Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(36)

Switching smiles, she turned as Skelton approached, the superintendent wearing his best suit too, and very smart, though his hand seemed to have slipped when he was shaving and he might have been too prodigal with the aftershave.

“Good to see you here, Charlie. There’s coffee on the side. Sherry, if you’d like.”

“Coffee will be fine.” He didn’t move.

“That spell Helen had with us a bit ago,” Skelton said. “Just passing through, that’s what we thought, eh? Good to welcome her back like this.”

“You’ll be going round all the stations, I dare say,” Resnick said. “Letting them see your face.”

“I dare say. Sooner or later. Coming here was different. You and Jack, people I know. Worked with.”

“And will again, it’s hoped,” Skelton said, his hand barely brushing her sleeve.

“I wonder, Jack,” she said, “that sherry you mentioned. Since this is something of an occasion …”

“Of course, right away.”

“Charlie,” she moved closer, filling the space Skelton had left, “I’ve a confession to make.”

“Go ahead.”

“This early visit, it’s not purely social.”

“I see.” Resnick’s mind was starting to race.

“Bit of a fishing expedition really. Poaching.”

“Yes.”

“Lynn Kellogg, she passed her sergeant’s board a while back now, unless I’m mistaken.”

Resnick tensed. “All set to join Family Support; she’s got an interview lined up the end of this week.”

Helen Siddons’ face expressed clear distaste. “Come on, Charlie, she doesn’t want that.”

“Not what she says.”

“A detective, Charlie, that’s what she is, and a bloody good one. You know that better than anyone. What does she want with domestics and missing kids? Wiping noses and passing round the Kleenex.”

“Ask her.”

“I will. But with your permission, Charlie. Your blessing.”

Resnick shifted balance. “Far as I know, nothing to prevent you approaching whoever you’ve a mind to.”

“Charlie …” Now it was his arm, her fingers light on the back of his hand. “You’ve got to let her go some time. Fly the nest.”

He pulled back, smarting. “She’s not a kid, you know. I’m not her bloody father.”

“No, Charlie. Not exactly that.”





Twenty

The trouble with south London, Grabianski had long decided, it was flat as Kate Moss. All those times his mum had walked him from common to common—Tooting Bec, Tooting Graveney, Wandsworth, Clapham—unbuckling him from his pushchair and encouraging him to run: if he hadn’t tripped across an upthrust root, looked away at the wrong moment, and smacked face first into a tree, he would have raced clear off the edge of the world.

Maybe that was why, Grabianski thought, ever since he had ceased to be a child, it was hills that drew him, mountains: the Lakes, Scotland, Snowdonia, the North Yorkshire Moors. His profits had gone on treks to the Tatra Mountains or Nepal, while Grice had been flirting with non-specific urogenital diseases in Benidorm.

And up here, high to the north of the city, Highgate, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, the open spaces were compounded of fold on fold of hills, sharp rises and sudden, unexpected declines, gullies and ravines. When he broke cover beyond the wayward thicket of tangled bush and trees and strode up toward the tumulus that marked the midway point between Kenwood and Parliament Hill, he truly thought he was Lord of All.

Another brisk ten minutes south, the sweep of the city below him, and he would be descending the thin diagonal path toward the bandstand and its attendant café, the D’Auria Brothers ice-cream and catering establishment, open all year round for quality food and fresh brewed coffee, pizza and homemade cakes a speciality.

When Grabianski, exultant, pushed his way in through the glass swing doors, Resnick and a young black man he didn’t recognize were sitting at one of the center tables, the young man just starting on what looked like a cappuccino, Resnick, small cup of espresso to one side, taking a plastic fork to a generous slice of raspberry and redcurrant pie.

Part of Grabianski’s instinct was to turn right round again and go back the way he’d come. But he knew that whatever that might achieve, it would be temporary, an exercise in deflecting the inevitable. Instead, he positioned himself at the end of the brief queue, ordered black coffee and a slice of pizza, waited while the pizza was microwaved, and carried his tray to where Resnick and Carl Vincent were sitting.

“Good walk?” Resnick asked.

Stirring sugar into his coffee, Grabianski assured him it had been fine.

Resnick made the necessary introductions and, not for the first time in his career, Grabianski wondered at the precise etiquette of shaking hands with someone who might well be about to arrest you and have you locked away for a generous five to ten.

“Carl’s helping me on this,” Resnick explained.

“This?”

“We thought, Jerzy, you might be in the mood to do a little, shall we say, trading? Man with your kind of interests—culture, ornithology—doesn’t want to wither away inside.”

Grabianski broke off a section of pizza. “Never was my intention.”