Time to see him getting into a black Ford Escort, stabilizer at the rear, car phone, sun-roof, hardly a patch of dirt on the wheels. Unable to follow, Patel took out his notebook and wrote down the number.
Resnick was back in his office in time for Patel’s call. No way of knowing whether Grice had gone back to the flat or if Grabianski had left in the meantime. There were other things to do, shifting priorities, and to keep Patel watching a potentially empty set of rooms was wasteful. Come back in and get together with Naylor over the VDU.
“Coffee,” Resnick called out into the CID room. “Black and now.”
The adrenalin was pumping and he knew they were close; just unsure as yet exactly what they were close to, how big.
“Jeff,” he said into the phone. “Charlie Resnick.”
“Thought you’d been avoiding me,” said Harrison, caustic yet wary.
“Snowed under.”
“You and me both.”
“Still game for that drink?”
“Seven suit you? Seven-thirty?”
“Difficult. You can’t make it around nine?”
“You still go to the Partridge?”
Not since I was there with Rachel, Resnick thought. “Yes. Nine o’clock, then.”
Harrison grunted and broke the connection. Resnick had the list underlined in his head: Skelton, Lennie Lawrence, Tom Parker, Norman Mann-and Graham Millington, else he’ll feel left out, stepped over. He was dialing the first number when he saw Lynn Kellogg through the glass at the top half of the door, the expression on her face.
“I didn’t know, sir.”
“Course you didn’t. How could you?”
“Had no idea.”
“I know.” She sat there with elbows to her knees, head down, face resting against the palm of one hand. Unusually for Lynn, she didn’t want to look at him. “Even if you had …”
She shook her head.
“Her father…”
“Not here, sir. Not in the building. I don’t know …”
“No.”
Resnick was on his feet, moving around the desk. Naylor appeared at the door with his coffee and Resnick waved him away. “Sounds to me as if you did well …”
“No!”
“What you were there for.”
“But it wasn’t, was it? Organized gangs, that’s what I’ve been looking out for, wasting my time. Not one kid.”
“Lynn.”
“Yes.” She looked up at him, her cheeks more flushed even than was usual. “Yes, sir?”
“Is she downstairs?”
Lynn nodded. “I didn’t know whether to send for her mother or not. The superintendent …”
“I’ll go down.” Resnick opened the office door. “You all right?”
“Thanks, sir. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll write up your report?”
“Now, sir.”
“Naylor’s got some coffee out there, have it with my compliments.”
He went out and left her sitting in his office, seemingly staring at the elaborate duty-rota fixed to the wall behind his desk. Before quitting the CID room he signaled to Naylor to take the coffee through.
He hadn’t seen Kate in person since she was thirteen years old. Only the scrubbed face on the superintendent’s desk, blank and smiling. Today he expected somebody much older, more mature, but the face that swung up at him from behind the white of the custody sergeant’s shirt was every bit as young as he remembered it. Different, though. Eyes rubbed raw and cheeks swollen with crying.
“Hello, Kate.”
She blinked at him, another in a succession of police officers.
“You probably don’t remember me …”
“No.”
“Let’s go upstairs.” Shrugging, she stood. “That okay?” he said to the sergeant.
“Help yourself.”
“Are you taking me to my dad?” Kate asked on the stairs.
“Not yet,” Resnick said. “When he comes back.”
“He doesn’t know yet?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’ll kill me, won’t he?”
Resnick found a smile in his eyes. “I doubt that.” On the landing he said, “Fancy a cup of tea, coffee?”
She shook her head.
“Come and watch me, then. I just gave mine away.” They sat in the canteen. Kate relented and had a tea, spooning so much sugar into it, she couldn’t stir it without the liquid swimming over the edge and running on to the edges of her jumper, but she didn’t seem to care or even notice.
“Haven’t got a cigarette, have you?”
Resnick shook his head. Did her father approve of her smoking, he wondered, before realizing what an asinine thought it was.
After twenty or so minutes of difficult silences and desultory conversation, most of it Resnick’s, Lynn Kellogg waved at him from the doorway. Jack Skelton had returned.
Lynn waited outside with Kate while Resnick knocked and went in. Skelton had hung his suit jacket on the hanger behind the door and had yet to gain his desk.
“Charlie. What can I do for you?”
There was warning there already in the concern that sat on Resnick’s face, the lack of any ready reply. Skelton eased back his chair and remained standing.
“Don’t beat around the bush, Charlie.”
“It’s your daughter, sir, Kate. She’s …”
“She’s all right?”
“She’s outside.”
Skelton started towards the door, stopped close to where Resnick was standing. The two men looked at one another and it was Resnick who looked away.
“She’s in trouble, then?”
“Yes, sir. She … DC Kellogg, she was on duty at the center. Kate …”
“Christ,” breathed Skelton. “She’s been caught shoplifting.”
Resnick nodded. “Yes.”
“She’s here? Here now?”
“Outside.”
“God, Charlie.” Skelton’s fingers rested on Resnick’s arm as the life seemed to pass from his eyes. Turning back to his desk, the spring had gone from his step, his shoulders, ever straight, slumped forward.
“There’s no question?”
“She’s admitted the offense. On the way in.”
“I see.”
“Others, too. It seems … seems to have been going on some little time.” The occasions he had been forced to do this, parents called unknowing to the door, mistaking him for a Jehovah’s Witness, some cowboy wanting to set slates back on the roof; their minds still swimming with whatever they’d been watching on TV. Slowly dawning: I’ll kill the little bastard, what’s he been up to now? Belligerence. Anger. Tears. My Terry, he’s off t’youth club, I know for a fact. My Tracy … My Kate.
Skelton didn’t say anything, sat there trying not to stare at the family photos, precise and particular on his desk.
“You’ll want to see her, sir. Before she’s interviewed. Makes a statement.”
“All right, Charlie.” He looked poleaxed. “Just give me a couple of minutes, will you? Then ask DC Kellogg to bring her through.”
Resnick nodded and went towards the door. It seemed a strangely long way and all the time he was expecting the superintendent to call him back, say something more, though he didn’t know what that should be. But there was nothing further. Resnick opened the office door and closed it again behind him.
“A couple of minutes,” he said to Lynn.
“Right, sir.”
When he looked at Kate, she turned her head away.
Twenty-eight
Graham Millington was feeling pretty chipper. His wife had agreed to take time off from her evening classes, one of the neighbors had promised to keep an eye on the kids, they had seats for the Royal Center, third row center. Petula Clark. As far as Millington was concerned you could take all your Elaine Paiges and Barbara Dicksons, Shirley Basseys even, lump them all together and they still wouldn’t rival Petula. God, she’d been going since before he could remember and that had to say something for her. And it wasn’t just her voice that was in great shape. She wasn’t page three, of course, never had been and wouldn’t thank you for saying so, but at least what there was was all hers. No nipping and tucking there. None of your hormone transplants either. Fifty whatever she was and looking like that. Incredible!