Lonely Hearts

by John Harvey

  “Another call for you a minute ago, sir. Pretty anxious to know where you could be contacted. I thought you’d already left, so I advised him to try the station tomorrow.”

  Resnick nodded. “Any time?”

  “I asked him, sir, but he said it didn’t matter. But I think it was the same person as earlier.”

  “Thanks,” said Resnick and carried on to his office.

  He dialed Social Services and Carole answered. Rachel had gone out to see a client and was intending to go straight home from there. Resnick thanked her and said he’d ring her there later, if that was all right.

  “You’re welcome to try,” Carole said, “but you might be lucky to catch her. I know she’s driving up to Sheffield to see a friend as soon as she’s changed.”

  “Maybe I’ll leave it till tomorrow then,” said Resnick. “If you’ll just say I called.”

  “Of course,” said Carole. And then, “You didn’t phone earlier, did you?”

  “No, why?”

  “No special reason. Only the switchboard took a couple of calls but they didn’t get a name.”

  “Not me.”

  “Ex-boyfriend, probably.”

  “Probably.”

  “Pest!”

  Resnick turned over to the back page to discover that County were playing at home.

  Even after Resnick had transferred his allegiance back over the Trent, he had stayed away for months on end. When he started going regularly again, the team began losing. His most regular period in front of the London Road stand coincided with a drop of two Divisions in as many seasons. Gloriously, he remembered a floodlit game when Villa stuck eight past them and their blond winger ran riot. This was under the lights, too, but that was where the comparison ended.

  On this present occasion, the visitors had brought a couple of dozen supporters with them, lost in the spaces of their enclosure and looking as if they’d have difficulty summoning up enough enthusiasm between them to club together for a cup of Bovril and a warmed-over sausage roll.

  Resnick stood on the edge of the usual knot of fortnightly acquaintances, for whom a fondness for County’s flaws and misdemeanors had made cynicism an art form. Straightforward abuse was reserved for referees under five-foot four, and former English internationals; the most abusive remarks of all were shouted in Polish.

  It was hard keeping warm during a first half that produced seventeen off-sides, three corners, and no shots on goal at either end. During the interval Resnick glanced at Patel’s notes, folded now inside his program. The second forty-five minutes were pure County: a through ball out of nowhere, a man on the overlap, and a first-time cross that was met at the gallop and clattered into the net; after that, they left one player upfield, pulled back the rest, and held out until the last five minutes when they conceded two goals, one to bad luck, the other to bad marking; with sixty seconds remaining, they were awarded a penalty and the final chance to equalize was ballooned over the bar.

  “Any other side, you could have been sure of three points.”

  Hands in pockets, Resnick nodded without turning his head, moving with the small crowd towards the exit.

  “But, then, that’s what makes them so exciting to watch.”

  Something in the voice made Resnick look to his side then, slowing down.

  “I didn’t take you for a County man, Inspector. More of a Forest supporter.”

  “A long time back.”

  “We learn the error of our ways.”

  They were standing opposite the entrance to the cattle market, people continuing to spill round them. A single constable on horseback was guiding the straggle of visitors across the road to their coach.

  “Professor Doria,” said Resnick, not knowing how he knew.

  “William Doria, yes.” He extended his hand. “Inspector Resnick.”

  “That’s correct.”

  His grip was strong and he held it for slightly longer than was necessary. He was shorter than Resnick, but by no more than a couple of inches. He wore a black wool overcoat, longer than was fashionable; the bottoms of his trousers were tucked into thick socks, brown leather boots came up above his ankles. Thick hair, graying, showed beneath the brim of a trilby hat. A County scarf, black and white, was tucked under the collar of his coat.

  “I recognized you from the newspaper,” Doria explained. “Your photograph, a while ago now. A case involving the abuse of a young child, I believe. Sad, naturally, but in so many ways symptomatic of our time.”

  Did that, then, make it any less sad, Resnick thought?

  The last few supporters moved around the corner from sight.

  “But now, of course,” said Doria, “your energies are being expended elsewhere, the deaths of those two unfortunate women.” His eyes flickered. “And now the revelation is imminent, the victim, I see, is soon to be brought to justice.”

  “The victim?”

  “It must always be, Inspector, the perpetrator in such cases, violence against the person, these women, that child, they are also the victim.” But not the abused, Resnick thought, not the dead. “Perhaps you don’t agree?”

  “I hadn’t realized your field was sociology, Professor,” Resnick said.

  “Neither is it and I find I have little sympathy with the view that would seek to discover the cause for aberrant behavior in unemployment and overcrowding.”

  “Then where would you look?” Resnick asked.

  Without hesitation, Doria set his index finger over his heart.

  “Inside us,” he said. “Those needs whose expression of necessity subverts the rules of community, of family, all of those patterns by which we live.” Doria barely paused. “But now, Inspector, I have scripts waiting to be assessed and you and I, I think, go in different directions. It was a pleasure to have met you.”

  Resnick stood his ground as Doria turned confidently away and walked south along London Road towards Turner’s Quay and the river.

