by John Harvey
“Are you sure you’ve been doing those exercises I showed you?” Holly asked, driving a thumb into the space between collar-bone and shoulder-blade.
“Ummph,” Grabianski mouthed into white cotton.
“Every day?”
“Uum.”
“Well, when we’re through I’ll show you another one for the lungs. Forefinger and thumb together, big breath, throw your arms wide, and come forward hard on your bent front leg. It’s good to do in front of an open window.”
Do that in front of an open window, Grabianski was thinking, and I just might throw myself through.
Seventeen
“How many words d’you know for vagina, Charlie?”
Resnick spluttered with surprise and set the cold penne arrabiata he was snacking on aside.
Hannah was sitting in her customary position, feet drawn up beneath her on the settee, lamp angled down behind her head, reading. For a change, no music was playing. The house was quiet, sealed in by the dark outside.
“I suppose,” Resnick said, “you’ve a good reason for asking?”
“Prudish, Charlie?”
“Probably.”
After several months of sleeping together, they both knew that to be true.
“This book I’m reading.” Hannah held up a slender hardback, the head and bare shoulders of a young woman filtered through blue on the cover, and across her skin, in red and lower case, the title, in the cut. “The woman in it, the one telling the story, she teaches English …”
“Like you.”
“Not at all like me. At least, not a lot. For one thing, she’s working in New York. Anyway, she’s writing this book, academic, about slang, different dialects. Every time she hears a new word, a different usage, she notes it down.”
“Like a word for vagina?”
“Exactly.”
“And there are a lot of those?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I mean in this book.”
“A lot.”
“Doesn’t sound like your usual kind of thing.”
“I’m reading it for this day school of Jane’s, Healing the Cut.”
“That’s what it’s called?”
“I thought you knew.”
“If I did, I forgot. But that’s where the name comes from, that book?”
“Yes.”
Resnick nodded. “And that’s one of those words, cut, the ones you were asking about?”
“Yes.”
With a sigh, Resnick turned back to his supper, broke off a piece of bread, and dipped it into the sauce. “What’s it like?” he asked a few minutes later. “I mean, is it any good?”
“Yes. I mean, she can clearly write …”
“But?”
“There’s so much violence. Not up front, but the threat of it, always there in the background. Women being violated, awful things happening to them. And she seems-the woman in the story-she seems attracted to it, almost. Excited.”
“You don’t like that?”
Hannah was thoughtful. “I don’t trust myself for liking it.”
“No one says you have to finish it.”
Hannah smiled. “I want to find out what happens.”
“Your friend, Jane,” Resnick asked later as they were on their way up to bed, “that business with her husband, you haven’t heard anything else?”
“No, not a thing.”
Jane was sitting in the dining room, one of those awful bloody paintings Alex had insisted upon buying staring down at her from the opposite wall. Her watch, which she had taken off and laid on the table, told her it was not so many minutes short of twelve o’clock. Folders and papers and books were scattered in ragged piles across polished oak. Of course, she would be tired in the morning, but at least now, with Alex in bed, she had peace and quiet. And the work had to be done.
She was just thinking about going into the kitchen, making another cup of coffee to keep her going, when she heard the faint creak of the stair.
Holding her breath, she tensed for the opening of the door, but after a pause, the footsteps continued on along the passageway. The sudden jet of water onto metal, the opening of a cupboard door, dull and low, the closing of the fridge. Jane allowed herself a smile: two minds, for a change, with a similar thought.
Alex would do this when he couldn’t sleep, fix himself a warm drink and sit up in bed, pillows propped around him, reading some research article on dentistry with the World Service faintly churning in the background: our correspondent in Delhi, our correspondent in Dakar.
Alex surprised her by coming in.
“Still at it?”
“What does it look like?”
“Here, I thought you might like this.” On a small tray, he had set out a cup and saucer, coffee, milk, an arc of biscuits. “I made decaf. I thought it best.”
“Thank you.”
“The least I could do.”
He moved away-but only a pace-and stood behind her, Jane aware of his closeness, his breathing; on the page beneath her eyes words jumped and danced, suddenly unintelligible.
“Go on, then. Don’t let it get cold.”
“In a minute.”
“It won’t be the same.”
With almost exaggerated care, Jane poured the coffee from its china jug and added milk.
“No sugar?”
“You know I don’t …”
“This late at night, I thought for the energy maybe.”
“No.”
“No, of course. Sweet enough.” She drank without tasting. “Alex …”
“Mmm?”
“Please don’t stand there.”
“What? I’m in your light?”
“No, it’s just …”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. It doesn’t matter, really.”
“Good.”
Blinking her way into focus, Jane fought to concentrate. At her back, Alex started humming a tune, something vaguely classical and then, as if realizing what he was doing, abruptly stopped. Reaching forward, he grazed the knuckles of his right hand gently across her cheek.
Stifling a shout, Jane froze.
Slowly, Alex’s fingers moved down inside her top, turning beneath her arm until they were touching her breast.
“Alex, what are you doing?”
