Cutting Edge (29 page)

Resnick said he supposed that was true.

“I know.” Groves pulled out the newspaper from beneath his stool and folded it back at the front page. “I was reading it in here.”

UNDER THE KNIFE

Hospital staff in the city are now working in fear of their lives after police confirmed today they are investigating a connection between the murder of attractive student Amanda Hooson and the earlier violent attacks on two young men employed at the hospital. Security precautions have been stepped up and there is a strong possibility that visitors will be routinely questioned and searched.

Detective Chief Inspector Tom Parker said that connections between the three victims were being pursued as a matter of urgency. “The one thing we don’t want the general public to do,” the Chief Inspector told our reporter, “is panic.” He would neither confirm nor deny that until the present danger has passed, both plain-clothes and uniformed officers would be on duty in and around the hospital buildings and grounds.

Resnick passed back the paper and stood up to go. “What if he wants to go to Madisons?” asked one of the girls, coming back. “Yeh, well,” said her friend, “what if he doesn’t?”

Resnick offered Groves his hand. “If you go through with it, the move, I hope it works out for you.”

“Thanks.”

Resnick looked for Maura on his way out, wanting to wave goodbye, but she was intently talking at the bar, uncorking a bottle of Bulgarian red without taking her eyes off a man in a blue mohair blazer, short fair hair and a stud in one ear, more muscle across his shoulders than Resnick had in the whole of his body and roughly half Resnick’s age.

There was nothing for it but to head home.

The smell of charred meat was strong, as though someone had decided to hold a barbecue there in the middle of the house. Smoke lingered close to the coving in the hallway and Ed Silver stood in front of Resnick’s stove like the man who’s discovered the wheel but can’t immediately think what to do with it. “Bastard thing!” Silver said, grudging admiration in his voice. He was wearing one of Resnick’s light-blue shirts as an apron, sleeves knotted behind his back. Small darts of flame were sparking out from beneath the grill. “Not be long, Charlie. Have it on the table in two shakes of a monkey’s tit.” If the kitchen didn’t burn down first.

Pepper’s head lolled from the tin hat of the colander, half-asphyxiated, a cat in need of a gas mask.

Resnick went to take hold of the grill pan, but Silver stuck a bony elbow into his side. “Relax, Charlie. S’under control.” Catching Resnick’s breath, he turned to him disapprovingly. “Bit early in the day to have been at the bottle?”

Whatever was simmering away in the various pans Silver had going on top of the stove was going to give new meaning to the words, well done. “Right,” Resnick said through gritted teeth, “I’ll leave you to it. Everything you want’s over there—salt, tomato sauce, fire extinguisher.”

He went upstairs to sluice his face, change his socks, work whatever had got lodged there out from his upper back teeth.

“What you’ve been missing, Charlie, someone to do this sort of thing for you. Make sure you’ve got a proper meal waiting for you when you get home. Never mind this sandwich, sandwich, sandwich. You must have a digestion like the M26 at rush hour.” It was always rush hour on the M26. Perhaps that was his point. “Grazing, that’s what it’s called. Eating like that. Heard it on the wireless.” He gave Resnick a sharp, pecking look over his forkful of mashed potato. “When I was with Jane.”

Let that one sink in.

“Jane?”

“You know. Wesley.”

“Wesley.”

“Yeh, that’s her. I was helping her out.”

“At Aloysius House?”

“Yeh. Nothing, like—how would you say?—too specialized. Bit of cleaning, few things she wanted humping out the way …”

“No cooking?” Resnick had given up trying to cut what, in a former life, had been a lamb chop and was holding it between his fingers.

“Not yet, eh?” Silver winked. “Got to ease into these things. Never does to go at it too hard. Full frontal, know how I mean?”

Resnick thought it was probably better that he didn’t. He wondered if mushy peas had been Silver’s original intention, or whether they’d simply happened along the way.

“Good, eh?” Silver said, pointing towards Resnick’s plate with his knife.

