Free Cutting Edge by John Harvey Page B

“Small.” Karen shook her head. “You don’t know the first thing about him.”
    “I’ve seen him in the hospital. Scurrying around with those headphones on, like whatever, the white mouse, white rabbit.” He started around the bed. “What’s he listening to all the time anyway? Special little tapes you make for him?” He patted the duvet, patted the mattress, caught hold of the toy animal and tossed it to the floor. “Little fantasies. Used to be good at those, I remember. Train carriage fantasy. Swimming pool fantasy.” Close again, voice low in his throat and that look in his eyes: she knew that look. “Burglar fantasies.”
    Karen turned and ran, swung herself round by the banister rail and jumped the first four steps, stumbled the rest. He caught hold of her before she reached the bottom, hip thrust into her side, a hand fast in her hair.
    “All right, Karen,” he said, “just like the old days. Like it used to be.”
    “Someone with something against him, this Fletcher? That what you think, Charlie? Someone with a grudge?”
    Resnick nodded.
    “Professional or personal?”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    “But if you had to guess.”
    “Fletcher’s at the bottom of the heap. Starting out. I shouldn’t have thought he’d have stepped on the wrong toes, become involved in rivalries … not enough to warrant this.”
    “Personal, then?”
    Again, Resnick nodded.
    “This …” Skelton glanced at the notes before him. “… Carew.”
    “Claims to have been at the Irish Center …”
    “Doesn’t sound Irish.”
    “He’s not, sir. Claims he was there till one-thirty, quarter to two. Back home quarter past. Straight off to sleep.”
    “Fletcher was attacked when?”
    “Went off duty a few minutes after two. Staff nurse in charge of the ward where Fletcher was working is pretty certain of that. Quick trip to the Gents, find his coat, he’d be on the bridge in five minutes, ten at the outside. Anxious to get away, see his girlfriend.”
    “That time of the morning?”
    “Promised to wait up for him. Fletcher’d been talking to the staff nurse about it, earlier.”
    “And the girlfriend, she found him?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “How old?”
    “Nineteen.”
    Skelton’s eyes flicked in the direction of the framed photographs, his daughter Kate. “Carew alibied for the time he was at this …”
    “Irish Center.”
    “That’s it.”
    “Went on his own, left the same way. Claims to have seen several people there he knows.”
    “Checked out?”
    “Doesn’t know all of them by name, not surname, anyway. We’ve spoken to two of the rest.”
    “And?”
    “One, another medical student, thinks he may have seen Carew there, but he isn’t positive. Place gets packed after eleven-thirty, twelve, and it isn’t what you’d call well lit. The other one, however, postgraduate student in psychology, she’s definite. Didn’t see him all evening.”
    There was a knock at the superintendent’s door, discreet, and Skelton ignored it.
    “You bringing him in?” Skelton asked.
    “Thought we should give it a little time, finish checking him out,” said Resnick. “Haul him in too soon, we might end up having to let him go.”
    “No chance he’s going to do a runner?”
    Resnick shook his head. “Naylor’s down there, keeping an eye. Anything out of the usual, he’ll stop him.”
    Skelton inclined his head upwards, pressed the tips of his fingers together, outsides of the index fingers resting against the center of his upper lip. There was a time, Resnick remembered, when the super used to have a neat little mustache.
    “Keep me informed, Charlie.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    When Resnick was almost at the door, Skelton spoke again. “Your eyes, Charlie, looking tired. Should try for a few early nights.” Resnick turned and looked at him. “Single man your age, shouldn’t be too difficult.”

    Resnick liked to let Lynn Kellogg drive: it enabled him to set aside any charges of being hierarchical or