Cold Light (3 page)

“No, she was. Straight up.”

“Told you, did she?” Naylor asked. “I mean, you know, came right out and said it?”

Divine dipped one of his chips into the pool of brown sauce spreading across his plate. “Don't need to
say
, do they? Know what's what, you can tell.” He pointed his fork across at Naylor, sprinkling the table with sauce. “Lot of your problem, you and Debbie …”

“Debbie and I don't
have
a problem.”

“For now, maybe.”

“We don't have a problem.” Naylor's voice getting louder, attracting attention.

“All I'm saying,” Divine went on blithely, spearing another chip, “all the evidence shows, you know bog all about bloody women.”

“Whereas you,” Lynn Kellogg leaned over from the next table, “expert by now, aren't you, Mark?”

Sarcastic cow! Divine thought. “Don't believe me,” he said, “catch me in action, this do tonight. The man who made pulling an art form.”

“I can't wait!”

“No?” Divine forked up a piece of meat pie. “Well, shame but you just might have to. I mean, I'd like to help out, but there's just so many others in line before you.”

Lynn pushed back her plate and stood up. “What do I have to do to keep it that way? Wear a cross round my neck? Eat garlic?”

Divine gave her a swift appraisal. “No need. Just keep looking the way you do.”

He leaned back and winked across at Naylor, as Lynn walked away, muffled laughter from some of the other officers flushing her face.

“You didn't need to say that,” Kevin Naylor said quietly.

“Nobody asked her to stick her nose in. Any road, it's no more'n true. I mean, would you fancy it? Be honest.”

Naylor looked back down at his plate and made no reply.

“That prick,” Lynn said to herself on the stairs, “knows as much about women as the average five-year-old.” She remembered him picking a magazine off her desk once, attention drawn by blonde hair and bright red lips and the headline,
Shere Hite and the Clitoral Tendency
. Divine had thought they were a new pop group.

Gary James had been waiting close to two hours and there were still five people in front of him, two of them Pakis. Turn a place over to them and the next thing it'd be swarming, aunts and uncles, sisters and cousins, floor to ceiling like bugs. He'd seen it happen. Next to them, this couple lolling all over one another, tongues in each other's ears half the time, looked as though they should still be at school, not in the bloody Housing Office. Tattoos all up their shoulders and necks, her with enough little rings in her nose to open a shop; bloke with his hair twisted round like some Rasta, though he was white as Gary himself. Down the row from Gary there was this West Indian woman the size of a sodding house herself, three kids clinging to her and another one on the way.

Jesus! Gary didn't have a watch and the clock on the waiting room wall had been at twenty-five past seven the past three times he'd been there.

“Hey, mate,” he said, tapping the nearest Paki on the shoulder, then pointing to his own wrist in case the bloke didn't understand. “What time you got?”

“Very nearly a quarter to four,” the man said politely and smiled.

Don't smile at me, you smarmy bastard, Gary thought as he sat back down, save that for when you get in there. And then, Christ, that's nearly three hours, never mind two.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, you!” He pulled one of the metal-frame chairs out of line and pushed it hard towards the wall. “Think I'm going to sit here all bloody day? I want to see somebody and I want to see them bloody now!”

“Sir,” the receptionist said. “Sir, if you'll just go back to your seat, you'll be seen as soon as possible.” All the while her fingers moving towards the panic button underneath the counter top.

Resnick had gone to talk to Mavis Alderney himself. Mavis thankful for the chance to catch a fag out back from the laundry off Trent Boulevard where she worked.

It had been Mavis who had come close to being sent flying by two youths that morning. “Arse over tip,” was how she put it. “Someone wants to get hold of the like of them and give them a good thrashing. Well, don't you think? Should've been done to ‘em long time back. Then happen they'd not be the way they are now.”

Resnick had grunted something noncommittal and pressed for her to be more specific with her descriptions. “A pair of them tearaways, you know, them boots and jeans, no respect for anyone, not even themselves,” wasn't quite going to do it.

