by John Harvey
“I don’t want to buy anything from you,” Ridgemount said, “I don’t want anything on credit and right now I can’t stop to discuss the Bible, because my nose tells me there’s a small emergency going on in my house. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
But Patel showed him his warrant card instead.
“I’m sorry,” Ridgemount said, “I have to deal with this first.”
He pushed the door open and left it wide. A man he didn’t recognize was standing half-way up the stairs, Calvin two steps from the bottom with another man right behind him, a hand on Calvin’s arm. Ridgemount stepped across the hall and into the kitchen; the windows were thick with steam and clouds of it had collected over the ceiling and were beginning slowly to descend the walls. He took a tea towel from its hook and bunched it in his hand, turned out the gas and lifted the pan from the stove. What had been a pound and a half of split peas was now a blackened mass crusted across the pan. Between the stove and the sink, the bottom of the saucepan fell out but the peas clung on, welded to the sides.
“Mr. Ridgemount,” said Resnick, who had walked over from his car and followed Patel into the house, “Detective Inspector Resnick. I’d appreciate it if you’d come with these officers to the police station. There are some questions we’d like to ask you.”
“Dad?” said Calvin from the hallway.
“These questions,” Ridgemount said. “What are they about?”
“Oh,” Resnick said, “I think you know.”
Ridgemount looked past Resnick to where Calvin was standing, Divine and Naylor at either side of him, Naylor still holding his arm.
“Let my son go,” Ridgemount said.
Resnick looked questioningly towards Naylor. “Possession of an illegal substance, sir. Namely, marijuana. Possession of stolen goods.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Ridgemount breathed.
Resnick nodded towards Patel, who went forward and reached his hand towards Ridgemount’s shoulder.
“Nooo!” Ridgemount screamed and backed clumsily against the stove, cleaving the space between Patel and himself with his fist. “No! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”
Patel moved in again but now there was a knife in Ridgemount’s hand, a kitchen knife, tears and fear glistening in his eyes.
“Steady!” called Resnick
Behind him, Calvin struggled to be free. “He won’t … You can’t … He won’t let you touch him. Not at all. He can’t.”
Resnick nodded, understanding.
“Let the boy go,” he said and Naylor, querying the order with his eyes, did exactly that. “Now, Mr. Ridgemount,” said Resnick, moving round Patel, slowly extending one hand, fingers spread. “Please let me have the knife. You have my word, we won’t touch you. Give me the knife and all you have to do is walk to the car and wait with one of the officers. We do have a warrant to search these premises and we’ll see that’s finished as speedily and with as little disturbance as possible. After we’ve searched the house, you’ll be driven to the station.”
“And Calvin?”
“He’ll come with us also. He can ride in the same vehicle as you if you wish.”
Ridgemount reversed the paring knife and placed the handle, carefully, in Resnick’s hand.
Forty-three
The postcard was from the island of Mykonos and off beyond the low, white buildings what Lynn presumed to be the Aegean was a dark stain like an ink blot in the monochrome copy on her desk. She imagined how blue it would be and Karen Archer stepping down to it through sand, even this far on in the year, to swim. We thought you would like to see this, Karen’s parents had said in their covering letter, we hope it sets your mind to rest.
Sorry to have been out of touch for so long but felt I just had to get away. Thank God for Thomas Cook and Access!! Think of me in the sun, pigging out on ouzo and olives!!! I’ll phone the minute I’m back in England. Take care and try not to worry. I’m fine!
Heaps of love, Karen XXXXXXXXXXXX
Well, good for you, Lynn thought. Be nice, wouldn’t it, if everyone in your position could go swanning off to Greece and pretend it had all been a bad dream. She sat for a moment, resting her head down into her hands. What’s the matter with you? Did you really want her to be a body somewhere, just so that you could have another victim, something to trace back to Ian Carew’s hand?
“Everything that’s said in this room,” Resnick explained, “everything you say, will be recorded on this machine, afterwards the tapes will be sealed and signed to show that they’re a true record.”
Ridgemount nodded to show that he understood.
“What I’d like you to do is say what happened in your own words, exactly as you want. If there’s anything that doesn’t seem clear, I might interrupt to ask a question, but other than that all I want to do is listen. All right?”
Ridgemount nodded: all right.
Carew hadn’t been certain whether to go up to her when she was with other people or wait again until she was alone. He hadn’t known whether to wear something not exactly formal but a little less sporty. Suggest that this was serious, not play. Touch and then go. Finally he settled on a faded denim shirt, white slacks, moccasins. Wallet buttoned down in his back pocket in case she said, “Terrific! Let’s go for a drink, celebrate!” Later they could get something to eat, that new place up from the Council House, all white tablecloths and single-stem flowers, Sonny’s, he’d been wanting to go there.
In the event, she didn’t say a thing. Stood there, staring at him as if not really able to believe it was him. The others that were with her, three of them, nurses, uncertain what to do, whether to walk on or stay, staring from Sarah to Carew and back again. Beneath her long, open coat she was still in her uniform, belted tight at the waist, dark sheen of her hair: perfect.
