Lonely Hearts (13 page)

“Guinness,” said Resnick to the barman. “Fresh glass.”

The same short fur coat, the same shiny trousers. She was with a man Resnick had tried to turn over twice and failed; after that he’d got passed on to the Serious Crimes Squad but they hadn’t had any more luck. With George Despard you needed more than luck: more than most money could buy. The man loitering by the entrance Resnick knew to be Despard’s minder.

He waited until the couple had sat down at one of the tables and made his way over, careful to approach from the front. Despard wasn’t the kind of man you risked going up to from behind.

Resnick nodded at George Despard. “I hope you haven’t left the Porsche parked outside,” he said to Grace Kelley.

“We came in the Ferrari,” Despard said.

Grace Kelley smiled. “Hello, Inspector. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“What’s a nice clean copper like me doing in a place like this?”

“Something like that.”

“Didn’t expect to see you in here, either, George,” Resnick said. “Not coming down in the world, are you? Hard times?”

“I’ve read it,” said Despard. “Less of a ramble than most of his books. Course, you got to respond to the symbolism.”

“Christ!” said Grace. “What is this? Evening classes?”

“A little self-improvement never hurt a soul,” said Despard solemnly.

“And you’re sitting next to the living proof,” Resnick said to her. “The very model of a self-made man.”

“My father,” Despard said, looking at Grace, “he come over from Jamaica after the war. Played trumpet in a dance band. Not very good, but he was black and up West they still thought that was exotic. Used to wear a frilly shirt and shake the maracas whenever they did a rumba.”

Half the club was watching Resnick and George Despard talking, trying to figure out what they were talking about: the other half were watching the first half watching.

“His lip give out,” Despard continued. “London was getting bad, more black faces and nobody figured them for cute any more. He took it into his head to move up to the Midlands, buy some little green-grocer’s shop. Months before it happening, he would say to everyone, watch out for Notting Hill. Trouble brewing.” Despard was stroking the curve of Grace Kelley’s shoulder, fingers lost in the fur. “He didn’t see it happening up here, too. First race riots in the country. Burned him out.” She wriggled her shoulder a little and he moved his arm away. Not far. “So you see,” he said, “I had to start from nothing, do it all myself. From that burnt-out shop to where I am today.”

“Regular phoenix from the ashes, aren’t you?” Grace said.

“There you are,” said Resnick. “You wanted symbolism.”

“I wanted a drink,” said Grace, looking round.

Despard signaled to his minder and moments later a bottle of brandy arrived with three glasses.

“Sit down,” said Despard.

“I’m on Guinness,” Resnick said.

“Sit down, Inspector,” said Despard. “You don’t want to disappoint a lady.”

Resnick pulled over a chair.

“You made quite an impression on her.”

“It’s my dress sense,” said Resnick. “Never fails.”

George Despard was wearing a lightweight blue suit, a yellow silk shirt, and a muted red tie. The shoes on his feet were real alligator. Gold was tastefully placed at strategic parts of his body.

They sat for a while drinking brandy, saying nothing very much. The singer was taking a rest and a DJ had taken over. People were dancing again.

“What’s Macliesh got against you?” Resnick asked Grace after Despard had lit another of her cigarettes.

“I did like you said. Went in and made a statement.”

Resnick nodded. “I read it.”

“Well, then.”

“He seemed certain you were the one that had it in for him.”

“After the way he treated Shirley…”

“More than that.”

Despard was looking at her with bored interest. Over by the bar, his minder was standing close to the man Resnick had been questioning earlier. They didn’t appear to be talking to one another.

“Seemed more personal than that,” Resnick said. “Between you and him.”

“As much distance as I can find,” Grace said. “Always.”

“Woman like this,” Despard explained, holding her hand in his, holding it over the table, on display. “Woman like this, men always going to fuss with her.”

“Let ’em try!” Grace shook her head.

“Is that what it was?” asked Resnick. “He made a pass at you?”

She leaned her head back and a trail of smoke lifted up from her nostrils. “More like—what d’you call it?—the Denver Buckskins.”

“Broncos,” Despard corrected her.

“Whatever.”