Now he was in the market, upstairs in the Victoria Centre, all the seats around the Italian coffee stall taken and having to stand to drink his espresso, listening to an animated discussion about why both the city's soccer teams were languishing near the bottom of their respective leagues.

“Ask me,” someone said, “best thing could happen, bloody managers ship 'emselves either side of Trent, swop jobs.”

“Now you're talking rubbish, man.”

“Well, they couldn't do a lot worse.”

“No,” put in somebody else, “I'll tell you what. Best present they could have, both clubs. Christmas morning, chairmen of directors gets 'em both, Cloughie and Warnock on the phone, wishes them a Merry Christmas and tells them they're both sacked.”

“What? They'll not sack Cloughie, they'd never dare. They'd have a full-scale bloody riot on their hands.”

“Aye, maybe. But not as much as if they go down.”

Resnick smiled and reached between two of the men, setting his cup and saucer back on the counter. On his way out of the market he'd buy a little Polish sausage to go with his duck, a chunk of Gruyère and some Blue Stilton, a good slice of apple strudel and some sour cream to take the place of a Christmas pudding.

Down below, crowds were pushing their way from store to store and last-minute shoplifting was in full swing. Even more people than usual were gathered around the Emmett clock, holding up small children to see the fantastic metal animals revolve and laugh with wonder as streams of water splashed off its gilded petals as they opened. Again, again, again.

Suspended from the high ceiling, a Santa on a bright red sledge chased polypropylene reindeer through stale air.

Resnick was out on the street when he heard the first siren.

Nancy Phelan had emerged from her office at the sound of shouting, curious to know whoever it was making all that noise. Besides, she could do with a break from her present assignment, explaining to a couple with an eighteen-month-old kid that by leaving the damp basement room for which the girl's mother had been charging her a robbery of a rent, they had made themselves voluntarily homeless.

“Voluntarily sodding homeless,” the man kept saying. “What in buggery is that?” Not loud, not even angry, simply swearing by rote.

What it bloody is, Nancy had thought, and not for the first time, was an almost meaningless form of words dreamed up by some official to get the housing authority off the hook.

That hadn't been what she'd said to her client; what she'd said was, “Sir, I've already explained it to you several times.”

Several? Haifa hundred.

Whatever disturbance was going on outside, it had to be more interesting than that. A little light relief.

Wrong.

Gary James—Nancy thought she recognized him, thought he might even be one of hers, though she could never have put a name to him—was standing pretty much in the middle of the corridor, both hands holding a chair above his head. The metal kind with the canvas seat and back. The receptionist, Penny, was cowering against one wall, bent forward, arms folded up in front of her face. He'd either hit her with the chair or was about to.

Howard, the security guard, was down at the far end of the corridor, squinting hopefully in their direction. Nancy knew for a fact he could scarcely see his own hand in front of his face without his glasses on.

“You!” Gary called over one shoulder.

“Me?”

“It's you I want to see.”

Oh, God, Nancy thought, it would be. Her second application to join a TEFAL course, train to teach English to polite, suited businessmen in Hong Kong or Japan, had just been turned down. This morning she'd been convinced—though it was difficult to tell—that one of her stick insects had died. And if that wasn't enough she was three days late.

Now this.

“You're the one me and Michelle saw before, right? About getting us out of that dump you moved us into.”

“I said I'd try yes …”

“Look! I'm telling you. You'd better do more than fucking try. And you, just stay where you fucking are or I'll take this tart's head off her fucking shoulders.”

Penny flinched and stifled a scream and Howard retreated a few feet more than he had advanced.

“Do you have an appointment?” Nancy asked, keeping her voice as normal as possible.

Gary shot her another glance. “What do you think?”

“Well, if you'll wait till I've finished with my present clients, which shouldn't take long, I'll be happy to review your situation.” Nancy, thinking all the while she was speaking that she'd picked up so much official gobbledegook, she sounded as if she'd learned English as a second language herself.

