by John Harvey
To the right of her desk there were two doors with discreet little nameplates on them. I could see from where I was that neither name was Blagden. But what’s in a name?
There were two canvas and chrome easy chairs and a round glass table with a handful of magazines on it. They didn’t look like the kind of thing I usually read. Possibly that was part of my trouble.
She had put the phone down and was looking at me. Something about her expression suggested that she thought I had stepped into the wrong place by accident. I wondered where she thought I should have been.
Eventually she accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to turn right around and walk out again. She asked, ‘What can I do for you?’ in a voice which sent a shiver along my spine and released several ice crystals into the atmosphere.
I tried a smile. Just a little one. For one thing I didn’t want to overwhelm her—not all at once—and for another I didn’t want to risk the plasters on my face working loose.
I said: ‘I’m looking for a flat.’
I might as well have said I was looking for a rare edition of a book about early Eastern religions.
‘A flat?’ I prompted her.
‘Sorry, we don’t have any.’
‘You don’t have any flats?’
‘We don’t have any flats.’
‘You are an estate agents?’
Her lips formed a tight line across her face. Then she said, ‘Of course, we are. What did you think?’
‘I thought you might have changed over to the deep freeze business. They tell me it’s all the rage. Did you know you could buy boxes of five hundred fish fingers at the most alarming discount?’
I couldn’t understand it. She didn’t seem interested. The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up on the first note.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I can’t. No, I’m busy. There’s someone in the office. Yes, all right. I’ll call you back. Good-bye.’
By the time she had replaced the receiver she was looking slightly flushed. Only a trace of reddening around the cheeks but I didn’t think it did her any harm at all.
‘He’ll understand,’ I said, quietly sympathetic.
‘What business is that of yours?’ she snapped.
‘It isn’t.’
‘Then what is?’
‘I told you, I’m looking for a flat.’
‘And I thought I told you that we don’t have any.’
I took my notebook from my pocket and read her off the address I had seen advertised.
‘That’s already been taken.’
‘But the sign said one was left.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but it’s gone. We should have changed the notice.’
‘As long as you’re sorry. But you must have some other things you could offer?’
She shook her head.
‘You do handle a lot of property in that area?’
She shook her head the other way.
‘I noticed a large place across the road from there. Wentworth Mansions. They all seemed to be empty. Is that one of your properties?’
She flushed again. ‘Yes. That is, no. I … I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘Not exactly. You would have to talk to Mr Cooper about that.’
I tried a step towards one of the doors. ‘Mr Cooper. Is this his office?’
She was half-way up out of her seat. ‘I’m afraid Mr Cooper is out at present.’
‘And Mr Barnard?’ I asked, reading the name off the other door.
‘He’s out as well.’
I turned and faced her quickly. How about Mr Blagden?’
She stared back at me, but if she was covering up she did it very well. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘we don’t have anyone of that name working here.’
‘My mistake.’
‘Yes, wasn’t it.’
She was sitting down again and back in control. The area of carpet between us seemed just as wide.
‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ I said.
She didn’t assure me that it was all right; she didn’t smile. She got up from her chair and walked all the way round the desk and over to the door.
She stood by it looking at me and I thought for one moment she was going to turn the open sign to closed and pull down the blind. But she didn’t even take off her glasses. She opened the door and held it open while I walked through and out on to the pavement.
Oh, well, I thought, she probably hadn’t even seen the movie and if she had she wouldn’t have liked the part.
I was on my way back to the underground station, when I glanced up and there he was. Sitting in the downstairs front seat of a double-decker bus. The curly hair, the overcoat—I couldn’t miss them; even the nervous look on his face.
I ran across the road, causing a taxi to swerve round me as I did so. The driver’s words of good fortune followed my erratic chase along the edge of the pavement, one foot, sometimes two, taking to the gutter as I attempted to keep out of people’s way without slowing down.
Thirty yards in front of me there was a bus stop with a small queue; the bus was pulling in towards it. I tried to increase my speed but my chest was starting to tighten and burn and my ankle felt as though it was going to give out on me altogether.
I finally made it with three large left-footed hops which took me on to the edge of the platform. Anxiously I looked along the bus; he was still there. Whatever else I did now, I couldn’t risk letting him see me.
I paid the conductor and went upstairs, sitting at the back so that I could see the platform below through the circular mirror. I would have to get down quickly, that was all there was to it.
