She gave it a few moments’ thought. ‘Jimmy Lyons, if anyone.’
‘Left the force, didn’t he?’ Millington said. ‘About a year back. Early retirement or some such.’
‘There was an inquiry,’ Sharon said. ‘Allegations of taking money to turn a blind eye. Massage parlours, the usual thing. Didn’t get anywhere.’
‘And they worked together?’ Resnick asked. ‘Burford and Lyons?’
Sharon nodded. ‘Quite a bit.’
‘Lyons,’ Resnick said. ‘Anyone know where he is now?’
Nobody did.
‘Okay. Sharon, chase up one or two of your contacts at Vice, those you think you can trust. See what the word is on Burford. Anil, see if you can track down Lyons. He might still be in the city somewhere, in which case he and Burford could still be in touch.’
Millington was already at the door. ‘I’d best get myself out to Carlton, see how they’re getting on. You’ll not want them dragging their feet on this.’
By four it was pretty much coming into place. The carpet fibres found beneath Clara Marston’s fingernails matched the floor covering throughout the upstairs of the house off Westdale Lane. And traces of blood, both on the carpet and in the bathroom, were identical with that on the girl’s clothing.
The house had been let a little over two years back to a Mr and Mrs Sadler, Philip and Dawn. None of the neighbours could recall seeing Dawn Sadler for a good six months and assumed the couple had split up; since then Philip Sadler had been sharing the place with his brother, John. John Sadler was known to the police: a suspended sentence for grievous bodily harm eight years before and, more recently, a charge of rape which had been dropped by the CPS at the last moment because some of the evidence was considered unsafe. Unusually, the rape charge had been brought by a prostitute, who claimed Sadler had threatened her with a knife and sodomised her against her will. What made it especially interesting — the arresting officers had been Burford and Lyons.
Lyons was still in the city, Khan confirmed, working with a security firm which provided bouncers for nightclubs and pubs; rumour was that he and Burford were still close. And Lyons had not been seen at work since the night Clara Marston had been killed.
Resnick crossed to the deli on Canning Circus, picked up a large filter coffee and continued into the cemetery on the far side. Burford and Lyons or Burford and Sadler, cruising the Forest in the van, looking for a likely girl. Finally, they get her back to the house and somewhere in the midst of it all things start to go awry.
He sat on a bench and levered the lid from his cup; the coffee was strong and still warm. It had to be Burford and Lyons who had sex with the girl; Sadler’s DNA was likely still on file and no match had registered. So what happened? Back on his feet again, Resnick started to walk downhill. Burford and Lyons are well into it when Sadler takes it into his head to join in. It’s Sadler who introduces the knife. But whose blood? Jimmy Lyons’ blood. He’s telling Sadler to keep out of it and Sadler won’t listen; they argue, fight, and Lyons gets stabbed, stumbles over the girl. Grabs her as he falls.
Then if she doesn’t do the stabbing, why does she have to die?
She’s hysterical and someone — Burford? — starts slapping her, shaking her, using too much force. Or simply this: she’s seen too much.
Resnick sits again, seeing it in his mind. Is it now that she struggles and in desperation fights back? Whose skin then was with those carpet fibres, caught beneath her nails? He sat a little longer, finishing his coffee, thinking; then walked, more briskly, back towards the station. There were calls to make, arrangements to be put in place.
Burford spotted Sharon Garnett the second she walked into the bar, dark hair piled high, the same lift of the head, self-assured. It was when he saw Resnick behind her that he understood.
‘Hello, Jack,’ Sharon said as she crossed behind him. ‘Long time.’
Some part of Burford told him to cut and run, but no, there would be officers stationed outside he was certain, front and back, nothing to do now but play it through.
‘Evening, Charlie. Long way off your turf. Come to see how the other half live?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Get you a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Sharon?’
Sharon shook her head.
‘Suit yourself.’ Burford lifted the shot glass from the counter and downed what remained in one.
Without any attempt to disguise what he was doing, Resnick picked up the glass with a clean handkerchief and deposited it in a plastic evidence bag, zipping the top across.
‘Let’s do this decent, Charlie,’ Burford said, taking a step away. ‘No cuffs, nothing like that. I’ll just walk with you out to the car.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Resnick said.
‘Decent,’ said Sharon. ‘That word in your vocabulary, Jack?’
Millington was outside in the car park, Anil Khan.
‘You know I’m not saying a word without a solicitor,’ Burford said. ‘You know that.’
‘Shut up,’ Resnick said, ‘and get in the car.’
When Lynn Kellogg hammered on the door of Jimmy Lyons’ flat near the edge of the Lace Market, Lyons elbowed her aside and took off down the stairs smack into the arms of Kevin Naylor. Blood had already started to seep through the bandages across his chest.
John Sadler had skipped town and his brother, Philip, claimed no knowledge of where he might be. ‘How about Mrs Sadler?’ Millington asked. ‘Been a while, I understand, since anyone’s clapped eyes on her.’ Philip Sadler turned decidedly pale.
Under questioning, both Burford and Lyons agreed to picking up Clara Marston and taking her back to the house for sex. They claimed they had left her alone in the upstairs room, which was where Sadler, drunk, had threatened her with a knife and then attacked her. By the time they’d realised what was going on and ran back upstairs, he had his hands round her throat and she was dead. It was when Lyons tried to pull him off that Sadler had stabbed him with the knife.
Burford claimed he then used his own car to take Lyons back to his flat and tended his wound. Sadler, he assumed, carried the dead girl out to the van and left her on the Forest, disposing of the van afterwards.
Without Sadler’s side of things, it would be a difficult story to break down and Sadler wasn’t going to be easy to find.
About a week later, media interest in the case beginning to fade, Resnick left the Polish Club early, a light rain falling as he walked back across town. Indoors, he made himself a sandwich and poured the last of the Scotch into a glass. Billie’s voice was jaunty and in your face, even in defeat. Since the time she had sat across from him in his chair, slipped into his bed, he had never quite managed to shake Eileen from his mind. When he crossed the room and dialled again the number she had given him, the operator’s message was the same: number unobtainable. The music at an end, the sound of his own breathing seemed to fill the room.
THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE STARS
Eileen had done everything she could to change his mind. Michael, she’d said, anywhere else, okay? Anywhere but there. Michael Sherwood not his real name, not even close. But in the end she’d caved in, just as he’d known she would. Thirty-three by not so many months and going nowhere; thirty-three, though she was still only owning up to twenty-nine.
When he’d met her she’d been a receptionist in a car showroom south of Sheffield, something she’d blagged her way into and held down for the best part of a year; fine until the head of sales had somehow got a whiff of her past employment, some potential customer who’d seen her stripping somewhere most likely, and tried wedging his podgy fingers up inside her skirt one evening late. Eileen had kneed him in the balls, then hit him with a solid glass
