Lonely Hearts

by John Harvey

  Twelve

  You didn’t only find dust in disused rooms: once, pulling out the empty whitewood chest, he had found a baby bird. Cocooned in a spider’s web and resting back on outspread wings, its beak and belly gave it the look of some prehistoric creature here in miniature. Days old, only hours. Carefully, he had prized the web from round about it, closed his mouth, and blown away the dust; when he cupped his hand beneath the bird and lifted it up, the wings disintegrated at his touch. Between the pages of a book he found a letter from his former wife which contained the words for ever. Tonight, searching for Bud, who had not appeared at the sound of cat food being scraped into bowls, he had picked from between some old magazines a picture postcard from Ben Riley.

  Come on in, the message had read, the water’s fine!

  On the front of the card, an expanse of land pushed back towards a range of mountains, snow at their peaks; the moon rising pale through a lot of sky. Not a sign of water anywhere the eye could see.

  Resnick and Ben Riley had walked the beat together for the best part of two years. One Saturday in four they would walk down through the Meadows and over Trent Bridge, stand on the terraces, and watch their colleagues sitting below, helmets off and on the ground beside them. On the way back, Ben would drop into the cycle shop and discuss the comparative merits of machines and gears, while Resnick flipped through the new releases in the jazz specialists along the street. Now Arkwright Street had been pulled down and most of the small rows of adjoining terraces along with it. Where they used to stand to watch the Reds, others now sat in executive boxes with the televisions tuned to the racing. Resnick had started watching the team on the other side of the river. And Ben Riley was out in Montana.

  Resnick supposed that was where he was.

  At first there had been letters, postcards from trips Ben had made—Custer’s Battlefields; the Breaks of the Missouri; Glacier National Park; Chicago—and then, inevitably, Christmas greetings that arrived mid-January and for the past few years nothing at all.

  On the way past the bathroom, Resnick heard a familiar, pathetic mewing. Pepper was curled asleep around the top of the laundry basket and, somehow, Bud had managed to get trapped inside it, pitifully tangled amongst Resnick’s soiled shirts.

  On the way to the kitchen, the cat purring, nuzzling the crook of his arm, Resnick lifted the stylus back on to Johnny Hodges. Ben Riley, he was thinking, had been the best man at his wedding. Resnick set the cat down by his bowl and smiled: just as well somebody was.

  He broke a couple of eggs into a bowl, added milk, forked butter into the bottom of a pan. He grated in some parmesan and opened the cupboard for the Tabasco sauce. Do you ever do anything in the way of exercise? You’re starting to look a little plump. Resnick tore the health club’s free offer into four and dropped the pieces into the bin. When the butter was beginning to sizzle up, he tipped in the egg mixture, stirred it round a couple of times and then, taking a carton of cream from the fridge, added a more than generous helping.

  It was still only mid-evening and there was no point in getting to the club before eleven. At a sudden thought, he gave the eggs a stir, turned the gas low, and went to the phone.

  Chris Phillips answered.

  Resnick imagined that was who it was. He said: “Is Rachel there?”

  “No, she’s at a meeting,” Phillips said.

  Resnick said, “Oh,” wondering whether he should leave a message and ask her to call him, meet him later.

  “Can I take a message?” Phillips said.

  “No, it’s okay. Thanks.”

  “Who shall I say called?”

  “Em, Resnick. Charlie Resnick.”

  “Didn’t you ring the other night?”

  Resnick set down the phone. When he took his plate through to the living room, Johnny Hodges was still playing. “Satin Doll.” When he had started listening to jazz, Resnick had thought Hodges the best saxophonist in the world. Still, there were times when his sound was the only one that worked.

  when I listen to Johnny Hodges

  I am ashamed

  to carry loss

  like a sick-note

  like a dream of sailing

  Come on in, the water’s fine! It didn’t matter that Ben Riley was somewhere on the prairie, that Rachel Chaplin wasn’t home: right now, Resnick felt better than all right.

