Cold Light (29 page)

Clicking on the indicator, he waited until there was a clear gap before swinging out into the traffic, not wishing to take unnecessary chances now.

The signs were not good. Michael turned into the forecourt and parked behind the pumps, but the main lights inside the adjoining building stubbornly refused to come on. Only the safety light burned, illuminating faintly the usual collection of motoring maps and engine oils, packaged food and confectionery, on sale audio cassettes by forgotten groups, and a special offer in troll dolls with purple hair.

“I'm sorry,” Michael said. “I could have sworn this place stayed open all night.”

“Not to worry,” Lynn said. “It's not your fault.”

“I travel this road quite a lot, though. I should know.”

“Me, too. I had half an idea you were right.”

“Perhaps it closes at twelve?”

“Perhaps.”

Lynn felt a little stupid now, sitting in the back the way she had. There was this man, perfectly nice, out of his way to help her, and there she was sitting in the back like Lady Muck.

“So what …?”

“What …?”

Their words collided and simultaneously they laughed.

“Had I best run you back to your car, then?” Michael asked.

“Looks like it.”

“Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you're heading for Derby.”

“Nottingham?”

“Fine.”

Lynn leaned back in her seat. “Thanks,” she said.

It was warm in the car, cocooned from the cold and rain. For a time, Michael chatted about this and that, his words half lost in the swish of other wheels, the rhythmic beat of the wipers arcing their way across the windscreen. Ten years ago he had left a steady job, started a small business of his own, following a trend; two years back it had gone bust, nothing spectacular about that. Now he was picking himself up, starting from scratch: working for a stationery suppliers, there in the East Midlands, East Anglia, glorified rep. He laughed. “If you're ever in the market for a gross of manila envelopes or a few hundred meters of bubble wrap, I'm your man.”

As they reached the outskirts of the city, sliding between pools of orange light, the rain eased, the wind dropped. Life shone, dull, through the upstairs nets of suburban villas as they approached the Trent.

“Whereabouts?” Michael asked. They were slowing past the cricket ground, the last customers leaving the fast-food places opposite with kebabs or cod and chips.

“Anywhere in the center's fine.”

“The square?”

“You could drop me off in Hockley. The bottom of Goose Gate, somewhere round there.”

“Sure.”

Shifting left through the lanes as they went down the dip past the bowling alley, he drew into the curb below Aloysius House. A small group of men stood close against the wall, a bottle of cider passing back and forth between them.

“Thanks,” Lynn said, as Michael pulled on the hand brake. “You've been really great.”

“It was nothing.”

“If it weren't for you, I'd still be out there now, probably. Condemned to spend a night on the A52.”

“Oh, well …”

Lynn shifted across the seat to get out. “Goodnight.”

“I don't suppose …”

She looked at him.

“No, it's all right.”

“What?”

“It's late, I know, but I don't suppose you'd have time for a cup of coffee or something? What d'you say?”

Lynn's hand was on the door and the door was opening and she knew the last thing she wanted to do, right then, was walk up that street and turn the four corners that would take her to her flat, walk inside, and see her reflection in the mirror staring back.

“Okay,” she said. “But it'll have to be quick.”

The all-night café was near the site of the old indoor market, opposite what had once been the bus station and was now a car park and The World of Leather. The only other customers were taxi drivers, a couple, who from the look of their clothes were on their way to Michael Isaac's night club up the street, and a woman in a plaid coat who sang softly to herself as she made patterns on the table with the sugar.

They ordered coffee and Michael a sausage cob, which, when it arrived, made Lynn look so envious, he broke off a healthy piece and insisted she eat it.

“I'm in the police,” she said. The first cups of coffee had been finished for some time and they were starting on their second.

He showed little in the way of surprise. “What branch? I mean, what kind of thing?” His eyes were smiling; in truth, they had rarely stopped smiling the past half hour. “You have a uniform or what?”

“God!” she said and laughed.

“What?”

