Off Minor

by John Harvey

  Half-dragging Raymond, half-pushing, he urged him out into the yard, barging him through the hollowed-out carcasses of meat that hung in line and throwing him, finally, hard against the open end of a delivery van.

  “Lookit!” Hathersage bellowed. “Look in there and just you tell me what you see? Loin chops, you see that? Freezer packs, wrapped and ready? Chuck steak, best chuck steak? Pork belly? Well?”

  Raymond leaned heavily against the van, wanting to rub his hip where it had struck metal, wanting to raise his voice back at Hathersage, tell him take your job and stuff it, tell him he didn’t fucking care.

  “Look at you, you pathetic specimen!” Hathersage shook his bull-like head. “Christ, if you could see what you looked like, you’d crawl away under a stone and die.”

  Raymond, still leaning, was breathing unevenly, snot dribbling down his face, the faint few hairs that grew along his upper lip.

  “Here! Take a good look at sodding this!” Hathersage pushed the copy of the order towards Raymond, who caught at it clumsily, tearing it almost in two.

  The manager stepped away, disbelieving; two butchers walked by in white headgear and rubber boots, overalls that had been white at the beginning of the day. “Ray-o,” they chanted, softly in unison. “Ray-o, Ray-o, Ray-o.”

  “Get this unloaded. Check that order, make it right. If you’re lucky, I won’t be standing at the gate as you dock off, ready with your cards. But don’t sodding bank on it.”

  Raymond spent the time until close of his shift praying that Hathersage would be there, giving notice, true to his word. That would be an end to it: this much, at least. But all he had seen of the manager was a reddened face, mouth wide with laughter, glimpsed through the office window as Raymond slunk past.

  Tonight was the night, more often than not, he went back home, round to his father’s, where they would eat sausages and onions, mashed potato, baked beans and tomato sauce. Tea strong enough to stand a spoon in. “One thing your mum could never seem to get the knack of,” his dad was like to say, “mashing a good cup of tea.”

  Never mind, there had been other things she had mastered; getting the measure of his father, for one. Five years married and Raymond rising four, she had realized his dad had already amounted to what little he was going to be. She had latched herself on to a salesman who went from village shop to village shop, small-town store to small-town store; his special lines were household wares, brushes, clothes lines, pegs, three-in-one dustpan sets in hard red plastic. When he wasn’t on the road, he lived in a caravan at Ingoldmells. Raymond’s mum always had liked the smell of the sea.

  The first few years she had sent him cards at Christmas and his birthday. Raymond had kept them for ages, took them out from time to time and ran his hands across the lightly embossed lettering, the fading biro messages, Love from your Mum, Love, Mum, Love, Mum. When he was fourteen he carried them into the back yard and tore them into tiny pieces and left them for the wind to carry away. Even now there were times when he would look inside the drawer, lift out the clothes, expecting them to still be there, safe and flat at the bottom.

  Raymond made up his mind: he wasn’t going home. No more of his father’s and his uncle’s jostling, himself caught in the middle. Sara, he knew, was staying in to help her mother wash her hair. He didn’t care. After his bath, he could sit in his room, watch TV, play with his knife.

  Michael Morrison pushed his dinner around the plate until Lorraine lifted it away and scooped the contents into the rubbish. She gave him two scoops of his favorite ice cream, raspberry ripple, straight from the freezer, and he sat there, watching it slowly melt. Since the television appearance, any remaining energy seemed to have been drained from him, little more than twelve hours and they had changed places again, Lorraine finding the resources somewhere to carry him through what remained of the day. Another since Emily had disappeared, a scattering of dolls in her wake.

  Of course, she could still be safe.

  Of course.

  The telephone broke into life and before Lorraine could reach it, had fallen silent again. She stood staring at it, willing it to ring again.

  “Perhaps,” she said, back in the kitchen, “we should get in touch with your brother?”

  “Geoffrey? For God’s sake, why?”

