Cold Light (31 page)

Oh, shit! Millington thought, not quite through the door.

“Why not see if Lynn's still around? Have a word with the Phelans together. If Inspector Siddons arrives, she can take over.”

“If I'm going to deal with it,” Millington said, “I'd sooner it was from start to finish.”

Resnick gave Skelton a quick glance and the superintendent nodded. “Fine.”

“What if they want to listen to the tape? The one with their daughter's voice?”

“Yes,” Skelton agreed, hanging his head. “Let them hear it all. They should have heard it in the first place. I was wrong.” He looked at Resnick for several seconds, then left the room.

Helen Siddons had not been wasting her time. She had acquired the original tapes and their packaging from the radio stations and had them sent off for forensic analysis, though by then so many hands would have touched them as to render that next to useless. But it was a process that had to be gone through. In case. She had listened to the second recording and compared it to the first, taken both to two experts and sat with them, listening through headphones, each nuance, again and again.

These things they were agreed upon: the northern accent identified on the first tape, less obvious on the second, was almost certainly not a primary accent. Certain elements in the phrasing, the softness of some of the vowel sounds, suggested Southern Ireland. Not Dublin, perhaps. More rural. A childhood spent there and then a move to England, the northwest, not Liverpool, but harsher—Manchester, possibly, Bury, Leigh, one of those faded cotton towns.

And the note sent in the Susan Rogel case, Helen Siddons wanted to know, was there any way of telling whether it was written by the same person?

There could be, in certain instances it might be possible, but she had to understand, written and spoken registers were so different. The farthest either of them was prepared to go, it could not be discounted the source was the same man.

For Helen that was enough. All of the suspects in the Rogel case, everyone the police had interviewed, seventeen in all, transcripts of their interviews would have to be double-checked, some would have to be contacted again if necessary She was quite convinced now, the perpetrator in both instances was the same: and, more likely than not, he was already known.

Forty-two

All day, Lynn had been aware of this uneasy sense of expectation. Through the usual raft of paperwork, the follow-up interviews on the Park burglaries, a session with Maureen Madden about an alleged rape victim who had, twice now, recanted on her evidence and who they thought was being threatened, all through the haze of sexual badinage with which Divine and his cronies clouded every day, the constant ringing of telephones, the unthinking cups of tea, she could never shake off the feeling of waiting for something to happen.

Distracted, Resnick had paused at her desk in the late afternoon, asking for news of her father, automatically passing good wishes.

“Pint?” Kevin Naylor called, putting on his coat by the door.

Lynn looked at her watch. “I'll see.”

When finally she went down the stairs, out past the custody sergeant's office, the entrance to the police cells, she knew it was Michael she was looking for—exchanging words with the constable at reception, kicking his heels on the street outside. He was nowhere.

Knowing that she'd regret it, promising herself she wouldn't stay too long, Lynn headed across the street to the pub.

“You ask me,” Divine's voice rose above the noise, “she's been dead since a couple of hours after she was lifted.”

Lynn wasn't about to waste her breath telling him that nobody had.

“What about this ransom business?” Kevin Naylor asked.

“Load of bollocks, isn't it? Some clever-clogs tossing us a-bloody-round. You know yourself, it's happened before.”

“Come on, Mark,” Lynn couldn't keep sitting there saying nothing, “her voice was on the tape.”

“So? What's to stop him forcing that out of her first?”

“All in two hours?”

Divine raised his eyes towards the smoky ceiling. Why were some women always so literal, jumping on every word you said as if it were gospel? “Okay, maybe it was a bit longer. Two hours, four, six, what's it matter?”

“To Nancy Phelan or to us?”

Divine emptied his glass and pushed it along the table towards Kevin Naylor, his shout this time. “All that matters, what we should be looking for is a body. Never mind all this undercover crap out there in the sticks.”

“Wasn't what you said at the time,” Naylor reminded him. “Not with another Early Starter on your plate.”

“You can talk! Here, you should've seen our Kev and this Gloria, tongue'd dropped any further from his mouth he'd been hoovering up the floor with it.”

Oh, God, Lynn thought, here we go again. “I'm off,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Not now, look, I'm just getting these in. Pint or a half?”

Lynn thought of what was waiting for her at home, half a frozen pizza, a bundle of ironing, her mother's call. “All right,” sitting back down, “but make it a half.”

A light rain had started to fall, not enough to persuade Lynn to use her umbrella as she took the cut-through beside Paul Smith's shop and came out by the Cross Keys, opposite the Fletcher Gate car park. Later the temperature was due to drop and most likely it would freeze. Last night, on the bypass out near Retford, a Fiesta had skidded on black ice and collided with a lorry loaded high with scrap; a family of five, mother, dad, two lads, a baby of sixteen months, all but wiped out. Only the baby had survived. She thought about her own good fortune, the car that had come so close to clipping her when she had swung, blinded, wide from her lane.

As she turned through the archway and began to cross the courtyard, the keys were in her hand.

Midway across, she hesitated, looked around. Muted by curtains or lace, lights showed from windows here and there about the square. Soft, the sounds of television sets, radios overlapping. A cat, ginger and white, padding its way along the balcony to the right.

Michael was on the landing, halfway up the stairs, sitting with his back against the wall, legs outstretched, breath on the air, a newspaper folded open in his hands.

“You know,” he said, drawing in his legs, “I can read this thing from cover to cover, front to back, every word, and if you asked me five minutes later a single thing about it, I wouldn't have a clue.”

Lynn had still to move.

“Here,” he offered the paper towards her, “test me. Name the prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Father of the House of Lords. Define once and for all the obligations of the Treaty of Maastricht. I couldn't do any of it.”

“How long have you been here?” Lynn asked.

“Oh, you know, I haven't exactly been counting, but possibly one or two hours.”

