Free Darkness, Darkness by John Harvey Page A

I’ve ever really got used to it, but staying where we were . . . long memories, some people. Resentments, buried deep. One minute folk’d be nodding at you in pub, asking after the missus, the kids, next they’re lobbing a brick through front window, painting Scab in foot-high letters on your door.’ He sighed. ‘None of that here. Kingdom of bloody Ikea. Nor much else, either. Not that I should be complaining. Give Megan a job, right off. Part-time, mind, but work all the same. Kids off our hands long since, it’s enough.’
    He pushed back his chair. ‘Leaves me time to go fishing. Peel spuds.’
    ‘And Geoff?’
    ‘Buggered off, didn’t he? Canada.’
    ‘Bit more extreme than Giltbrook.’
    ‘That’s for certain. Kept in touch at first, you know, sent the odd postcard or two. Christmas card one time.’ He gave a shake of the head. ‘Must be getting on twenty years since I heard. Could be anywhere by now. Could be dead.’
    ‘And those cards . . .?’
    ‘Long gone. I wrote back just the once, I remember. Always meant to keep in touch, but you know how it is.’
    ‘A long time ago, I know, but you wouldn’t still have the address? Written down somewhere? An old address book?’
    ‘Unlikely. But if you think it’s important, I could look around. See what I can find.’
    ‘Thanks. I’d be obliged.’
    ‘I will do then.’
    He walked Resnick to the door. ‘No disrespect, but you must be near retiring age yourself, I’d’ve thought. Runnin’ a pub somewhere, corner shop, that’s what they do, coppers, isn’t it, when they pack it in? Used to, any road.’
    Resnick shook his hand. Turned the car around and headed back towards the motorway.
No shortage of blokes grateful for a few days’ graft
. What chance was there of finding out who had worked with Geoff Cartwright at the rear of 20 Church Street, all that time ago? Cartwright and whoever else had been giving him a hand. Laying paving stones: safe, neat, secure. Those days between Christmas and New Year, 1984. Nights when the site would, in all probability, have been left unguarded and open.
    So far they had no clear motive; if you disregarded the husband, which at the moment he was inclined to do, no clear suspect. As Catherine Njoroge had put it, they were no wiser about the reasons for Jenny Hardwick’s murder than people were, centuries later, about the circumstances that lay behind Chesterfield’s twisted tower.

13
    HE’D BEEN THINKING about her more than ever, these last few days. That was the way it seemed, though he could never be sure. Most times she was just there, somewhere close beneath the surface of his mind. His skin. As if, sometimes, he could reach out and touch . . .
    It was the job, of course that’s what it was. This job. Working with a woman, a major investigation; working with Catherine Njoroge, though it would be hard to find two women less alike than Catherine and Lynn. Save that they were good police officers both, good at their job.
    He remembered the first murder case they had worked on together, Lynn and himself; Lynn new to the squad, keen, young. The body she’d almost stumbled over in the rear garden of an otherwise unexceptional inner-city house; a young woman wearing her wounds like ribbons in her hair. By the time Resnick had arrived, it had been covered from sight, a single high-heeled shoe close by, black, new.
    Lynn had been inside, shaken, pale; when he stepped towards her, she had fainted into his arms, fingers of one hand caught fast against his mouth.
    ‘There are those,’ she said to him years later, ‘who reckon I did it on purpose. Brazen hussy! Throwing myself at the boss’s feet.’
    ‘Think that, then they’re fools.’
    ‘Had to get you to notice me somehow, didn’t I?’
    ‘Likely’ve managed it of my own account.’
    ‘Eventually.’
    ‘Time enough.’
    Something inside him locked tight.
Had we but world enough and time.
Where had that come from? Dredged up from school.