  Thirty-Two

  “So what are you saying, Charlie, that he confessed?”

  Skelton stood against the window, a silver rind of moon over his left shoulder. So far it was a clear morning, bright and cold, no sign of rain. Resnick had scarcely slept; had been at the station well before the first shift came on duty.

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Not in any words.”

  “He said…”

  “Charlie, you’ve already told me, three times. I know it off by heart. And it still doesn’t mean what you want it to mean.”

  He stood there, thought Resnick, telling me: those needs whose expression of necessity subverts the rules of community, of family, all of those patterns by which we live.

  “He gave you a theory, Charlie. Like any other tuppenny-ha’penny academic. It only takes a dolphin to be washed up on a beach somewhere in the world for some expert to inform us that they’re doing it to warn us we’re damaging the ecology of the planet. Child abuse has become a growth industry for sociologists and child psychologists from Aberystwyth to Scunthorpe. Do you know how much a QC gets paid to chair a panel which will take two years to tell us what was right before our eyes in the first place?

  “We’re surrounded by people with theories for all and sundry, Charlie, and the best we can hope to do is steer a course between them and use their knowledge when we’ve told them exactly what we want and nothing more.”

  “With respect, sir, I don’t think this is the same. It isn’t abstract. He knew what he was saying, Doria, knew who he was saying it to.”

  “Now what, Charlie? He was watching for you, waiting for you? Maybe he went to the match for the express purpose of seeking you out, striking up a conversation? Great shot! That bloke’s a load of rubbish! Oh, by the way, I’ve got this confession I want to make if you can hang on till they’ve taken this corner.”

  Facetious sod! thought Resnick. His All-Bran can’t be working.

  “I don’t think it’s impossible, sir,” he said.

  Skelton moved t
owards his desk. “I know it’s not easy to find acceptable reasons for watching that miserable team, but this might be taking it a bit far.”

  Resnick turned and started towards the door, smarting under his superior’s sarcasm.

  “Inspector…” Skelton began,

  “What about the girl?” Resnick asked, stopping, his voice unusually loud. “Oakes—what about her? We’ve her description of…”

  “A bit of rough, isn’t that what they call it, Charlie? You’re always so much more in tune with these terms than I seem to be. If we started pulling in every bloke who treated his wife like that, we’d have more inside than out on the street. And don’t waste that look of disapproval, I’m not condoning anything, you know that. I’m saying there’s a certain kind of world out there and we’re paid to work in it. Unfortunately, we have to live in it, too.”

  “Yes, sir.” Resnick spoke flatly, looked back at Skelton tight-lipped.

  The superintendent drummed his fingers across the papers on his desk before sitting down. “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And there’s nobody still wasting their time round the campus, playing at being students?”

  “No, sir.”

  Skelton lowered his head. Dismissed, Resnick opened and closed the door with respect.

  “Someone asking to see you, sir.”

  Resnick snapped at Naylor so sharply that the DC collided with the door when he withdrew.

  Certain that nothing now was going to make the day better, Resnick finished what he was doing before quitting his desk. There seemed to be more than usual activity around him, but he felt no part of it. Better to push away at the routine, keep his head down, sooner or later he’d stop feeling sorry for himself. Just about the last thing he wanted to do was talk to another human being. And he knew that it was neither of the people he would have been interested in seeing: had it been either Doria or Rachel he felt he would have known. It was Marian Witczak.

  She was wearing a burgundy cape and her hair was tied back into a bun. She looked like Resnick’s idea of a piano teacher with perfect pitch and a mother in a nursing home in the country.

  She waited until she was sitting opposite Resnick, until she had made a slow and careful survey of his office, until she had politely declined coffee, before taking an envelope from her bag and placing it on the desk before him.

  Like somebody depressing middle C.

  Resnick looked at her questioningly for a moment.

  “Open it.”

  The card was the same as he had seen before, the same color, size, texture.

  My Dear Marian,

  I am beginninq to regret, quite strongly, that so many months have elapsed since we met. I find I am in urgent need of mature and stimulating company and conversation.

  I wonder if you can bring yourself to overlook my inexcusable tardiness in communicating and agree to spend an evening with me?

  Shall we say this coming Saturday?

  Your sincere friend—

  William Doria

  Neatly printed, below the embossed name, were his address and telephone number.

  “I discovered it when I went downstairs,” Marian said. “It had been put through the letter-box early this morning.”

  Or very late last night, thought Resnick.

  “It was certainly delivered by hand. You see, it bears no stamp.”

  Resnick read the note through again, as Marian would have said, searching for clues. He could find none.

  “I thought—after the interest you showed before—I thought, Charles, that you would wish to know of this.”

  “You’re right,” said Resnick. “I’m grateful.” And then, “What do you intend to do about what he says?”

  “My first intention, this will not surprise you I think, was to tear this up, this beautiful calling card. My second, and I do not think this will surprise you either, was to accept.” She looked at Resnick, as if waiting for a comment that didn’t come. “Do you think I am foolish?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “That I have no pride?”