“Distinctive.”

Silver beamed. “S’what I said, Charlie. How it should be all the time. Job like you’ve got, can’t be expected to cook for yourself. You need someone to do it for you.”

Was this how Ed Silver saw his future? Mornings doing good works for homeless alcoholics like himself; afternoons as Resnick’s resident cook and butler.

No.

“She was here, Charlie. You know that?”

“Jane Wesley?”

“Elaine.”

Air clogged at the back of Resnick’s throat.

“Earlier. Came to the door, didn’t see as I could turn her away.”

“She came into the house?”

“Well, it did used to be half hers, Charlie. ’Sides, she looked terrible.”

“Ill?”

“Face like a bleached nappy. I had her sit down and made a pot of tea; slipped a drop of gin into it.” Whose had been the gin, Resnick wondered, Ed Silver’s or Elaine’s? “We had quite a little chat.”

I’ll bet you did!

“She’s had a hell of a life, Charlie. Since she left you. One hell of a life.”

Resnick set down his knife and fork and pushed the plate aside.

“You’ve never finished! There’s another chop waiting to be eaten. Apple pie in the oven, Mr. Kipling, can’t beat them. Winner every time. Charlie …”

“Let’s be straight on this,” Resnick on his feet, back of his chair, staring down, “it’s fine for you to stay here, for a while, till either you get a room somewhere or decide to move on. But I don’t want a nanny, I don’t want a housekeeper, I don’t want a cook and if I did, with the best will in the world, I don’t think you’d get the job.” Silver sat there absolutely still, looking up at him. “And I don’t want a wife: especially the same one I had before.”

“Some people,” Ed Silver said a few minutes later, trying to coax Bud on to his lap with a piece of fat, “don’t know the meaning of the word gratitude.”

When the cat only sniffed the meat but wouldn’t come any closer, Silver popped it into his own mouth, got up, and carried the plates towards the sink to do the washing up.

Ben Franks had been in the Buttery, taking his mind off an overdue essay with several bottles of Newcastle Brown, a couple of games of pool and the last half hour bopping around to a retro post-punk band with reggae leanings called Scrape the Barrel. He saw a bunch of students he knew ahead of him and called after them, running in a shambling sort of fashion past the library to catch up.

Four of them, three lads and a girl, they’d been across to the Showcase to see a film about a legless Vietnam vet who dies in a traffic accident and is reincarnated as a kung-fu Buddhist priest who’s vowed to eliminate the Colombian drug lords. Chuck Norris, the girl said, was better than you’d have given him credit for. Especially playing the entire ninety-four minutes on his knees.

Somehow, heading down the grassed slope towards the hall of residence, all five became involved in a re-enactment of the plot, with the result that Franks finished up twisting his ankle and having to be supported the rest of the way home. Down on the level, they decided he could manage to hobble by himself and after a few steps his ankle went again under him, he pantomimed a dying fall and came down with a clatter amongst the dustbins. Groaning theatrically and allowing himself to be hauled to his feet, Ben Franks’s hand brushed against something and he called for them to stop.

He picked it up and turned in the direction of the overhead light; he blew on it a couple of times, brushed away a persistent beetle, and opened it up. There in his hand, Amanda Hooson’s diary.

Thirty-seven

The slimline diary with the black imitation-leather binding and trim, metal corners at its four edges, lay on Skelton’s desk, the sunlight shafting in from a cloudless sky, Indian summer. In a neat hand on the prelim pages, Amanda Hooson had written her name and both addresses, university and home, together with their respective phone numbers. Beneath she had put her passport number, current account number, national insurance number; the telephone numbers of her bank, doctor, dentist; the internal numbers for the Social Sciences Department and the Health Center. Columns requesting dress size, hat size, shoe size had been left blank. At the foot of the right-hand page, she had filled in the name and address of her next of kin, to be informed in case of accident or emergency. There was an organ donor card sellotaped inside the back cover, but the necessity for a police post-mortem would have prevented it being used.