  There were nightclubs in the city where men had to wear a tie before they could gain admittance and the toilets were swabbed out three times of an evening. There was one with a style bouncer who checked you over carefully and if you were found to be wearing anything from Marks and Spencer or Top Shop they wouldn’t sell you a ticket. Resnick had heard rumors of another with a membership fee that was roughly equal to his monthly salary, where the furnishings were pure white and they played nothing but Frank Sinatra and Vic Damone.

  The Stardust was squeezed between a pub and a stationery warehouse on one of the main roads through Resnick’s patch of inner city. The music was solid reggae and calls to complain about the insistent throb of bass were almost as consistent. Cabs lined the pavement between two and four. The sign above the cash desk announced that members had to show evidence of membership when entering, but nobody seemed overly concerned about dress code. Non-members were supposed to be signed in by a member but Resnick showed his warrant card instead.

  At the far end of the room, a singer with a full beard and a brightly striped woollen hat was holding the microphone too close to his face. There were a few tables, but most of the clientele were on their feet—lining the bar, leaning back against the opposite wall, mostly twos and threes with an occasional male on his own, staring off into the middle distance, swaying lightly. Others were dancing. A sinewy black was winding his way around a woman in a vast velvet dress who turned through a small circle, never taking her eyes from his face. Four girls swayed around a pile of handbags. The majority of the men were Afro-Caribbean in origin; almost without exception the women were white and when Resnick first came to the city they would have worked in one or other of the hosiery factories that lined the road leading out through Kimberley and Eastwood towards Heanor. He wasn’t sure what they did now, these women. Even the old Players factory had been demolished now, the one on Prospect Street.

  “Trouble?” The man running the bar was overweight and white.

  “Guinness,” said Resnick, drawing in his stomach.

  “Paying for it?”

  Resnick placed a five-pound note on the counter and left the change where it lay. “Know a man named Warren?”

  “Warren Oates.”

  Resnick looked at him, the studied insolence in his eyes.

  “Rabbit warren.”

  Resnick scooped the change away and dropped it down into his pocket. He made his way slowly across the room, skirting round the handbag girls and waiting for a slim-hipped man with dreadlocks and a bright red and green skinny-ribbed jumper to finish dancing.

  “Jackie, this here’s Detective Inspector Resnick.”

  The woman blinked at him from a face that saw too little natural light. She turned with a shrug and moved away.

  “New girlfriend?” Resnick asked, pleasantly enough.

  “Slag,” said the man, leaning against the wall beside Resnick, head arched back, pelvis jutting out.

  “I can see why you’re such a success with the ladies,” Resnick said. “It’s your natural sympathy and charm. That and the obvious respect you have.”

  “You come to me for lessons?”

  “Information.”

  “Lessons cost.”

  “Information comes free.”

  “Who says?”

  “It was free last time.”

  “You shut it about that!” He was close now, close enough to smell the sweetness of the marijuana.

  “You were only doing your duty.”

  “Shut it!”

  “An honest citizen.”

  “I grassed.”

  Each and every way, Resnick thought, en
joying the joke.

  “What you grinning all over your face at?”

  “You gave up somebody because it was in your own interests to do so. Someone who’d been putting girls on the streets you thought were yours to work. The right time, the right place and now he’s still waiting for parole.”

  “You complaining?”

  “Asking for more.”

  “Get fucked!” Swiveling away.

  “Warren,” Resnick said after him. He hesitated, half-turned.

  “I need to talk with somebody called Warren.”

  The man turned away again.

  “Maybe, before I leave, I should get up on the mike and announce that you’re our newest recruit to the Neighborhood Watch.”

  He didn’t stop walking, but he heard.

  Resnick waited a while. There were other faces that he recognized; by that time more who recognized him, knew who and what he was. He began to count those in the club whom he’d arrested, seen sent down. At five, he stopped and went back to the bar. The woman, Jackie, was standing there and when he put down his empty glass she spat in it.