“Surprise, surprise!” Carew said.
“See you tomorrow, Sarah,” called one of the others, continuing on her way.
“Fine,” Sarah said. “Bye.”
Then they were alone in the middle of the broad corridor, doors off. Paintings by local primary children on the walls. “I thought you were in jail,” Sarah said.
Carew smiled. “I was. It was a mistake.”
“There must have been something. They must have arrested you for something.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Well, yes.”
A doctor, stethoscope around his neck, came into the corridor and walked towards them. He had a squash ball in his hand and he was squeezing it rhythmically, pressing it hard into his palm.
“Well, there was something,” Carew said. “They seemed to think I’d murdered someone. A woman.”
Scarcely missing a beat, the doctor turned through one of the doors and disappeared from sight.
Sarah Leonard was staring at him, unable to work him out. “And now they’ve changed their mind,” she said.
Carew smiled. “The wrong Ian. You see, they found her diary, the woman’s, and there was a name there, Ian. They thought it was me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. But it was a mistake. The real Ian turned up, the one from the diary and, well, here I am.”
“What for?”
“Um?”
“What for? Why are you here? I don’t understand.”
The smile shifted from the mouth to the eyes. “I thought, you know, we had some unfinished business.”
Sarah waited.
“When we were talking, before, if I remember rightly, we’d just got to the point.”
“Of what?”
“Finalizing the arrangements. Where we were going to go, where we were going to meet. Italian or Chinese. You know the kind of thing.”
“I may do. But what makes you think I’d ever agree to going out with you? Especially now.”
“Exactly my point.”
“What?”
“Especially now. It’s not every day the police decide you didn’t murder somebody after all. We have to go and cel
ebrate.”
Sarah shook her head. An elderly woman was maneuvering the length of the corridor on a Zimmer frame, pausing every fifteen feet or so to draw breath.
“We’ve got to,” Carew said.
“You’re the one. It’s nothing to do with me. You celebrate.” She began to walk towards him, veering left to go past. As she drew level he caught hold of her hand.
“It’s no fun on your own.”
“Tough!”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
One of the side doors opened and she pulled herself clear. A porter backed out a trolley bearing a sheet and blankets, nothing else. He was chewing gum and whistling “When You’re Smiling”; recognizing Sarah, he winked and grinned and switched the gum from one side of his mouth to the other, all without quite losing the tune.
“Just one drink,” Carew pleaded. “Half an hour. On your way home.”
“No.”
“But …”
“No. How’s it spelt?”
Carew hung his lower lip, made a good pass at crossing his legs standing up, and stared at her as if she’d asked him to explain the theory of relativity. “Er,” he stuttered. “Um … er, um … the first letter, miss, it’s not an M?”
“No.” Willing herself not to find his little-boy act funny, just absurd. Pathetic.
“N? It’s an N, isn’t it? N for no.”
Unable to stop herself smiling, Sarah nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Carew was suddenly no longer the timid boy, moving confidently towards her. “You did say yes.” He’d been saving his best smile for last, the one that never let him down. “Half an hour,” he said. “An hour at most.”
“I was lying there,” Ridgemount said, “I was lying there with my eyes taped over shut and I couldn’t move. They had this tube, see, this tube clamped over my mouth. Taking the air down to my lungs. And they’ve been saying, before, you know, they give me this shot, put me under, she was saying, this girl, not much more than a girl, just a few seconds and you won’t feel a thing. Not till you’re back in recovery and it’s all over.
“Well, I went spark out all right. Next thing I know, I seem to come to and there I am thinking it’s just like sleeping, nights you go to bed and you’re so tired you can’t as much as remember your head hitting the pillow but the next second you’re waking up and it’s eight hours or more later. So I’m there thinking, okay what did she say this place was, recovery? All right, I’m in recovery, except my mouth is still covered and my eyes are still taped over and I reason I’m still in the operating room, must be going to wheel me out any minute.
“They don’t wheel me out. Nobody’s about to wheel me out.”
“Even though I’ve got this tape across my eyes, somehow I can see these bright lights right there above me and it’s like, you know when you’ve been looking up at the sun and you close your eyes and for a while you can see this hot blur, like it’s printed on the inside of your eye, that’s what it’s like. Not only that, I can hear voices. Not too clear what they’re saying, not clear at all, so I try and say something, speak to them, what’s going on? Only there’s no way I can say anything, not a word. I try to move, can’t move a muscle. Just stretched out there and I realize, shit, they haven’t done this operation, taken out this damn gallbladder, haven’t even started yet. My head’s panicking and my body can’t move and I can’t shout or scream and all I can see is the blur of those lights and I’m thinking, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t and then it does.
“It’s like wire being pulled clear through me. Thin wire. Only it’s hot. It’s a piece of red-hot wire and I swear I can hear the flesh tear when he pulls it through. And all I can do is pray for it to stop. Pray to die. ’Cause I know it won’t stop ever. Won’t stop till it’s done.”
