Cold Light (2 page)

“Snowman,” said Gary later, pointing at the figure in front of the dodgems with its yellow hat and gloves. “See the snowman, Karl?”

“Noman,” Karl had replied, excited. He had seen snowmen in his cartoons on TV.

“Snowman,” Gary laughed. “Not noman, you daft pillock! Snowman.”

“Gary,” Michelle said, starting to laugh herself. “Don't call him that.”

“Noman!” sang out Karl, jumping up and down. “Noman! Noman! Noman!”

He lost his footing and went sprawling, bruising his face and grazing the fingers of the hand from which he'd earlier lost his glove. Not long after that they all caught the bus home.

Michelle looked up from what she was doing and listened; footsteps that might have been Gary's outside on the street. As they went on past, she slid her hands back into the soapy water, washing out a few clothes in the sink. Natalie she'd put down half-hour back and mercifully she'd stayed. Last time she'd checked, Karl was belly down in front of the TV lost in a program about lions; at least he was quiet.

She lifted the clothes clear of the water while she emptied the bowl ready to rinse. She only hoped Gary would be pleased with what she'd got for him, a replica goalie's shirt, twenty-eight quid it'd set her back; they'd kept it on order for her at the County shop, twenty-eight pounds less one penny.

Well, it was only once a year after all.

The door stuck as she was taking the washing through to the back yard to peg out and when she nudged it with her hip the bottom half of the door came away from the frame.

“Michelle! Michelle! You there?”

“I'm out back.”

“You might've shut the door behind you. Like a bloody fridge in here.” He stopped short, staring at the twisted hinge.

“I'm sorry,” Michelle said. “It wasn't my fault.”

Gary turned on his heel and a moment later she heard the front door open and slam shut. Upstairs in her cot, the baby woke up crying.

“Ion,” said Karl from the doorway. “Ion!” And he made his tottering run towards her, hands stretched high like claws, growling loudly.

Mark Divine was three degrees short of pissed off. First they'd told him, sorry, he'd have to wait outside the Intensive Care unit, they'd be certain to let him know the minute Mr. Raju regained consciousness. So he'd sat there, his bulk awkward on the low chair, legs at all angles, watching various other Rajus as they were shepherded in and out, whispering and wailing. The one time he wandered off in search of the WVS canteen and a decent cup of tea, one of the staff nurses came out looking for him.

“He's come to, then, has he?” Divine asked when finally she found him.

As well as the plastic cup of tea, which was threatening to burn a hole in his fingers, he was trying to balance two chocolate cupcakes and a lemon puff.

“Concerned about your sugar levels?” the staff nurse asked, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Divine's one-handed juggling.

“Not as I know of,” Divine said cockily.

“Well, perhaps you should be.”

One of the cupcakes fell to the floor and rolled underneath the nearest chair. “Don't worry,” she said, “the cleaners will find it. Why don't you put the rest of them down on the table over there and come through?”

“You mean now, like? This minute?”

“You do want to see him, don't you?”

“Yes, but …”

“Ask him some questions?”

“Yes.”

“Then I should do it before they take him down to theater.”

Divine took a large bite from the lemon puff, risked burning his tongue on a swig of tea, and followed the staff nurse through the double set of doors towards the ward. Nice arse, he thought, wonder if they've got any mistletoe strung up in Intensive Care?

Resnick arrived back in his office after a brisk thirty minutes with the superintendent, to find a large parcel stuffed into his waste basket. Brown paper and string inside a pair of plastic bags. Around ten pounds, he thought, weighing it in his hands. One of the plastic bags contained quite a little puddle of blood. He hadn't realized Lynn Kellogg was due back in the office so soon.

The files detailing the night's events, messages and memoranda, the movement of prisoners in and out of police cells, still lay on his desk barely touched. Half-a-dozen men and one woman drunk and disorderly; Resnick recognized most of the names. Likely by now they'd been cautioned and pushed back out on to the streets. By noon most of them would be drunk again, winding themselves up for the night. After all, it was Christmas, wasn't it? Wasn't that what Christmas was about?

In the outer office two phones began ringing almost simultaneously and Resnick switched them from his mind.

Considering the possibilities—so many homes left empty, all those expensive presents ready-wrapped—the increase in burglaries was less than might have been expected. Even so, enough people would have returned from their firm's annual pre-cooked Christmas dinner, the ritual risque jokes and innuendo, to find the golden goose had flown. All those expensive tokens of status and admiration liberated in under fifteen minutes by eager hands using a pair of the homeowner's socks as gloves.

The phones were still ringing. Resnick pushed open the door to his office, ready to shout an order, and realized there was no one there. A filing cabinet with the drawer not pushed fully back, mugs of tea staining deeper and deeper orange, typewriters and VDUs all unattended. Resnick picked up the nearest receiver, identified himself and asked the caller to hold while he dealt with the second. A postman had been cycling to work at the sorting office off Incinerator Road when a taxi had turned past him, heading for the bridge; he'd got a pretty good sight of the two youths in the back. A woman on her way back from the garage shop with a packet of cigarettes and a carton of milk had nearly been knocked off her feet by two lads rushing past. Resnick made a note of their names and addresses, was still arranging for the postman to come into the station, when Lynn Kellogg came backwards through the door.

When she turned to face him she had two sandwiches in her hands, two cups of filter coffee, one of them black. Medium height, hair medium brown, red-faced, stocky, Detective Constable Lynn Kellogg, back from her parents' poultry farm in Norfolk, byway of the deli across the street.

“Mozzarella and tomato,” Lynn said, handing Resnick a brown paper bag already leaking French dressing. “I thought you might not have eaten.”

“Thanks.” He prized the plastic lid from the coffee and drank. “I thought you weren't due in till this afternoon?”

