Resnick thought it was probably better that he didn’t. He wondered if mushy peas had been Silver’s original intention, or whether they’d simply happened along the way.
“Good, eh?” Silver said, pointing towards Resnick’s plate with his knife.
“Distinctive.”
Silver beamed. “S’what I said, Charlie. How it should be all the time. Job like you’ve got, can’t be expected to cook for yourself. You need someone to do it for you.”
Was this how Ed Silver saw his future? Mornings doing good works for homeless alcoholics like himself; afternoons as Resnick’s resident cook and butler.
No.
“She was here, Charlie. You know that?”
“Jane Wesley?”
“Elaine.”
Air clogged at the back of Resnick’s throat.
“Earlier. Came to the door, didn’t see as I could turn her away.”
“She came into the house?”
“Well, it did used to be half hers, Charlie. ’Sides, she looked terrible.”
“Ill?”
“Face like a bleached nappy. I had her sit down and made a pot of tea; slipped a drop of gin into it.” Whose had been the gin, Resnick wondered, Ed Silver’s or Elaine’s? “We had quite a little chat.”
I’ll bet you did!
“She’s had a hell of a life, Charlie. Since she left you. One hell of a life.”
Resnick set down his knife and fork and pushed the plate aside.
“You’ve never finished! There’s another chop waiting to be eaten. Apple pie in the oven, Mr. Kipling, can’t beat them. Winner every time. Charlie …”
“Let’s be straight on this,” Resnick on his feet, back of his chair, staring down, “it’s fine for you to stay here, for a while, till either you get a room somewhere or decide to move on. But I don’t want a nanny, I don’t want a housekeeper, I don’t want a cook and if I did, with the best will in the world, I don’t think you’d get the job.” Silver sat there absolutely still, looking up at him. “And I don’t want a wife: especially the same one I had before.”
“Some people,” Ed Silver said a few minutes later, trying to coax Bud on to his lap with a piece of fat, “don’t know the meaning of the word gratitude.”
When the cat only sniffed the meat but wouldn’t come any closer, Silver popped it into his own mouth, got up, and carried the plates towards the sink to do the washing up.
Ben Franks had been in the Buttery, taking his mind off an overdue essay with several bottles of Newcastle Brown, a couple of games of pool and the last half hour bopping around to a retro post-punk band with reggae leanings called Scrape the Barrel. He saw a bunch of students he knew ahead of him and called after them, running in a shambling sort of fashion past the library to catch up.
Four of them, three lads and a girl, they’d been across to the Showcase to see a film about a legless Vietnam vet who dies in a traffic accident and is reincarnated as a kung-fu Buddhist priest who’s vowed to eliminate the Colombian drug lords. Chuck Norris, the girl said, was better than you’d have given him credit for. Especially playing the entire ninety-four minutes on his knees.
Somehow, heading down the grassed slope towards the hall of residence, all five became involved in a re-enactment of the plot, with the result that Franks finished up twisting his ankle and having to be supported the rest of the way home. Down on the level, they decided he could manage to hobble by himself and after a few steps his ankle went again under him, he pantomimed a dying fall and came down with a clatter amongst the dustbins. Groaning theatrically and allowing himself to be hauled to his feet, Ben Franks’s hand brushed against something and he called for them to stop.
He picked it up and turned in the direction of the overhead light; he blew on it a couple of times, brushed away a persistent beetle, and opened it up. There in his hand, Amanda Hooson’s diary.
Thirty-seven
The slimline diary with the black imitation-leather binding and trim, metal corners at its four edges, lay on Skelton’s desk, the sunlight shafting in from a cloudless sky, Indian summer. In a neat hand on the prelim pages, Amanda Hooson had written her name and both addresses, university and home, together with their respective phone numbers. Beneath she had put her passport number, current account number, national insurance number; the telephone numbers of her bank, doctor, dentist; the internal numbers for the Social Sciences Department and the Health Center. Columns requesting dress size, hat size, shoe size had been left blank. At the foot of the right-hand page, she had filled in the name and address of her next of kin, to be informed in case of accident or emergency. There was an organ donor card sellotaped inside the back cover, but the necessity for a police post-mortem would have prevented it being used.
“Well?” Skelton said, early in the day but down to shirt sleeves already; things were going to get hotter as this day wore on.
Resnick and Paddy Fitzgerald were side by side, close against Skelton’s desk. Resnick was wearing a green-hued tweed jacket with sagging pockets and frayed cotton at the cuff of its left arm. Fitzgerald was sweating through the dark blue of his uniform, little to do with the temperature or the unlooked-for sunlight.
“Well?”
Paddy Fitzgerald glanced, stiff-necked, at Resnick and Resnick looked away.
“I’ve had them in, sir, every man jack of ’em. Gave them a right bollocking.”
“If you’d done that sooner,” Skelton said, “might have had some effect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many days searching that area?”
Fitzgerald blinked.
“Days?”
“Three, sir.”
“Officers?”
“Sir?”
“How many officers?”
“Twelve. All told, sir. Not, I mean, obviously not all at the same time, same shift …” Words withered away under Skelton’s unflinching glare.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Fitzgerald said.
“You’re …?”
“Sorry, sir. I don’t know how they … I don’t understand how it wasn’t spotted.”
“Maybe it was only put there last night,” Resnick suggested. “Maybe whoever took it, kept it until yesterday, decided to get rid of it.” He shrugged. “Always possible.” Even to himself, he didn’t sound very convincing.
“Seen the state of it, Charlie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Read it? The relevant pages?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You, Paddy?”
Fitzgerald nodded. The ripe scent of sweat was permeating the room and if things continued this way there was liable to be a puddle in front of Skelton’s desk, not necessarily perspiration.
“What if,” the superintendent said, measuring every word, “what if our laddie had sharpened up his blade, found another victim, some young nurse say, walking home alone, what if there was another body on our hands? What would you think then?”
Fitzgerald stuttered. “I don’t know, sir.”
“It only takes five minutes,” Skelton said. “Ten at most. You gave him seventy-two hours.”
The sun was strong on the right side of the superintendent’s face, highlighting the fine strands of hair above his ear, making the skin at the curve of the ear gleam.
“It would be nice to think,” Skelton said, “that when your men go back over the ground this morning, any weapon that might be lying around underneath the odd dustbin might be found before it takes another half-cut student to do their job for them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Skelton nodded and looked down towards the desk, allowing Fitzgerald the grace to leave the room. After another moment, Skelton picked up the diary and leafed through it, all the color-coded dots beneath or alongside dates, the times of tutorials and seminars, notes of books to return to the library or pulses to buy from Hizicki or Oroborus, her father’s birthday. When he found the right week, he angled the page across the desks that they could both read what was written in the column for Saturday: Buttery. 1pm. Ian.
Resnick pushed the door to the CID room open wide enough to call round it. “Mark, Kevin. Job for you.”