Carew was drinking his second single malt, savoring it, the look he gave the stupid little cow behind the bar when she asked him if he wanted ice in it should have made her pee her pants. Where was the point in drinking the good stuff like this, only to water it down with frozen algae out of the Severn-Trent?
“D’you ever come in here?” He looked round at the wide room, stuffed red chairs and shiny black-top tables, like something off a P amp; O cruise ship.
Sarah Leonard shook her head. It was only after he made a fuss about ordering bitter lemon-what kind of a celebratory drink was that? — that she’d relented and had a dry white wine and now she was regretting it.
“We should have gone somewhere a bit livelier. More style.” He leaned forward across the table exactly as she knew he would. “We still could.”
“Oh, no.”
“Come on. Let’s go dancing, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time you went dancing? Venus. New York, New York. God, we could even go to the Irish.” He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. “How about it?”
The wine tasted sour and old, as if the box it had been squeezed out of had been moldering in a cellar somewhere for years.
“Why don’t you ever give up?”
“It’s not in my nature,” Carew smiled, “to accept defeat.” Sarah put down her glass and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
She pointed towards the door alongside the bar. “Ladies.” Carew nodded.
“Sarah,” he called when she was halfway across the room. Swiveling her body, she stopped to look back at him. “Don’t go slipping out the back way now, will you?” And he laughed.
“You could tell from their faces, the way they were all over me, fussing with this, fussing with that, you could tell they knew something had gone wrong. But they never said, never said a thing to me and I couldn’t … at first, when they pulled the tube away from my mouth, all the time I’d been wanting to shout out and scream and cry and when I could do it I couldn’t get a sound to come out.
“Later, yes. Then I would scream and call them barbarians and butchers and they would come running and slide this needle into my arm. Keep me quiet. Take away the pain. That’s what they say, make you feel comfortable, take away the pain. It’s too late, I say, it’s too late for that. And they slide the needle home.”
“What’s that?” Sarah asked, pointing at the glass.
“Bitter lemon.”
“And?”
“Ice.”
“And?”
“Gin.”
She picked it up and carried it over to the bar. “There was a misunderstanding,” she said. “I didn’t want this.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl behind the counter. “You can’t have your money back.”
“Fine.”
Sarah gave Carew a quick look, see how he was taking that, and headed for the door. A picture in denim, that was how he saw himself. Mr. Irresistible. She wondered when a woman had last turned him down and what had happened to her when she had. She had thought he might jump up and come after her, flash another of those practiced-in-the-bathroom-mirror smiles, but Carew continued to sit where he was, drinking his malt whisky, looking cool.
A quarter of a mile on, she was less angry about it already, just another bloke trying it on, this one, maybe, a touch more persistent than the rest. Approaching the road that led down towards the old Raleigh factory, Sarah’s face opened to a smile. Had he really imagined she was going to go off with him, dancing, dressed like that? The badge on her uniform that spelled out her name and rank. Ridiculous.
And suddenly there he was in front of her, posing at the corner of the side street, having to struggle to control his breathing and pretend he hadn’t had to sprint fast to double around that block and get ahead of her in time.
“Now what?” Sarah said, angry again.
“Easy. I walk with you to your door, say good night, turn right around, and go home. End of evening. Okay?”
“No.”
Ian Carew didn’t say anything; he didn’t even smile. He just looked.
Sarah began to walk and he danced into step alongsid
e her, not attempting to talk, simply walking. All right, Sarah thought, five minutes, another five streets and it will be over.
“When I got home from the hospital I could still feel the pain. I didn’t go to bed at night, I wouldn’t lie down, as soon as I did I’d be waiting for it again, waiting for it to start. The cutting. The wire. I slept sitting up, wherever I was and even then, though I wasn’t lying down, I would scream.”
“At first my wife, she would come to me and try to calm me down but if she went to touch me I screamed all the more. I couldn’t ever bear to have anyone touch me.”
“My Marjorie … she was little then, she says to her mother, why does daddy shout at me like that, why won’t he let me near him, why does he hate me?”
“In the end they couldn’t take it any more and they left me and Calvin he stayed. No matter what that boy does, I’ll always love him for that. He stayed by me when nobody else would.”
Sarah’s house was in a short terrace that backed on to a playing field. She had bought it when prices in the city had been lower than almost anywhere aside from Belfast, which was just as well because on her salary it had been all she could afford. She stood with her back to her front door, hands in her coat pockets, fingers of one tight about some loose change, the others round her keys.
“Right,” Sarah said.
“What?”
“Good night.”
The smile was back. “Good night.”
Sarah didn’t budge. “Let me see you walk away.”
“Just one thing …”
“No.”
“Just …”
“No!”
“Tim Fletcher, I wanted to ask …”
“What about him?”
“You were getting pretty friendly with him, running errands and all that …”
