Darkness, Darkness (31 page)

How long, she wonders?

Not long. Just till he comes.

It strikes cold inside, as if they’ve been away for several days already. Not wanting to switch on the lights – no one’s meant to be there, after all – Jenny moves carefully from room to room. In the kitchen she feels her way through several drawers until she finds a box of matches, then, some moments later, a torch. Shines it along the floor near where she’s standing, around the walls. In place of the rear door, a thick sheet of polythene has been fixed in place; whatever work they’ve been having done, Howard and Megan Peterson, not quite finished.

There’s a grey-trim phone in the hall.

She doesn’t know who to phone, who to call.

She’ll have to wait.

If nobody comes inside a half-hour, an hour . . . what then?

Cross that bridge, she tells herself, and not wanting to use up all its batteries, switches off the torch.

She sits on a straight-backed chair against the wall, the bulk of the room in shadow; the suitcase down beside the table where she left it.

She thinks she hears what might be footsteps approaching but they dematerialise as swiftly as they came. A car driving slowly along the street behind. Then nothing. She can’t take her eyes off the case, a sudden desire to see what’s inside.

That story she learned at school . . .

Pandora?

Just a myth.

For something to do as much as anything else, she picks up the suitcase and sets it down on the table in the middle of the room.

Shall I, shan’t I?

She unfastens the buckle on the strap and slips it back. Her fingers are clumsy on the metal clasps, not easy working in the dark, and she thinks, of course, they’ll be locked, why didn’t I think before, but there’s a key – a pair of keys, small and bronze – attached to the handle. Picking up the torch in one hand, with the other she lifts the lid.

My God! It’s stuffed with money, fat with it, all kinds, all denominations. Twenty-pound notes, tight rolls of them inside elastic bands. But other money too. German? French? Different sizes, colours. She can’t believe how much.

Switching off the light, she lets the lid fall back.

‘Forty thousand, give or take,’ the voice says.

She gasps, stifles a scream. Fumbles with the torch and lets it fall.

At the far side of the room, in the open doorway, a shape detaches itself from the greater dark.

Jenny struggles to control her breathing, the impulse to run.

‘You terrified me,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry.’

Does she recognise the voice? As the speaker moves forward, she bends and scoops up the torch, shines it in his grinning face.

‘I thought a quick knee trembler before we get down to the real business. Hard up against the wall. That’s what you like, isn’t it?’

She hurls the torch at his face, but he just sways aside and laughs; when he grabs her arm, she struggles and tries to wriggle free but he’s too strong.

Screams but there’s no one to hear.

RESNICK’S CAR RESOLUTELY
refused to start. Easy enough to go back into the station, borrow a pair of jump leads, but easier still to accept Catherine’s invitation of a lift back down to Nottingham. A miserable evening, the rain that had been threatening off and on for the last hour or so had finally started to fall. With a vengeance. Heavy goods vehicles on the motorway sent waves of water splashing across the windscreen, wipers at full speed. Catherine concentrating on the road, conversation at a minimum.

Resnick found himself thinking about Danny Ireland. A man he never knew, now never would. A haphazard path that seemed to have taken him from Doncaster to Leeds, from Goole to Aberdeen; work on the oil rigs, the ferries and then, as far as they could tell, no regular work at all until he turned up at a smelter north of Fort William, living in a room with a single bed, but choosing to sleep on the floor.

What had that been, that job briefly held? A last gesture towards civilisation? Or was that how he had lived, ten years or more? Picking up work here and there, enough to fund his next withdrawal from the world? And what was it, Resnick wondered, that had brought him to that point? Where the company of others was a contagion to be avoided at all costs?
Keeping the fuck away from the likes of you.
Had he done something so terrible that he avoided, at all costs, anything that might force him to acknowledge it? Or had the world – or someone in it – done something so hurtful to him?

Some went into a seminary, sought seclusion that way, took vows of silence, talked only to their God; some put a gun to their head, stepped out in front of a train, took what the judgemental referred to as the coward’s way out, though Resnick knew it wasn’t that; some simply walked away and kept on walking – keeping the fuck away – until the moment came, perhaps, when, for whatever reason, they could walk no more. Lay down and waited for the snow, the mist, the earth to cover them from thought and sight.