I sat there and got as much of my breath back as I could, hoping that he wouldn’t move too soon. He didn’t. I paid two lots of extra fare before he stirred.
I hovered on the stairs and watched him get off and look around in his usual worried manner. He finally went to cross the road behind the bus and I watched him go, then jumped off as it was gathering speed. It was okay; there was a large privet hedge to break my staggering fall and I had managed to land on my good leg. Things were starting to look up.
I let him get a good way ahead of me, without risking losing him if he took a sudden turning. But he seemed content to walk easily now, confident of where he was going.
As we went from side road to side road the houses got smaller, more cramped together. Some were painted in new, garish colours, purples and yellows; others had paintwork and plaster flaking off them like a disease. It was outside one of these that he eventually stopped.
He did his, usual little look round but I was ready for it and had ducked back out of sight. He knocked a couple of times on the front door and after a few moments it opened. There was a brief conversation and he went inside.
I waited a while, then crossed the road and walked by on the opposite side.
What looked like an old blanket had been draped across the window of the downstairs room and the bottom pane of glass had been broken. Cardboard was propped uneasily behind it. There was net curtaining at one of the upstairs windows, nothing at the other.
I walked on to the cross roads, then switched sides again. The garden at the back ran on to the garden of the house behind; there was no proper rear exit.
I went back and waited within sight of the front door. I didn’t know how long he would be, but if he’d gone for what I thought, then it wouldn’t be too long.
It wasn’t.
A little over half an hour later he came out. The door opened just enough to let him through and no more. I couldn’t see anything or anyone else.
I let him get a good start and began to tail him back to wherever he was going. It was tedious and boring, but it might be necessary. Besides, I was used to it. Much of my job consisted of the same dull routine. Only i
nterrupted by the odd blow to the back of the head, the boot in the guts.
Still you carried on, following up leads that seldom went where you expected them to. You kept chasing them down and somehow, somewhere you found yourself with something useful. Not often. But it did happen. And it was better than standing still.
We caught a bus back towards the centre of town; my mind on him, his mind on who knows what.
He got off the bus and on to a tube and I watched him through the windows of the communicating doors. His eyes closed, he sat with his head back against the woodwork at the top of the seat. After a couple of stops, he lifted his head and looked at the map of stations opposite. Satisfied, he put his head back and closed his eyes again. His right hand went into his overcoat pocket and stayed there. As though he had something he wanted to keep safe.
I held on to the strap and watched over him, as though watching a sleeping child.
We got off the train at Camden Town and I followed him up the escalator. At the top he went through his hesitation routine, took a few paces to the right, checked, went to the left, then left again to the row of telephones. I stood at the bookstall and shielded my face with a newspaper while he dialled a number.
The girl’s death was already off the front page and I turned over to find it near the foot of page five. There was nothing new. Except, of course, that the police were confident of making an early arrest. Chief Inspector Hankin was anxious to talk to a man named Trevor Warren, who was believed to have been staying at the flat where the girl’s body had been found. He was in his twenties, with dark curly hair and a pale complexion.
He pushed his coin into the slot and started talking. After a while, he stopped talking and listened. He listened for several minutes. Without saying anything else he hung up.
When he came out of the phone booth and crossed the station forecourt towards the far exit, Trevor Warren seemed a very worried looking young man.
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About the Author
John Harvey (b. 1938) is an incredibly prolific British mystery writer. The author of more than one hundred books, as well as poetry and scripts for television and radio, Harvey did not begin writing professionally until 1975. Until then, he was a teacher, educated at Goldsmiths College, London, who taught literature, drama, and film at colleges across England. After cutting his teeth on paperback fiction, Harvey debuted his most famous character, Charlie Resnick, in 1989’s Lonely Hearts, which the English Times called one of the finest crime novels of the century.
A police inspector noted for his love of both sandwiches and jazz, Resnick has starred in eleven novels and one volume of short stories. The BBC has adapted two of the Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment (1990), for television movies. Both starred Academy Award–nominated actor Tom Wilkinson and had screenplays written by Harvey. Besides writing fiction, Harvey spent over twenty years as the head of Slow Dancer Press. He continues to live and write in London.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1976 by John Harvey
Cover design by Julianna Lee
978-1-5040-3884-3
This edition published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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