Free Lonely Hearts by John Harvey Page B

women.”
    Resnick felt an echo of something inside himself, too distant to be clear what it was. “Maybe,” he said.
    “The one thing he did say,” Millington began.
    “Yes?”
    “When Divine and Naylor were taking him through to the cells.”
    “Yes.”
    “He said, ‘I know that cow set me up for this and I’ll fucking kill her!’”
    “Who did he mean?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “Who d’you think he meant?”
    “The girl’s mother?”
    “Probably,” Resnick said, but he was thinking about Grace Kelley.
    Across the room a phone rang and Millington picked up the receiver, “CID.” Then, “Right, sir. Yes, sir. The superintendent,” he said to Resnick. “Will you pop up and see him before he goes?”
    Resnick was already on his way.
    The newspaper was spread across the superintendent’s desk, open at the report of the trial. Most of page two and a run-on to page three: child abuse was still big news. Resnick looked down at an out-of-date press photograph of himself, blurred and upside down.
    “Not a very good likeness.”
    “No, sir.”
    “And the report—any more accurate, would you say?” Resnick lifted the paper from the desk and skimmed it through. Skelton studied the station roster on the side wall. You could have fitted Resnick’s office into the superintendent’s several times and still had room to do fifty push-ups during the lunch break. Rumor had it that an overzealous inspector had come bursting in one day and found Skelton standing on his head beside the filing cabinets. But that was only rumor.
    “Yes, sir,” Resnick said, replacing the newspaper. “I suppose it’s fair.”
    Skelton made a sound pitched somewhere between a cough and a grunt. “It doesn’t usually serve our purposes to become combative in court.”
    “He was trying to steamroller me. Make an impression in front of the jury.”
    “Which you didn’t want him to do. Unopposed.”
    “He’d been practicing this one in front of the mirror. Look sharp, score points, and bugger the truth.”
    “You’ve got the monopoly, have you, Charlie?”
    Resnick didn’t answer.
    “Emotionally involved, Charlie?”
    “Yes, sir,” Resnick said. “Of course I am.”
    Skelton’s eyes grazed the picture of his wife and daughter, safe in their silver frame. “How about the jury? Any idea which way they’ll go?”
    Resnick thought about their faces, solemn, apprehensive: the bald man in the sports jacket who made notes with a ballpoint pen on the back of an envelope; the woman who gripped her handbag tighter during portions of the evidence and whose lips moved rapidly, silently, as if in prayer.
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    Skelton slid back in his chair and stood up, a single fluid action. He had been in the building for close to nine hours and his clothes looked as if they’d come from the dry cleaners within the past twenty minutes. Sensible shoes, sensible diet: Resnick didn’t suppose Skelton ever left the house without first buffing up his brogues and enjoying a smooth bowel movement.
    “You’ve seen Macliesh?”
    “Not yet, sir. I was just talking to Millington.”
    “Frustrating afternoon.”
    Resnick nodded.
    “I can’t delay on intimation much longer. There was the threat against a witness, the custody sergeant heard that as well, loud and clear. But I can hardly claim that we’re securing evidence by questioning—not expeditiously, at any rate. Come morning, we’re going to let him make his call and he’s got to have a solicitor. If he refuses to request one, we’ll take whoever’s duty solicitor on call.” He nodded briskly and Resnick stood up.
    “All right, Charlie. You’ll be looking after things here in the morning?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Try talking to Macliesh yourself.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Oh, and Charlie?”
    “Sir?”
    “Do you ever do anything—in the way of exercise?” Resnick looked at the superintendent a shade blankly. Weekend before last he’d lugged that Hoover all