Lonely Hearts (26 page)

“Have you got a minute?”

Resnick laughed. “Don’t suppose the kettle’s on, is it?”

“It could be, sir.”

“Here,” he said, sliding open the bottom drawer and taking out a jar. “Thee and me and then it goes right back in here.”

Lynn smiled, redder-faced than ever.

Nescafé Cap Colombie—she frequently lifted it off the shelf at Tesco’s, but it had never got as far as her trolley. At that sort of price it would have given Kevin and Debbie Naylor serious heartburn. It tasted okay, though; not bitter but more flavour than most instant coffee she’d tried. Trust Resnick to have his priorities sorted out. A man who looked after his stomach first and foremost, Lynn decided, even if his clothes did come a poor second.

“It’s a call I made, sir. I’m not sure what or why but it’s been nagging at me, off and on ever since.” She pushed the print-out towards him. “Probably nothing. Probably a waste of time.”

Resnick unfolded the paper. “It’s detectives who don’t listen to the little nagging voices that put the wind up me. Like wing-halves who’ll only pass square instead of putting a foot on the ball, getting their head up and seeing what might be on.”

Lynn Kellogg looked faintly puzzled.

“Wing-halves,” Resnick said. “Call them something else now.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lynn, uncertain.

It was quiet while the inspector read the dot-matrix print as well as he could. He went back over a few lines and then said: “So tell me about him, Professor Doria.”

“He’s been at the university nine years, before that he was at Hull. Three years ago he was given…” She hesitated, worrying about her choice of verb, “…the Chair in Linguistics and Critical Theory. He’s…”

Resnick was shaking his head and continued to do so until Lynn Kellogg’s voice faltered to a stop.

“Come on, Lynn.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to tell me about
him
. Not give me what I can get from the university prospectus and
Who’s Who
. He isn’t making you wake in the middle of the night with your scalp itching because he’s got the Chair in anything.”

She cradled the mug in her hands. How did you put things like this into words?

“I think…part of it, he was this odd kind of mixture of over-friendly and distant, both at the same time. I mean, he sat me down, fussed about whether I was comfortable enough, warm enough, seemed in quite a state about my not being in a draught. He was like—I don’t know, I’ve never met one, but from the television—those dons—is that what they’re called?—living their lives in book-lined rooms in Oxford or Cambridge.”

“Open-toe sandals and sherry and a copy of Wittgenstein casually open on the easy chair,” suggested Resnick.

“Behind it all, though, all the time, he didn’t mean it. Not any of it.”

“And the sherry?”

“On his desk.”

“Sweet or dry?”

Lynn smiled and shook her head. “I didn’t have any, sir.”

“But he did?”

“He said he always had—“took” was the word he used—always took a glass at four in the afternoon. Part of his daily ritual.”

“It was four o’clock?”

Lynn shook her head again. “He said in honor of my visit he’d make an exception. A member of CID.” She flushed, remembering. “That’s what I mean, sir. That’s pretty much what he was like all the time, what he sounded like.”

“Bit much to be suspicious of a man for that. In his circles it probably counts as being polite.”

“He was. And helpful. Couldn’t have been more so. He agreed that from time to time he wrote off in reply to Lonely Hearts ads, confirmed the names we had and offered another that somehow we’d missed.”

“That’s been checked out?”

“It’s gone into the system. I don’t know if it’s led anywhere special.”

Resnick drained his mug of coffee. “So there he is, this effusive academic, not a great deal for you to like about his manner, but that’s not enough, Lynn, is it? That’s not all.”

She looked towards the floor. The lace of Resnick’s left shoe had come undone and for an instant she had to suppress her instinct to bend down and retie it for him.

“The fuss, the showing-off, I’m not going back on what I said, there was something false about it, but at the same time I think he was excited.”

“Excited?”

“It’s not quite right, but it’s the only way I can describe it.”

“And what by?”

“By my…” she turned her head away, towards the door, then slowly back. “By my being there.”

