Lonely Hearts (7 page)

She came down wearing a sweatshirt and leg warmers, at least she hadn’t been asleep.

“What time is it?” she asked, taking the receiver.

“Nearly twelve,” Phillips said, walking away.

“Hello,” Rachel said into the phone. “Who is this?”

Resnick said, “I figured the chances were we’d bump into one another tomorrow and I just, well, I didn’t want it to be awkward, that’s all.”

He didn’t say anything else.

Rachel hung up the phone.

Phillips looked over from where he was writing a final draft of his report, head angled to one side as if to say, who was that?

“Nobody important,” Rachel said, and went back upstairs to bed.

Seven

Mark Divine sat in the reception area across from an inquiry desk that had been enclosed with contiboard, leaving space for a sliding glass window that would have admitted a man’s head but not his shoulders. Not without the head being pulled very hard. Jutting out from beneath the window was a Formica-topped counter edged with cigarette burns. Posters asking for information about missing children had been pinned to the walls beside and behind the wooden bench on which Divine sat, thumbing through the pages of the
Sun
. Fifteen, no, twenty minutes they’d been kept hanging about and not so much as a cup of tea.

Kevin Naylor came through the door past the desk and Divine folded his newspaper and stood up. “About time,” he said.

“Macliesh, is he…?”

“I thought that’s what you’d been to find out.” Naylor shook his head. “I was on the phone.”

“Reporting in?”

“No. Debbie. Thought I’d give her a quick call, that’s all.”

Divine grunted as he sat back down and shook open the paper. “Afraid she’ll disappear or something?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If she doesn’t hear your voice, she’ll go up in a puff of smoke.”

“Don’t be soft.”

“Me? Soft? You’re the one who has to phone his missus every other five minutes.”

“I don’t
have
to phone her at all.”

Divine turned a page, then another. “No, you don’t have to call, of course you don’t. What d’you find to say to one another all the time, that’s what I’d like to know?” He grinned up at Naylor. “That lovey-dovey, newly wedded, darling I’m missing you I can’t live without you mush, is it? Sweetheart, I’m lost without…”

“Stuff it, Divine!” Naylor lashed out with his arm and knocked the paper from Divine’s hands.

“Oooh, now, now!” Divine smirked.

“I said, stuff it!”

Divine was on his feet with dangerous speed and looking at Naylor hard.

“Up here we usually leave that kind of thing to the customers,” said a uniformed sergeant from the window.

Naylor lowered his eyes first and the two men stood apart.

“You’re here for Macliesh, aren’t you?”

They nodded.

“Come through with me and I’ll take you down to the cells.”

The custody sergeant was sitting behind a small curved counter, a leather-bound book open in front of him, lines ruled and crammed with letters in black ink. Behind his right shoulder was a dark green board on which arrivals and departures were chalked in and out. The smell, freshly splashed disinfectant overlaying the sweetness of sewage, came up the steps on the cold air.

“These two are for Macliesh.”

“Aye.”

Aside from the allegations they’d heard and that single photograph, neither Naylor nor Divine had any clear idea of what to expect of Macliesh. So when he walked slowly up the stone steps they were surprised to find that he was slight. Seemed it, until they saw the tightness of the muscle on arms almost without body hair, the flatness of his stomach. Not a pound of spare flesh on him.

“That all he was wearing?” Divine asked.

A gray pullover without sleeves, a black T-shirt beneath it; jeans from which the belt had been removed, worn-down scuffed shoes without laces.

A hold-all was pulled up from behind the counter, an envelope opened and its contents tipped out: some coins, stub of pencil, a five-pound note, a watch on a clear plastic strap.

The officer held out a pen.

Naylor signed for the belongings and they were returned to the envelope, the envelope pushed down under the zip of the holdall. Naylor signed again and the sergeant handed him the custody record. “Go careful with him.”

The sergeant clicked one cuff over Macliesh’s right wrist, the other to Divine’s left.

“Shit!” hissed Divine as it pinched skin.

“Sorry,” said the sergeant with a grin and loosened the ratchets before locking it fast again.

“Right, then?” asked Naylor.

