Widows

Resnick eased his chair forward, opened the previous night’s reports and glanced over them. He lit yet another cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out toward Fuller. Tapping the report, he picked up an enlarged photo of Rawlins’s forearm and wrist watch. ‘Says here, Fuller, you think we’re spending too much time on this Rawlins business. That correct? That what you think?’

Fuller bristled and looked to Andrews for support. Resnick was on him like a flash.

‘Oi, Fuller, it’s you I’m talking to, not him!’ He stood up. ‘You think I’m wasting your time do you, Fuller? Well, let me tell you this, you narrow minded little...’ Resnick stopped himself from swearing and leaned his clenched fists on his desk to steady his anger. ‘We’ve got the case of the century, right here, and if you can’t see that then you’re even more stupid than I think you are.’ Fuller rolled his eyes and Resnick flew into a rage. ‘“Here we go again!” is that what you’re thinking? You’re all told within minutes of joining up, aren’t you? “That’s him. That’s the poor sod who was framed!” Castrated more like and who did it to me, eh?’

Fuller didn’t like being the target of Resnick’s anger. ‘One of Harry Rawlins’s mob apparently, sir,’ he said, through tight, angry lips.

‘That’s right. And not one of Harry Rawlins’s mob does so much as fart without the nod from him. It was Rawlins that did me in! And now it’s my turn to get him by the balls and wipe him out.’

Fuller looked Resnick straight in his raging eyes. ‘It’ll be a bit difficult now the man’s dead.’ The silence in the room and the stare between Resnick and Fuller seemed to last forever. In Fuller’s opinion, Resnick was a wreck and a has-been. A bright boy, groomed for promotion, when Fuller was told he was being moved to work under Detective Inspector Resnick, he’d felt shafted. Everything about the man annoyed him: his scuffed, filthy shoes, his stained shirts, the constant smell of BO, his cigarettes and yellow smoke-stained fingers... Fuller had decided he’d try and sniff out anything he could on him. It shouldn’t be difficult: everyone knew the fat man’s history. Mud sticks, Fuller thought to himself.

Resnick rammed his hands deep into his pockets as though restraining himself from thumping this insolent subordinate. When he spoke again he was calm and quiet. ‘I’m not talking about Rawlins himself, I’m talking about his system. His ledgers... which I’m well aware you don’t believe even exist, Fuller.’

Pacing up and down behind his desk, Resnick spoke fast, spitting out his words while simultaneously gulping smoke into his lungs and blowing it out through his mouth and nose.

Resnick slapped file after file of unsolved robberies onto his desk. ‘The A3 Raid, the Euston Bypass Raid, the Blackwall Tunnel Raid.’ His stubby finger prodded each file as it landed. ‘Take a look at the formation on the suspect vehicles, Fuller, each one’s identical, and each time the men got away. We’ve got nothing on any of them, not a single bloody thing.’ Resnick’s tirade was interrupted by a coughing fit, the jowls on his face shaking, a puce color rising upward from his neck. ‘An’ you can bet your sweet life, all of ’em, every single one, was instigated by Harry Rawlins! And do you know why I think that?’ Resnick paused, staring daggers at Fuller, waiting for the arrogant prick to say something smart. Wisely, Fuller chose to say nothing. ‘Cat got your tongue, Fuller?’ Resnick taunted. ‘Let me help you out. I think Harry Rawlins was behind every single one of these unsolved armed robberies, because the MO is exactly the fucking same as the job that blew him sky high! And I also think that all of these robberies will be detailed in his ledgers.’ Fuller’s greedy eyes flicked from the mess of files on the desk, to Resnick’s red, sweaty face. Resnick smiled. ‘That’s right. Dozens of crimes, just waiting to be solved. How would that look on your prissy bloody starched and ironed CV, eh?’

Resnick waddled over to a whiteboard with a sheet over it and jerked his head. Like a bunch of schoolboys, they hurriedly clustered around him.

‘We solve one, we solve them all.’ Resnick announced as he pulled the sheet away like a magician, revealing a detailed drawing and crime scene photographs of the failed robbery in the Strand underpass. With a red felt-tipped pen Resnick ringed a picture of a bread truck. ‘A truck like this was seen by a witness in front of the security wagon.’ Next he ringed the raiders’ Ford Escort van. ‘This is the van that exploded, killing the three men inside.’ Jabbing the circled bread truck with his finger, he hammered his theory home. ‘In every single one of these robberies—’ Resnick pointed to the scattered files on his desk — ‘they use that same formation: four men. The solo driver up front — that’s the man we want. He’s our link to everything else.’