Lynn widened her eyes and moved to her desk.

“Things at home not so good?” Resnick asked.

Lynn shrugged. “Not so bad.” She shook some loose pieces of lettuce from the paper bag and pushed them back inside her sandwich.

“I found the turkey,” Resnick said, nodding in the direction of his office.

“Good.” And then, suddenly grinning, “It's a duck.”

“I was just wondering,” Divine said. He was on his way out of the ward, interview over, and he'd timed his move to perfection, coinciding with Staff Nurse Bruton's purposeful walk towards the drugs trolley. Lesley Bruton—tall, her height accentuated by the mass of dark hair untamed by her nurse's cap … it was there on her badge, printed out for all to see. “Like I say, Lesley, I was wondering …”

“Yes?”

“What time you got finished? You know, came off shift.”

“I know what it means.”

“So?”

She gave him a look that would have scuppered a more sensitive man and lifted a clipboard from the side of the trolley.

“Look, it's not a chat-up, you know. No way.”

Amusement flirted across her eyes. “Help you with your inquiries, can I? Something like that?”

What? Divine thought. Give me half the chance!

“No,” he said, “not official …”

“I thought perhaps not.”

“See, what it is, I've got to stay here till he gets back on the ward. Raju. Could be—well, what?—hours.”

“Could be.”

“Thing is, there's this present I've got to get. You know, for tomorrow.”

“Special, is it?”

Divine nodded, looked sincere.

“Girlfriend?”

“Sort of.”

“Underwear, then?”

Divine treated her to his lop-sided grin; he was starting to sweat more than just a little.

“Black and sexy?”

“Could be. Why not?”

She looked at him, saying nothing. Waiting.

“There's this place,” Divine said. “That arcade back of the Council House. Real posh.”

“I know it,” Lesley Bruton said. “My boyfriend buys me stuff there all the time.”

Jesus! Divine thought. His eyes slithered down her uniform, wondering if she was wearing any of it now.

Lesley slid her hands along the rail of the trolley. “And you'd like me to pop in there when I finish?” she said. “Pick up something for you. For your girlfriend. A bra and pantie set. Maybe a camisole top. One of those teddies.”

“Yes,” said Divine, “that sort of thing.” Wondering if a teddy was what he hoped it was, one of those all-in-one jobs like a swimsuit made out of lace.

“Maybe try them on for you while I'm there?”

“Why not?” Divine said, not quite able to believe his luck.

“Why not?” Lesley said, fixing him with her eyes. “For you?”

“Well, I …”

For a moment, voice lowered, she leaned towards him. “In your dreams,” she said. And without a second glance, she walked away.

Gary had been working on the door the best part of two hours, more, if you included the time it had taken him to walk up the street to his mate Brian's house and borrow a decent-sized screwdriver and a rasp. Michelle had finished a second lot of washing, fed Natalie, given Karl fish fingers and beans, and made herself some toast. Gary had said he wasn't hungry. Her mum had asked her to take the kids round some time that afternoon so she could give them their presents and even though it meant carting the pushchair off and on two buses, Michelle thought she'd better make the effort. First thing in the morning, her parents would be off up the Al to Darlington to have their Christmas dinner with Michelle's older sister, Marie, and her family. Three-bedroom semi, that's what they had. Picked it up dirt cheap after it was repossessed.

“Michelle!” Gary's voice from the back.

“Yes?”

“Lend us a hand, will you?”

“Be there in a minute.”

“No, now.”

The kettle was coming to the boil, Natalie was getting into a right old grizzle, Karl was calling something from the front room and she couldn't tell what; she'd thought while the tea was mashing, she'd see if there was mincemeat enough left to make some more mince pies. Last she'd made were almost as good as you could buy in the shop.

“Michelle! You coming or what?”

Michelle sighed and pushed the teapot to one side. Through the open front-room door, she could see Karl painstakingly climbing on to the settee so he could roll back off.

“You be careful now,” she called at him on the way past. “You'll only hurt yourself.”

“Here,” Gary said, pointing. “Steady that for me there.”

“Where?”

“Jesus Christ, girl! There!”

Michelle pushed two fingers against the top of the hinge, her thumb against the bottom.

“Okay, now budge over, give me room to get the screwdriver to it.”

She could hear his breathing clearly, loud and slightly ragged beneath his shirt. He hated doing jobs like this.

“Right. Whatever you do, don't let go. Hold it firm. Push.”

There was a shout, sudden and loud, from inside the house and she knew that Karl had fallen and hurt himself.

Gary sensed her move and stopped it. “I'll be done in a minute. Hang on.”

“It's Karl, he …”

“I said bloody hang on!”

Gary gave a final turn and the screw splintered sideways through the wood of the frame, jerking the screwdriver from his hand. The hinge fell away from Michelle's fingers and the whole door slid sharply outwards, wrenching the bottom hinge away with it.

“Fuck!” Gary yelled. “Sodding bastard fuck!”

“Gary!” Michelle called. “Don't.”

From somewhere, blood seemed to be running between her fingers, collecting inside her hand.

Karl was standing close by the doorway, fists jammed against his eyes, mouth widening through a succession of screams.

“Fuck!” Gary swore again, kicking at the frame. “And you,” he said, grabbing Karl by both arms and lifting him into the air. “You want something to bloody cry about!” He dropped his son towards the floor and before he could land, had cracked his hand, hard as he could, back across Karl's face.

Three

“Crying out for it, she was?

Meal time in the canteen and Divine, relieved from his duties at the hospital, was telling Kevin Naylor about his encounter with Staff Nurse Bruton over the drugs trolley. A year or so back, Naylor would have been impressed; now his expression was, to put it mildly, skeptical.