“He must have young women in that room all of the time, tutorials.”

“It was more than that.”

“Even so that was part of it?” said Resnick, not wanting to let the idea go.

“Yes, yes. But more, well, why I was there.”

“The investigation?”

“I think so, yes, I suppose that’s what it was.”

“He was interested in the investigation?”

Lynn bit gently down into the center of her lower lip. “Maybe, this sounds daft, it was something to do with me being in the Force.”

“A police officer?”

“Yes.”

“That was what was exciting him?”

Lynn sighed. “It makes it sound as if he was kinky for handcuffs and uniforms.”

“Which you weren’t wearing?”

“No.”

“And presumably you didn’t brandish a pair of cuffs under his nose?”

She laughed. “No.”

Resnick looked down at the print-out again, looked across at her. “Go on.”

“All the while he was talking, telling me what I wanted to know, what I didn’t, great long sentences and one word in every dozen I didn’t understand, it was as if—yes, as though he was in another part of the room, listening to himself. Thinking how clever he was sounding.”

“Admiring himself?”

“Yes, sir. And…”

“And?”

“I’d be making notes, book on my knee, and a couple of times I looked up when he wasn’t expecting it and…the way he was watching me. It was as if there were these eyes, set back, staring, staring out at me as though they were behind a mask.” She looked towards Resnick, plainly troubled. “Looking at me from behind a mask,” she said.

“Clutching at straws a bit, aren’t we?” said Tom Parker.

“Straw man, Charlie?” said Skelton.

“There’s not a lot else, sir,” Resnick observed.

“Exactly,” said Parker.

“You’re running a check on him, of course?” asked Skelton.

Resnick nodded.

“You don’t think there’s a danger of letting the girl overreact to the situation?” Parker said.

They were walking across the Forest, the three of them, glad for the chance to get some fresh air, which is what it certainly was. All three of them were wearing overcoats, Resnick had a blue scarf knotted at his throat, hands pushed deep into his pockets. Jack Skelton and Tom Parker were both wearing trilby hats, Resnick was bareheaded. On the slope to the left, two kids who should have been at school were playing chase, in and out of the trees. Further over towards the road, a middle-aged man was trying to fly a kite which the wind, contrary, refused to accept. A steady stream of cars and vans passed each way along the boulevard.

“She’s a woman,” said Resnick. “A sensible one. She’d not be knocked sideways by a bloke in a gown gawping at her knees.”

“Was he wearing a gown?” asked Parker, surprised.

“Probably not.”

“What does seem strange,” Skelton ventured, fifty yards later, “is that he bothers with answering those kind of things at all. I mean, other staff aside, the place must be crawling with young women and from what I hear, liaisons of that nature are no longer frowned upon.”

Resnick looked at the superintendent keenly, wondering what his reaction would be if his daughter came home and announced she was having an affair with one of her lecturers.

“Could be that’s the thing,” suggested Parker. “How’s the saying go? Don’t spill milk on your own doorstep.”

“Something like that.”

“Instead of charvering his students, he looks further afield.”

Skelton was looking far from happy. “It still doesn’t sound anything close to a case. Not even reasonable grounds for suspicion.”

“All I’m asking, sir, is permission to scratch around a little.”

“Charlie, we’ve got paperwork like dogs have fleas,” said Parker.

“I won’t use the whole team,” said Resnick.

“Too bloody right!”

“You’re a wonder for following hunches!” said Skelton, slapping his arms across his chest. “Even when they’re not your own.”

“She’s got the makings of a good copper,” said Resnick. “I think she deserves this one.”

“Just a couple of officers, Charlie.” Skelton was striding away again, leaving the others in his wake. “We can’t spare any more. We shouldn’t.”

“No, sir.”

“And the minute it looks like a dead end,” said Parker, “we’re out.”

“Yes, sir.”

They were back at the station when across their shoulders the first few flakes of snow began to fall.