  “Certainly not that. I know you have.”

  She lifted up the card and glanced at it once again, although she must have been able to picture it by then with her eyes closed tight.

  “This last evening, the one I told you about, it was such pleasure to me. He is so diverting a companion.”

  “You’ve made up your mind,” Resnick said.

  “Unless you tell me otherwise.”

  “How can I do that, Marian? What you do is your own affair.”

  “Unless you wish to warn me.”

  “Of what?”

  “Charles, that I do not know.”

  Resnick tried to unscramble all of the voices that were vying for attention inside his head.

  “You said that when you were with him before you felt no danger?”

  “Of course not. Are you saying I should have done so?”

  “The important thing is that you didn’t.”

  “I have said this.”

  “Then…where would you go?”

  “I don’t know, I thought he might choose. He seems to have so many interests. Except…”

  “Yes?”

  “There is a dance, at the Polish Association.” For a moment her severe face softened into a smile. “You remember those dances? Of course they are not the same, but I could suggest it.” She studied his face. “What do you think?”

  “Yes,” Resnick said with a certainty he had no right to feel. “I think that would be the best idea.”

  He didn’t see Jack Skelton for the remainder of that day, suppressing his inclination to go to him with the copy he had made of Doria’s card and say, “There. What do you think all that’s about?”

  But what was it about? An educated man who liked the company of women, who liked to take them out and impress them with his erudition and, just occasionally, take them to bed. As the superintendent had said, if that tended to get a little excited, wasn’t that the same for all of us at some point in our lives?

  Doria liked to play verbal games, that was what words were to him: like “writing” he used them to disturb the ordinary, the run-of-the-mill, and the commonplace. Where was the harm in taking hold of conformity and shaking it by the scruff of its rigid neck?

  And the evidence—instead of evidence all that Resnick had were voices: Patel’s describing his charisma; Lynn Kellogg, the way his eyes had held her from an otherwise immobile face; Doria himself, the knowingness that had accompanied the placing of his finger to his heart.

  Voices: hurt me

  hurt me

  At three minutes past eleven the following morning (the officer at the desk would remember that time exactly), Leonard Simms walked into the station and said he wanted to confess to the murders of both Shirley Peters and Mary Sheppard.

  Thirty-Three

  “Don’t do it, Charlie.”

  The band was taking a breather and the disco had taken its place immediately below the stage, patterned lights and sixty-watt speakers. They had found a table in a side room, where most of the others were families, grandmothers left with the smaller children while their parents danced. To saxophone and accordion, Rachel and Resnick had waltzed, quickstepped, simply walked around the floor, slowly, in each other’s arms. It had been the jiving that had finished them, a breakdown of arms and good intentions during a version of “La Bamba” that had owed more to the polka than to a bar out in the barrio.

  “Don’t keep looking at me like that.”

  Resnick had not steered Rachel far past the entrance before vodkas had been thrust at them, amidst cries of surprise and greeting: back-slapping and kisses and the pumping of hands. “You’re supposed to swallow it straight down,” Resnick had explained, leading by example. After the second, Rachel had, politely but firmly, refused. Now Resnick was drinking beer and Rachel white wine, but every now and again someone would pass by their table and set down another glass of vod
ka, close by Resnick’s elbow.

  Rachel reached across and took hold of his hand. “Stop trying to make me fall in love with you.”

  Marian Witczak allowed Doria to pin the corsage to the bodice of her black dress; his hands were supple and confident, but there was a flush of excitement in his eyes which she could not remember. He accepted the offer of sherry and they sat facing one another, he leaning back in the worn comfort of the armchair, Marian at the edge of the settee, running the rings round and round her fingers.

  He talked about the courses he was teaching, the brilliance of one of his students—“the most striking red hair, she would have Rossetti painting in his grave”—and the dullness of the others. He had visited London and Manchester to attend the theater, exhibitions; a flight to Dubai, first-class, all expenses paid, to deliver a paper on Paul de Man. Most perfect of all had been a recital in Bath: “Fauré, Debussy, of course, Ravel—I have never heard anyone achieve the sensuality of the final section of the Sonatine in such a way. A cliche it may be, my dear Marian, but I am willing to swear here and now that she did become as one with her piano during that interpretation. A perfect fusion!”

  Doria smiled, finished his sherry and sprang smartly to his feet. “Now! Shall we go to the ball!”

  Resnick’s suit, Rachel recalled, was the one he had been wearing that first occasion she had seen him, walking across the entrance of the courthouse. She smiled to herself, remembering the way he had stared at her, tried to hide what he was doing, disguise it, embarrassed; the way he had carried on looking at her, nevertheless, as if having no alternative.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Oh, nothing special.”

  “You were smiling.”

  “Was I?”

  “I hope it means you’re having a good time?”

  “Charlie, of course I am. I don’t understand why you don’t come here more often.”

  He grinned, boyishly. Another woman, Rachel thought, would be reaching across to push his hair back from his eyes, straighten his tie. “I can only take this much alcohol once every six months.”