“Why is it that's always the first thing men ask?”

“Is it?”

“Usually, yes.”

“Well, do you?”

Lynn shook her head. “I'm a detective. Plain clothes.”

“Is that so?” He looked impressed. “And what do you detect?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Even murder?”

“Yes,” she said. “Even murder.”

The couple across from them were laughing, well-bred voices as out of place as good china; the girl was wearing a long button-through skirt in what might have been silk and it lay open along most of her thigh. From time to time, carelessly, the young man stroked her with his hand. They were probably nineteen.

“What's the matter?” Michael said.

Lynn realized she had started crying. “It's nothing,” she said, unable to stop. A couple of the cabbies were looking round.

“It'll be the accident,” Michael said. “Delayed reaction. You know, the shock.”

Lynn sniffed and shook her head. “I was crying when it happened. That's what did it.”

“But why,” said Michael, leaning forward. “Why were you crying then? What was it all about?”

She told him: everything. Her father; fears: everything. In the middle of it he reached across and took her hand. “I'm sorry,” he said, when she'd finished. “Really, truly sorry.”

Lynn released her hand, ferreted in her bag for a half-dry tissue, and gave her nose a good blow.

“Shall I not walk you home?” he said, out there on the street.

“No, it's all right.”

“I'd feel happier.”

“Michael …”

“Young woman such as yourself, doesn't do to be walking home alone at this hour … Heavens, is that the time?”

“You see.” Lynn laughing, despite herself. Tears gone.

“Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “Show me the way.”

She slipped free of his hand, but let him walk with her nonetheless, up past the Palais and into Broad Street and the new Broadway cinema, where she kept meaning to go without quite making it.

“
The Vanishing
” Michael said, looking at the posters. “Did you ever see that?”

Lynn shook her head. “No.”

“It's a fine film,” he said.

At the entrance to the courtyard, she turned and stopped. “This is it.”

“You live here?”

“Courtesy of the Housing Association, yes.”

Slowly, he reached for her hand. God, how I hate this part of it, Lynn thought. Deftly, she moved towards him, kissed him on the cheek. “Goodnight. And thanks.”

“Will I see you again?” he called after her, voice echoing a little between the walls.

She turned her head for a moment towards him but didn't answer and Michael didn't mind: he knew he would.

Forty

The assistant chief constable's last words to Skelton: “However else this little lot turns out, Jack, keep track of the bloody money.”

“Enough here,” Graham Millington had said thoughtfully, weighing one of the duffel bags in his hand, “to keep the Drug Squad in crack till next year.”

Skelton's instructions had been clear, hands strictly off, keep your distance, no diving in: watch and wait, the name of the game. As he came down the stairs after the briefing, the strain on his face clearly showed.

“If this bastard's tossing us around, Charlie,” Reg Cossall said, “jolly Jack there's going to be scraping the shit off his boots for weeks.”

Resnick and Millington had charge of the A17 team, Helen Siddons and Cossall were north on the A631. “Big chance, eh, Charlie,” Cossall had laughed, “me and Siddons, parked off for a few hours, chance to find out what the old man's getting his Y-fronts in a state about. Taking precautions, mind.” He winked, and pulled a leather glove from his side pocket. “Not be wanting to catch frostbite.”

Two officers had been installed in each Little Chef since the previous night; cameras with infrared film and the kind of zoom lenses normally used for spying on Royals were trained on both parking lots and entrances. The pairs elected to make delivery sat with the ransom behind them on the rear seat, joking about how they were going to pull a switch themselves, take off for a month to the Caribbean, the Costa del Sol. Intercept vehicles, radio linked, were stationed at intervals along all major routes leading away from the restaurants. Once their quarry showed, he would be followed in an inter-changing pattern until finally he went to ground. All in all, resources from three forces were involved.

Watch and wait: the clock ticked down.

