Resnick was ready; he shifted his weight and caught her as she half-turned, her body, stiff and thickening into middle age, falling across him, his arms supporting her, her brown hair harsh and soft against his neck.
Over the top of her head, he could see Lynn standing in the doorway, watching; after a while she turned back into the house.
The telephone rang and then was still.
Sarah Farleigh straightened and, shakily, got to her feet. "I'm sorry. Thank you. I shall be all right."
Resnick smiled a wan smile.
"I shouldn't be surprised if Lynn hasn't made some tea."
She looked at him.
"No. I expect she has. It's what women are good at. It's what we do."
Resnick walked with her, back to the house.
The scene-of-crime team had lifted seventeen good prints from the hotel bedroom, the bathroom had yielded eight more. Likelihood was that most of the prints would have come from Farleigh, others either from the hotel staff or previous occupants of the room. So much for cleaning. All these people would have to be contacted, checked and eliminated. If everything worked out the way it did in the textbooks, if luck and logic were on their side, any prints unaccounted for would belong to Farieigh's attacker. If that person had a record, well, while not exactly home free, the police would have a suspect, clear in their sights.
Everyone involved in the inquiry knew things were rarely that simple.
"Any sign of those photographs? From the hotel?" Resnick was barely into the office, loosening his tie, undoing the top button of his shirt.
"Promised half-hour back," Millington said, looking up from the computer printout splayed across his desk.
"Give them a chase."
"Right. Mark…"
Boss? "
"Ten-by-eights from this morning, find out where they are. And while you're about it, check out the arrangements for viewing the scene of crime video."
"On it now."
"Good lad."
Resnick was reading the printout upside down.
"From the hotel,"
Millington explained.
"Three lists. Guests registered for the past two nights, previous occupants of Farleigh's room, going back two months, and all staff on duty in the past forty-eight hours."
"Any headway?"
"Kevin's got a couple in now, running through photos with them. Maybe they'll pick out the woman, maybe not. If not, best haul our tame artist in, get a composite."
"How about the hotel?"
"We've got three lads out of uniform, questioning the staff as they clock in."
Resnick picked up the list and let it fall.
"We'll need more bodies."
"Too right. I can hear 'em bleating about overtime already."
Resnick sighed.
"I'll have a word with the old man. He can lean on the ACC. Budgets should be their problem, not ours. Meantime, we should get the names on this list checked with Intelligence at Central. Never know your luck."
Millington nodded.
"Next thing up."
In his office, Resnick wondered if it weren't time to call down to the front desk, see if someone wasn't nipping across to the deli.
They were getting tired, Naylor could see that; losing concentration.
Time and again he was having to stop them, not leading, not wanting false information, but slowing them down, bringing them back. Not wanting their eyes to gloss over another page of photographs without discriminating, letting individual features sink in. Known prostitutes, working the city centre, with a possible preference for hotels.
"Jesus," the waiter said.
"How much longer are we going to be?"
"Not too long now."
Yes, but how long? "
Till we're done. "
"Don't worry," the barman said, winking.
"I know him. This is how he spends his breaks; feet up in the bogs back of the kitchen, looking at pictures of women. Only difference, these've got more clothes on."
"Up yours!" the waiter said, cheerily feigning offence.
"Nota Not today. It's Friday and I'm a good Catholic, remember?"
"Here," Naylor said, turning the page.
"Take your time and have a careful look at these."
Resnick had the scene-of-crime photographs spread across his desk; the gorgonzola and radicchio sandwich he was eating lay on a paper bag in his lap. What held his attention most, aside from the un focusing depth of the dead man's eyes, was the haphazard pattern of stab wounds in the chest, the single blow the first to be struck, or delivered later, after the fury of the first assault? – that had penetrated the ribs and found the heart. Resnick imagined Farleigh struggling from the bed, endeavouring to escape, only to fall across the mattress-end before the blade was driven home again. Was that how it had been? And then the slow crawl towards the bath.?
Resnick looked again at the pictures of Farleigh's face, the spread of his overweight body. What had he done or said, Resnick wondered, to provoke such an outburst?
He brought the remaining half-sandwich to his mouth with both hands and chewed thoughtfully. Catching a stray drip of mayonnaise on the back of his hand, he looked around for something to wipe it on, finally resorting to licking it away; the last thing he wanted to do was get splotches all over the photographs.
"There!" the waiter said.
"Where?"
There. "
The face he was pointing to, finger wavering stubbily above it, was of a woman who was probably in her forties, with dark hair that hung, puppy-dog-like, around her ears and over equally dark eyes. There was no humour in those eyes. For all the world, she looked as if she had been willing the police photographer to shrivel up and yes die.
Marlene Kinoulton.
"You're mad." The barman said, shaking his head. "That's never her."
I say it is. "
"She's too old, way too old."
"You didn't see her as well as I did. You were never as close."
"She was at the bar."
"How many times? Twice? Once? You think how many times I was over to the table, bending over to serve her…"
"Gawping down her front."
"Never mind that. You know what I'm saying. I had a better sight of her than you. And for my money, that's her."
The barman swivelled away in his chair, gestured towards Naylor.
"The hair. It's wrong."
"What d'you mean wrong?" the waiter asked.
"It didn't look like that at all."
"So what? Aren't women changing their hair all the time?"
"But this look it's thicker, bushy. Can you not imagine feeling that? What it'd feel like? Coarse, am I not right? Where that one last night in the bar, her hair was fine, well looked after, finer than this. No, no way, this is never her."
For several moments there was silence, both men sneaking glances at Naylor and Naylor not wanting to influence either of them unduly.
The barman finally jumped to his feet.
"Well, I don't care what you say. I reckon that's her and I'm sticking to it. And now, if there's anything you want me to sign or whatever I'll sign it, because then, I don't mind telling you, I've had quite enough and, if it's all right with you, I'm out of here, so I am, now."
Kevin Naylor was looking at the photograph. Marlene Kinouhon. The name meant nothing to him. He. would pass it on down the line and, as long as she was still working the city, they would bring her in. He knew that both men were looking at him, waiting for him to say something positive, send them on their way. His back was aching from bending over the albums for so long and he knew he could do with a pint, but it was at least an hour before he would get one, possibly longer. Always, jarring at the edge of his mind, the conversation he had had with Debbie over breakfast, over children, another baby.