  “Guinness,” said Resnick to the barman. “Fresh glass.”

  The same short fur coat, the same shiny trousers. She was with a man Resnick had tried to turn over twice and failed; after that he’d got passed on to the Serious Crimes Squad but they hadn’t had any more luck. With George Despard you needed more than luck: more than most money could buy. The man loitering by the entrance Resnick knew to be Despard’s minder.

  He waited until the couple had sat down at one of the tables and made his way over, careful to approach from the front. Despard wasn’t the kind of man you risked going up to from behind.

  Resnick nodded at George Despard. “I hope you haven’t left the Porsche parked outside,” he said to Grace Kelley.

  “We came in the Ferrari,” Despard said.

  Grace Kelley smiled. “Hello, Inspector. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “What’s a nice clean copper like me doing in a place like this?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Didn’t expect to see you in here, either, George,” Resnick said. “Not coming down in the world, are you? Hard times?”

  “I’ve read it,” said Despard. “Less of a ramble than most of his books. Course, you got to respond to the symbolism.”

  “Christ!” said Grace. “What is this? Evening classes?”

  “A little self-improvement never hurt a soul,” said Despard solemnly.

  “And you’re sitting next to the living proof,” Resnick said to her. “The very model of a self-made man.”

  “My father,” Despard said, looking at Grace, “he come over from Jamaica after the war. Played trumpet in a dance band. Not very good, but he was black and up West they still thought that was exotic. Used to wear a frilly shirt and shake the maracas whenever they did a rumba.”

  Half the club was watching Resnick and George Despard talking, trying to figure out what they were talking about: the other half were watching the first half watching.

  “His lip give out,” Despard continued. “London was getting bad, more black faces and nobody figured them for cute any more. He took it into his head to move up to the Midlands, buy some little green-grocer’s shop. Months before it happening, he would say to everyone, watch out for Notting Hill. Trouble brewing.” Despard was stroking the curve of Grace Kelley’s shoulder, fingers lost in the fur. “He didn’t see it happening up here, too. First race riots in the country. Burned him out.” She wriggled her shoulder a little and he moved his arm away. Not far. “So you see,” he said, “I had to start from nothing, do it all myself. From that burnt-out shop to where I am today.”

  “Regular phoenix from the ashes, aren’t you?” Grace said.

  “There you are,” said Resnick. “You wanted symbolism.”

  “I wanted a drink,” said Grace, looking round.

  Despard signaled to his minder and moments later a bottle of brandy arrived with three glasses.

  “Sit down,” said Despard.

  “I’m on Guinness,” Resnick said.

  “Sit down, Inspector,” said Despard. “You don’t want to disappoint a lady.”

  Resnick pulled over a chair.

  “You made quite an impression on her.”

  “It’s my dress sense,” said Resnick. “Never fails.”

  George Despard was wearing a lightweight blue suit, a yellow silk shirt, and a muted red tie. The shoes on his feet were real alligator. Gold was tastefully placed at strategic parts of his body.

  They sat for a while drinking brandy, saying nothing very much. The singer was taking a rest and a DJ had taken over. People were dancing again.

  “What’s Macliesh got against you?” Resnick asked Grace after Despard had lit another of her cigarettes.

  “I did like you said. Went in and made a statement.”

  Resnick nodded. “I read it.”

  “Well, then.”

  “He seemed certain you were the one that had it in for him.”

  “After the way he treated Shirley…”

  “More than that.”

  Despard was looking at her with bored interest. Over by the bar, his minder was standing close to the man Resnick had been questioning earlier. They didn’t appear to be talking to one another.

  “Seemed more personal than that,” Resnick said. “Between you and him.”

  “As much distance as I can find,” Grace said. “Always.”

  “Woman like this,” Despard explained, holding her hand in his, holding it over the table, on display. “Woman like this, men always going to fuss with her.”

