Widows

‘Fuller, my office pronto, bring the reports. Andrews, get me some coffee! Alice, I want those forensic reports back today!’ Resnick didn’t actually catch sight of anyone he shouted at — but he knew they were there and he knew he’d get what he wanted. Reaching his own office, he took his key, opened his door, entered and kicked it closed behind him, causing the already cracked glass to shudder.

Alice hurtled out of her office clutching the requested forensic reports, just as Andrews collided with Fuller in the corridor.

‘The coffee machine’s broken!’ she said.

The color drained from Andrews’s face. This wouldn’t go down well with Resnick. He scampered down the corridor in search of another one.

It was already 9:30 a.m., Fuller had been waiting since nine for his orders and, feeling tetchy, he straightened his already straight tie and tapped on Resnick’s door.

‘Enter!’ Resnick bellowed.

Resnick’s office was in its usual state of confusion. Every available surface was crammed with used coffee cups, paperwork and ashtrays full of discarded cigarette stubs; even the floor had piles of files stacked in lines. The drawers in the filing cabinet were open because they were crammed too full. Resnick stood in the center of the chaos smoking his tenth cigarette of the day, coughing his lungs up and reading a file at the same time.

Alice began sorting out the mess on his desk. She worked fast, tipping cigarette stubs and ash into the bin and collecting screwed up bits of paper from all over the room. She was there to restore order to Resnick’s disordered life so that, each day, he could see the forest for the trees. Without her, he’d simply drown in files and cigarette ash and piss everyone off even more than he already did. Alice had been with Resnick a long time and she knew the torment he’d been through; she’d been right by his side through every moment of his investigation, she’d seen him in those quiet vulnerable moments late at night and she understood exactly what he had lost when Rawlins set him up and then grassed him to the papers. Above all else, he lost his dignity and standing as an officer — and that was impossible to get back no matter how hard he tried. Most people in the station thought Alice was an angel to cope with Resnick’s mood swings and foul habits on a daily basis, but she loved working for him. He went from role model to embarrassment in the blink of an eye and, although everyone else seemed to have forgotten his spectacular early years in the force, she never would. She would be loyal till the end. And she was the only person he ever said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to.

‘Alice is taking my rubbish down to the incinerator to burn, Fuller,’ Resnick said. ‘I don’t allow cleaners in here as things may go missing, be seen by the wrong people or get into the wrong hands.’ Fuller blushed, wondering if Resnick was implying something.

As Alice cleared a space on the desk for the phone, it rang.

‘What?’ barked Resnick. He listened, growing redder by the minute and then slammed the phone down. ‘Criminal Records,’ he spat. ‘Up in arms cos I’ve “removed files without permission and without filling in the proper forms.”’ Resnick threw a crumpled piece of paper at Fuller. ‘Fill that in and send it back to the fuckin’ arseholes! And get the rest of the lads in here!’

As Fuller left the office to summon the rest of Resnick’s men, Andrews arrived with the coffees. Resnick grabbed one, lit another cigarette and began his daily routine of filling his newly emptied and cleaned ashtray. Within seconds, Fuller was back with Detectives Hawkes and Richmond. As everyone settled, Fuller completed the backdated records request sheet and handed it to Alice; she’d go down there in person and smooth things over... again.

Resnick pulled up his chair, plonked himself down in front of his lads and spread out the contents of a file onto his clean and tidy desk. Next, he opened an envelope from forensics and tipped out a bunch of large color photographs of the dead bodies from the raid, horribly mutilated, their faces burned and contorted. The worst of them showed the charred remains of Harry Rawlins, unrecognizable as a human body, apart from the bit with the watch on it.

‘She didn’t need to have him cremated, did she?’ Resnick quipped as he laid out the photographs on his desk. Leaning back in his chair he noted that Andrews looked shocked. Fuller wore his usual arrogant, unperturbed expression. Fuller was a good officer, but there was something about him that got right up Resnick’s nose; even now he was sitting there as if he had a red-hot poker up his arse. Andrews, on the other hand, who was perched on the end of a desk because he couldn’t find a chair, was an idiot. Hawkes and Richmond he knew of old; good, hard-working coppers but nothing exciting. Since returning to work from suspension, the top brass had not been so willing to entertain his officer selection requests, so he’d had to take the ones he was given.