  “What he said, the reward …”

  “No.”

  “Michael, I don’t see why not.”

  “You know what the police said about that.”

  “Yes, but there’s nothing else. They haven’t come up with anything else.”

  “Even so.” He got up and broke the seal on the Scotch, daring Lorraine to say anything. What she did was fill the kettle to make herself a cup of tea.

  “Look,” Michael said, “if I thought it would be any good …”

  “All I’m saying, I don’t see what we’ve got to lose.”

  Michael hardly tasted the whisky as it went down; he drank some more. “Ever since I can remember,” he said, “my brother has tried to run my life. Michael, wake up, you should be doing this, doing that. Michael, Michael, if only you were bright enough, quick enough, had the balls enough, you’d be more like me.”

  “He’s only trying to do the best …”

  “What he wants is for me to get close enough to him that I can see the distance there is between us.”

  She slipped inside his arms, inside his guard and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I don’t want you to be like Geoffrey.”

  “I know.” Michael closing his eyes, lowering his face against her hair. “I know.”

  She pressed her fingers lightly against his back, the knot of bone near the base of his spine; when he didn’t move away, push her clear, she slid his shirt free from his belt and began to stroke his skin.

  “Lorraine,” he breathed. “Lorraine.”

  “All I was thinking,” Lorraine said, “even if nothing comes of it, what harm would it really do?”

  Two things Stephen Sheppard did at half-past nine every night: lock and bolt both front and back doors, check the latches on the downstairs windows; when that was done he would prepare the tray. Horlicks for Joan, nothing to drink for himself or he’d be up and down like a yo-yo. Four biscuits, buttered, two with a nice piece of mature cheddar, the others with a dabble of jam, blackcurrant or apricot; the cheese was for himself. Rumor was that cheese at night made you dream, but he set no more store by that than he did by any other old wives’ tale. It wasn’t four years back that Joan had talked him into seeing that fortune teller at Goose Fair. A long and happy life, she’d said. Expect good news at work, promotion. What he’d got was the sack. Nothing regular since. Pushing fifty—what was he thinking of? He was fifty, gone—most firms didn’t even bother to reply. Ah, well, they hadn’t settled into such a bad life, after all.

  He opened the door first, went back for the tray. He could hear the theme music for News at Ten just beginning, just in time.

  Lynn Kellogg had been in the car, seat belt buckled, when she realized she didn’t want to go straight back. The thought of the bundle of clothes she had left close by the ironing board enough to put her off. Divine and Naylor were where she expected to find them, Divine over at the corner of the bar, deep in conversation with a tall West Indian, which probably meant that he was after information. Social drinking for Divine rarely extended beyond the color bar.

  She bought a half of bitter for herself, a pint for Kevin Naylor and joined him near the window. From the edges of the room came the electronic clamor of games machines, through the ropey pub stereo Phil Collins was making promises he couldn’t keep. Lynn liked Phil Collins: that spring she’d gone across to Birmingham by coach to see him, the NEC, seats had been naff, but he’d been good, really good.

  “How’s it going?” Lynn asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  She drank some beer and let it be; he’d talk in his own good time or not at all, that was Kevin.

  “It’s all gone to crap,” he said suddenly, moments late
r. She thought he was talking about the investigation and quickly realized it was something else. “Debbie’s back home with her mum, properly moved back in, and she’s taken the kid with her. Absolute bloody crap!”

  “Oh, Kevin,” Lynn took his free hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, well, I’m up to here with being sorry and it don’t make a scrap of sodding difference.”

  “Can’t you talk to her, reason …?”

  “Shut it!” Naylor said suddenly and Lynn jerked back as though she’d been slapped. It was only when she looked at Kevin’s face that she realized his response had been to the television set above the bar and not to what she had said.

  The artist’s impression of the man seen outside the Morrison home was still on the screen, a lined face with a strong nose, close shaven, beginning to lose his hair.

  “Kevin, what is it?”

