Quentin Tarantino screenplay every day. '
Terrific, Susan thought, blood and gore and bad seventies pop songs, continuing to stir the meringue as he relayed the events at the hotel.
'You are coming to the show this afternoon?' Tyrell asked.
'Oh, yes, I expect so.'
'You should. Aside from one screening at the Electric in 1982, Dark Corridor hasn't been shown in this country since the fifties. And Curtis himself hasn't set eyes on a print of Cry Murder since he was still in the States.'
'Really?' Susan said with barely feigned interest. The meringue was just stiff enough now to cover the pie. She could have got into an argument about rarity not always equalling quality if the damn films were any good, why hadn't some enterprising programmer shown them? – but she lacked the energy.
Umpteen eleven- to eighteen-year- olds, nine till four, Monday to Friday, she knew well enough to reserve her strength for what really mattered.
Back at the hotel, Lynn Kellogg and Kevin Naylor were questioning as many of the staff and guests as they could find. Resnick had phoned Skelton and arranged to meet him back at the station to make his report; he had promised to talk with Cathy again later. Frank sat in the chair before a silent television, watching a ball game that, for all its apparent similarities to baseball, he just didn't understand.
Cathy Jordan lay on the bed, fully dressed, staring up at the ceiling with blank, blue eyes.
Thirty-four 'I guess when I married Frank, that was more or less my last chance.
Kids, I mean. Oh, we talked about it, back and forth, you know. Frank he would have been keen, keener than me, if you want to know the truth, but, well, the time never did seem right. This book to be finished, that book; another damn tour. In the end, I suppose the idea just ran out of steam. '
Cathy Jordan had wanted to get away, clear her head, and Resnick had brought her to Wollaton Park, green slopes and a golf course, ornamental gardens round an old ancestral pile and down below where deer were grazing, the lake they were walking around.
'You have kids?' Cathy asked.
Resnick shook his head.
'But you're married, right?'
'I was. Not any more.'
'I'm sorry.' She laughed.
'I say that, sorry, automatically, you know, without thinking. Truth is, half the friends I've got are divorced and most of the others wish they were, so…'
They emerged between brightly coloured rhododendron bushes at the far end of the lake, a middle-aged couple walking amongst other couples who were exercising their dogs, simply enjoying the sunshine. Here and there, men sat transfixed beside fishing rods, immovable as stone.
'Mostly, now, I never think about it. Kids, I mean. Then something happens like today well, never like today, 192 not, thank God, exactly like that and somehow it starts up again…' Her voice trailed away and it was a good few moments before either of them spoke. A pair of Canada geese skidded noisily on to the water, scattering blue.
'I guess it gets easier, right? I mean, the point finally has to come, you accept it: I am not going to be a parent.'
Resnick shrugged.
'Maybe,' he said, not believing it was so. Even now it would lurch at him, unsuspected, out from the darkest corner of the house or through the glare of a midsummer street the urge to have a child of his own.
'Well, I tell you,' Cathy was saying,
'I'm from a big family and whenever we get together, nephews and nieces every which way, I get home after one of those things and I'm glad of the rest.' She laughed.
'I've got three sisters, five cousins, seems they pop another one out whenever they stop to take a breath.'
Resnick smiled and together they walked on past the lake's edge and up the slow incline towards the Hall. By the time they had turned through the gateway past the stables and the small agricultural museum, it was time to drive the short distance back to the city.
'You going to be okay?' Resnick asked. They were standing beside the car in the hotel forecourt, motor idling.
'Mollie seemed concerned about this interview you have to do.'
Cathy gestured dismissively with her hand.
'I'll be fine. And listen, thanks for this afternoon. Most people wouldn't have taken the time.
I'm only sorry I wasn't better company. '
'That isn't true.'
She threw back her head and laughed.
'Along with everything else, I'm fucking premenstrual!'
Resnick watched her walk towards the doors.
'Take care,' he said, then climbed back in the car and drove to the station.
Millington's wife was spending the afternoon rehearsing The Merry Widow and he had come in to the office in an open-neck shirt and his third-best sports jacket, the one with the leather-patched sleeves, and was threading his way, painstakingly, back through the statements mat pertained to Peter Farleigh's murder. Something whose importance they had failed to grasp, a connection they had missed if it were there, so far it had eluded him.
'Call for you from the wife,' Millington said, seeing Resnick walk in.
Resnick's stomach went cold; without reason, his first thought was of Elaine.
'Ex-wife, that is,' Millington went on.
'Widow. Farleigh's.'
'Sarah,' Resnick said.
'Yes, that's it. Wants to know, once the inquest is over, will we be prepared to release the body?'
Resnick's breathing was back to normal.
'I'll talk to her, thanks.'
He looked down at the material on the sergeant's desk.
'Anything?'
Millington shook his head.
'About as enlightening as shovelling shit.'
Resnick nodded and moved away.
'Boss.' He turned again at the sound of Divine's voice; Mark coming into the room with a slice of part-eaten ham and pineapple pizza folding around his hand. Lunch, Resnick thought, I knew there was something.
'Had a bell from Gamett. Says she's going to have another go at Kinoulton's mate later, reckons as how she knows more'n she's letting on.'
'You think she's right?'
'Could be. Let's face it some bugger's got to know something.'
'Okay,' Resnick said.
'Keep on top of it.' Sharon Gamett, Divine thought, I shouldn't mind. Tilting back his head as be lifted the pointed end of pizza to his mouth, he wandered over towards his desk.
In the corner near the kettle, Resnick found the remnants of a packet of chocolate digestives and dunked them in lukewarm tea. He was considering phoning Sarah Farleigh, still wondering exactly what he might say, when Kevin Naylor and Lynn Kellogg got back from Cathy Jordan's hotel.
Naylor had talked to the room service staff on duty, the young woman who had prepared Cathy Jordan's breakfast tray, the man who had taken it up to her room, knocked, received no reply and left it on the trolley outside the door. He had talked to the maid who had been changing bed linen and towels on that floor. Everyone had followed procedure; no one had noticed anything amiss. Unless one of the staff were lying, and Naylor didn't think this was the case, the most likely scenario was that the macabre 'baby' had been exchanged for the proper contents of the basket while the trolley was outside the room. Which raised the question since, presumably, the thing had required planning, and since whoever was responsible could hardly have been sure the breakfast trolley