  “Let ’em try!” Grace shook her head.

  “Is that what it was?” asked Resnick. “He made a pass at you?”

  She leaned her head back and a trail of smoke lifted up from her nostrils. “More like—what d’you call it?—the Denver Buckskins.”

  “Broncos,” Despard corrected her.

  “Whatever.”

  Despard laughed and jiggled the brandy round in his glass. “Tried to sack you, did he?”

  “Not after I put my foot in his bollocks, he didn’t.”

  “Did Shirley know?” Resnick asked.

  A quick, strong shake of the head. “She had enough to worry about, poor love.”

  “He said he’d do you an injury,” Resnick said.

  “Not where you’ve got him.”

  “For the present.”

  “You’re not letting the bastard out?”

  “Not if we can help it.”

  “Course you can help it. He did for her, didn’t he?”

  Resnick glanced away. “He’s got an alibi.”

  “Of course he’s got a bleedin’ alibi! Even he’s not that fucking stupid!”

  “He’s in court tomorrow. Let’s hope he doesn’t get bail.”

  Grace looked at Resnick and then at Despard.

  “Still,” Resnick went on. “You’ll likely be back in London pretty soon.”

  “She won’t come to any harm here in the city,” said Despard proprietorially.

  “I’m not going to be here in the sodding city. Not if that maniac’s wandering loose.”

  “We’ll still be able to get in touch with you?”

  “I’m not skipping the country.”

  “Your address…”

  “That sergeant of yours, I give it him.”

  There didn’t seem a great deal more to say after that and Resnick didn’t want to carry on sitting there, drinking George Despard’s brandy. Guilty through association: it had happened to men more senior than himself. Besides, he might want to start telling Despard what he thought of him.

  “Nice to see you again,” he said to Grace Kelley and although the smile she gave him was genuine enough, there was more than a trace of fear lingering behind it.

  Despard offered his hand and Resnick shook it, firmly but quickly and walked away.

  His man was waiting at the entrance out on t
o the street. Resnick was aware of him a fraction of time before he saw him, a slender shadow backed up against the wall.

  “This Warren. He’s at Victor’s. The gym.”

  Resnick scarcely broke his stride.

  Thirteen

  Through the night CID presence was token: two officers from three stations. This night Lynn Kellogg was one of them. She sat at her desk with a cup of not-so-hot chocolate, struggling with a letter to her parents. Somewhere they’d heard about the city bus drivers going on strike and refusing to take out the last buses on a Friday or a Saturday night. I do worry about you so, Lynnie love. What you got to be doing that job for in a rough place like that? Least you could do is get a transfer to Norwich. That’d be a lot safer and you’d be closer to home, wouldn’t you? Welcome to Norwich, thought Lynn, a fine city. Well, this was a fine city, one with a bit of real life to it, and the thing about real life was occasionally it bit back. As for being closer to home—every couple of months she’d get to be really missing them, the family. Weekend off, she’d make the slow single-lane drive over there, hugs and kisses and handshakes and inside of an hour she couldn’t wait to drive away again.

  “Boyfriend?” Jim Peel was a gangling man with sandy hair and a declining slope where his chin was supposed to be. One of a family of four brothers, all of them had joined the Police Force, following a father and great-uncle before them. Well, it was either that or campanology.

  “Letter home. They’re worried about the last buses not going out.”

  “Afraid you’ll have to walk?”

  “Something like that.”

  Peel took a pencil from his pocket and poked it carefully down into Lynn’s cup, lifting away a heavy crust of skin.

  “Thanks, Jim.”

  He nodded and dropped the skin into a nearby bin, licking the pencil end clean. “It’s nothing new, you know. This business with the buses. I was talking to someone in the canteen, said they were doing it when he first came on the Force, that was ’67.” Peel sat on a chair over at the far side of the room and leaned back until it was balanced on its rear legs, his shoulders against the wall. “Shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the same back when they had horse-drawn trams.”