“I should have thought you’d have known.”
“Why are you doing this now?”
“You shouldn’t have to ask.”
With a sigh, Jane closed her eyes and leaned forward, trapping his hand between the edge of the table and her breast. Angling his head, Alex kissed the nape of her neck, ran the tip of his tongue around the curling edges of her ear.
“Come to bed,” he said.
“Alex, I can’t …”
“Come to bed.”
Shaking her head, she straightened her back and shook him free. Black silk robe, bare feet, Alex stood looking at her, arms folded now across his chest.
“Alex, I’m sorry …”
“Yes.”
“I have to finish this.”
“Yes.”
“Really, I …”
“Jane, I understand.”
Slowly, she began to turn away. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“That’s okay.”
When she heard him move toward the door and ease it open, one of the knots in her stomach slipped free.
“Jane …”
“Mmm?”
“When you come up, I’ll be waiting …”
“Charlie!”
At the sound of Hannah’s voice, Resnick broke from sleep, pushing himself up on one arm, Hannah already sitting up, bent forward, her body ploughed in sweat.
“Oh, Charlie!”
“What? What is it?”
Her hair was lank and damp and dark against her face.
“What happened?”
She grasped one of his hands between hers and squeezed. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? It doesn’t sound like
nothing.”
“It was just a dream. A stupid dream.” Lowering herself back down, she kissed him on the cheek. “Just hold me a little, I’ll be all right.” And hold her he did, arms warm around her, drawing out the clammy coldness of her skin.
“Charlie,” she said again a while later, speaking out into the darkness; but by then he was lost in sleep.
Eighteen
The face on the fax, as such faces tend to be, was blurred and darkened out of recognition. The details, printed below, were economical and sparse. The body had been spotted by a night worker on his way home, pedaling his bicycle along the towpath of the canal. Something yellow puffed up in the water, like a piece of tarpaulin, an old sack. These observations, grubbily poetic, did not find their way onto the fax. Extent of injuries, date, time, presumed cause of death. Yellow anorak aside, she had been wearing blue jeans, a turquoise polo shirt, gray canvas shoes. No purse or wallet found with the body; no other forms of identification. Dark hair. The tattoo of a hummingbird in three colors high on her right arm, a silver ring through the left nostril: no other distinguishing features or marks. Aside from the wound at the back of her head, a three-inch gash above the left ear.
Resnick picked up his phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the fax. Worksop was a small town to the north of the county, bisected by the Chesterfield Canal; one of those places where not a great deal seemed to happen, and when it did the rest of the world usually failed to blink. For a few days now, the media would focus on this, a young woman murdered, always the possibility of sexual assault. And then if there were no arrests, no startling revelations, the incident would flicker and fade from the news; a post-mortem would be opened and closed, details analyzed, shuffled, cross-checked, the file left open. Another set of statistics for Operation Enigma, the initial planning meeting of which Jack Skelton had recently attended in lieu of the city’s yet-to-be-appointed head of Serious Crimes.
The north of the county had not been so cautious. Sandy Paul was the new DCI, fished out of the fast-track graduate pool, a first from Durham in politics, his masters in criminology. Rumor had it he was studying for a law degree in his spare time. Between feeding the ferrets and a spot of fishing, that’s likely what I should be doing, Reg Cossall had observed; always assuming I’m not busily engaged in tupping the wife. Cossall, a DI who had joined the force the same month as Resnick, the pair of them raw-boned and idealistic behind the ears, was on his fourth wife; Sandy Paul only recently betrothed to his first, a barrister with chambers in Sheffield and a growing reputation in cases of misrepresentation and fraud.
“I’m sorry, Inspector,” one of the civilian support staff announced with all the warmth of a British Telecom recording, “but Mr. Paul is attending a press conference at this moment. If you would like to log the details of your call, I’m sure Mr. Paul or one of his officers will get back to you.”
Mr. Paul, Resnick thought, nice that, the Mr., makes him seem more approachable somehow, more like a bank manager or the head of a local double-glazing firm.
The sergeant who finally rang back was someone Resnick knew, a committed Chesterfield supporter who occasionally ventured down to the County ground and joined Resnick in bemoaning the absence of players like Armstrong and Chedozie, who had once graced their teams.
Resnick was surprised to find that Brian Findley had transferred into Serious Crimes.
“Made me an offer I could scarce refuse, Charlie. Sign on or get shifted out to the likes of Bolsover.” He pronounced it Bowser. “Faced with that, not a lot I could do.”
Resnick, who in an earlier life had enjoyed a brief but fiery relationship with a social worker from Bolsover, understood what Findley meant. It had been years before he could think of certain kinds of sexual activity without the scent of coke fumes seeming to drift, unbidden, through the air.
“You’ve not joined up yourself, then, Charlie? Still managing to keep pure.”
“Not sure, Brian, if that’s the word.”
“Dragging their heels a bit down there, aren’t they? Still to appoint a DCI.”
“Any day now.”
“Woman, isn’t it? Favorite. What I heard.”