“Kellogg’s report aside,” said Jack Skelton, letting Tom Parker go on into the building ahead of them, “have you got anything else making your blood pump a little faster?”

“Not really, sir.”

Skelton stood there, snow fluttering against his face, and waited.

“One of the names on the list,” Resnick said. “The women our professor admitted to meeting…I know her.”

Twenty-Five

The white and red horizontal stripes of the Polish flag hung across the porch window, facing outwards onto the uneven paving of the drive. The house, a Victorian delight of turrets and arches, stood back from the road behind sixty feet of dark shrubs and rose bushes pruned almost to the roots. To the left of the porch was a trio of narrow stained-glass windows one above the other, predominantly blue and green. Above the cracking wood of the door, a larger panel of colored glass, rectangular, depicted the Annunciation. Lace, rich and yellowing, shielded the interior from casual sight.

Resnick pressed the smooth white circle of the bell and heard it sound, off-pitch and distant.

He didn’t think he had spoken to Marian Witczak for more than two years, probably hadn’t seen her in eighteen months. In the days of his marriage, Resnick’s wife had feigned at least a fondness for the dances which the Polish community organized regularly on a Saturday night. On his own, what was there to do other than join one of those tight male circles where one pair of arms, at least, was always within reach of the bar? Or stand eating smoked ham and
pieroqi
, pretending not to notice the church matrons pointing him out encouragingly to their stubbornly unmarriageable daughters. Besides, so much had changed: now a dance there was not so different from the Miners’ Welfare, the British Legion.

A key was turned, bolts were slid back, top and bottom, finally a chain was loosed. Marian looked at him in surprise, confusion, pleasure.

“I thought you were from the auction rooms. I am expecting…But, no, it is you.”

Resnick grinned a little self-consciously. They were the same age, Marian and himself, a matter of some months’ difference, yet she always made him feel like a small boy who had come cap in hand to beat the carpets, sweep the leaves.

“I do not read the newspaper, of course, but I have seen your picture. You are always descending steps, Charlie, after giving evidence against some dreadful man. You always look so sad and angry.”

“I don’t like having my photograph taken.”

“And this job that you do—do you like your job?”

“I remember you used to make good coffee, Marian.”

“Ah, this is why you are suddenly here?”

Resnick shook his head, smiled. “No.”

“Of course,” the muscles of her face tightened, “the knock on the door. I do not forget.”

“Marian, it’s a November morning in England. I’m not the Gestapo.”

“Oh, yes,” stepping back to let him enter. “The English way. What is it?
An Inspector Calls?
”

“That was a long time ago.”

She closed the door behind him. “Yes,” she said, turning the key in the lock, “now you have guns.”

Resnick turned and looked at her. “Marian, I suspect we always had guns.”

The fireplace was carved black marble, inset with deep pink and white, and more than six feet across, almost as tall. The center had been covered with tiles and a fifties’ gas fire burned low, frugal and utilitarian. Three armchairs and a chaise longue were covered in dark floral brocade and draped with antimacassars. An arrangement of dried flowers stood in a glass vase at the center of a low table. Around the walls, stained oak bookcases held a mixture of leather-bound books and old orange Penguins. Above these the walls were hung with photographs: General Sikorski, Cardinal Wysznski, a villa overlooking the Mazurian Lakes, a family group picnicking on the lawns in front of the Wilanow Palace.

Resnick didn’t need to walk over to the piano at the rear of the room to see that the music that was open there was Chopin, some polonaise or other, probably the A flat major, the only one he knew.

Marian came in with the coffee in a dented enamel pot, ardently polished; there were small white cups, bone china, sugar in a bowl with tongs. She was wearing a stiff green dress, belted tightly at the waist, flat shoes in soft green leather. She had quickly pulled her hair back and tied it with a length of white ribbon. Her eyes were dark, her cheekbones high and hard against her skin so that her cheeks seemed pinched and hollow. She was what would once have been called a handsome woman; maybe in her circle she still was.