Dana walked up past the futon shop into Hockley and considered treating herself to lunch in Sonny’s; discretion sent her down Goose Gate to Browne’s Wine Bar, a glass of dry house white and a chicken salad baguette. One glass became two and then three and from there it was a short, less than steady walk to the architects’ office where she worked.
“Closed till January 3rd,” read the card in neat black italic calligraphy taped to the center of the door.
She had the keys in her bag.
For a while, she wandered from room to room, past the drawing boards and the intricately made models and into the library where she worked amidst carefully cross-catalogued collections of slides and plans.
She walked back to Andrew Clarke’s office. Only gradually, sitting on the corner of his matt-black executive desk, toying with the lipstick she had bought that morning at Debenhams, did the idea form, in Moroccan Scarlet, in her mind.
For all that Raju was out of the woods, Divine thought, he still had one hell of a lot of British taxpayers’ money hooked up to him, one way and another. It was all he could do to maneuver a place to park his chair amongst all those stands and tubes and dials.
But old Raju, now he was propped up and looking perky, he came up with the goods as far as descriptions were concerned. One of the youths, the one who had done all the talking, the one who’d tapped on his window for him to stop, he had a small scar, the shape of a half-moon, there, underneath his right eye. And fair hair. Very, very fair. Divine knew full well none of the other witnesses had said anything about fair hair.
“You’re positive,” he said, “about the hair?”
“Oh, yes. Indeed.”
More than likely, the bugger’s still a bit delirious, Divine thought.
The second youth, the one who had hit him from behind, Raju was sure that he had several tattoos along his arms. Some kind of strange creature on one of them, a serpent maybe, something like that. Someone on a horse. A knight? Yes, he supposed that was right. And a Union Jack. No confusion about that. But left arm or right-no, sorry, he couldn’t say.
“Age?” Divine asked.
“The age you would expect. Young men. Sixteen or seventeen.”
“No older?”
Raju shook his head and the movement made him draw a sharp breath. “A year or two, perhaps. No more.”
Divine closed his notebook and eased back his chair.
“You will be able to catch them now?”
“Oh, yes. Now we’re armed with this. Two shakes of a dog’s tail.”
Leaning back against his pillows, Raju, smiling, closed his eyes.
Lesley Bruton was talking into the telephone at the nurses’ station and Divine had to bide his time until she was through. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “Raju, there. Tipping me the wink.”
She looked back at him, saying nothing, waiting.
“Look,” Divine said, “I was thinking. You wouldn’t fancy coming out for a drink sometime?”
“This is,” Lesley Bruton said, “some kind of a joke? Right?” And she brushed past Divine so close he had to step out of the way; it was three-fifteen and she had an enema to organize.
“Have you got a solicitor, Mr. Hidden?” Graham Millington asked.
They were in the corridor outside the interview room. After his second session, Robin had been decidedly shaky and they had suggested he walk up and down for a bit, make sure the windows were open, get some fresh air. Voices rose and fell along the stairways at either end. Someone’s personal radio flared to life, overloud. Behind doors, the muted clamor of telephones.
“No, why? I don’t see …”
“It might be as well if you contacted one. If there isn’t anyone you know personally, there’s a list we can provide.”
Robin Hidden stared into the sergeant’s face, the brown, unblinking eyes, curl of the mouth beneath a moustache so perfect it could have been a fake.
“I thought once I’d answered all of your questions, it would be all right for me to leave,” he said.
The mouth widened to a smile. “Oh, no, I don’t think so, Mr. Hidden. Not quite yet. Not now.”
Twenty-one
The solicitor appointed to represent Robin Hidden was David Welch, a forty-nine-year-old bachelor with two small Jack Russells, which he left in the back of his BMW, with a request to the officer on the desk that they be let out to do their business after a couple of hours.
Welch was experienced but lazy; some years before, he had realized that he lacked certain requisites for a really successful career. He lacked a wife, but clearly he wasn’t gay; he was neither a Mason, nor a Rotarian, nor the possessor of the right stripe of school or college tie; not driven by burning ambition, he had never successfully cultivated the appearance of someone sure to succeed. Poor David, he didn’t play bridge or poker, he didn’t even play golf. He had looked around and understood the score. It would have been possible to move to another practice, another city, start again; he could have sought a new career-what he had settled for was an easy life.
“Your client’s waiting, Mr. Welch,” Millington said. “Along the corridor, third on the left.”
“I suppose you’ve been allowing him all the proper breaks? Rest periods? A decent meal?”
“Cod and chips,” Millington said chirpily. “Tea. No slices of bread and butter. Turned down the syrup sponge and custard.” Millington patted his own stomach. “Not want to be putting on weight, like as not.”
“I’d like a good half hour,” Welch said.
“All the time you want,” said Millington. They both knew it was a lie.
Divine was at his desk in the CID room, talking to a young woman who, two hours before, had had her handbag and two carriers of new purchases stolen from her in the middle of the city. Late lunchtime. Sandra Drexler had been walking through the underpass below Maid Marian Way, the one with the news kiosk at its center, close to the Robin Hood Experience. Several families had been passing through at the time, children wearing Lincoln-green hats made from felt and waving bows and arrows in the air. Two youths in jeans and shirt sleeves had come running down the steps from the entrance nearest to St. James Street, caught hold of Sandra Drexler’s arms, and swung her round in what had seemed, at first, like a drunken game. A couple of six-year-olds had pointed and laughed and their mother had shushed them on their way. But the youths had pushed Sandra hard against the tiled wall and torn the bags from her hands, her bag from her shoulder. They had gone running past the kiosk and along the tunnel towards Friar Lane and the castle, leaving Sandra on her knees, shocked and in tears, people walking wide to avoid her. Five minutes in which she had limped slowly towards the street, before an elderly woman had stopped to ask if she was all right.
“These tattoos,” Divine said, interrupting her account. Sandra was in her second year of an Art and Design course at South Notts College. She took a sheet of A4 and a pencil and sketched them within minutes, the Union Jack, St. George and the Dragon.
“Sixteen, seventeen, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re sure about the hair?”
“Yes, quite sure. Sort of washed-out sandy color. Really fair.”
Divine thanked her for her trouble and gave her his second-best smile; if he weren’t so full of himself and wearing that awful suit, Sandra thought, he might be almost good looking.
Resnick was weary. The muscles at the back of his neck were beginning to ache and he had drunk so much canteen tea it felt as if there was a coating of tannin furring his tongue. Across the table, Robin Hidden, with his solicitor’s encouragement, had withdrawn into his shell. Saying as little as possible, giving nothing away.
“Robin,” Resnick said, “don’t you think we’re making this more difficult than it has to be?”
Robin didn’t respond; pointedly, David Welch looked at his watch.
Inside the machine, the twin tapes wound almost silently on.