Despard laughed and jiggled the brandy round in his glass. “Tried to sack you, did he?”

“Not after I put my foot in his bollocks, he didn’t.”

“Did Shirley know?” Resnick asked.

A quick, strong shake of the head. “She had enough to worry about, poor love.”

“He said he’d do you an injury,” Resnick said.

“Not where you’ve got him.”

“For the present.”

“You’re not letting the bastard out?”

“Not if we can help it.”

“Course you can help it. He did for her, didn’t he?”

Resnick glanced away. “He’s got an alibi.”

“Of course he’s got a bleedin’ alibi! Even he’s not that fucking stupid!”

“He’s in court tomorrow. Let’s hope he doesn’t get bail.”

Grace looked at Resnick and then at Despard.

“Still,” Resnick went on. “You’ll likely be back in London pretty soon.”

“She won’t come to any harm here in the city,” said Despard proprietorially.

“I’m not going to be here in the sodding city. Not if that maniac’s wandering loose.”

“We’ll still be able to get in touch with you?”

“I’m not skipping the country.”

“Your address…”

“That sergeant of yours, I give it him.”

There didn’t seem a great deal more to say after that and Resnick didn’t want to carry on sitting there, drinking George Despard’s brandy. Guilty through association: it had happened to men more senior than himself. Besides, he might want to start telling Despard what he thought of him.

“Nice to see you again,” he said to Grace Kelley and although the smile she gave him was genuine enough, there was more than a trace of fear lingering behind it.

Despard offered his hand and Resnick shook it, firmly but quickly and walked away.

His man was waiting at the entrance out on to the street. Resnick was aware of him a fraction of time before he saw him, a slender shadow backed up against the wall.

“This Warren. He’s at Victor’s. The gym.”

Resnick scarcely broke his stride.

Thirteen

Through the night CID presence was token: two officers from three stations. This night Lynn Kellogg was one of them. She sat at her desk with a cup of not-so-hot chocolate, struggling with a letter to her parents. Somewhere they’d heard about the city bus drivers going on strike and refusing to take out the last buses on a Friday or a Saturday night.
I
do worry about you so, Lynnie love. What you got to be doing that job for in a rough place like that? Least you could do is get a transfer to Norwich. That’d be a lot safer and you’d be closer to home, wouldn’t you?
Welcome to Norwich, thought Lynn, a fine city. Well, this was a fine city, one with a bit of real life to it, and the thing about real life was occasionally it bit back. As for being closer to home—every couple of months she’d get to be really missing them, the family. Weekend off, she’d make the slow single-lane drive over there, hugs and kisses and handshakes and inside of an hour she couldn’t wait to drive away again.

“Boyfriend?” Jim Peel was a gangling man with sandy hair and a declining slope where his chin was supposed to be. One of a family of four brothers, all of them had joined the Police Force, following a father and great-uncle before them. Well, it was either that or campanology.

“Letter home. They’re worried about the last buses not going out.”

“Afraid you’ll have to walk?”

“Something like that.”

Peel took a pencil from his pocket and poked it carefully down into Lynn’s cup, lifting away a heavy crust of skin.

“Thanks, Jim.”

He nodded and dropped the skin into a nearby bin, licking the pencil end clean. “It’s nothing new, you know. This business with the buses. I was talking to someone in the canteen, said they were doing it when he first came on the Force, that was ’67.” Peel sat on a chair over at the far side of the room and leaned back until it was balanced on its rear legs, his shoulders against the wall. “Shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the same back when they had horse-drawn trams.”

Lynn nodded and looked through what she’d written. He was a nice enough bloke, Jim, but, God, didn’t he rattle on! Sort of bloke her folks would wet themselves over if ever she invited him home to Norfolk for the weekend, perish the thought. She could just imagine him walking around with her father, nodding with interest as the relative merits of White Rock and White Cornish broilers were explained in great detail. Pretty soon they’d have graduated to the lesser types of fowl pest and her mother would be counting the months as well as her chickens.

“I’ll get it!”

Jim Peel rocked his chair forward and pushed himself off the wall with the flat of his hands, but all Lynn had to do was stretch sideways.

