'I'd like to see her.'
Resnick scraped a speck of something from the cuff of his shirt, real or imaginary. 'All in good time.'
'Christ, Charlie. That bastard Keach kept her locked up -'
'I know, I know.'
'And now you -'
'Frank, it's not so straightforward. Hear me out.'
Elder sat back with a slow release of breath. 'Is it ever?'
Resnick resettled himself in his chair. 'The car she was travelling in was stopped on Forest Road East. There'd been an incident, Cranmer Street; a firearm discharged.'
'And they thought she was involved?'
'Not really. Just stopping everyone. Routine. They'd've been off and away if Katherine hadn't given the officer a piece of her mind.'
'She'd been drinking?'
'Maybe just a little.'
'She wasn't breathalysed?'
'She wasn't driving.'
Now we're getting to it, Elder thought.
'Officers hoiked them out of the vehicle,' Resnick said, 'the pair of them. ID, the usual palaver. Phoned it all in.'
'The driver,' Elder said, 'he was known to you.'
'Rob Summers. Two priors. Nothing too serious. Possession of cannabis. Public order. Some kind of argy- bargy at the university. Demonstration.'
'I've met him. Briefly. I didn't know he had form.'
'Drug Squad, they've had their eye on him for a while now. Suspected him of handling a little cannabis, spreading it around, friends mostly. Not worth the aggravation of bringing him in.'
'And now?'
'Some consideration he might be moving up, apparently. Different league.'
'They'd like a reason to squeeze him.'
'Something of the sort.'
'And that's where my Katherine comes in.'
'When the vehicle was searched there were a little over five grams of heroin in a small leather bag in the dash.'
'You're saying it was hers?'
'Her bag, Frank. Her stuff inside.'
'She was holding it for him.'
'Likely.'
'No way he's putting up his hand?'
'What do you think?'
'And Katherine?'
'Beyond the fact that, yes, the bag's hers and she hasn't the foggiest how the drugs got inside, she hasn't said a thing.'
'And you reckon holding her overnight might make her think twice, drop him in it, this Summers, change her mind?'
'Somebody does.'
'Somebody?'
'Bland. DI.'
'Then he doesn't know her very well.'
Resnick held Elder's gaze. 'How well do you, Frank? Driving round in broad daylight with a suspected drug dealer, sizeable amount of a class A drug in her possession.'
Katherine lay curled on the narrow bed, knees drawn up and pressed against the cell wall, the collar of her oyster-coloured jumper pulled up close to her neck. If there had been a belt with her tan jeans it had been punctiliously removed. Her feet were bare.
'Kate?' His voice was loud in the fetid, airless room. 'Katherine…'
A slight tensing of her muscles and nothing more. A tray of food, uneaten, lay nearby on the floor.
'Talk to me.'
A silence, unbroken, and then, muffled by her arm, so that Elder had to strain to hear: 'What for?'
'I want to help.'
She laughed then, a harsh sound that raised her head and broke into a jittering cough. Elder moved closer and sat, perched, near the end of the bed; when his leg inadvertently touched her foot, she pulled it, sharp, away.
'You want to help,' she said, not looking at him, her voice small and dry.
Times he had sat like that when she was a child, four, rising five; his hand would touch her cheek and, as he spoke and said her name, she would slowly stroke his lower arm, her fingers smooth and warm and small. His eyes smarted with the beginnings of tears.
'Of course I do,' he said.
The laugh again, harder this time. 'You mean like you did before?'
Elder flinched as if he had been hit.
For an instant he must have looked away, because suddenly he was aware of her staring at him, her gaze, the awful flatness of her eyes.
'Katherine…' he began.
But by then she had turned again towards the wall, head buried in her arms.
Elder stayed where he was, not moving, awkward, listening to her breathe. When the custody sergeant called time, Elder bent over her once more, stopped short of kissing her, stood and turned aside, the sound of the door closing behind him like the clenching of a fist.
She's alive and you're some great hero, your picture all over the papers, all over the screen every time you turn on the bloody TV.
Joanne's words.
29
Martyn Miles answered the door. 'She's in a bad way, Frank. Shaky at best.'
Joanne was sitting at one corner of the settee, legs pulled up under her, face drawn, a half-empty wineglass in her hand. A cigarette was smouldering in an ashtray on the floor. 'You've seen Katherine?' she said.
'Yes.'
'How was she?'
'Confused, angry, upset. Take your pick.'
'When I went to see her, she kept her face to the wall. She wouldn't tell me a thing.'
'The drugs they claim she had in her bag,' Miles said. 'Planted, like as not.'
'Martyn,' Joanne said. 'Please stay out of this.'
He carried on as if she hadn't spoken, as if he hadn't heard. 'No offence intended, Frank, not to you, but the police, you know what they're like, some of them.'
'Martyn,' Joanne said. 'I'm warning you…'
'All right, okay. Calm down, why don't you? Just calm down.'
Ash spilled down the front of Joanne's dress and she brushed it casually away. 'Heroin, Frank,' she said.
