“Yes?”
“You say Karl left first?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
Groves looked at him sharply.
“You met for a drink, spend-what? — an hour together, more, normal thing, I would have thought, you’d have left at the same time.”
“Karl was worried about getting home.”
“Oh?”
“He was on an early. Next day, today.”
“Arrived late, left early.”
“Yes.”
“One of the penalties, going out with a nurse.”
“Sorry?” Just a touch sharper, arms away from the desk, but not still, stretching away from his sides.
“Same with the police. Shift work. Plays havoc with your social life. Police and nurses. Earlies and lates.” Resnick leaned his chair back on to its rear legs, relaxed. “That’s all there was to it, then? His leaving before you?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Yes,” Resnick nodded. “So you did.”
He smiled at Groves helpfully, waiting for more. Revisions of revisions. Groves fidgeted, the tie, the table, creases in his trousers, the tie again. “I can’t think of any other reason.”
Resnick could: several. “It’s not true there was an argument, then? No truth in that?”
“What argument?”
“I don’t know, it’s only a suggestion.”
“Whose suggestion?”
“Probably nothing to it.”
“That’s right.”
“There’s nothing to it?”
“No.”
“Karl and yourself, you didn’t argue?”
“No.”
“No raised voices?”
“No.”
Resnick lowered the front legs of his chair carefully to the floor. He leaned forward across the table and, instinctively, Paul Groves leaned back. Of the two, Resnick was by far the bigger man. “Like I said, it was pretty noisy, the music. Quite a few dancing. Almost had to shout to make ourselves heard.”
“I expect that’s what it was, then.”
Groves shrugged.
“Not a row at all.”
Groves looked at him. “What would we have to row about?”
Resnick gave him another encouraging smile. “You tell me.”
Three shots out of four, Divine could get the paper into the waste bin without it touching the sides. Mind you, that was after twenty minutes of concerted practice. The boss was in the interview room, safely out of the way, everyone else God knows where, and he was writing up another report. A couple of hours of sitting in taxis down round the square, all very well for them to have those NO SMOKING stickers in the front, came out of the cabs smelling like an Indian restaurant. Anyway, there’s this bloke comes prancing by in that purple sports gear they all seem to fancy just now, brand-new ghetto-blaster in one hand and an Adidas sports bag in the other. All Divine had done was go across and talk to him, by the numbers, warrant card, name and rank, station. “I have reason to believe …” Now the guy was threatening official complaint, witnesses, racial harassment. In the court just the other week, some clever-bollocks of a barrister trying to make him look like a lifelong supporter of the National Front. “Why did you stop the accused, constable? Had my client been white, would you have acted in the same way?” If the bastard had been white, he’d have been a sight less likely to be walking home at two in the morning with half an ounce of crack and his wallet thick with dirty tenners he’d just ponced off the girls he pimped for on Waverley Street.
Racial harassment, it choked him up. If they didn’t want to get harassed, why didn’t they clean up their act? Go straight, get a job. Instead it’s sponging off the State one minute and calling it for every evil, repressive pigging thing the next. If harassing the buggers didn’t make for an improvement in the crime statistics, it would stop soon enough. Not his fault if it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Asking for it and when they got it crying foul.
He cursed and screwed up another piece of paper, lobbing it through a high arc, into the bin in one.
Same with the bollocking IRA, they were another bunch of two-faced bastards. Over here, over in Europe, up to their armpits in Semtex and sub-machine-guns, blowing women and kids to kingdom-bloody-come, someone from the SAS sticks a gun up against their heads and pulls the trigger. Smack through the brain pan, that’ll do nicely, thank you, they start squawking about illegal acts, overstepping the mark, operating outside the rule of law. What the fuck were they doing, if it wasn’t operating outside the rule of law?
No.
Either they fuck off back to their own country, the lot of them, go back to growing potatoes or whatever it was they did over there, else give up running behind the skirts of some Human Rights Commission and accept the consequences.
Over here, looking for trouble, IRA or any other bloody terrorist, whap! Have them up against the wall fast and let the rest see what they’re up against. That’d soon put a stop to it, no mistake.
And in the meantime, don’t let anyone waste their breath telling him he was prejudiced. Not anyone. He swiveled in the chair, arm raised, going for something more fancy, in-off, side of the desk on to the wall, down into the bin, when the door opened and Patel came into the office.
“Bollocks!”
The ball of paper rebounded from the wall and skittered across the floor.
“Paul Groves,” Patel said, handing Divine a page from his notebook with the address, “the boss says can you check him through records?”
“When I’ve got time.”
“I rather think he meant now.”
Divine waited until Patel had left the room. “What’s wrong with doing it yourself, Diptak? Too busy rimming the old man’s arse to find the time?”
“You haven’t any ideas yet then,” Paul Groves was saying, “who might have done it?”
“Oh, yes,” Resnick said. “We’ve always got ideas.” He stood up and held out his hand. After only the slightest of hesitations, Grove shook it, looking Resnick in the eye, but likely, Resnick thought, having to force himself to do so. Knowing it was the right thing to do.
“There’s nothing else, then?” Groves asked.
Resnick smiled. “Not for the present.”
Patel opened the door.
“DC Patel will show you out.”
Divine didn’t know what Resnick had expected him to come up with, maybe nothing, but the way Groves was shaping up he was ripe for something. Two and a bit years back, he’d been charged with gross indecency; that had been lowered to behavior likely to harass, alarm, or distress, before being dropped altogether. Nine months after that he had received a warning for remaining in a public lavatory longer than was reasonable for the purpose.
Not for his purpose, Divine said to himself, little bugger spends his lunch hours out cottaging.
Resnick was standing just outside the CID room, chatting to one of the other DCs about soccer.
“If I were you, sir,” the DC was saying, “I’d give County the elbow. Better off going up to Chesterfield and watching John Chedozie.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Divine came across and handed Resnick the details. “Won’t pay to turn your back on this one, sir,” said Divine. “He’s a bloody poof!”
Twenty-two
Calvin heard his father’s footsteps overhead and leaned on to his left side, wondering if he was about to come downstairs. But the steps carried on towards the kitchen and Calvin relaxed and made himself comfortable again on the bed, drawing down hard on the spindly roll-up to keep it alight. Trouble with dope, especially stuff as good as that, the lingering sweetness of the smell; one move of his father’s towards the stairs and Calvin would have been across to the door that opened out into the garden, wafting in air, spraying aftershave around like it was going out of style. “One thing,” his father had said, “and one thing only. You bring home girls, I don’t want you bringing them down to your room. And I won’t have you smoking dope. Not in this house.” Calvin had nodded, agreed, not pointing out to him that was two things. What did it matter? It was like school, you said yes and carried on doing what you liked. Calvin had reasons to remember schooclass="underline" endless afternoons of woodwork and skiving cross-country runs, and kids who’d yell at him across the playground: “What’s the matter with you, Calvin? Not got the balls to be a real nigger!” Real niggers were black. Calvin, son of a Bermudan father and a Nottinghamshire mother, was a shade of light coffee. “Hey!” the black kids would shout. “You ain’t one of us!”