“What are you thinking, Charlie?”
“‘Crossroads,’ sir.”
“Not bringing that back, are they? Thought it was all this Australian stuff, Neighbours and the like.”
“No, sir. ‘Crossroads.’ It’s a blues. Robert Johnson. Skip James. It’s …”
“Relevant, Charlie?”
“No, sir. Not really.”
Skelton gave him a short, hard stare and resumed pacing his office carpet. As a superintendent you get thicker pile and a choice of colors, replacement every five years if you had the right connections. The way Skelton was going, that might be something else to talk to Paul Groves about.
“It’s distracting,” Skelton said, behind Resnick now and making him turn in his chair. “That’s what worries me. Leading us away from what I think should be our main focus.”
“But if it’s there …”
“What, Charlie? What exactly?”
“If Groves and Dougherty were involved …”
“Come on, Charlie. We don’t know that.”
“Seems pretty incontrovertible Groves is gay, bisexual at least.”
“Where’s your evidence about Dougherty?”
“Close to thirty interviews, people who’ve worked with him, some of them for quite a while. Had a drink with him, socialized. Not a great deal, but a little. Never once, any talk of a girlfriend. Woman. Not once.”
“That means he’s gay?”
Resnick shrugged. What was Skelton getting so worked up about? “It’s an indication.”
“Of what? That he doesn’t like women? That he doesn’t like sex? Maybe he’s a very private person. Maybe it’s his hormones. If we all had our sexuality determined by our rate of intimacy, where would that leave us?” Skelton was back behind his desk, constructing cages with his fingers. “Come to think of it, Charlie, last couple of police functions, you haven’t brought anybody with you, the opposite sex. Not significant, is it?”
Resnick found himself wriggling a little more than was comfortable. Either Skelton was accusing him of being a long time in the closet or being innately prejudiced, he wasn’t sure which. Perhaps it was both. Or simply a game? No. The only games he could imagine Skelton being interested in had strict rules, required the utmost concentration and alertness, were important to win and absolutely no fun at all. Fun, Resnick thought, wasn’t a concept the superintendent believed in.
Poor Kate!
“I’m sure there was something going on between them,” Resnick said. “Something to make Dougherty leave early, more than this shift business. I saw Groves’s face when I suggested they might have been having a row.”
“Lovers’ quarrel, Charlie?” said Skelton dismissively.
“Could have followed him out of the bar, across the street. One thing, if Dougherty knew who his attacker was, that would explain why he was able to get close, get in the first blow.”
“From behind, Charlie?”
The thought set up possibilities neither man was prepared fully to consider. Skelton slid back one of his desk drawers and took out a blue folder, some papers clipped neatly together.
“Home Office statistics. Rise in recorded sexual offenses, five percent to twenty-eight thousand in ’89, since then more or less holding.” Skelton flipped over two pages. “Research into that extra five percent, thirteen hundred cases, between half and a third indecency charges against men. One town’s public toilets. You can imagine what the gays had to say about that. You know.” Skelton turned to another sheet, a photo copy of a magazine article. “‘The prosecution and persecution of gay men,’” Skelton read.
“With respect, sir …”
“Let the media get wind of this,” Skelton said, “they’ll have a field day. Gays carving themselves up in lavatories. The so-called silent majority will want officers on observation, armed with everything from mirrors to video cameras and everyone to the left of the Co-op Labour Party will be organizing demos and picketing police stations on behalf of their oppressed brothers.”
Resnick allowed a small silence to collect around them. Beyond it a car went by, all of its windows presumably down, loudspeakers blaring. From further along the corridor, not quite decipherable, the familiar cadence of swearing. Telephones, their urgencies overlapping.
“If he had motivation, sir. Groves. Opportunity.”
“Yes,” said Skelton, subdued now. “I agree. We have to check it out. But, Charlie, low profile, low key, be careful who you use. And remember, if there is anything in it, where does that leave us with the attack on Fletcher? The hospital, Charlie, I still think that’s where we’ll find our answers.”
“Yes, sir,” Resnick said, getting to his feet.
“The wrong kind of publicity, Charlie,” Skelton said as Resnick reached the door, “it can only get in the way.”
Patel was worrying over the information that had come back from the hospital, fussing with the computer, opening files, finding facts to cross-reference, and concluding there were too few. If there was a clear link between Fletcher and Karl Dougherty he couldn’t pin it down. Aside from the obvious; apart from the fact that they had survived. In Dougherty’s case, just. His condition was still giving cause for concern.
Naylor and Lynn Kellogg were talking into telephones, opposite ends of the office.
“Nobody tramps the streets with a pram for eight hours,” Naylor was saying. “Nobody in their right mind.”
“And when she made this application,” said Lynn Kellogg, “did she say what she was going to do?… Mm, hm. Mm, hm … And did she say where?”
Resnick stood for a while behind Patel’s desk, looking at the characters springing up on the green screen. Names, dates, times. It should all be checked against a list of patients Fletcher would have had dealings with, patients from Bernard Salt’s list, but that list was slow in coming. The consultant’s secretary had greeted Patel’s request like an invitation to perform a particularly unsavory sexual act.
If Skelton was right and the hospital was where they were going to get their answers, they would have to do better than this.
“I would go back there, sir,” Patel said. “But with the best will in the world, I don’t think it would make a lot of difference. She is a very determined lady.”
Resnick nodded. The sort that, generations back, would have traveled across the Sahara by camel without ever breaking sweat or needing to urinate behind the nearest pyramid; who held the Raj together in the face of disease, the caste system, and the occasional difficulty in getting a fourth for bridge.
“If you might call her yourself, sir,” Patel suggested.
“I’ll get the super to do it.”
“I don’t know,” Naylor was saying. “As soon as I can. What does it matter anyway, if you’re not going to be there?”
“Thank you,” said Lynn. “If she does get in touch, you’ll let me know?”
Resnick watched as Naylor slammed down the phone and left the office with a speed that nearly left a startled DC, who happened to be coming through the door, minus an arm. Resnick looked questioningly towards Lynn Kellogg and slowly she shook her head. The number of times Resnick had seen it happen: young officers who think a kiddie is all they need to bring them and their young wives back together.
He headed for his office and Lynn followed him.
“Karen Archer, sir. I’ve checked with the university. Seems she saw the student counselor and was advised to take some time off. Compassionate leave, sort of thing. The department secretary assumed she’d gone home to her parents, but didn’t know for sure. I’ve tried to contact them and can’t get any response.”
“You’re worried?”