Cold Light (11 page)

Later, as she lay curled away from Gary, listening to the suck and whine of his breathing, Michelle was unable to sleep, thinking about it. Not what Gary had said only minutes after Lynn had gone, about keeping things from him; not the ache in her ribs where he had punched her, low where it wouldn't be seen. Not those, but what he'd said when she'd asked him, the policewoman, if he'd gone out again that night, Christmas Eve. Why he'd lied.

Thirteen

“Kevin?”

“Shhh!”

“What time is it?”

“Early. You go back to sleep.”

“The baby …”

“I gave her a drink and she went off again.”

Debbie rolled on to her side, face to the pillow. It was dark in the room, even the gap at the top of the curtains, where they refused to meet, offering no light.

“You're on an early.”

“Yes.” Dressed in all but his jacket, Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, close to her bare arm.

“I'm sorry, I forgot.”

Lightly stroking her shoulder, Kevin smiled. “Doesn't matter.”

“You used to hate that.”

“What?”

Slowly lifting her face, a thin skein of spittle stretched from the pillow to the corner of her mouth until it snapped. “When I used to forget your rota, which hours you were on.”

“I used to hate a lot of things.” Her mouth was damp and warm and musty from sleep. “Love you,” he said.

“I know,” Debbie said. She brought her other arm around him, crook of her elbow tightening against his neck. One breast slipped free from the Snoopy T-shirt she wore in bed.

“I'll be late.”

“I know,” Debbie said.

She kissed him hard and let him go.

Pulling the front door shut and stepping out on to the street, the same, now familiar feeling closed cold around his stomach: how close he had come to losing this, all of it, letting it go.

Resnick had woken something short of four, finally got up at five. When he had opened the garden door to Dizzy, the black cat had entered with sprung step and hoisted tail as if there were nothing new in this. Below freezing outside, Dizzy's fur was sleek and tinged with frost.

Resnick warmed him milk in the pan, testing the temperature with his finger before pouring it into the dish. The cat's purrs filled the kitchen as it ate and Resnick sipped hot black coffee: a secret between them, no one else awake.

The first news of Nancy Phelan's disappearance would go out on the local news at six, would possibly rate a minor mention on the national network an hour later. Jack Skelton had called a meeting for nine. The evidence, such as it was, would be assembled, evaluated, broken down; assignments would be made, which interviews warranted following up, which gaps had still to be filled. Her father's pain and anger on the phone. Doing everything we can. He remembered the way Nancy had looked in the otherwise empty CID room, red coat unbuttoned and loose at her shoulders. Later that evening, the voice that had seemed to come from nowhere, silver of her smile, breath that had hung between them in the air.

“Very well, ladies and gents, let's come to order if you please.”

The new DCI wore his Wolverhampton Polytechnic education like a thin veneer; a supercilious smugness which his Black Country vowels disavowed. Recently promoted over the pair of them, Malcolm Grafton was ten years younger than either Resnick or Reg Cossall—as Reg never failed to remark.

“Jesus, Charlie! You don't think he wore those for his interview, do you?”

As Grafton had resumed his seat on the platform, one leg had crossed high over the other, revealing a sock that looked, as Reg Cossall remarked, as if it had been dipped in a late-night curry disaster, then hung on the line to dry.

Resnick grunted and kept his own counsel, only a while back he had noticed he was wearing odd socks himself, dark blue and maroon. No wonder he hadn't pinned down the color of the car waiting to drive Nancy Phelan away.

“For the present, we're looking at three areas for the possible abductor …” Jack Skelton was on his feet now, gesturing towards the boards to his right, “… boyfriends, men friends, call them what you will, that's for starters; guests at the hotel on Christmas Eve—initially that's those at the same architects' do as her, but ultimately anyone and everyone who used the place that evening.” A groan from the assembled officers at this. “And lastly, at the moment no more than an outside chance, this man, Gary James.”

Heads swiveled to where Skelton was now pointing and Gary's whippet face stared back at them, full-on, from between twin profiles, left and right.