  “That bloke. I only know him, don’t I? I was only talking to him this afternoon.”

  Thirty-one

  When Resnick had been a boy, eleven, his grandmother had slipped and fallen in the small back room, the parlor. Her arm or leg, some part of her, had dislodged coals from the fire, the coal had smoldered on the carpet as she lay unconscious, stunned by the blow her temple had taken from the polished tiles of the hearth. After not so many minutes a spark attached to the fabric of her dress and flared to life. Resnick’s mother, mixing the flour and suet for dumplings in the kitchen, adding water from the measuring jug, a teaspoon of dry mustard, a sprinkling, thumb and forefinger, of dill, had smelled burning. Not the stew. By the time she had found the source, the older woman’s clothes were ablaze around her and she had woken to the center of a dream that was no dream, a nightmare no nightmare, the screams that broke searing from her, her own screams. An old woman with her hair ablaze around her face.

  Resnick’s mother had responded with the cool control and speed that sometimes visit us in dire emergencies. By the time the fire brigade arrived, the ambulance, the police—and they were quick—all but a few smoldering remnants of the fire had been extinguished. Her mother lay close against the heavy sideboard which stood along the side wall, blankets covering most of her body, shrouding her burnt, blistering head. She was taken to the hospital, sedated, treated for shock, transferred to the burns unit as soon as her condition had stabilized. “You have to understand,” the registrar said, “your mother has been through a traumatic experience. It will take time for her to recover.” Almost a month Resnick’s parents kept to the silent bedside, disturbed only by whimpers of pain whenever she moved. Resnick himself was kept at home, told little of the worst, shielded from upset. When his grandmother did at last open her mouth it was to scream and call her daughter a whore.

  There were weeks of silence and sudden, wild accusations almost inevitably in Polish. In the worst of these, her children were betraying her to the Nazis, she was being dragged headlong from the ghetto, she was bundled into a cattle car on its way to the concentration camp, she could see the ashes floating on the air, smell the burning of the ovens, the sweet pungent smell of smoldering flesh, of skin, of hair.

  When, finally, she was allowed home all that she would do was sit in the kitchen and rock herself slowly back and forth in a high-backed wooden chair, a shawl around her head where her hair had grown back patchily between her scars. Resnick stood once until the blood in his legs sang, hand in hers, uncertain if she knew, not who he was but whether he were even there. After little more than weeks, another ambulance came and she was taken off, this time to the hospital for the mentally disturbed where she would end her days.

  On Sundays they would drive and park in the hospital grounds, his father in suit and tie, his mother in her good dress, a bag containing fruit, home-made biscuits, a Thermos of soup held at her side. Resnick would be told to lock the doors and stay in the car, while they disappeared into this tall, dark building with turrets at the corners, iron railings ranged along the roof. An hour later they would reemerge, his father shaking his head, mother sniffing, dabbing at the tears. When he would ask them how his grandmother was, his father would fail to reply, his mother would press her lips together and force a smile. “A little better this week, don’t you think so, Father? Yes, Charles, a little better.” When, after almost a year, she caught pneumonia and died they agreed it was a blessing. For her funeral, the community came out in force, the procession from the cathedral to the cemetery blocking the traffic for almost half an hour.

  Now Resnick sat in the car park again, an early winter evening that promised little more than rain.

  The doctor’s call had come through to Resnick late that afternoon, hesitant, careful. “An officer was in contact earlier, making inquiries; she referred me to you.”

  There were lights in one wing of the building only. The remainder stood dark and disused. Despite protest, it seemed likely that within a twelvemonth, the rest would be closed down, most of the patients released into the community. Some would stay in hostels or live together in houses which the authority had bought and renovated specially for them. But many would shuffle, bewildered, between an already overextended network of social workers and volunteers, out-patient clinics and GPs. Soon Resnick would take to recognizing their faces on the benches above Bobby Brown’s Café, by the fountains in Slab Square; leaning outside the night shelter near the London Road roundabout, asleep among the cigarette ends and vomit on the bus station floor.