She turned away, past the chalked graffiti, to look at the light falling in a spiral at the foot of the stairs. Rain drawn across it like a veil.

“You're not angry?”

“For what?”

“Me being here.”

Angry? Was that what she should be? Looking at him sitting there, Lynn's shoulders rose and fell and she tried to avoid the smile sidling into his eyes: how long had it been since anyone had waited for her five or ten minutes? “No, I'm not angry.”

He was on his feet in a trice. “Shall we go, then?”

“Where?”

Disappointment shadowed his face. Doubt. “You didn't get my message?”

“No. What message?”

“About dinner.”

The iron of the railing was cold against her hand. “There wasn't any message.”

“I left it where you work.”

“You don't know where I'm stationed.”

“I phoned personnel.”

“And they told you?”

He had the grace to look a little sheepish. “I told them I was your cousin, from New Zealand.”

“Somebody believed you?”

A laugh, self-deprecating. “I've always been quite good at accents, ever since I was a child.”

Lynn nodded, moved one step higher, two. “Where was that? That you were a child?”

“What do you think?” he said. “Is it too late for dinner or what?”

He had booked a table at the San Pietro. Red tablecloths and candles and fishermen's nets draped from the walls. Crooners murmured through the loudspeakers in Italian, more often than not to the accompaniment of seagulls and a mandolin.

“I've no idea what this place is like,” Michael said, pulling out her chair. “I thought we could give it a try.”

The waiter appeared with the wine list and a couple of menus.

“Red or white?” Michael said.

“Nothing for me, I've had enough already.”

“Are you sure? You …”

“Michael, I'm positive.”

He ordered a small carafe of house red for himself, a large bottle of mineral water for them both. For a first course, he had prosciutto ham and melon, Lynn a mozzarella and tomato salad. They were well into their main dishes—fusilli with gorgonzola and cream sauce, escalope of veal with spinach and sauté potatoes—when Michael asked his first question about her day.

“I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised you were late, this terrible business, it must be driving you mad.”

Lynn set down the fork she had half-raised to her mouth. “Which business is that?”

“That poor missing girl.”

“What makes you think I'm working on that?”

“Are you not? I suppose I thought you all would be, trying to find her, you know, twenty-four hours a day.”

“Well, I'm not, not directly.”

“But you must know all about it. I mean, what's going on.”

She lifted up her fork again; the veal was tender, sweet to the taste, the breadcrumbs surrounding it not too crisp.

“This latest business, this ransom that was never collected and everything, isn't that all very weird? Didn't I read that setting that trap for him cost so many thousand pounds?”

“You seem to know as much about it as I do.”

“Ah, well, it's only what I read in the papers, you know.”

“I thought,” Lynn said, “you forgot all that the minute you'd taken it in.”

Michael smiled back at her and summoned the waiter, ordered himself another carafe of wine.

“You're sure you won't?”

“Quite sure.”

For the remainder of the meal, he asked her about the damage to her car, her father's health, talked about plans for setting up on his own again once the recession had really started to turn around. Distribution, that's the thing, wholesale; anything but stationery, deadly stuff, try as you might, never get it to really move. And he'd glanced up at her, grinning, to see if she'd got the joke.

They were back in the courtyard, the cold biting round them; Lynn with her scarf wound twice around the space between her upturned collar and her hair, Michael's hands deep in his pockets all the way back from the restaurant, but now …

“You know,” Lynn said, “I don't think I'm ready for this.”

“What would that be now?”

“Whatever it is you're wanting.”

His hand was on her arm, inches above her wrist. “To be friends, is there anything wrong with that?”

“No. Except that's not all you want.”

He was close enough to have kissed her with scarcely a dip of his head, not a tall man, not really, three or so inches more than she was herself. “Am I so transparent, then?” he smiled.

Something happened to his face, Lynn thought, when he smiled. He came to life from inside.

“And am I not going to get my kiss, then? My little peck on the cheek?”

“No,” Lynn said. “Not this time.”

When she glanced down from the balcony, he was still standing perfectly still, looking back up at her; before she could change her mind, she let herself quickly in, bolted and relocked the door.

Michael only then starting to walk away, whistling softly. Not this time, he was thinking. Well, doesn't that mean there'll be another?

The bath as hot as she could take it, Lynn lowered herself through the rising steam. How clearly had he known she had wanted him to kiss her, standing there with little more than their breath between them? His mouth pressed against her, no matter what. So long since a man had thought of her that way, made love with his eyes. Despite everything, she shivered, imagining his touch.

Forty-three

Alice Skelton was in her bathrobe, towel wrapped around her hair, cigarette between her lips. It was twenty past six in the morning. She had heard his daughter—that was the way she tried to think of Kate now, it made things easier—returning home closer to three than two. Not bothering to be quiet about it any more, no more guarded whispers as she gave some youth a last wet kiss and reached down to slip off her shoes. These days—these nights—it was a slamming of doors and a shout of thanks, and whoever had driven her home turning back up the volume of the car stereo before the end of the drive. Alice had lain awake, said nothing, waited for the raid on the fridge, the toilet flush, the bedroom door. Christ, girl, she thought, what would I have done with my young life if I'd enjoyed your freedom? Would I have screwed it up any less or more?

Beside her, rolled as far towards the edge of the mattress as was possible, Jack Skelton slept on, his body twitching every now and then as if cattle-prodded by his dreams.

At four, Alice had given up all pretense and gone downstairs. Sweet biscuits. Ice cream. Coffee with a little gin. Cigarettes. Finally, just gin. She ran an early bath and lay back in it, her head resting against a plastic cushion, listening to the World Service:
Londres Matin
, the early morning news in French.

Out and dried, she had been considering going back upstairs and getting dressed when the phone rang.