Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(33)

“Yes.”

“I have to finish this.”

“Yes.”

“Really, I …”

“Jane, I understand.”

Slowly, she began to turn away. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“That’s okay.”

When she heard him move toward the door and ease it open, one of the knots in her stomach slipped free.

“Jane …”

“Mmm?”

“When you come up, I’ll be waiting …”

“Charlie!”

At the sound of Hannah’s voice, Resnick broke from sleep, pushing himself up on one arm, Hannah already sitting up, bent forward, her body ploughed in sweat.

“Oh, Charlie!”

“What? What is it?”

Her hair was lank and damp and dark against her face.

“What happened?”

She grasped one of his hands between hers and squeezed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It was just a dream. A stupid dream.” Lowering herself back down, she kissed him on the cheek. “Just hold me a little, I’ll be all right.” And hold her he did, arms warm around her, drawing out the clammy coldness of her skin.

“Charlie,” she said again a while later, speaking out into the darkness; but by then he was lost in sleep.





Eighteen

The face on the fax, as such faces tend to be, was blurred and darkened out of recognition. The details, printed below, were economical and sparse. The body had been spotted by a night worker on his way home, pedaling his bicycle along the towpath of the canal. Something yellow puffed up in the water, like a piece of tarpaulin, an old sack. These observations, grubbily poetic, did not find their way onto the fax. Extent of injuries, date, time, presumed cause of death. Yellow anorak aside, she had been wearing blue jeans, a turquoise polo shirt, gray canvas shoes. No purse or wallet found with the body; no other forms of identification. Dark hair. The tattoo of a hummingbird in three colors high on her right arm, a silver ring through the left nostril: no other distinguishing features or marks. Aside from the wound at the back of her head, a three-inch gash above the left ear.

Resnick picked up his phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the fax. Worksop was a small town to the north of the county, bisected by the Chesterfield Canal; one of those places where not a great deal seemed to happen, and when it did the rest of the world usually failed to blink. For a few days now, the media would focus on this, a young woman murdered, always the possibility of sexual assault. And then if there were no arrests, no startling revelations, the incident would flicker and fade from the news; a post-mortem would be opened and closed, details analyzed, shuffled, cross-checked, the file left open. Another set of statistics for Operation Enigma, the initial planning meeting of which Jack Skelton had recently attended in lieu of the city’s yet-to-be-appointed head of Serious Crimes.

The north of the county had not been so cautious. Sandy Paul was the new DCI, fished out of the fast-track graduate pool, a first from Durham in politics, his masters in criminology. Rumor had it he was studying for a law degree in his spare time. Between feeding the ferrets and a spot of fishing, that’s likely what I should be doing, Reg Cossall had observed; always assuming I’m not busily engaged in tupping the wife. Cossall, a DI who had joined the force the same month as Resnick, the pair of them raw-boned and idealistic behind the ears, was on his fourth wife; Sandy Paul only recently betrothed to his first, a barrister with chambers in Sheffield and a growing reputation in cases of misrepresentation and fraud.

“I’m sorry, Inspector,” one of the civilian support staff announced with all the warmth of a British Telecom recording, “but Mr. Paul is attending a press conference at this moment. If you would like to log the details of your call, I’m sure Mr. Paul or one of his officers will get back to you.”

Mr. Paul, Resnick thought, nice that, the Mr., makes him seem more approachable somehow, more like a bank manager or the head of a local double-glazing firm.

The sergeant who finally rang back was someone Resnick knew, a committed Chesterfield supporter who occasionally ventured down to the County ground and joined Resnick in bemoaning the absence of players like Armstrong and Chedozie, who had once graced their teams.

Resnick was surprised to find that Brian Findley had transferred into Serious Crimes.

“Made me an offer I could scarce refuse, Charlie. Sign on or get shifted out to the likes of Bolsover.” He pronounced it Bowser. “Faced with that, not a lot I could do.”

Resnick, who in an earlier life had enjoyed a brief but fiery relationship with a social worker from Bolsover, understood what Findley meant. It had been years before he could think of certain kinds of sexual activity without the scent of coke fumes seeming to drift, unbidden, through the air.

“You’ve not joined up yourself, then, Charlie? Still managing to keep pure.”

“Not sure, Brian, if that’s the word.”

“Dragging their heels a bit down there, aren’t they? Still to appoint a DCI.”

“Any day now.”

“Woman, isn’t it? Favorite. What I heard.”

Resnick had heard nothing of the sort.

“Any road up,” Findley said, “whoever it is, I hope they’ve got a bit more experience than the boy wonder here.”