The cats heard the phone moments before Resnick himself, jumping down from the bed and scuttling towards the bedroom door. Resnick blinked and groaned, lifting the receiver at only the second attempt.
“Yes?” he said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “What is it?”
He listened for less than a minute then set down the receiver. He had sat up for too long, hoping that Ed Silver might return, chasing the Budweiser with shots of vodka brought back by a friend from Cracow, the real thing. Setting his feet to the floor gingerly, he pushed himself up and padded to the kitchen. Miles and Bud had beaten him to it and were sniffing at their empty bowls expectantly. Pepper, who had taken to sleeping in an old plastic colander, yawned a greeting and reclosed his eyes, forgetting to put the red tip of his tongue back inside his mouth.
Knowing he was unlikely to get back to sleep, Resnick made coffee, drank half and put the remainder into a flask which he carried out to the car. Overhead lights shone a dull orange along the empty street. He went straight across the lights at the Forest, keeping the cemetery to his right. One last prostitute lingered against the wall near the next junction, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, face pale in the glow of her last cigarette.
When he began driving Resnick hadn’t known for certain where he was going, but now he did.
Large blocks of brick and glass, by day the hospital didn’t have enough character to be ugly. By night, most of its lights extinguished, some of them burning here and there, it was more inviting, mysterious. Resnick went slowly around the one-way system and parked fifty yards short of the medical school entrance.
A few swallows of black coffee and he took a torch from the compartment alongside the dash, locked the car and started to walk towards the bridge. It was a good hour later than the time Fletcher had been attacked, the flow of traffic was sporadic, there was no one else on foot. A short avenue of bushes and trees separated the hospital from the road. He flicked the torch on and shone it up the metal spiral before beginning to climb. Whoever had followed the houseman had either come directly after him from the hospital, or taken this route up from the road. This way, Resnick reasoned, pausing as his head came level with the glass above. Less likely to create suspicion, loitering about; easier to wait for your victim, pick him out.
The door at the top could have been locked, likely would have been if someone had not removed the bolt. Wonder, thought Resnick, exactly when that was done.
He pushed the door open and stepped through, turning left so that the hospital lay behind him, the bridge stretching out ahead. The occasional vehicle now, headlights sliding down the glass panels as they sped along the ring road, north or south. Resnick stood quite still, listening to the muted thrum of engines, concentrating on the double doors at the far end, the bridge spanning six lanes of highway, those doors a long way off.
Do people feel unhappy only during office hours? Black print on white paper, Blu-tacked to the wired glass. Phone NITELINE 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. Resnick tried to imagine being trapped in there, terrified, desperate to escape. He began to walk, slowly, towards the other side, the smell of rubber clearer with every step.
Whoever had seen Fletcher, followed him, what had determined his choice? Being there, now, the middle of the night, Resnick found it difficult to believe in a chance attack. Whoever had stalked the exhausted houseman almost the length of the bridge had done so for a reason. Resnick needed to believe it had been personal. He hesitated for a moment, staring down. He had to believe that, cling to it, knowing that if it were not true, there was somebody still out there, somewhere in the city, who had wreaked terrible havoc on Tim Fletcher’s body for reasons that only a psychologist might ever understand. And who might do the same again.
City Life, read the poster facing Resnick as he went through the double doors. A bicycle had been left chained to the railings on the broad platform, two-thirds of the way down the steps. The air that touched Resnick’s hands and face was surprisingly cold, driving up from the flyover. Something caught his attention, low by the wall of the first building and he brought up the torch.
It was only boxes, crammed with computer printouts: metallurgy, something close. Resnick switched off the torch and stood them, feeling the adrenalin in his body. Seek and you shall find. He crossed back over the ring road, stepping easily over the metal safety barriers at the center.
Sitting in the car, he dribbled the last of the coffee into the plastic cup. There had been no mistaking his ex-wife’s voice on the phone, nor, in those few not-quite-coherent sentences, the mixture of resentment and pleading he had thought forgotten.
Eleven
He had the kind of profile that could have been selling aftershave; thick hair, naturally curly and dark, a hunk wearing a black vest and loose-fitting sweatpants with a draw-string waist. He was wearing a pair of running shoes that had cost him close to eighty pounds, but that didn’t mean he was running. He had walked down the street and now he stood outside Number 27 and rang the bell. When nothing seemed to happen, he hit the door with the flat of his hand, enough to make it shake. Pushing back the letter flap, Ian Carew called Karen’s name.
A couple of minutes and he saw her through the couple of inches of door: salmon socks, double-knit and large and folding loosely back down her calves; hem of a white T-shirt bouncing as she came down the stairs, enough to give him a glimpse of expensive underwear, beige lace and broderie anglaise. There was a large Snoopy in relief on the front of the shirt. Carew let the flap snap into place and stood back.
Not far.
“What …?”
He stepped in without speaking, anger in his face, forcing her back along the threadbare carpet at the other side of the mat.
She looked at him and shook her head and for a moment he thought she was going to bite down into her lower lip, like a child. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and there was sleep in the corner of her eyes.
A woman walked past on the opposite side of the street, Asian, wearing a purple and gold sari and pushing a pram, twins. Karen didn’t think she’d ever noticed Asian twins before.
Carew moved forward, blocking her view.
“Good at it, aren’t you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Natural. Comes natural. Something Mummy fed you along with the milk.”
“Now you’re being stupid.”
“And don’t do that!” His hand was on her face before she could move, fingers squeezing against the sides of her jaw, forcing her mouth slightly open so that she could no longer bite the soft flesh inside her lip.
“Lying,” he said. “That’s what you’re good at. Lying. ‘No, Ian, there isn’t anything wrong. I’m not seeing anybody else, of course I’m not seeing anybody else.’ Weeks until I found out.”
Karen turned her head aside, laughed dismissively. “Is that what this is all about?”
“What do you think?”
“Tim.”
“Gets himself mugged and you send the police round after me.”
“Oh, Ian.”
“Oh, Ian, what?”
She didn’t want this conversation, didn’t want this to be happening. She might have guessed that cow of a policewoman would put two and two together and come up with the wrong answer. Probably she should have warned him, but she hadn’t. Now he was there in the house, angry, and she didn’t think she could make him leave against his will, not by herself. She didn’t think there was anybody else in the house.
“Look,” Karen said, “let me get dressed. It won’t take a minute.”
Carew didn’t move.
Shrugging, she turned and went back upstairs, conscious that he was following her, looking at her legs.