once but became distracted midway through the third paragraph. “Well, I’m here now.”

Somebody along the street shouted at a dog, a cat or a child and slammed their back door so forcefully that Karen’s window, despite folds of yellowing newspaper, rattled in its frame.

“Look,” said Karen, pushing his hands away, moving across the narrow room, picking up things and putting them down, trying to seem businesslike, “I’m sorry about the police. Really. But now I’ve got to go. I’m already late for a lecture.”

“What?”

Hand on hip, she looked at him. Unmade, the bed was between them, a tatty stuffed animal poking out from beneath the rumpled duvet.

“What lecture?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then don’t go.”

“I mean it doesn’t matter to you, what does it matter, what bloody lecture I have to go to?”

“Hey, Karen. Calm down.” Oh, God! Trying the smile, giving his teeth their best shot. Don’t bother! She opened the door to the room and left it open, wide to the stairs.

He didn’t move.

Neither of them moved.

Karen prayed for the communal phone to ring, someone to come to the door, postman, milkman, double-glazing salesman, anyone, one of her fellow tenants to return. She considered leaving him there and taking off down the stairs, but knew he would come after her and catch her, haul her back before throwing her down on the bed. It had happened like that several times before but then it had been different, she had enjoyed it, they’d been going together.

“What I can’t understand,” Carew said, “is why you’d prefer someone like that anyway.”

“Someone like what?” Karen said, knowing as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she shouldn’t.

“Oh, you know …” He gestured with his hands. “Small.” Karen shook her head. “You don’t know the first thing about him.”

“I’ve seen him in the hospital. Scurrying around with those headphones on, like whatever, the white mouse, white rabbit.” He started around the bed. “What’s he listening to all the time anyway? Special little tapes you make for him?” He patted the duvet, patted the mattress, caught hold of the toy animal and tossed it to the floor. “Little fantasies. Used to be good at those, I remember. Train carriage fantasy. Swimming pool fantasy.” Close again, voice low in his throat and that look in his eyes: she knew that look. “Burglar fantasies.”

Karen turned and ran, swung herself round by the banister rail and jumped the first four steps, stumbled the rest. He caught hold of her before she reached the bottom, hip thrust into her side, a hand fast in her hair.

“All right, Karen,” he said, “just like the old days. Like it used to be.”

“Someone with something against him, this Fletcher? That what you think, Charlie? Someone with a grudge?”

Resnick nodded.

“Professional or personal?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But if you had to guess.”

“Fletcher’s at the bottom of the heap. Starting out. I shouldn’t have thought he’d have stepped on the wrong toes, become involved in rivalries … not enough to warrant this.”

“Personal, then?”

Again, Resnick nodded.

“This …” Skelton glanced at the notes before him. “… Carew.”

“Claims to have been at the Irish Center …”

“Doesn’t sound Irish.”

“He’s not, sir. Claims he was there till one-thirty, quarter to two. Back home quarter past. Straight off to sleep.”

“Fletcher was attacked when?”

“Went off duty a few minutes after two. Staff nurse in charge of the ward where Fletcher was working is pretty certain of that. Quick trip to the Gents, find his coat, he’d be on the bridge in five minutes, ten at the outside. Anxious to get away, see his girlfriend.”

“That time of the morning?”

“Promised to wait up for him. Fletcher’d been talking to the staff nurse about it, earlier.”

“And the girlfriend, she found him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How old?”

“Nineteen.”

Skelton’s eyes flicked in the direction of the framed photographs, his daughter Kate. “Carew alibied for the time he was at this …”

“Irish Center.”

“That’s it.”

“Went on his own, left the same way. Claims to have seen several people there he knows.”

“Checked out?”

“Doesn’t know all of them by name, not surname, anyway. We’ve spoken to two of the rest.”

“And?”

“One, another medical student, thinks he may have seen Carew there, but he isn’t positive. Place gets packed after eleven-thirty, twelve, and it isn’t what you’d call well lit. The other one, however, postgraduate student in psychology, she’s definite. Didn’t see him all evening.”

There was a knock at the superintendent’s door, discreet, and Skelton ignored it.

“You bringing him in?” Skelton asked.

“Thought we should give it a little time, finish checking him out,” said Resnick. “Haul him in too soon, we might end up having to let him go.”

“No chance he’s going to do a runner?”

Resnick shook his head. “Naylor’s down there, keeping an eye. Anything out of the usual, he’ll stop him.”

Skelton inclined his head upwards, pressed the tips of his fingers together, outsides of the index fingers resting against the center of his upper lip. There was a time, Resnick remembered, when the super used to have a neat little mustache.

“Keep me informed, Charlie.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Resnick was almost at the door, Skelton spoke again. “Your eyes, Charlie, looking tired. Should try for a few early nights.” Resnick turned and looked at him. “Single man your age, shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Resnick liked to let Lynn Kellogg drive: it enabled him to set aside any charges of being hierarchical or chauvinist in one fell swoop and besides, it gave him time to think. Ian Carew was living with three other medical students in a house in Lenton, easy walking distance from the medical school, the hospital, the bridge. Naylor was sitting in a Ford Fiesta just around the corner from the Boulevard, there at the end of a short street of Victorian houses, the last on the right being Carew’s. Lynn pulled up in front of him and Naylor got out of his car and walked towards theirs. He looked about as happy as he usually did, these days.