Resnick had heard nothing of the sort.
“Any road up,” Findley said, “whoever it is, I hope they’ve got a bit more experience than the boy wonder here.”
“Problems, then?”
Findley moved the mouthpiece closer and lowered his voice. “Organization, management, public relations, he’s a fucking marvel. But ask him to find his left armpit of a Sat’day night, I doubt he’d manage it with a flashlight and an OS map, large scale.”
“This girl in the canal,” Resnick said, “how much do you know?”
“Not a lot. Not soddin’ enough. Somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two or twenty-three. Been in the water nigh on four hours when she were spotted.”
“What’s that make it?” Resnick broke across him. “Two thirty? Two?”
“Thereabouts.”
“And this blow to the head …”
“Would it have finished her if her lungs hadn’t filled with water? Up to yet, no word.”
“But your best guess?”
A hesitation, Findley clearing his throat, and then: “What’s your interest, Charlie? Special, that is.”
Succinctly, Resnick told him about the body that had been found the night of the Milt Jackson concert, though he kept the musical references to himself. As he remembered, Brian Findley’s tastes revolved round “Apache” by the Shadows, “Diamonds” by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan. Footwork, Charlie, that’s what amazes me, the co-ordination. That Hank Marvin, all them intricate dance steps in his winkle-pickers and he’s playing the tune on his guitar the whole time.
“Similarities, then, that’s what you’re thinking,” Findley said.
“Maybe.”
“Computer’s like as not spewing them out downstairs about now.”
“How about sexual assault?” Resnick asked. “Any sign?”
“Still swabbing the orifices, Charlie. No official word.”
“But unofficially?”
“Got to be quids on, don’t you think?”
What, Resnick thought, had Hannah been saying? Always there in the background, women being violated. “You’ve got no farther with the identification?” he inquired.
“Reports of a young woman in town this last couple of days, asking for work. Casual, you know the kind of thing-pubs, burger bars. She was in the place on the canal yesterday evening, warehouse they’ve tarted up into some kind of disco, looking for a job there. Manager says he had nothing, had to turn her down. Sorry, though. Quite fancied her. Australian, apparently. One of these round-the-world tours they go in for all the time.”
“How in God’s name did she end up in Worksop?” Resnick asked.
“Go anywhere, don’t they? Where the spirit moves them. Walkabout, isn’t that what they call it?”
“Aborigines, I thought.”
“Not this one. Whiter than the wife’s mother’s toilet bowl.”
“You might keep me posted,” Resnick said. “Anything develops as might tie in this end.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks. And the notes from down here, you want me to send them through?”
“Likely no need. If the computer’s not picked up on it already, I can access them from here.”
“Okay, Brian,” Resnick said. “Keep in touch.”
“You too.”
A woman, Resnick thought, favorite to run Serious Crimes, which woman was that? He had bought his lunchtime sandwich and espresso at the deli near the station and carried them over into the cemetery, where he was now sitting, sharing his alfresco meal with several dog-eared angels and the spirit of Amy Maude Swinton, whose tenure on this earth had been less than twenty-one years.
A woman.
Since deciding not to apply for the DCI’s post himself, Resnick had tried to seal himself off from the crosscurrents of speculation, inf
ormed and otherwise, which radiated between Central station and its various satellites. But of the hundred and nine serious applications, fifteen had come from women, somehow he had heard that. He had no idea how many, if any, had progressed onto the final shortlist, nor who they were.
He was just about to congratulate himself on getting through both halves of a ham and mozzarella with mustard and mayonnaise on rye without mishap, when he noticed an unsightly splurge on his right thigh.
Nineteen
“Listen,” Resnick had said, Hannah beginning to make yawning noises behind her book and shift position at the other end of the settee, “you won’t take this the wrong way …”
“But you don’t want to stay.”
Resnick shrugged and smiled.
“Well,” Hannah said, setting the book on the floor and getting to her feet, “the cats will be pleased.”
“You don’t mind?”
Hannah shook her head. “Of course not.” She nudged the book with her foot. “I can go to bed with this.”
“Another cheery tale?”
“A fifty-year-old man in prison for attacking little girls and a young woman who likes sex with eleven-year-old boys.” She saw the frown darken his face. “It’s life, Charlie, you know that better than most.”
“All the more reason I’d not want to read about it.” He was looking down at the book on the floor. The End of Alice by A. M. Homes. On the cover an old monochrome picture of little girls in ballet clothes had been artfully dismembered so that their bodies skipped and cavorted above the title, and their faces, shiny and alive, appeared below the author’s name.
“Come on, Charlie,” Hannah said, “I’ll walk you to the car.”
Take-away menus for Indian restaurants and pizza parlors were gathering dust behind the front door; any burglar who left a fingerprint on the hall table or the bannister of the stairs would fill Scene of Crime with delight. From a perch on the third shelf in the kitchen, Pepper stared down at him as at a stranger, a distant, faintly remembered relative at best. He was surprised Dizzy didn’t take a bite out of his leg.