“Well?” Skelton said, early in the day but down to shirt sleeves already; things were going to get hotter as this day wore on.

Resnick and Paddy Fitzgerald were side by side, close against Skelton’s desk. Resnick was wearing a green-hued tweed jacket with sagging pockets and frayed cotton at the cuff of its left arm. Fitzgerald was sweating through the dark blue of his uniform, little to do with the temperature or the unlooked-for sunlight.

“Well?”

Paddy Fitzgerald glanced, stiff-necked, at Resnick and Resnick looked away.

“I’ve had them in, sir, every man jack of ’em. Gave them a right bollocking.”

“If you’d done that sooner,” Skelton said, “might have had some effect.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many days searching that area?”

Fitzgerald blinked.

“Days?”

“Three, sir.”

“Officers?”

“Sir?”

“How many officers?”

“Twelve. All told, sir. Not, I mean, obviously not all at the same time, same shift …” Words withered away under Skelton’s unflinching glare.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Fitzgerald said.

“You’re …?”

“Sorry, sir. I don’t know how they … I don’t understand how it wasn’t spotted.”

“Maybe it was only put there last night,” Resnick suggested. “Maybe whoever took it, kept it until yesterday, decided to get rid of it.” He shrugged. “Always possible.” Even to himself, he didn’t sound very convincing.

“Seen the state of it, Charlie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Read it? The relevant pages?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You, Paddy?”

Fitzgerald nodded. The ripe scent of sweat was permeating the room and if things continued this way there was liable to be a puddle in front of Skelton’s desk, not necessarily perspiration.

“What if,” the superintendent said, measuring every word, “what if our laddie had sharpened up his blade, found another victim, some young nurse say, walking home alone, what if there was another body on our hands? What would you think then?”

Fitzgerald stuttered. “I don’t know, sir.”

“It only takes five minutes,” Skelton said. “Ten at most. You gave him seventy-two hours.”

The sun was strong on the right side of the superintendent’s face, highlighting the fine strands of hair above his ear, making the skin at the curve of the ear gleam.

“It would be nice to think,” Skelton said, “that when your men go back over the ground this morning, any weapon that might be lying around underneath the odd dustbin might be found before it takes another half-cut student to do their job for them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Skelton nodded and looked down towards the desk, allowing Fitzgerald the grace to leave the room. After another moment, Skelton picked up the diary and leafed through it, all the color-coded dots beneath or alongside dates, the times of tutorials and seminars, notes of books to return to the library or pulses to buy from Hizicki or Oroborus, her father’s birthday. When he found the right week, he angled the page across the desks that they could both read what was written in the column for Saturday:
Buttery. 1pm. Ian
.

Resnick pushed the door to the CID room open wide enough to call round it. “Mark, Kevin. Job for you.”

Carew had found a light cotton sweater, pearl gray, and he wore it now, draped across his shoulders, a deep purple singlet underneath, white running shorts with stripes in two shades of green and a high vent at the sides, Reactolite Polaroids with silvered frames. On each wrist a purple and green sweatband. He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t taking this seriously.

He rocked forward, legs straight out, and flicked an ant from the toe of his left shoe. Brand new LA Gear, he’d made a trip specially into the city to buy them that morning. What was the point of having parents who were prepared to supplement your grant if you didn’t take full advantage?

“You didn’t just happen to be here?” Sarah Leonard said.

“Uh-uh,” grinning that cocky grin of his, “I was waiting for you.”

“How did you know I’d be here.”

“Easy. I checked your ward rota.”

“You checked …”

“Lying around on the sister’s desk.” Carew touched the side of his sunglasses, but didn’t take them off. “It’s hardly confidential. Surely?”

“I’m early.”

“I know.” All right for some, Sarah thought, bit of sun and they’re lazing around, taking it easy; here he was, didn’t care if he had to wait over an hour, just as long as he got a little more tanned. But instead Carew said, “You’re often early.”