Flesh And Blood (10 page)

Donald was remembering Irene’s husband, Neville, the look of fierce contempt on his face the last time they had met.

‘I daresay Irene might persuade your mother to come down and visit before too long. How would you feel about that?’

Donald didn’t say.

‘Shane?’

‘Yeah, it’d be all right, I suppose.’

Donald’s mother hadn’t been to see him in prison more than half a dozen times, Pam realised. Perhaps she was ashamed, ashamed at what he’d done. Felt herself in some way to blame.

‘There’s just one more thing I wanted to mention,’ Pam said. ‘Make you aware of. One or two of the local papers, near where Lucy Padmore lived, they’ve been carrying stories for a while now about your release. It’s mostly been pretty hostile, I’m afraid. Lucy’s father, he’s made threats, what he’d do if he found out where you are.’

Donald’s hand was at his mouth, teeth tugging a small flap of pink skin from near the edge of his thumb nail.

‘If it doesn’t get taken up nationally,’ Pam said, ‘and I can’t see any reason why it should, there’s no reason anyone here should know. But if I were you, I’d be careful who you talk to, say as little as possible about how you offended, just in case. All right?’

A quick nod.

Pam pushed her papers together and dropped the folder down into her bag.

‘I’ll see you in my office, then, Shane, a week today. Eleven thirty. The details are on my card.’

When Donald left, Gribbens was hovering outside. Once she’d gone over the salient details of the interview, Pam needed a few words about one of the other residents, and then she could be on her way. A quick sandwich and then back to the office, a case conference on a habitual shoplifter pencilled in for two. Before any of that she needed a cigarette. When she’d agreed to share the house in Hebden with a rabid non-smoker, she’d embraced it as an opportunity to give up. The packet of Marlboro Lights in her glove compartment was only there for emergencies. A quarter of a mile along the road, she pulled in and switched off the engine, wound down the front windows midway and lit her first cigarette in almost two months. What had disturbed her most about the interview with Shane Donald was not that for most of the time he had refused to look her in the eye, but that the one time his eyes had settled on her face his mouth had twisted into a smile.

Most crimes against children, Elder knew, were perpetrated within the family. Uncle. Step-parent. Mum or dad. Trevor Blacklock had been interviewed on six separate occasions inside a week. Someone had had an instinct, a feeling, but Blacklock had never been cautioned, never been charged.

The house was in a small crescent, part of a newish estate near the western edge of Tamworth, garages and front lawns, semi-detached. The rose bed by the fence looked well-established; tubs either side of the front door held geraniums, white and a mixture of reds. Elder had telephoned the previous evening and been greeted by Trevor Blacklock’s brusque ‘Hello’. At the first mention of Susan’s name the line had gone dead. When Elder had dialled again, moments later, the phone had been disconnected.

By now, a little after ten, he assumed Blacklock to be at work; the sliding door to the garage had been pulled a third of the way back down, no sign of a car inside. Tins of paint were neatly stacked along one side; on the other, a selection of garden tools were clipped to the wall. In some neighbourhoods, Elder thought, those would have been liberated by now.

A woman’s face showed for a moment at one of the front windows, peering out.

Elder walked up to the door and rang the bell.

She was small, slight, almost bird-like, mid-thirties, a cap of dark hair and brown, nervous eyes.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance Trevor’s still here?’ Elder said.

‘Oh, no. He’s been gone a good couple of hours. More.’

‘Not one for a lie-in, then?’

For an instant, she smiled. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. If he’s not in by eight, the garage’s hollering down the phone.’

‘Shame,’ Elder said. ‘I was just calling on the off chance.’

‘You’re a friend, then?’

‘More a friend of Helen’s, really.’

‘Helen?’ And then, ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

‘I could always call by where he works. Just to say hello.’

‘Trevor and Helen, they’ve not really been in touch…’

‘No, I know. A shame, isn’t it? If you’ll just give me a few directions, I’ll be on my way.’

There was a child’s bike, Elder noticed, leaning up against the hall doorway behind where she stood.

