Cold Light (16 page)

“Then don't,” Robin had said.

“You should never have got mixed up with her in the first place.”

“Mark, come on …”

“Well, she wasn't exactly your type.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“That was why, wasn't it. Because she wasn't some Ramblers Association groupie who couldn't see beyond the next youth hostelling weekend in the Wrekin, She wasn't like anyone I'd ever been with before and I'm not likely to find someone like that again.”

Mark tipped the flask high over the cup, shaking out every last drop. “Girls like her, two a penny.”

The way Robin had looked at him then, rearing up, for all the world as if he might have thrust out an arm, sent his friend hurtling from the ledge.

“Hey!” Mark had shouted, swinging back, alarmed. “Don't take it out on me. I'm not the one led you on and then said, thanks very much, goodbye. That was her. Remember? If you want to take out your anger on someone, take it out on her.”

And Robin had stood close to the edge, very close, staring down. “I'm not angry with Nancy. What right have I got to be angry with her?”

“Mr. Hidden?” Millington said. “Robin?” He'd been so bound up in what he was thinking, remembering, he hadn't noticed the sergeant coming back into the room. “There are just a few points we'd like to clarify,” Millington said. “If you can spare us the time.”

Robin Hidden barely nodded, blinked, and turned his chair back in towards the table. Millington closed the door and waited for Resnick to sit down before crossing to the tape machine.

“I thought this was the same as before? Just a few things, you said.”

“So it is,” Resnick said.

Millington took hold of the tab between forefinger and thumb and pulled, freeing the tape from its wrapping, did the same with a second, slotted them both into place. Twin decks.

“For your protection,” Resnick said. “An accurate record of what you've said.”

“Is that what I need?” Robin asked. “Protection?”

“This interview,” Millington began, sitting down, “is being recorded on the twenty-seventh of December at …” Checking his watch, “… eleven minutes past two. Present are Robin Hidden, Detective Inspector Resnick, and Detective Sergeant Millington.”

“What we're interested in, Robin,” Resnick said, “is where you were, late on Christmas Eve.”

It was a slow day in Fleet Street. No coded messages from the IRA to Samaritans' offices, giving details of bombs left outside army barracks or in shopping centers; no cabinet ministers with their fingers caught in the Treasury till or the knickers of women other than their wives; no photographs of starving children newsworthy enough after the Christmas overkill; no gays to bash, no foreigners to trash, no sex, no drugs, no rock ‘n' roll.

So it wasn't only the local Midlands press who were there at the news conference, nor had the Nationals sent their stringers merely; these were the big boys, men and women with serious expense accounts and bylines, the real McCoy. Both Central TV and the BBC had their cameras loaded and ready, each had earmarked Skelton for separate interviews later, one on one. A researcher from
Crimewatch
was there with rubber-covered notebook and mobile phone.

Four papers, two dailies and two Sundays, were primed to speak with the Phelans afterwards, sound them out about an exclusive contract—“Our Daughter Nancy”—in the tragic eventuality that when she was found she was dead.

—“So are you saying, Superintendent, that after all of this activity, the police have no leads at all? Either as to the whereabouts of the girl or the possible identity of her abductor?”

—“Would you tell us, Mrs. Phelan, just what you're feeling about your daughter's disappearance?”

—“Mr. Phelan, would you care to comment on the way in which the police investigation has been conducted so far?”

“So you went back out at around ten then, Robin?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing special in mind?”

“No.”

“No plan, no destination?”

“No.”

“And you were in the car?”

“Yes.”

“The Cavalier?”

“Yes.”

“And you just drove?”

“Yes.”

“Around the city?”

“Yes.”

“Round and round?”

“Y-yes.”

“You never stopped once?”

Robin Hidden nodded his head.

“Does that indicate yes or no?” Millington asked.

“Y-yes.”

“You stopped the car?” Resnick said.

“Once or tw-twice, yes.”

“Where was this?”

“I d-don't remember.”