When Lynn had died there had been moments when he’d contemplated the second way out, longed for the third. Done neither. The thought of her telling him not to be so bloody stupid a necessary corrective.

They were leaving the motorway, joining the steady drift of cars towards the city centre.

‘I don’t suppose you fancy a drink?’ Catherine said.

He did.

She parked the car on the Ropewalk and they walked the short distance down towards the Old Market Square. Resnick maintained a fondness for the Bell, principally for the way you could walk in through that narrow entrance and find yourself more or less exactly where you were twenty or thirty years before. Catherine said she didn’t care.

They found a seat in the back bar, Resnick settling for a pint of Greene King IPA, Catherine a glass of dry white, New Zealand Sauvignon. Conversations spun around them, customers walked in and out, some – a tidy few – looking over in Resnick’s direction with a nod of recognition. The occasional raised eyebrow: what’s he doing, lucky sod, with a woman like that?

Catherine was due to report to Martin Picard in the morning. A little over three weeks since the investigation had started and what did she have to tell him? One of their most significant potential witnesses had been found dead in the Highlands of Scotland. Not so much more.

She could see Picard’s raised eyebrow now, his look of barely concealed contempt.

‘Cheer up,’ Resnick said.

‘You are kidding.’

‘Look at it this way – his way – Picard’s way. What he wanted was a low-key investigation into a thirty-year-old murder. Quiet. Discreet. No feathers ruffled. All right, there was all that business with Fleetwood and Michael Swann, but like most things in the headlines these days, twenty-four hours later, it was as good as forgotten.’

‘I don’t know, Charlie.’

‘If the case remains open after a few weeks, Picard said, no skin off anyone’s nose.’

‘He said that?’

‘More or less.’

‘Then why am I letting myself get worked up into such a state?’

‘Because, whatever Picard or anyone else says, it’s your case. And you want a result.’

Catherine braced back in her chair. She wanted a cigarette, but not enough to go and stand in a shop doorway along the street, sheltering from the rain.

‘Do they do food here?’

‘Did the last time I asked.’

‘Because I really want another drink, but if I drink any more without food it’s going to go straight to my head.’

‘I’ll get us some menus,’ Resnick said, pushing back his chair.

Catherine ordered a club sandwich, Resnick steak-and-ale pie. So as not to talk any more about the case, she asked him about his family, and he told the story, in so far as he understood it, of how his parents, along with countless other Poles, had made their way to England in the late summer of 1939, fleeing the German invasion.

‘We’re not so unalike, then, Charlie, you and I,’ Catherine said. ‘Exiles under the skin.’

A hen party made a final sally through the bar, funny hats, party poppers, whistles, slogans, skirts up around their behinds. Across the street, a contingent of men aged between twenty and forty – shaven heads, shirts worn outside their trousers, more than the odd tattoo – had emerged from Yates’ Wine Lodge and were serenading the occupants of the police car parked at the bottom of Market Street.

Resnick and Catherine turned along St James’s Street and past the Malt Cross in the direction of the Castle. A short way along the Ropewalk, Catherine lost her footing and grabbed hold of Resnick’s arm for support.

‘Sorry, Charlie. I must be drunk after all.’

‘Easy done.’

Outside the building, she fished inside her bag for the keys. ‘Quick cup of coffee?’

Reading his hesitation, she smiled. ‘Relax, Charlie. Coffee just means coffee, okay?’

‘Okay.’ Said with a self-conscious grin.

The flat was a little impersonal, he thought; by which, in all likelihood, he meant not filled with clutter. Neat and tidy. Modern. Not to his taste, but wasn’t that only to be expected?

‘You want it with milk or black?’ Catherine called from the kitchen.

‘Better make it black.’

There were stains on the wall closest to the kitchen, not quite washed away; as if someone had thrown a glass of wine in anger, he thought – and thought again about the bruising that had discoloured Catherine’s face, the man who had confronted her in the street.

‘That man,’ he said, when she brought in the coffee.

‘Abbas?’

