Downstairs in the communal kitchen the young man who’d let Lynn in was pouring warm baked beans over cold mashed potato.
“When did she leave?”
“Who?”
“Karen.”
“Dunno.”
Lynn wanted to force his head under the cold tap, wake some life into him. “Think.”
He struck the underside of the sauce bottle with the flat of his hand and a gout of tomato sauce flopped out, most of it on the plate. “Might have been yesterday. Must’ve been. Supposed to give us notice, four weeks. Now we’ve got to go tarting round for someone else.”
Lynn’s heart bled for him. “Any idea where she’s gone?”
He looked up at her disparagingly. “Home to Mummy.”
“She’s giving up her course?”
He shrugged and stirred the beans and potato together.
“Have you got an address for her?” Lynn asked.
“Somewhere.”
It was all she could do to stop herself from pushing his face down into his plate. She contented herself by plucking the fork from his hand, waiting till she had his attention firmly on her face, “Get it,” she said. “Wherever it is, the address, get it now.”
He didn’t like it but he did as he was told.
During all of this, Resnick had been doing more than his share of window-shopping: anywhere with male assistants wearing suits. In succession, he had feigned a passing interest in bicycles, fourteen-day trips to the Yugoslavian coast, all-in, a new sports jacket, a signet ring, a char-grilled burger with fries and a 90-Day Extra Savings account; he had considered the possibilities of walking boots, cricket bats, Filofaxes, framed posters of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, separately or together; now he was standing between broad rolls of carpet, listening to a disquisition on the virtues (or otherwise) of underlay, when he noticed one of the salesmen leading a couple towards a central table to confirm the details of a sale.
As the salesman filled in the form, pausing at intervals to ask a question, once to laugh, several times to smile, Resnick watched him. Twenty-five or — six, but already thinning on top, hair combed from either side towards the center of his head in a vain attempt at disguise. He was wearing a double-breasted light gray suit that would have fitted somebody perfectly, but not him. Resnick waited until the final handshakes, the nod of the head, promise of delivery, beginnings of an accompanying walk towards the door. Don’t go all the way, don’t waste time, there is commission to be earned.
“Excuse me,” Resnick said evenly, approaching from behind,
The salesman blinked as he turned, moving half a pace back so as to get Resnick properly in focus. Family man, not about to spend a fortune, with any luck a three-bedroom semi in need of recarpeting throughout.
“Yes, sir.” Cheerily.
“Peter …” tried Resnick.
“Paul, as it happens. I …”
“You know a Karl Dougherty, by any chance?”
Paul Groves shot a glance towards the door and instinctively Resnick moved across to cover any attempt to escape. But: “Is it still raining?” Groves asked. “Wondered if I’d need a coat.”
Twenty-one
Resnick watched Groves all the way back to the station, alongside him in the back of the summoned car, one of his elbows resting against the window, not staring, not making it too obvious. Just the fifteen feet across the pavement from the shop doorway to the curb had been enough to destroy the loose thatch of Groves’s hair, one side falling past his left ear, the other sticking out like a mistake, pale scalp exposed clearly between. Even so, he didn’t look too disturbed, now and again glancing out, interested, as if being driven through a city he only remembered. Sure, his fingers tugged at the slack of his suit trousers once in a while and the collar beneath his blue-and-silver striped tie was getting a touch too tight, but underneath he seemed unconcerned. As if, at base, he knew nothing could really get to him; he was safe. Resnick wondered.
Outside the CID room he told Groves to hang on and put his head round the door, beckoning Patel from the desk where he was diligently making his way through his paperwork.
“News from the hospital?” he asked quietly, as they turned into the corridor.
“Back in intensive care. Apparently stable.”
Resnick nodded and directed Groves into the nearest interview room, with a view across the sloping car park towards four-story houses where two-bedroom flats were still fetching in excess of a hundred thousand. He pointed to a chair and waited for Groves to sit down, taking the chair opposite for himself, leaving Patel room to make notes at the end of the table.
“I knew you’d want to talk to me,” Paul Groves said. “After what happened.”
Resnick didn’t respond, not directly. “You’re here of your own volition to make a statement and can leave at any time. You understand that?”
Groves nodded.
“Why don’t you tell us about last night?”
Groves loosened his tie a little, then tightened it again, holding the knot between the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand while he pulled on the short end with his right. No matter how easily they come to water, Resnick thought, rare that they rush to drink.
“Karl and I had arranged to meet for a drink,” Groves began. “Half nine and he was late, but then he always was.” Resnick noted the always but let it go. Questions later. “I suppose it was nearly ten by the time he arrived. We stayed there till closing, talking, as much as you can over the music, two or three drinks, that’s all. We’re not what you’d call drinkers, either of us.”
He paused and looked at Resnick directly, the first time since he’d begun talking.
“That’s Manhattan’s. That’s where we were. But I suppose you know that?”
“Go on,” Resnick said.
“There’s not a lot more, really. Karl left a bit before me, not long. I went home. I assumed he’d done the same. Until this morning when I heard the news. Local. They didn’t give many details at first, not even a name. Went through the back of my mind it might have been Karl, but why should it have been? I mean, really? Why would it?” His arms were resting on the edge of the table, several inches back from the wrist; the more he spoke, the more he gesticulated with his hands. Now they closed into fists and were still. “Then they said who it was.”
It crossed Resnick’s mind that Groves had been practicing this, rehearsing the shifts in tone, the moves.
“I called the hospital,” Groves said, “wouldn’t say a lot over the phone, but they did tell me how he was.” A quick glance up. “I was going into see him, tonight, after work. I mean, I would have taken time off, only with Karl being like he is …”
“Like he is?”
“Not conscious, not really conscious and in intensive care. They said they might have to operate again …”
“They did.”
Now the response was real, concern jumping across his eyes.
“Whatever they did,” Resnick said, “seems to have been successful. The last we heard he was resting. Not out of the wood, but …” Resnick spread his hands, suggesting, with luck, everything would turn out all right.
“Is this going to take much longer?” Groves asked.
“There’s just a couple of things …”