“Katie.”
She turned to face him from the foot of the stairs. Her hair had been hacked short for some months now and tonight it was greased into abrupt, frozen spikes. Her face was pale, save for lips painted black. She wore a black T-shirt over skin-tight black trousers; a black leather jacket dripping with crosses and gothic impedimenta. A cartridge belt, empty, hung loose over one hip; white socks led to black winkle-picker shoes that were beginning to crease upwards at the tips.
One foot on the bottom tread of the stairs, a hand to the banister, she glared at him, head erect, the epitome of tough.
“I fell asleep,” Skelton said.
“Down here?”
“I was waiting …”
“I know what you were doing.”
“I was worried.”
“Yeah.”
“We were worried, your mother …”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“What you were going to say, don’t say it.”
“You’re being very unfair …”
“And she doesn’t give a shit about me, so don’t you pretend that she does.”
“Katie!”
He moved towards her fast, one arm raised: hit her or hold her?
The girl narrowed her eyes and stared him down: two months past sixteen.
“Coffee,” said Skelton, stepping back.
“What?”
“Coffee. I could make us some coffee.”
She looked at him, incredulous, and laughed.
“We could talk.”
Kate shook her head.
“All right, then, just sit.”
She snorted, bitter. “A bit late for that, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see why.”
“Late, I thought that was the point.”
“Of what?”
“All this.”
Skelton sighed and turned away, but now she wasn’t prepared to let him go.
“This welcoming committee,” she sneered. “The long-suffering looks. The way you’re being so bloody careful not to ask me if I know what time it is.”
He didn’t know what to do with her hostility: smother it, deflect it; impossible to ignore it There were silver rings in both her ears and even in the subdued suburban lighting they shone. What use was anger when every thought he had of her was something other than that? Sentimental, that’s what Kate would call him: sentimental old fool.
“I’m going to have some coffee anyway,” he said.
He was sitting on a stool, elbows on the fitted surface, cup held between both hands, when she came into the kitchen. She pulled out one of the other stools, but didn’t sit on it; stood less than easily, instead, examining the floor.
“Sure you don’t want some?”
Kate shook her head.
Skelton wished he didn’t think like a policeman, didn’t think like a father. Silence settled uneasily between them. Kate showed no sign of wanting to move. Shut up, said Skelton to himself, shut up and wait.
“How did you …?” he began.
“I got a lift.”
“Who from?” The question out before he could stop it.
“Nobody I knew.”
He looked at her sharply, not knowing if it were true or if she was saying it to shock him, hurt. Her response as automatic as his.
“I stood in the road and stuck my thumb out. These two blokes pulled over. I don’t know who they were, do I?”
“You could have phoned.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Here. Phoned me. I would have …”
“Come to meet me, my father the superintendent of police. No thanks.”
“Then you should have left earlier.”
“I couldn’t”
“Got a taxi.”
“What with?”
“Money. You had money.”
“I spent it.”
“Katie.” Skelton turned on the stool, reached out his hands towards her. “Don’t do this?”
“Do what?”
He withdrew his hands as he stood. “Look,” he said, “if you’re going out at night and you think you’re going to be this late back, tell me.”
“And you’ll say, don’t go.”
“I’ll give you the money for a taxi.”
“Every time?”
“Yes, every time.”
“No,” she said.
“Why ever not?”
“Because it’d get spent before it was time to come home.”
She pushed her way past the sliding door and left him to listen to her footsteps, rising up the stairs above his head. In the morning she would come down with all the gel rinsed from her hair, the earrings, all save one, replaced by studs, neat and small. Blouse, jumper and skirt: no makeup. Half a dozen halting words and she would be gone.
Katie.
When the phone rang, the cats stirred before Resnick. He had finally fallen asleep with a pillow jammed over his head, arms and legs stretched diagonally across the bed.
“Hallo,” he said, lifting the receiver, dropping it. “Hallo, who is this?”
“Sir? Sorry to disturb you, sir. It’s Millington. Something like the Tong wars, sir. I thought maybe you’d want to come in.”
Resnick rubbed at his eyes and groaned. “Ten minutes, Graham,” he said. “Quarter of an hour.”
“What on earth,” he said aloud, addressing three cats, searching for his trousers, “does Millington know about Tong wars?” He stepped into one leg, maneuvered towards the other. “Must have been another evening class his wife took.”
Seventeen
“Kevin,” Resnick called across the room.
“Yes, sir.” Naylor looked up from what he was doing, the shaft of a pencil pushed through the sprocket hole of an audio cassette, carefully winding back the loop of overflowed tape. What was the use of recording interviews if the technology let you down?
“Finished checking those insurance companies?”
“Sir. It’s all typed up, I had it…” He set down cassette and pencil and started to shuffle papers across his overcrowded desk. The phone close behind him burst to life and, instinctively, he turned towards it, stopped, went back to his search.
“Later, Kevin, later. Just tell me-anything worth following up? Any clear connections?”
Naylor shook his head. Abruptly the ringing tone shut off, to begin again when he was in mid-sentence. “Five different companies, four of them national, no more than two homes insured with the same people.”
Disappointment evident momentarily in the set of his mouth, Resnick moved away.
“But, sir …” Naylor was on his feet, one arm extended.
“Can’t somebody answer that?”
Patel and Divine started up from different sides of the office.
“A couple of them did use the same broker … might be something there, sir?”
“Check it out,” said Resnick without enthusiasm.
“Oh, and sir …”
“Go on.”
“When the insurance people did an examination, wanted security brought up to scratch, the broker, he recommended Fossey.”
There wasn’t a lot that morning with a chance of making Resnick smile, but that little tidbit came close. “You’re on your way to see this broker?”
“Right after I’ve sorted this, sir.”
Resnick nodded. “Good.”
“Sir,” Divine had his fingers over the mouthpiece, “something about a peeping Tom.”
“Downstairs. Uniform.”
“They transferred the call up here, sir.”
“Transfer it back down again.”
Divine shrugged, did as he was told.
Before Resnick could retreat into his office, Millington had wearied his way through the main door. Cold coffee was slopping over the sides of the polystyrene cup in his hand. The skin below his eyes resembled washing left too long in the rain.
“Kevin might have turned up something new on friend Fossey,” Resnick told him.
Right then it wasn’t what the sergeant wanted to hear. He wanted a change in the rota that would give him instant forty-eight-hour leave; he welcomed dreams of featherweight duvets and mattresses that both supported yet absorbed body weight; the repatriation of all citizens of Chinese extraction, effective as from two months previous; hot coffee in a real cup.