  The nurse who met Resnick was in his late twenties, slight and not far short of Resnick’s height; his sandy hair was worn long, eyes clear pale blue. He was wearing loose beige cotton trousers, a faded green shirt over an equally faded T-shirt that swore solidarity to a cause Resnick could not discern. He told Resnick Diana had been admitted the previous Friday, claiming she no longer felt able to cope.

  “What with?” Resnick asked.

  The nurse looked back at him, somewhat incredulous.

  “She’s been here ever since? No way she could have gone back outside?”

  “She could. But, no, I don’t think she has. She hasn’t wanted anything to do with anyone or anything. That’s the only way we’ve been able to keep the news away from her.” He looked at Resnick earnestly. “I presume you’re not proposing to tell her, about her daughter?”

  A shake of the head.

  “It can’t be kept from her for ever. It shouldn’t, but coming right now …”

  “You have my word.”

  “What you have to understand, Diana is under a great deal of stress; she has been for some while. Having said that, a lot of progress has been made. But even so, something like this, it could put her back a long way.” The eyes held Resnick fast. “In agreeing for you to see her, we’re assuming that you will be sensitive to her condition.”

  Resnick nodded. “I understand.”

  “I hope so. She’s waiting in one of the quiet rooms, just along here.”

  Resnick followed the nurse down the high-ceilinged institutional corridor. From another floor he could hear the music from Neighbours, starting or finishing, he wasn’t sure which. “She is on quite strong medication,” the nurse said, lowering his voice outside the door, “she should understand you correctly, but it might mean that some of her responses are rather slow. Also you might notice some shaking, especially her hands. A side-effect of the drugs.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “Diana, your visitor’s here.”

  Resnick hadn’t been sure what to expect, his mental pictures overlaid in advance by the gaunt shock of his ex-wife’s face when finally she had confronted him after years of psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. But Diana Wills looked up at him pleasantly, her smile a little hesitant yet real enough, her face, if anything, fuller than the photos he had seen had suggested.

  “I’ll leave you for a while,” the nurse said.

  There were three chairs in the room, a low circular table, pictures on the walls, flowers. Resnick pulled one of the chairs closer to Diana and sat down. “I’m a polic
e officer,” he said. “Resnick. Detective Inspector. Charlie.”

  Diana looked back at him and gave the same quick, nervous smile.

  “We were worried about you.”

  She opened a hand and pulled at the tissue that had been squashed there, used it to dab at the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a button-through dress, soft green, a brown ribbed cardigan. “Worried? I don’t understand.”

  “When you didn’t come home.”

  “Home?”

  “At the weekend. The neighbors, they were just a bit concerned. Had a word with the local bobby. We thought you might have had an accident or something.”

  “Jackie.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Jacqueline.”

  “Your friend.”

  Diana pressed the tissue to her mouth again. “You know Jacqueline?”

  “I said, we were worried. We got in touch, in case she knew where you were.”

  “I should have gone to see her.”

  “Yes.”

  “This past weekend.”

  “Yes.”

  Now both of Diana’s hands were beginning to tremble and she slid them from sight. “Was she angry with me?”

  “No, not at all. Just concerned.”

  “You’ll tell her where I am?”

  Resnick nodded.

  “I shouldn’t want her to worry.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Not Jackie.”

  “No.”

  “She’ll be so ashamed as it is.”

  “Why’s that, Mrs. Wills?”

  “Diana, please.”

  “Diana.”

  “What did you ask me?”

  “You said that your friend would be ashamed.”

  “Well, of course she would. Anyone would.”

  Resnick willed himself to look at her face, not be distracted by the increased agitation of her hands. “Can you tell me why Diana?”

  She sat suddenly upright, eyes widening with surprise. “Because of what I did, of course.”

  “What you did to whom?”

  The sound was faint in the small room, its syllables barely passing her lips. “Emily.”