Divine sat on a packing case in the storage area, feet on a carton of oven-ready chips. Four in the afternoon, but he was eating his second Early Starter of the day. In between, he'd tried the gammon steak, the plaice, and a special helping of those hash browns that went with the American Style breakfast, just four with a couple of eggs. All in all, he thought the Early Starter was best.

“Ought to get something down you while you can,” he called across to Naylor, who was over by the small rear window, peering out. “Not every day it comes free.”

“Soon won't be able to see a thing out here,” Naylor said. “Not a bloody thing.”

“D'you hear what I said?” Divine asked, biting down into a sausage.

“Another half hour and he could come from those trees over there, right across this field, and none of us would see a thing.”

“Jesus!” Divine exclaimed. “Might as well talk to your chuffing self.”

Naylor came over and took a piece of bacon off the plate.

“Get your own!”

Naylor shook his head. “Like my bacon crispier than that.”

“Yeh? I can see Debbie fancying everything well done, eh?”

Naylor gave him a warning look, shut it!

Divine wasn't so easily dissuaded. “Gloria, though, out there waiting tables, got her eye on you. Play your cards right, you could be away there. Quickie down behind the griddle.”

The storeroom door swung open and Gloria came in, a big woman from King's Lynn whose white uniform needed extra safety pins to keep it in place. “Feet off there,” she snapped, looking at the oven chips. “People got to eat those.”

“Kevin here was just letting on,” Divine said, “how he could really fancy you.”

“That's nice,” Gloria said, treating Naylor to a smile. “I always like the quiet type, they're the ones that take you by surprise. Not like some.” Delicately, her chubby fingers lifted Divine's remaining sausage from his plate. “All that talk and then they're about as good for you as this poor thing. Look at it. First cousin to a chipolata.”

Resnick checked his watch; less than five minutes since he'd looked last. All the while sitting there, hoping he wouldn't be proved right. Susan Rogel over again. Another wild-goose chase, another woman unaccounted for. Cold sleep in a shallow grave. Beside him, Millington unscrewed the top of his second thermos and held it towards him. Resnick nodded and waited while Millington half-filled the plastic cup.

Straitened circumstances, he thought it might taste better than the first time. “Wife not back into dandelion coffee, is she, Graham?”

“Gilding, sir.”

“Come again.”

“Gilding. You know, old furniture and the like. Restoration. Sent off for details of this course, Bury St. Edmunds way. Two hundred quid for the weekend. Eighty-five for the video. Daylight robbery, I told her, but, no, Graham, it's the cost of all that gold leaf, she says …”

Controlling a grimace, Resnick sipped the coffee and continued to stare through the windscreen, letting his sergeant's chatter fade inconsequentially into the background. He couldn't quite rid his mind of the image of Dana, pale faced, listening to the replay of the tape.
Nothing … nothing bad has happened to me, so I don't want you to worry …
Dana, listening to her friend's voice, fears strung along the edges of her imagination. This woman, who to Resnick had been so lively, irrepressible, slumped in the chair with all the life drawn out of her. If he had no longer felt any connection between them, it was because Dana no longer had anything with which to connect. Well, partly that. Ever since that first astonishing, joyful evening, Resnick had been aware of the shutters coming down, drawn by his own hands.

“Look!” Millington said suddenly, interrupting his own conversation.

But Resnick was already looking. The green Orion had passed the Little Chef sign once, reappeared from the opposite direction less than two minutes later, and was now approaching it again.

“He's slowing right down,” Millington said. “Go on, you bugger, turn in, turn in.”

They watched as the vehicle followed the white arrow painted on the car-park surface, drove forward fifteen feet towards the entrance, stopped, took a left, and slowly reversed into the broad space between a green 2CV and a reconditioned Post Office van.

Through the binoculars, Resnick could see the driver's face behind the wheel, white, clean-shaven, middle-aged: alone.

“Time, Graham?”

“Four forty-two.”

Having parked the car, the man was making no attempt to move.

“Want me to check out the license plate?” Millington asked.