♦

The showroom took up most of the frontage, shiny new cars with men in shiny suits patrolling in between; potted plants with shiny leaves. Reception was off to one side, a shallow curved desk behind which a brittle blonde talked briskly into a telephone, tapping at a computer keyboard with her free hand.

Elder waited until, with an expression of distaste, she set the receiver back down. ‘Some people,’ she said, ‘expect you to work miracles.’

Almost immediately the phone rang again and she put the caller on hold.

‘Trevor Blacklock,’ Elder said. ‘I was wondering where I could find him?’

‘Parts. Through that door there, round past the first bay and it’s on your right.’ A pink nail pointed the way.

A framed certificate was attached to the wall: Trevor Blacklock had gained the gold standard in Parts Management in the company’s national training scheme. Blacklock himself stood behind the counter wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt, his name taped to the breast pocket, just in case there should be any doubt. He was fifty, Elder thought, fifty-two; they were of an age.

‘Yes, sir?’ Blacklock said. ‘How can I help?’ The fingers of his left hand toyed with the computer keyboard, ready to begin the search.

‘I wanted to ask a few questions,’ Elder said. ‘About Susan.’

Blacklock stepped backwards and both hands gripped the counter hard. ‘How the hell did you get here? How did you know where I was?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘All right, I asked. I asked your wife. Partner. Whichever it is.’

‘You’ve no right.’

‘Look, I don’t see why you’re getting so het up. Ten minutes of your time, that’s all I want.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ve no bloody right.’

‘Listen,’ Elder said, his voice level and even, trying to bring things back under control. ‘I’m not a reporter. I’m not the police.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘Then you know I was involved with the investigation when Susan disappeared.’

‘I know you lied.’

‘Never knowingly.’

‘
I’ll find her
, that’s what you said.’

‘I know.’

‘So is that what you’ve done? Is that why you’re here now?’

‘No.’

‘Then get out of here and leave me alone. I’ve nothing to say.’

A mechanic came in for some front brake pads; a customer wanted replacement wiper blades for an N-reg Vauxhall Corsa. Elder turned on his heel and left.

♦

He gave it one more try that evening. The six o’clock news would just have been finishing and dinner, in all probability, standing ready by the microwave or simmering on the stove.

It was the wife who came to the door, brisk and businesslike now, a little flour adhering here and there to her hands.

‘My husband doesn’t have anything to say to you…’

And then he was there himself, standing behind her, changed out of his work shirt into a comfortable check, nothing comfortable in the tightness round his mouth and eyes.

‘What happened to his daughter all those years ago is something Trevor will always regret. But that was in another life. His life now is here with us. I only hope you can understand.’

It sounded like a prepared statement, a release for the press. And as if to round things off, the perfect newscast moment, a girl of seven or eight, the very image of her mother, appeared in the doorway between them.

‘Daisy,’ the woman said, ‘please go back inside.’

Instead the girl leaned against Blacklock and, automatically, his arm went about her, fingers stroking her hair.

They were still standing there when Elder climbed into his car and switched on the ignition, slid it into gear and began reversing away.

‘Neutral ground then,’ Maureen Prior had said when Elder had phoned and suggested meeting in the Arboretum, the inner city park that stretched across the centre of Nottingham, from the eastern edge of the general cemetery and the Mansfield Road.

It was not Maureen that Elder met first, though, but Charlie Resnick, Detective Inspector, hands in the pockets of the shapeless beige raincoat that he wore in all weathers; Resnick making his way down past the circular bandstand towards the exit on to Waverley Street. From there he could walk up through the cemetery to Canning Circus and the station where his CID team had its office.

‘Charlie.’

‘Frank.’

The two men stood at roughly equal height, an inch or so above six foot, Resnick the heavier by a good stone and a half.

‘So,’ Resnick said, ‘how’s retirement then?’

‘Not so bad.’

Resnick looked unconvinced.

‘You must have your thirty years in by now, Charlie. You should try it. See if it suits.’

Resnick shook his head. ‘I’ll soldier on a bit longer yet.’

‘Die in harness, eh?’

