“Heart attack before he’s fifty,” Lynn said caustically, glancing sideways.
“Maybe he takes long healthy walks,” Resnick said. “Off into Derbyshire. Couple of squash games a week and visits to the health club.”
“And I’m about to get put up to sergeant,” Lynn responded.
“You will. All in good time.”
“Meanwhile I’m still at the bottom of the pecking order, counting through my check stubs each time I go to Safeway.”
“You’re not doing so bad.”
“Aren’t I?”
“You’re still only twenty-five.”
“Twenty-six.”
“You’ll get there.”
Lynn eased the car forward a whole fifteen yards. “How old were you, when you made sergeant?”
Resnick could remember being summoned to the old man’s office, stomach bowling googlies all the way along the corridor, not being able to get the grin off his face afterwards, so that four hours later when Elaine opened the door to him she knew. “Nigh on thirty,” he said.
“And that was CID?”
Resnick shook his head. “Transferred back into uniform to get the promotion.”
“Can’t see me doing that. Rather stay where I am.”
“It wasn’t so bad. Good experience, really. And I was back in CID inside two years. Jack Skelton had just got bumped up as well; he was my Dl.”
Lynn laughed. “I can just see him, briefings every morning, checking how you were all turned out.” She shot Resnick a quick look. “Smart suit, well-ironed shirt, and tie.”
Resnick joined in with the laughter. “He tried.”
A gap appeared ahead in the traffic and Lynn accelerated smartly into it.
Divine was hard up against the back door, hoping against hope the suspect would try and do a runner; a strained groin had kept him out of the rugby squad for the past three games and he’d dearly love an excuse for landing a couple of good right-handers. Naylor sat behind the wheel of the second car, end of the alley. Resnick pulled on his raincoat and headed for the front, Lynn half a pace behind.
Before Resnick could try the bell, or use the knocker, the door opened and a bald man stumbled out, ripe with the smell of ammonia which comes from clothes steeped in stale urine and alcohol.
“Hey up!” Resnick stepped sideways swiftly, halted him with the flat of one hand.
“Wha-?”
“Reginald Rylands?”
“Na.”
“He does live here?”
The man’s head moved forward and back as his eyes tried to focus. “Downstairs. Try down … stairs.”
But, by then, Rylands was in the hallway, the head of the cellar steps, and walking forward. “You looking for me?”
Resnick showed his warrant card, identified himself and Detective Constable Kellogg.
“You’d best come in,” Rylands said.
“Be on m’way,” slurred the bald man, stepping between Resnick and Lynn Kellogg and on to the street.
“Is he okay?” Resnick asked.
Rylands nodded. “Long as nobody stands too near him with a lighted match.”
Inside the kitchen, Resnick turned down the offer of tea, took in the empty quart cider bottles on the floor, several days of unwashed pots and plates. Lynn hung back in the doorway, careful for the sounds of anyone making a dash for the front door.
“Something about the house?” Rylands asked. “One of the lodgers? I’m properly registered, you know, approved. Least, till the EEC start in on toilet bowls and sinks.”
“It’s not that.” Resnick shook his head.
“Then it’s Keith.”
“You tell me.”
Rylands eased a finger inside his mouth, scraped away at something stuck between his teeth with a nail. “Got to be, hasn’t it?”
“How’s that?”
“Always in trouble, isn’t he? This thing and the other.”
“And recently?”
Rylands shook his head. “No idea. ‘Less it’s motors, is it? Cars. Can’t keep away from them. That what it is?”
From one of the upstairs rooms came the strangulated tenor of Josef Locke and Resnick grimaced: popular films sometimes had a lot to answer for.
“You do know where your son is?” Lynn asked.
“No.”
“We understood that you did.”
Someone of similar musical tastes to Resnick opened a door above, shouted loudly, and then slammed it shut. Josef Locke faded back into insignificance.
Rylands looked with interest at the white fiber from the heart of last night’s chicken tikka, suspended from his finger end. “And who’d that be from?” he asked.
“We’ve just been speaking to Keith’s mother.”
“Oh, yes, the former Mrs Rylands, light of my life.”
“She seemed certain that Keith was here, staying with you.”
“And I thought he was staying with her and old Stuart, the handy man par excellence. Funny, isn’t it?”
“She said she hadn’t seen Keith for a couple of days.”
“Me neither.”
“You haven’t seen him?”
“You heard right.”
“Since when?”
Rylands shrugged. “Thursday, Friday last week. You sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea?”
Resnick’s expression suggested that he was.
“Well, I’ll just make one for myself, if you don’t mind.”
He was on his way towards the sink with the empty kettle, but Resnick was standing in front of him, blocking his way.
“We have reason to believe your son might have been involved in a serious matter.”
“I daresay. Now if you’ll …”
Resnick took the kettle from his hand and set it down. Lynn stepped to one side in the doorway to let Divine through. “Sorry, boss, getting dead bored out there. Thought I’d get to where the action was.” Reading the question in Resnick’s face, he added, “Kev’s out back, not to worry.”
Rylands had retrieved the kettle.
“Tea up, then, is it?” Divine grinned.
“No,” Resnick said. “It’s not. Not till we’ve got a few more answers.”
“Well, that’s it then, standoff. Afraid I can’t tell you what you want to know.”
Resnick could just smell the alcohol on his breath, not insistent, but there. Steady drinker now, he thought, controlled. Likely doesn’t start till eleven, eleven-thirty of a morning, no acceleration till late on, eight or nine at night.
“You know it’s an offense,” Divine was saying, “withholding information.”
“How can it be an offense if I don’t know anything?”
“You’ll not mind,” Resnick said, almost casually, “if we search the house.”
“Should I?”
“We’ll see, shan’t we?” Divine smiled.
“If you’ve a warrant. You did think to bring a warrant?”
“Too cocky by half, boss,” Divine said, nodding towards Rylands. “Been here before.”
“Have you ever been in trouble with the police?” Resnick asked.
“Who hasn’t?”
“Recently?”
Lynn Kellogg responded to footsteps on the stairs and moved out into the hallway; a man wearing stained khaki trousers and a Fair Isle jumper two sizes too tight was carrying a nondescript brown dog towards the door, one hand round the animal’s mouth. Before his objective was reached, the dog wriggled out of his arms and barked.
“No animals,” Rylands said to Resnick. “It’s in the rules. Plain. So daft he thinks I don’t know he’s smuggling it in and out.”
“This trouble …” Divine began.
“Let’s get back to your son,” Resnick said.
Rylands’s shoulders slumped and this time Resnick allowed him to fill the kettle, set in on the gas. “You any of your own?” he asked Resnick. “Kids?”
Resnick gave a quick shake of the head.
“If you had, maybe you’d understand. I don’t suppose you ever stop caring for them, feeling something, but … the rest of it, the day to day, the way they’re fucking up their lives.” He stood with his eyes closed for as much as twenty seconds. “If I knew where he was I’d tell you. Time inside, real time, he might learn a lesson. If not, least happens, he’ll be out of harm’s way. Not able to do anything stupid.”
“You think he might?”
“Only every sodding day.”
“Then you would tell us where he was?”