“Try.”

The whirr of the tape machine faint in the background.

“Once by the square.”

“Which side of the square?”

“Outside Halfords.”

“Where else?”

“King Street.”

“What for?”

“S-sorry?”

“Why did you stop on King Street?”

“I was hungry. I wanted something to eat. A burger, cheeseburger. Chips, you know, fries.”

“Where from?”

“Burger King.”

“And you parked on King Street?”

“It was the nearest I could get.”

“Nancy,” Resnick said, “you knew where she was spending Christmas Eve?”

“With Dana, yes. At this stupid dance.”

“But you knew where?”

“Where what?”

“Where it was being held,” Resnick said.

“This stupid dance,” Millington smiled.

“Robin, you knew where it was, the dinner-dance? Dana's firm's function, you knew where …?”

“Yes, of course …”

“Where Nancy was?”

“Yes.”

“And you drove round all that time—what?—two hours, give or take. Round and around the center and you never went, never once went near where you knew she would be?”

Robin Hidden's body had half-turned in his chair and he was staring at the floor; it looked as far off, as hazy and unclear as a valley viewed from some high place. “If you want to take out your anger on someone,” Mark had said, “take it out on her.”

“Not on the off-chance,” Millington said, leaning in a little closer, “that you might bump into her?”

“Catch a glimpse?” Resnick said.

“All r-r-right, so what if I did? So what if I went by there, by the stupid bloody hotel, all those idiots dressed up like clowns, prancing about and flashing off their money, so what if I did?”

“You did go to the hotel then, Robin? That night?”

“Isn't that what I just said?”

“Did you drive past outside or did you turn into the courtyard, by the main doors?”

“The courtyard.”

“I'm sorry, could you say that more clearly.”

“The courtyard. I d-drove into the courtyard.”

“And parked?”

“Yes.”

“What time was this?”

“About … about … it must've been j-just before twelve.”

“And that was when you saw Nancy? When you were parked in the hotel courtyard a little before midnight on Christmas Eve?”

“Yes,” Robin said. “That's right.” His voice seemed to come from a long way off.

Twenty

Dana had spent the first hour that morning sorting out her room, tidying away things she'd long forgotten existed. By the time that particular task was over she had filled four plastic bin bags with clothes, three of which would be passed on either to Oxfam or Cancer Research, the other—mostly things which were too worn, too soiled, or simply beyond repair—she would put out for the bin men.

That done, she defrosted the freezer, cleaned the cooker—the surface, not the oven, she wasn't that much in need of distraction—wiped round the bath. She was on her knees, rubbing a Jif-laden J-cloth around the inside of the toilet bowl when she remembered a scene from a film she'd seen recently: a young woman—that actress, the one from
Single White Female
, not her, the other one—giving the inside of the lavatory bowl a shine with the blue T-shirt some man had left behind.

What she would have liked to have done with Andrew Clarke was push his head down till his nose reached the U-bend and hold him there while she flushed the chain.

What she might do, Dana thought, up on her feet with a new spring to her step, was sue the bastard for sexual harassment in the workplace. See what that did for his senior partnership, his place in the country, his snazzy little sports car.

She switched on the radio, a few minutes of Suede and she clicked it back off; fumbling through her tapes for Rod Stewart, she hesitated over Eric Clapton or Dire Straits, finally found what she was looking for inside the cassette box labeled Elton John. This was more like it. Old Rod. “Maggie May”; “Hot legs.” Forget the new haircut, remember the bum. Listlessly she flicked through the pages of
Vanity Fair
. One more thing, sort through the drawers of her dressing table, and then she'd get out to the shops, buy herself something she didn't really need in the sales.

Her mood lasted as long as finding one of Nancy's earrings jumbled amongst her own: it came back to her then like cold wind, chilling her where she stood; she didn't think she would ever see Nancy again.

Kevin Naylor had taken the call from the hospital, listened a moment, before holding out the receiver towards Divine. “For you.”

