Walking home now, Resnick turned left through the everspreading polytechnic and entered the Arboretum, a few parents wheeling their kids past the aviary, holding them, pointing excitedly, close against the bars. He sat for a while on one of the wooden benches facing the cannon, weathered black and impressive, which the local regiment had captured in the Crimea. The daftness of it, a man not so far short of middle age, sitting alone on that early winter afternoon, rehearsing all of the things he wanted to say to his father and now never could.
When he walked in through his front door, thirty minutes later, cats swirling round his feet, the telephone was already ringing.
You couldn’t see them so well that time of an evening, but Resnick knew the houses well enough, two-story, detached, each with its own garage, gardens front and back; most of the front lawns with a cherry tree or something close, soft petals that drifted out onto the curve of pavement, purple or pink. Family homes that went up-what? — twenty years ago, twenty-five? Resnick would drive round there sometimes, using the crescent as a cut-through, and think it was like a movie set. The fifties’ Hollywood ideal. Crusty old pop, forever chewing on his pipe; mom with flour on her apron, a great line in advice and pies whose pastry rose just right; the daughter with a soft spot for dogs and crippled kids and the leading man, who was pretty much of a ne’er-do-well, but who saw the light in time to find his way to the altar. If Resnick could ever remember their names, he’d know her-round-faced, fair-haired, sort of catch in her voice she most likely developed when she was just another band singer, sitting stage left near the piano, patiently waiting till she was called to the microphone. Dinah? Dolores? What was her name?
Michael guided the young woman in from the kitchen towards them. “This is my wife, Lorraine.”
Resnick guessed her to be early twenties, but the result of all the crying had been to render her younger, late teens.
Resnick introduced Lynn Kellogg and himself, suggested they went somewhere and sat down; there were questions they had to ask.
With Michael’s permission, the uniformed officers were already making a thorough search of the property, top to bottom. Police in another part of the country had recently gone to a hostel, looking for a kidnapped four-year-old boy, had checked the room in which he was being kept and driven away empty-handed, leaving the cupboard in which he was hidden undisturbed.
“I don’t understand,” Lorraine said, “what you’re doing. She isn’t here.”
“We have to check, Mrs. Morrison,” Resnick said.
“They have to check, Lorraine,” Michael said.
“Perhaps we can start,” said Resnick, “with the last time you saw her.”
“Emily,” Lorraine said, twisting the ends of her hair around her fingers.
Resnick nodded.
“She’s got a name.”
Yes, thought Resnick, they always have. Gloria. Emily.
“My wife’s upset,” Michael said. He touched her arm and she stared at his hand as if it belonged to a stranger.
Resnick’s eyes and Lynn’s met. “The last time you saw Emily,” Resnick said.
“Lorraine saw her,” Michael said. “Didn’t you, love?”
Lorraine nodded. “From the bedroom window.”
“And where was she? Emily?”
“In the garden. Playing.”
“That would be at the front?”
Michael shook his head. “The back. The main bedroom, it’s at the back.”
“And what time would this have been?”
Michael looked at Lorraine, who was still twisting her hair, staring at the floor. Heavy footsteps walked across above their heads. “Three, three-thirty.”
“You can’t be more accurate than that?”
“No, I …”
“Five past three,” Lorraine said with sudden sharpness.
“You’re sure?”
“Look,” Lorraine suddenly on her feet. “It was three o’clock when Michael said why didn’t we go to bed. I know because I looked at the clock. I went straight up to the bathroom, then into the bedroom and that’s when I saw Emily. Five minutes, okay? Six. Seven. What does it matter?”
Michael tried to grab her, prevent her running out of the room. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right,” said Resnick. “I understand.”
Lynn Kellogg looked over at Resnick and when he nodded she went to look for Lorraine.
“We’ll need a detailed description,” Resnick said, “a photograph, recent, head and shoulders. The sooner we get it circulated the better. A list of Emily’s friends, those she’d be most likely to play with, visit. Relatives-we know of course about her mother, there’s an officer at the house now, waiting for her return. Anything else you think is relevant.”
Resnick smiled reassuringly, “She’ll be all right, Mr. Morrison. We’ll find her.” But Michael was not reassured.
Lynn Kellogg tried the kitchen, the bedrooms; standing to one side on the narrow landing as the constable went by, she asked him a question with her eyes and was answered by a setting of the mouth, a quick shake of the head. Finally, Lynn found Lorraine in the rear garden, cardigan around her shoulders, one of Emily’s dolls tight within her arms. Lights showed, orange and yellow, in most of the adjoining houses; silhouettes of people proceeding, undisturbed, with their lives. The Antiques Road Show. Songs of Praise. Mastermind. What remained of the chicken, the roast, covered with foil and placed in the fridge. Tomorrow saw the start of another week.
“She’s not mine, you know. Emily.”
“I know.”
No tears now: all cried out. “We were … we went … we were making love.”
“Yes.
“Oh, God!”
Fingers pressing deep into her palms, she turned towards Lynn and Lynn held her in her arms. At either side of them, officers with torches were making their slow search among the shrubs, along the borders.
Back inside the house, Michael, with some hesitation, was telling Resnick about Diana, his first wife.
Eighteen
“Should have called me sooner, Charlie.”
“Chances were, found her first couple of hours.”
“Yes. But we didn’t, did we?”
Skelton set his overcoat on the hanger behind the door, running his hands outwards along the shoulders to ensure it hung smoothly. He had been settling into a book when Resnick had got through: Alexander Kent, naval yarns that knocked Forester and Hornblower into a cocked hat.
“Dad, for you.” His daughter, Kate, leaning round the door, black T-shirt and lipstick to match. Six months now she’d been going around with what Skelton had been informed was a Goth: a first-year physics student at the university with a taste in loud music and necromancy. Weekends it was down to London and Kensington Market, clubs like Slimelight. More than likely drop out next year and take Kate on a tour of Transylvania.
Skelton had finished his sentence, put his bookmark in place and gone to the hall telephone, receiver dangling from its cord as Kate had left it.
The first tones of Resnick’s voice and he had known it was serious. “All right, Charlie, I’m coming in.”
Now Skelton stood behind his desk. “Mother’s not turned up yet?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Who’s out there?” Skelton angled the chair away from the desk and sat down, indicating that Resnick should do likewise. The overhead light burned brightly, the clear hundred-watt bulb reflecting off the white inside of the coned shade. The raw facts, such as were known, lay typed inside the folder on Skelton’s blotter, together with the photocopied face, Emily’s age and description, last seen …