The sergeant nodded as Naylor and Divine took their prisoner out to the waiting car; they weren’t going to get much out of him on the drive back home. Smiling, he used a bright yellow duster to wipe Macliesh’s name from the board.

“At which point did you establish that the woman who first reported the alleged offense was not, in fact, a neighbor but the girl’s mother?”

Resnick had briefed Millington on the procedure to be followed when Macliesh arrived: made sure he would be at the station to interview Grace Kelley and take her statement. He would far rather have been there himself anywhere rather than back in court under cross-examination.

“Inspector?”

Resnick finished checking his notebook. “Three days after the initial report.”

“Three days?”

“Detective Sergeant Pierce went back to the home with DC Kellogg and on that occasion Mrs. Taylor agreed that she had made the allegations herself. Then, after some discussion, she further agreed to bring her daughter in for a medical examination.”

“And this examination, Inspector, where did this take place?”

“At the City Hospital.”

“Who was present at this examination?”

“A consultant pediatrician, the police surgeon, Mrs. Taylor of course, and the social worker assigned to her case.”

“But not Mr. Taylor?”

Resnick shook his head. “No.”

“Not the child’s father?”

“No, for obvious…”

“Your mind was already made up. As to his guilt? Yourself and Social Services between you had determined…”

“Nothing,” Resnick interrupted.

The defense counsel smiled. “You would say that you enjoy a good relationship with the Social Services department, Inspector?”

Resnick wanted to shift his gaze to where he knew Rachel Chaplin was sitting. He knew she was wearing a dark blue suit with a fine stripe running through it, the jacket tucked in slightly at the waist, padded at the shoulders. A pale blue blouse was buttoned high at her neck. Today her hair had been pulled back off her face to be held by matt silver combs.

“Given that our aims are not always identical, I’d say, yes, it’s a good working relationship.”

He was looking directly at the defense counsel, face giving nothing away. The barrister hesitated, drawn to pursue the issue of aims, wanting to, but not allowing himself, plowing on instead.

Rachel Chaplin shifted back on the bench seat, recrossed her legs, right over left. In the quiet of the court, she could hear the sound of nylon sliding across nylon. “Not giving evidence today, are you?” Phillips had said as she was leaving. “I shouldn’t think so, why?” “Just you’re looking extra smart.”

She had held her breath when she heard the question, waiting for Resnick to look across the courtroom and seek her out. How would you describe your relationship with Social Services? She was certain that he wanted to look in her direction, just a glance, and it impressed her that he did not. Only later did it occur to her that was his intention, the effect he’d been working on.

Yes, she thought, all right, I’d like to sit down with you some time and talk about aims, intentions, sit down and talk some things through.

“Now, Inspector,” counsel was saying, “I should like to draw your attention to those photographs, entered as Exhibit A, which were taken by the police photographer subsequent to the girl’s initial medical examination.”

Resnick pinched the bridge of his nose and, for little more than the space of a second, closed his eyes.

“Underpowered,” Divine said sideways.

He was doing eighty-five in the outside lane, flashing full-beam at the Volvo fifteen yards in front.

“Stop at the next services,” said Naylor.

“Again?”

“Again.”

On the previous occasion, the two men had changed places, leaving Naylor in the rear with the prisoner. Almost a hundred miles of sitting less than comfortably, feeling your left leg growing numb above the knee; fidgeting your buttocks without wanting to move around too much because the man who was handcuffed to you was not moving at all, only breathing, his eyes staring through the offside window at the patches of green that rose and fell dully away between the swish of traffic.

“You’re not going to make another phone call.”

There was one thing you’d have to say about Divine, Naylor thought, once he got an idea into his head, no matter how pathetic, he didn’t let it go easily.

“I want a leak,” Naylor said.

“A couple of those doughnuts,” Divine said over his shoulder. “Lemon curd.”

“Only two?” said Naylor.

“For starters.” Grudgingly the Volvo shifted into the center lane and they accelerated past. “How about happy-bollocks?” said Divine. “He’ll be wanting to go by now.”

Naylor looked at Macliesh.