“This is Staff Nurse Bruton, it's about Mr. Raju.”

Poor sod's bought it, Divine thought.

“He's been making a good recovery, and he's certainly well enough now to be able to talk to you.”

“Well,” Divine said, “the thing is, something big's come up here, this woman that's gone missing, and I really don't know …”

“He could have died,” Lesley Bruton said.

“Sorry?”

“Mr. Raju, what those youths did to him, he could have died.”

“I know, I'm sorry and …”

“And it doesn't matter?”

“Look, I should have thought you'd have been pleased. I mean, this is a woman this has happened to and …”

“And this is only an Asian man.”

Oh, Christ, Divine thought, here we go.

“I'll tell him you're too busy, then, shall I?”

“No,” Divine said.

“Perhaps you could send somebody else?”

“No, it's okay …” Looking at his watch, “… I could be there in forty minutes, give or take. How'd that be?”

“If he has a relapse,” Lesley Bruton said, “I'll try to let you know.”

The queue just to get into Next was right across the pavement outside Yates's and curled, four-deep, around the corner and up Market Street as high as Guava Records. Warehouse was hip to hip with customers eager for the twenty-five to fifty percent markdowns and Monsoon was crammed with well-bred women over thirty-five wearing what they'd bought at last year's sale.

Dana walked up past the futon shop into Hockley and considered treating herself to lunch in Sonny's; discretion sent her down Goose Gate to Browne's Wine Bar, a glass of dry house white and a chicken salad baguette. One glass became two and then three and from there it was a short, less than steady walk to the architects' office where she worked.

“Closed till January 3rd,” read the card in neat black italic calligraphy taped to the center of the door.

She had the keys in her bag.

For a while, she wandered from room to room, past the drawing boards and the intricately made models and into the library where she worked amidst carefully cross-catalogued collections of slides and plans.

She walked back to Andrew Clarke's office. Only gradually, sitting on the corner of his matt-black executive desk, toying with the lipstick she had bought that morning at Debenhams, did the idea form, in Moroccan Scarlet, in her mind.

For all that Raju was out of the woods, Divine thought, he still had one hell of a lot of British taxpayers' money hooked up to him, one way and another. It was all he could do to maneuver a place to park his chair amongst all those stands and tubes and dials.

But old Raju, now he was propped up and looking perky, he came up with the goods as far as descriptions were concerned. One of the youths, the one who had done all the talking, the one who'd tapped on his window for him to stop, he had a small scar, the shape of a half-moon, there, underneath his right eye. And fair hair. Very, very fair. Divine knew full well none of the other witnesses had said anything about fair hair.

“You're positive,” he said, “about the hair?”

“Oh, yes. Indeed.”

More than likely, the bugger's still a bit delirious, Divine thought.

The second youth, the one who had hit him from behind, Raju was sure that he had several tattoos along his arms. Some kind of strange creature on one of them, a serpent maybe, something like that. Someone on a horse. A knight? Yes, he supposed that was right. And a Union Jack. No confusion about that. But left arm or right—no, sorry, he couldn't say.

“Age?” Divine asked.

“The age you would expect. Young men. Sixteen or seventeen.”

“No older?”

Raju shook his head and the movement made him draw a sharp breath. “A year or two, perhaps. No more.”

Divine closed his notebook and eased back his chair.

“You will be able to catch them now?”

“Oh, yes. Now we're armed with this. Two shakes of a dog's tail.”

Leaning back against his pillows, Raju, smiling, closed his eyes.

Lesley Bruton was talking into the telephone at the nurses' station and Divine had to bide his time until she was through. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “Raju, there. Tipping me the wink.”

She looked back at him, saying nothing, waiting.

“Look,” Divine said, “I was thinking. You wouldn't fancy coming out for a drink sometime?”

“This is,” Lesley Bruton said, “some kind of a joke? Right?” And she brushed past Divine so close he had to step out of the way; it was three-fifteen and she had an enema to organize.