‘Yes. You seen anything of him lately?’

Catherine shook her head. ‘Back in the City somewhere. Busy setting up another takeover or two, I imagine.’

‘That’s what he does?’

‘Venture capitalism, I think that’s what it’s called.’

She pressed play on the stereo. Guitar, bass, lazy sort of tempo, trickle of piano, a woman’s voice.

‘Is this that Natalie someone you were telling me about?’ Resnick asked.

‘Natalie Duncan. No, this is someone else.’

She sat down next to him on the settee. Listened. Brushed against his arm once reaching for her cup. A mistake. He asked her a question or two about the flat, if she was just renting, things like that.

She mentioned Lynn. That saved him. Saved them both.

‘Are you going to get a taxi or . . .’

‘Rain’s stopped. I’ll probably walk.’

‘I can call for one if . . .’

‘It’s okay. There’s bound to be one or two by the square if I change my mind.’

Taking her cigarettes and lighter, she walked him down the stairs and out on to the street. The pavements were still a little dark from the rain, a little damp, but otherwise it was a clear night, fresh, not over-cold.

‘Well, I’d best be off.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘Good luck with Picard.’

‘Thanks. You want a lift in afterwards?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s okay. I’ll catch the train.’

Watching him walk away, she lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, holding down the smoke. Above the Castle, the clouds were gathering around the moon. A light across the street went out. And then another. Muffled laughter. She continued to stand there, smoking, thinking about what had just happened, what hadn’t happened, about the various stupid things she’d done with her life, mistakes she’d narrowly avoided, mistakes she’d made.

Turned back inside.

He was waiting for her on the landing, his body crashing into her the moment she turned the key in the lock.

THE IMPACT SENT
her flying, arms flailing, all balance gone, cannoning into the edge of the door before falling to the floor. His body on top of her, pressing her down, crushing her, making it impossible, almost, to breathe. Something sharp then pressing hard between her shoulder blades, down into the small of her back – an elbow, a knee – and before she could lift her head, he had seized hold of her by the ankles and half-dragged, half-swung her through into the living room and over towards the settee, bouncing her off the furniture, the walls.

Then leaving her. Stunned.

Lifting herself carefully, slowly on one arm, Catherine blinked the blood from her eyes.

Her left eye.

Heard the flat door slam.

Abbas was nowhere to be seen.

He’d gone.

Gingerly, she leaned back, closed both eyes, and, a moment later, trembling, began to cry.

‘Catherine?’

She jumped at the sound of his voice, stifled a scream.

‘Catherine,’ he said, concerned. ‘I do believe you’re bleeding.’

‘Why are you . . .?’

‘Doing this?’ A smile. ‘It’s no more than you deserve. Fucking that old man.’

‘He’s not . . .’ It hurt her to speak.

‘Not what?’

‘Not old.’

‘Wrong answer.’ He slapped her hard across the face. ‘What you should have said, I wasn’t fucking him. You fucking bitch.’

‘I wasn’t . . .’

His hand was at her throat. Squeezing hard, he tightened his grip, leaving Catherine unable to speak, unable to breathe.

‘Can’t help it, can you? Like animals in the fucking fields. You bitch. You black fucking bitch! You passed me over for that. That!’

Rearing suddenly away, he relinquished his grip, and she rolled, choking, to one side, fighting for breath. And when she rolled back, he was standing over her, impassive, staring down, and she could see the anger, the hatred, still simmering in his eyes, and knew it wasn’t over.

It had just begun.

Reading her fear, he laughed.

‘What? You think I’m going to rape you? Is that what it is? That’s what you’re frightened of?’

Stooping, he brought his face down close to hers. His voice a whisper. ‘You really think I’m going to soil myself inside you? Inside that?’

A look of disgust on his face, he arched back his head and spat.

‘Abbas,’ she said. ‘Please . . .’

Without warning he punched her in the chest. And again. Again. The belly, the head, the breasts. Even after she had lost consciousness it continued. Went on until he was exhausted, knuckles swollen and starting to leak a little blood of their own.

Eyes like pinpoints, shining in the dark.

Oh, Catherine . . .