Gary swung the chair through a half-circle and brought it crash against the wall, close enough to Penny's head to make her hair curl.

“All right,” Nancy said. “Why don't we talk now?”

“Yeh?” said Gary, panting just a little. “What about Clint Eastwood down there?”

“Howard,” Nancy said. “It's okay. I'll see Mister …” She looked at Gary hopefully.

“James.”

“I'll see Mr. James in my office. There's no need to be concerned. But you might look after Penny here, see that she's all right.”

Gary was watching her, uncertain. This woman not much older than himself, if that, taking control, coping. She didn't seem frightened at all. Tall, Gary thought, five eight or nine, likely had something to do with it. Not bad looking, either. Standing there in her smart bluejacket and the pleated skirt, waiting for him to make his next move.

When he said nothing, Nancy turned to the couple she'd been interviewing, now agog outside her door, and explained to them this was something of an emergency and if they wouldn't mind waiting a while, she would talk to them again and see if they couldn't sort something out. From her purse she handed them some coins and suggested they try the drinks machine on the next floor.

“Please,” she said to Gary, holding open her office door. “After you.”

A shade hesitantly, Gary lowered the chair to the floor and walked in. For the briefest of moments, Nancy hesitated; up to now she'd been working on instinct, training, defusing the situation without any special regard to herself. Only now did it strike her, the degree to which she was placing herself in danger. She made a quick face down the corridor that said, do something, and then stepped smartly after him, closing the door behind her.

Four

“Lock the door,” he said.

“What?”

“Lock the door.”

Nancy sweating a little now, wondering what she'd got herself into. “It's against regulations …” she began, but she could see Gary, increasingly edgy, looking round the room for something to break. Something to break over her. Quietly, she slid open the small drawer to the right of her desk and took out the key.

No sooner had the door been locked and Nancy sat back down than the phone rang, once, twice, three times; looking at Gary for a sign that she should pick it up.

“Hello,” she said into the receiver. “Nancy Phelan here.”

A pause, then: “No, I'm fine.” Glancing across the desk to where Gary was still standing. “We're fine. Yes, I'm sure. No. Bye.”

Deliberately, she set the receiver down and, as she did so, Gary bent towards the floor and pulled the wire from its socket above the skirting.

“Well,” Nancy said, “why don't you sit down?”

But Gary was staring round her office, taking it all in. The postcards from foreign holidays she'd Blutacked to the filing cabinet, the ivy that needed repotting near the window, the overflowing in-tray, a color photograph of her cousin's twins. In a clear plastic container with an air-tight lid, green leaves and pieces of thin twig. Gary picked it up and shook it.

“Don't!” Nancy cried, alarmed. Then, more quietly, “I'd rather you didn't do that. There's something … there are stick insects in there. Two of them. I think.”

Gary held it up to his face and gave the container an experimental shake.

“They were a present,” Nancy said, uncertain why she felt the need to explain. “A client.”

“I think they're dead,” Gary said.

Nancy thought he might be right.

The first response car had only arrived at the Housing Office moments before Resnick walked in, strudel, cheese, and sausage in a plastic bag in his left hand. In the lobby, a young PC was talking to the security guard, another, slightly older, having problems using his two-way radio to call in. Not recognizing either of them, Resnick produced his warrant card.

“PC Bailey,” said the officer with the radio. “That there's Hennessey.”

Not, Resnick assumed, the one that used so effectively to police the Forest midfield. He listened to a quick run-down of the situation and moved towards the stairs.

“D'you not think we should wait for some support, sir?” Bailey asked.

“Let's see what we can do ourselves,” Resnick said. “Whoever he's got in there might not thank us for hanging about.”

Most of those who had been queuing to be seen and a growing number from other floors had crowded into the corridor outside the locked door.

“Keep everybody back,” Resnick told Hennessey. “In the waiting room with the door shut.”