“Yes,” said Resnick slowly. “Yes, it is.”
Sarah stared at him hard. “Whoever it was. Did this. He wants locking away.”
For several moments Resnick didn’t say anything. And then he found a smile and thanked her for coming in so promptly. “One of the officers will take your statement,” he said, escorting her through the door.
Rachel, he thought, would never have talked of locking the person who did this away; she would have spoken of safety, providing help and care. He remembered the consultant giving his description of Tim Fletcher’s wounds, the sight of Dougherty, unconscious in his own blood. He didn’t know who needed caring for the most.
Eighteen
“Borrowed one of your shirts, Charlie. Hope you don’t mind.”
Ed Silver had dragged a stool close to the stove and was spreading peanut butter on the nub end of a rye loaf. Several tea bags oozed orangey-brown from where they had been dumped on a corner of the chopping board. Silver had also found a pair of Resnick’s older gray trousers while rummaging through his wardrobe and wore those now, held at the waist by a red-and-gray striped tie. Resnick wasn’t sure whether the socks were his or not. Without doubt the cat was. Dizzy, stalker of the night and the least susceptible to human advances, had found in Ed Silver a fellow spirit.
All these years, Resnick thought, and he’d misjudged him. Poor, blackhearted Dizzy. Not a football fan at all, a lager lout-in his soul Dizzy was something more serious, more tragic, an artist, an alcoholic manque.
“Nearly out of this,” Silver said, tapping the peanut-butter jar with the blade of the knife.
Resnick was more worried about his vodka.
“You had a phone call,” Silver said, chewing earnestly.
“Message?”
“Said she’d ring back.”
“She?”
“Don’t know how you do it, Charlie,” Ed Silver cackled. “Pulling birds at your age.”
Resnick glanced at his watch. There wasn’t time, but he wanted to shower. The smell of stale urine still clung to him, the memory of the wavering chalk line that had marked Dougherty’s body. The expression on Pauline Dougherty’s face, smiling: You see, there’s been a mistake. Parents like that, those situations, the ones whose children had been buried high on cold ground or laid waste between the brick ginnels of blackened cities, what did they ever understand? What beyond the numbness and after the pain?
He dropped his clothing on the bathroom floor and switched the shower to full. Eyes closed, needle jets of water washed his body. Resnick turned up the temperature, turned his face towards the stream.
Patel sat outside intensive care, staring at his shoes. Better, at least, than surveillance outside another anonymous warehouse or factory, cold on the trail of 36 gross pairs of wide-fitting mislabeled jeans. Here one of the domestics would push a cup of tea into his hands, a biscuit; from time to time a nurse would slip him a sidelong smile.
Through a double set of glass-paneled doors he could see the apparatus around Dougherty’s bed, observe, as if through water, the ritual observations of blood pressure, temperature, vital signs. The watchers watched.
Two doctors passed quickly through, white coats flapping around well-cut dark trousers, talking in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Consultants, registrars, housemen-Patel knew the names, didn’t know the difference. His father had wanted him to become a doctor, had preached long nights about it, the honor, the prestige. Eighteen hours in a corner shop his father worked, seven days a week, every day except Christmas, all to make things easier for his children, easier than they had been for him, arriving in England with little more than names written on the back of an envelope. Welcome to Bradford. See, Diptak, you will receive an education, your brothers also. You will be a professional man. I will be proud of you.
After his degree, Patel had applied to join the police and at first his father had been less than proud. His friends, some of them, had ostracized him, cut him dead. Traitor! The word had dogged his footsteps along the streets where he had grown up, assaulted him from the walls; one evening, serving in the family shop, his best friend had spat in his face. The vehemence of it had been unsuspected and the hurt clung to him still, worse by far than the racist jokes his fellow officers would repeat to his face without a second thought, the calls of “Paki bastard!” he had to ignore most days of his life, most nights in the city.
“Excuse me.” Patel got to his feet as the two doctors walked back through the doors. “Excuse me, but Mr. Dougherty, is there any change?”
They looked at him as if he could only be there in error.
“Is there any change in his condition?” Patel asked.
“No,” one of the doctors said, walking away.
“What do you think?” said the other. “A jar before squash or after?”
No hats or trainers read the notice taped to the door. Sorry no jeans. No hats, thought Resnick, pushing his way through, must be some kind of code.
A short staircase wound down to the center, a curve of seats and small tables off to the left, the DJ’s decks to the right, more steps led down to the main floor and the facing bar. Knees resting on a rubber pad, a blonde-haired woman was polishing away at the wooden dance floor.
A pair of lights shone dully from beneath the glass shelves at the back of the bar. Alongside the Labatt’s and Grolsch in the cold cabinet, Resnick spotted some bottles of Czech Budweiser and his admiration rose several notches.
“Anyone around?” he asked.
“Too early,” said the woman on the dance floor, not bothering to turn around. “Come back in an hour.”
“You’re the only one here, then?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” she said, with a touch of put-on weariness. “Are you thick or what?”
Hands to her hips, she arched her back and swiveled her head. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“Hello, Rosie,” Resnick said.
The last time she had heard his voice had been in court, Resnick giving evidence against two of her sons, the pair of them arrested and charged with offenses under Sections 47 and 38, causing aggravated bodily harm and using force to resist arrest. They’d be back out any time now, but probably not for long.
“How’s the girl?” Resnick asked. Rosie’s daughter had been born with a severe disability to the spine that had kept her shuffling in and out of hospital for years.
“What the hell do you care?” Rosie said.
A door to the side of the bar opened and she picked up her polishing cloth and went back to her work. “We’re not open yet,” said a man in a loose white shirt and a maroon bow tie, hair gelled upwards in short, fashionable spikes. “Come back in …”
“I know,” Resnick said, “an hour.” He pushed his warrant card along the bar.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?” the man asked.
“Are you the owner?” Resnick asked. “Manager?”
“Derek Griffin. I’m the manager.”
“Here last night?”
“Most of the time, why?”
Resnick looked over towards the nearest table. “Let’s sit down.”
Resnick leaned against the padded backrest; Griffin perched himself uneasily on a stool, reminding Resnick of a cockatoo from the aviary in the Arboretum, likely to fly off at any moment.
“Can I get you something, Inspector?” Griffin asked, glancing towards the bar.
“How many staff here with you?”
“Last night?” Resnick nodded.
“Three behind the bar, bouncer on the door. Four.”
“That all?”
“Unless you count the DJ.”
“Five, then.”
“All right, five.”
“Names and addresses.”