“CID. DC Kellogg speaking.”

Vera Barnett was fifty-eight and looked twenty years older; thinning gray hair was sticking to her scalp with perspiration and her facial skin was loose and sallow. The knuckles of her hands were purple and swollen. She sat in a tall armchair, high-backed, high-sided. One of her feet rested on a cushion.

“The children…” Lynn asked.

“I’ve told you, they’re in my bed, sleeping. Poor lambs!”

“But how old…?”

“Luke’s just seven and little Sarah, she’s four.”

“They’re all right?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them while I’m here.” Lynn glanced round at the uniformed officer, standing patiently to one side.

“Your daughter has left them with you before?” Lynn said.

“Every week.”

“The same evening?”

Vera Barnett nodded and Lynn winced as she heard bones creak and grate.

“Do they often stay the night?”

“Never.”

“Not even for a special occasion? I mean…”

The mouth tightened. “She’s their mother and they’re her children. She’s no right. No right.”

“So you were expecting her to collect them?”

“Always.”

“What time would that be, Mrs Barnett? Usually, I mean.”

“Half-past eleven.”

“But the children would already be asleep…”

“They’re no trouble. Wake up without a fuss. Go off when she gets them back home again, fast as anything.”

“So your daughter comes to collect them at half-past eleven…”

“Or earlier. Makes me a bedtime drink, helps me into the bedroom, and off she goes till the next time. Brings them over on the bus, two buses really, but she always gets a taxi home. Phones through for it the minute she arrives.” She dabbed at a damp patch of hair. “I’ve known her have to ring back two, oh, three times; give some excuse like they couldn’t find the number, rang the bell and nobody answered. I’ve got nothing against them, of course, but they’re all, you know, these Asians. I don’t know if I should like to be driving home with them, last thing at night.”

There was a lot worse, Lynn thought.

“I rang the hospital,” Vera Barnett said. “In case, you know, she’d been in an accident. Well, you hear about such things.”

“Why are you so certain something’s happened to your daughter?”

“What else could it be?”

“It is only…” Lynn checked her watch.

“Two fifty-two,” said the constable.

“It isn’t three yet. If she’s with friends. A party.” Lynn tried to smile reassuringly, but more and more she had a sense that the woman’s fears were grounded. Cold was starting to seek out her stomach. “There’s plenty of time for her to turn up.”

“She’s only once been late, really late, and then she rang.”

“Maybe, wherever she is, she was having such a good time, she forgot.”

“With the children here?”

Lynn rubbed the palms of her hands along the slightly rough wool of her skirt. If the woman was right, then all they were doing here was wasting time. Trying to reassure her wasn’t working anyway: her mind was too firmly set on disaster.

“You’ve phoned round her friends?” the constable asked.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Even so. If you’re worried.”

“Besides, she doesn’t have friends. Not like that. Not that she goes out with. People to talk to at work, but that’s all.”

They had already had the story of a marriage gone wrong, blame liberally sprinkled, one thing they could be sure of, wherever Mary was she wouldn’t have gone gallivanting off to see
him
.

“And you’ve no idea where she was going this evening, Mrs Barnett?”

Again the set mouth, eyes narrow with disapproval. “None whatsoever.”

“Where she usually went on her evening out?”

“She didn’t tell me her business and I never asked.” With effort she shifted round in her chair, arms resting along the wings, fingers gripped. “Though I knew what she was up to, of course.”

Lynn looked at her expectantly.

“She was with a man.”

“Getting really worked up about it, wasn’t she?”

“Her daughter gone missing? Hardly surprising.”

“Her daughter having it off.”

“Is that what you think this is about?”

“Don’t you? If you’ve only got one chance a week.” Lynn blinked and gave a quick shake of the head: another bloke whose ideas about sex were based upon the letters pages in
Penthouse
and mutual masturbation sessions in the showers after games.

“What would your mum say, then? You and sex.”

“Not a lot.”

“How’s that then?”

“They don’t believe in sex in that part of Norfolk.”

The house was in a short road, cars parked close at either side. A light was on inside number 7, probably the stairs. All of the other houses in the street were dark.