“As most of you'll know,” Skelton continued, “there was an incident at the Housing Office the same afternoon, James became violent, offered threats to various personnel, including the missing woman, Nancy Phelan, whom he kept a prisoner in her office for a time. The initial grudge he has against her seemed to stem from an argument over the housing allocated to James, his common-law wife, and their two children. Whether, as a result of anything that happened yesterday, it's gone beyond that, we don't know.”

Skelton stepped back, seeking out Lynn Kellogg through the rising haze of tobacco smoke. “Lynn, you saw him yesterday, I believe.”

Slightly self-conscious, buttoning, then unbuttoning the front of her jacket, Lynn got to her feet.

“I spoke with James yesterday, sir. Claims he was home the later part of the evening and his wife, Michelle Paley, that is, she supports him in that.”

“You think he's telling the truth?”

“I've no reason not to think so.”

“But you're not convinced.”

A pause. “No, sir.”

“The woman, Michelle, she'd lie to alibi him?”

Without hesitation, Lynn said, “She'd be frightened not to.”

“Knocks her about, does he?”

“No direct evidence, sir. No obvious signs. But he's got a temper; flares up out of nothing. And there are the injuries to the little boy.”

“I understood we'd cleared that up?” Skelton was looking towards Resnick now. “Clean bill of health.”

“According to the doctor,” Resnick said, half out of his chair, “bruising and swelling tallied with the mother's story. Accidental injury.”

“But you think it could be something else?”

Resnick shrugged. “Possible.”

“The situation's being watched?”

“Social Services, yes.”

Skelton nodded gravely, pressing the tips of his fingers tight together; Resnick lowered himself back into his seat. Lynn was still on her feet.

“Yes?” Skelton said.

“I was wondering, sir, whether that was enough. The whole situation there, I don't know, it's like something waiting to explode?”

“We've heard, Social Services are keeping an eye …”

“Even so, overstretched the way they are …”

“And we're not?” There was more than a touch of anger in Skelton's voice.

“But if James is a strong suspect …”

“Is he? Is that what we're saying? He's really a viable suspect here?”

Lynn didn't answer; glanced across at Resnick for support. At the back of the room, Kevin Naylor shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed on her behalf.

“Are you saying it's possible,” Malcolm Grafton put in, “that James could have been the driver of that car, waiting to whisk Nancy Phelan away?”

“We don't know that's what happened,” Resnick said.

“Best bet, Charlie. Your call.” Grafton leaned back and recrossed his legs, giving his socks another airing. “Got to be where we're looking, surely? Not this sorry bugger. Knocking his wife and kids about, throwing chairs at women clerks, that's his mark.”

“That doesn't mean—” Lynn began, color leaping to her cheeks.

“Lynn …” Resnick was out of his seat, faster this time.

“You're not suggesting, sir,” Lynn said, gripping the chair in front of her hard, “that domestic violence …”

“I think what the DCI means …”

“Thank you, Charlie, but I don't need an interpreter,” Grafton said.

“Just a decent pair of socks,” murmured Reg Cossall.

“Our concern here is finding Nancy Phelan, what happened to her,” Grafton continued. “Anything else, it gets in the way.”

Slowly, Lynn sat back down.

“'Bout chuffing time!” Divine said to no one in particular. “Now we can get bloody on.”

Grafton allowed himself a quick smirk.

“Nevertheless,” Resnick said, “man with a record of violence, currently on probation, already subjected the missing woman to an actual assault, we wouldn't be dropping him from our inquiries entirely. Would we?”

Grafton stared down at him through narrowed eyes.

“A watching brief, Charlie, your team.” Skelton was back on his feet, quick to intervene. “Not priority, though; that's Nancy Phelan's boyfriends, they're down to you. Reg …”

“Here we bloody go!” stage-whispered Cossall

“… the guests at the hotel, if you please. Malcolm's arranging for you to have some extra bodies.”

“Old ones he's done with, is that, then?”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing, sir. You're all right.”