‘Hopefully not that.’

There was a smear of something yellow, Elder noticed, that had dried on the front of Resnick’s shirt, close alongside his tie.

‘Devon, isn’t it?’ Resnick said. ‘That you’ve hived off to.’

‘Cornwall.’

‘What brings you back here, then?’ Resnick asked.

‘Oh, you know…’ Elder gestured vaguely.

Resnick nodded. ‘Ah, well, best be getting on. Good to see you again, Frank.’

‘Charlie. You, too.’

Elder stood and watched him walk away, still light on his feet for such a heavy man. He’d not quite disappeared from sight when Maureen came down the main path from the rose garden, striding briskly.

‘Talking over old times?’

‘Something like that.’

Maureen nodded. ‘I just worked with him the once. Liked him. A good copper.’

‘I’m surprised he’s still up at Canning Circus, still a DI.’

‘Not as if he didn’t have the chance. Chief Inspector, Major Crime Unit, back when they were setting up. What I heard, more or less handed to him on a plate.’

‘And he turned it down?’

‘Too much admin, most likely. Paperwork. Still likes to get out and about, does Charlie. Get his hands dirty.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘Besides, you remember that DC of his, Kellogg, Lynn Kellogg?’

Elder thought perhaps he did: round-faced, soft-spoken, stockily built, late-twenties.

‘They got it together a few years back, just about when the Crime Unit was being set up. Kellogg was in line for a sergeant’s post. Could have proved awkward, the pair of them, you know…’

Elder knew. He’d seen that sort of thing happen and fall apart.

‘Upshot of it was Resnick turned the job down, opted to stay where he was. Kellogg made the jump to Major Crime. This was before the unit was split up on to two sites. Done all right for herself, too. Inspector now, acting up, out at Carlton.’

The other site, where Elder and Maureen had been stationed, was some thirty minutes’ drive out of the city at Mansfield, now in a new building which resembled nothing as much as a second-rate hotel.

‘And they’re still together?’ Elder asked. ‘Resnick and Kellogg?’

‘As far as I know,’ Maureen said, and then, seeing Elder’s rueful grin, ‘What? What’s so funny?’

‘Resnick. I’d never have thought he was the sort.’

‘What sort’s that?’

‘You know. Younger women. Bit of intrigue. Romance.’

‘You don’t approve?’

‘No, it’s not that,’ Elder said, though, in truth, he was less than sure. ‘It’s more I always took him for a bit of a sad bastard, really.’

‘Maybe that’s part of the appeal.’ Maureen grinned. ‘That and being cuddly. Not like some I could mention.’

‘Let’s walk,’ Elder said briskly. ‘I wanted to talk about Shane Donald.’

♦

There was not a great deal new that Maureen had to say. Both local papers were continuing to run the story of Donald’s release, refusing to let it die. For their part, Lucy Padmore’s parents had collected several thousand signatures demanding statutory life imprisonment for all murderers, life meaning life. David Padmore was still telling anyone who would listen just what he would do to Donald should he get the chance.

‘How long do you think it will be before the whole affair goes public?’ Elder asked. ‘Plastered all over the tabloids. Reporters doing their damnedest to track Donald down.’

‘You never know, he might be lucky.’

Elder didn’t think good luck and Shane Donald were acquainted, never mind the best of friends.

‘How did you get on up in Yorkshire?’’ Maureen said. ‘Manage to turn up anything new?’

He ran down his progress for her, such as it was, the largely abortive visit to Susan Blacklock’s father, the couple of friends from her old drama group he was still trying to track down.

For a while afterwards Maureen was thoughtful, saying nothing.

‘What?’ Elder asked eventually. They were standing towards the eastern edge of the park, near the battery of guns that had been brought back from the Crimea.

‘You don’t think there’s a danger she’ll get traumatised all over again, Susan’s mother, you dredging this all up

now?’

‘Of course I do.’

They walked on, under the tunnel beneath Addison Street and up the other side.

‘You didn’t come down just for this,’ Maureen said. ‘We could have had this conversation on the phone.’