Darkness, Darkness Read Online Free PDF

years, having run the CID team out of Canning Circus, dealing with major crimes up to and including murder. But the force, not for the first time, had been in the throes of reorganisation, and though, rumour had it, Resnick had been offered a further promotion that would have kept him in the thick of things, for whatever reasons, he had declined.
    ‘Charlie?’ one of his contemporaries had told Catherine when she’d enquired. ‘Seen writing on bloody wall. Seen the future and it’s bright young things like you with university degrees comin’ out their backsides, not the likes of him an’ me. Dinosaurs, that’s what we are. Least that’s what top brass think. Charlie’s just takin’ hisself out the firing line afore they stick him in front of it blindfold.’
    ‘Charlie,’ said another. ‘Cosyin’ up with that young woman out of Homicide, lucky sod. Someone to look after him in his old age.’
    It hadn’t worked out that way. On her way home late from a meeting in London, Lynn Kellogg had been shot and fatally wounded outside the house she and Resnick latterly had shared. Catherine had been attached to the team that had investigated her murder.
    Whenever she had seen Resnick around that time, he had seemed like a husk, empty and dry, scoured out. Only more recently, on the few occasions they’d met, had the life seemed to have bled slowly back into him, the light behind his eyes fired with the occasional spark.
    ‘Charlie,’ she said when she called, ‘you wouldn’t have time for a coffee, I suppose?’
    They sat, cradling takeout cups from the Pelham Street deli, on one of the benches overlooking the Old Market Square. The square remodelled like so much else now, redesigned.
A fluid and relaxing public area whose organic form echoes the classic formality . . .
To Resnick’s eyes, they had stripped it of whatever had made it interesting – the flower beds, the fountains, the bandstand – and left a vast flat open space without character or distinction.
    But the toddlers splashing their way in wellies across the shallow, flowing water terrace at one end of the square seemed happy enough, despite the cold. And the people, young and old, sharing the benches that spread out in either direction, were content, apparently, to sit there and eat their lunch, chat, or simply stare. Crotchety, that’s what he was getting. Even Lynn had said that. Old before his time.
    ‘You okay, Charlie?’ Catherine asked.
    ‘Fine, why?’
    ‘You seemed lost in thought.’
    There had been a brass band Resnick was remembering – years back now – youths mostly, a scattering of old heads to keep them in line. The conductor standing out front, occasionally taking up his cornet to solo. The odd march, a bit of light classical, songs from the shows. Two youngsters, the only ones not in uniform, a boy and a girl, had sat huddled together in the back row; the pair of them scanning the music, waiting their turn. At the crucial moment, instruments to their lips, the wind had whipped the girl’s music from its stand, and she had sat there, numbed and silent, while the lad had scrabbled for it on the floor.
    ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’
    Resnick, soft bugger, had sat watching, tears in his eyes.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Not important.’
    ‘And the job? How’s the new job?’
    Resnick forced a wry smile.
    ‘I was wondering if you might fancy something a little more challenging?’
    He looked at her. ‘Such as?’
    ‘A woman’s body found, long buried . . .’
    ‘Bledwell Vale, you mean?’
    ‘The inquiry, it’s gone to our unit. I’m SIO.’
    ‘Congratulations.’
    ‘Picard handed it to me on a plate.’
    ‘He’ll have his reasons. Good ones, I don’t doubt.’
    Catherine’s turn to smile. ‘I’m going to need help, Charlie.’
    ‘I’m not sure . . .’
    ‘Real help. I think – I don’t know why – but I think they might just be hanging me out to dry.’
    ‘Who, Picard?’
    ‘Picard,