Macliesh continued to gaze out of the window like a man who’d found himself in another land surrounded by another language.

They parked alongside a VW Polo and waited while a baby was strapped into a car seat and then three other children aged between three and seven were packed aboard, arguing and pushing their way between suitcases, assorted games, a blue plastic potty, and a Yorkshire terrier. By the time the parents had got into the front, they looked too tired to drive out of the car park.

“That’ll be you in a few years’ time,” grinned Divine, opening the door so that Macliesh could get out.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” said Naylor, following close behind.

“Oh, yeh?”

“There are other ways of doing it.”

Divine smirked and raised one eyebrow.

“It all depends on the way you treat them, the kids I mean. Set about it right and the more kids you have the more help they are. Within reason.”

“Debbie tell you that?”

“Common sense tells me that.”

They were standing close to a line of video games and slot machines, a couple of bikers leaning up against the wall making gestures of solidarity towards Macliesh, who didn’t acknowledge they were there. An elderly woman went slowly past using a Zimmer frame, staring at the handcuffs all the way.

“Realize how much it’d cost bringing a family like that in here? All those fish fingers, burgers, cobs, and chips. Set off on holiday and you’d be spent up before you were off the motorway.”

Then what you do is pack up your own sandwiches before you leave, Naylor said to himself, big bottle of Coke and a Thermos. He knew better than to say it out loud.

“Cheaper sticking to condoms,” laughed Divine. “Not that I use them myself, take away most of the enjoyment.”

“Get us something and bring it out to the car,” said Naylor, nodding towards the cafeteria. “I don’t want to go in there like this. We’ll go to the Gents and see you back in the car park.”

“Sure you’ll be all right?”

Naylor nodded at Macliesh and started to walk him towards the toilet.

“Better hope he’s left-handed,” Divine called after them.

Just once, Naylor was thinking, just once it would be nice to get sent out with Patel, he wasn’t such a bad bloke, Lynn Kellogg even. There were even times when he found himself quite fancying Lynn. And that was something else that had taken him by surprise. Get hitched, he’d thought, and all that lusting after other women’ll go by the board. For the first few years anyway. God, he wondered what Debbie would say if he ever plucked up the courage to tell her, which, of course, he wouldn’t. She wasn’t even good-looking, Lynn, not in the way women were supposed to be, but that didn’t stop him catching a sideways glance at her sometimes in the squad-room and wondering what she looked like underneath those loose-fitting clothes she usually wore. Not long after she’d been promoted into CID, Divine had taken her out. Mouth flapping away as usual beforehand. On and on about how he was going to see she was made good and welcome, getting her properly initiated, crap like that. He didn’t know what had happened, but Divine had clammed up like a stone afterwards. Like a stone. He…

Naylor felt something suddenly warm and turned his head. Macliesh had shifted sideways in his stall and was standing, quite solemnly, holding himself in his left hand and directing a steady stream of urine down the left leg of Naylor’s trousers.

“And at no point, Inspector, did it occur to you to doubt the truth of Mrs Taylor’s allegations?”

“It’s for the court to establish truth. What I needed to be certain of was that there was a real possibility that an offense had been committed.”

“Which you were?”

“Yes.”

“Beyond any doubt?”

“If there was any possibility of a child being at risk, it was my duty to see that the allegations were properly investigated.”

“Speedily.”

“Yes.”

“Hastily.”

“That’s your word,” said Resnick flatly.

Good for you, Rachel said to herself and smiled.

“I don’t consider it necessary for you to debate semantics with the legal profession,” said the judge, leaning slightly forward. “Simply answer the questions.”

“I’m sorry, your honor,” replied Resnick, “I thought I already had.”

“I suggest that what you have done,” said the counsel for the defense, “is to marry together two convenient pieces of evidence. That which proves, all too sadly and conclusively, that this unfortunate child was the victim of sexual misuse on more than one occasion, and the accusations of a highly wrought and distressed mother who may have had any number of other reasons for electing to blame her husband for those same offences.”

There were angry shouts, two of them, bitter and prolonged, from different sections of the public seating. Rachel realized that she had risen halfway to her feet and made herself slowly sit down.