As Skelton continued, Cossall leaned towards Resnick, talking behind the back of his hand. “Ever occur to you, Charlie, if any one of us was going home to his little semi of an evening, carving up corpses and stuffing 'em into plastic bags, our Malcolm up there's your man?”

There had been fifty-seven guests at the dinner: Andrew Clarke's assistant had provided the names, almost all of the addresses. Times of departure would be ascertained and, where possible, double-checked; modes of transport, makes and types of car. When was the last time that evening they remembered seeing Nancy Phelan? Where had that been? Who had she been with?

Once that had been done, answers compared and tabulated, leads and questions followed up, the lists, still slowly being compiled, of the hotel's other clients would be waiting. Somewhere between three and four hundred in total—without casual callers at the bar.

Reg Cossall, extra bodies or no, was going to have his work cut out.

Resnick was in his office with Lynn Kellogg, Naylor, and Divine, looking at the names Dana Matthieson had supplied of the four men Nancy had recently been involved with. Patrick McAllister. Eric Capaldi. James Guillery. Robin Hidden. Divine had already talked to McAllister on the phone and was due to call on him that afternoon. Naylor had made contact with Guillery's parents, who had informed him their son was on holiday in Italy, skiing, and wasn't expected back until after the New Year. Eric Capaldi's answerphone offered some blurry piano music and not a lot else. Robin Hidden had so far remained, well, hidden.

“It's not possible,” Kevin Naylor said, “there's others? I mean, that her flatmate didn't know about?”

“As far as I know,” Dana had said. “This's who she'd been seeing. The only ones she talked about, anyway.”

“You think there could have been someone else, then? That she never mentioned.”

“It's always possible.”

“Was she secretive, though? Things like that?”

“Not specially. But, you know … there's always somebody, isn't there? Whatever reason, the one you won't talk about, not even to your best friend.”

Is there? Resnick had thought.

And then—yes, of course.

Now, prompted by Naylor's question, he thought of Andrew Clarke. Was that the kind of relationship Dana had been hinting at? Older, married, somebody where she worked?

“The receptionist from the Housing Office,” Resnick said.

“Penny Langridge,” Lynn read from her notes.

“Have a word with her, see if there was anything between Nancy Phelan and any of her colleagues, something she might not have wanted broadcast about.”

“Quick knee-trembler back of the typing pool,” Divine grinned. “That the sort of thing?”

Lynn shot him a quick angry look. Any other time, Resnick thought, she would have had a sharp remark to go with it. But now part of her mind was on other things.

The minute Resnick was alone in his office the phone rang: it was Graham Millington calling from his in-laws in Taunton, just this minute heard about the missing girl on the news and wondering if they could use him back at the station.

Fourteen

Graham Milllington had met his wife in the Ladies' lavatory of Creek Road Primary School, a little after eleven in the morning and caught short in the middle of a talk to forty-seven ten-year-olds. Millington, not his wife.

One thing he hated above all others, worse than charging into the ruck of a Friday night bar-room fight with glass flying, barging into the Trent End on a Saturday afternoon to collar the smart-arse bastard who's just felled the visiting goalie with a sharpened fifty-pence piece to the head, was standing in front of a class of kids in his best suit and behavior, lecturing them on the dangers of solvent abuse and underage drinking. Knowing sneers on their scrubbed little faces.

And this particular morning, fielding the usual sporadic questions about airplane glue and which brands set to work fastest, he was overcome by a sharp sudden pain deep behind his scrotum, an urgent message that he needed to pee.

“I wonder …” he stammered to the deputy headteacher, sitting at the corner table, filling out what suspiciously resembled a job application. “Could you …?”

The nature of Millington's discomfort was clear for all to see.

“First right down the corridor, second left.”

Millington remembered it wrong, first right, first left instead. He was just easing himself through his fly, looking wildly for the appropriate stall, when, with a swift whoosh of water, Madeleine Johnstone stepped out from the cubicle in her bottle-green Laura Ashley dress, pale green tights, sensible shoes.

“Sorry, I …”