Cutting Edge

by John Harvey

  Lynnie, no! You aren’t serious?

  The job.

  She checked the address in her notebook and looked up at the front of the house. Mid-terraced, the one to its right was a prime example of seventies stone-cladding, that to the left sported a shiny new door, complete with brass knocker and mail box.

  Twenty-seven.

  Two curtains had been draped unevenly across the downstairs window, probably held up by pins. Among the half-dozen bottles clustered on the step was one ripe with yellowing, crusted milk At least, thought Lynn, she didn’t live like this.

  The girl who finally came to the door was a couple of inches taller than herself, even in woolly socks. She had near-black hair to her shoulders, unbrushed so that it made a ragged frame around the almost perfect oval of her face. She was slender in tapered black jeans, with a good figure that two jumpers—purple and green—failed to disguise. Her eyes were raw from lack of sleep or tears or both. Looking like that, she’d get the sympathy vote as well.

  “Karen Archer?”

  The girl nodded, stepping back to let Lynn enter. She scarcely glanced at Lynn’s warrant card, motioning her past the hall table with its telephone almost hidden beneath free papers, free offers, handouts from Chinese restaurants and taxi firms. A succession of tenants had etched numbers on to the wallpaper in a rising arc, some of them scored heavily through.

  “Mind the fourth step,” Karen warned, following Lynn closely.

  There was a poster stuck to the door of Karen’s room, two lovers kissing in a city street.

  “Go on in,” Karen said.

  It had originally been a back bedroom, a view from the square of window down over a succession of back yards, old outhouses, an alley pushing narrowly in between. Cats and rusted prams and washing lines.

  The interior was a mixture of arranged and untidy: neatly stacked books alongside music cassettes, each labeled in a clear, strong hand; earrings hanging from cotton threads, red, yellow, blue; on the bed a duvet bundled to one side, as though Karen had been lying beneath it when Lynn had rung the bell: tights in many colors dangling down from the mantelpiece and the top of the opened wardrobe door, drying.

  “Sit down.”

  The choice was between the bed and a black canvas chair with pale wooden arms and Lynn took the latter.

  The room smelled of cigarette smoke and good perfume.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  There were five used mugs, one on the scarred table, three close together on the floor beside the bed, the last standing on the chest of drawers, in front of a mirror with photographs jutting at all angles from its frame. “No, thanks,” Lynn said with a quick smile. She was wondering which of the men in the photos was Fletcher.

  “What d’you want to know?” Karen said.

  They went through the worst first, the discovery of the houseman on the bridge, the fears that he might die, be already dead; then their arrangements for that evening, the phone call which might have been from Fletcher yet might as easily not.

  “You haven’t known him all that long then?”

  Karen shook her head. “Two months.” She lifted her head to see that Lynn was still looking at her, encouraging her to continue. “I went to this Medics Ball, I don’t know.” She gestured vaguely with her hand, the one not holding a cigarette. “I’d been going around with these medical students, I don’t know how that started really, except most of the people on my course are a bunch of deadheads. Either that or posers of the first order.”

  “Your course?”

  “English. Drama subsid. If he didn’t die before the Second World War, he didn’t exist. That’s English anyway. Drama’s not so bad.”

  “Are they all men, then, the people you study?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Writers. You said, he.”

  Karen stared at her. What the fuck? A feminist policewoman? “Figure of speech,” she said.

  Lynn Kellogg nodded. “The medical students you mentioned, were they male?”

  “Mostly. To be honest, I think women are pretty boring, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Lynn. “No, I don’t.”

  She could see the shifting look in Karen Archer’s distressed eyes, the word forming silently behind them—dyke!

  “Anyway,” asked Karen, “what does it matter?”

  Lynn sidestepped the question. “Before you began going out with Dr. Fletcher, you did have another boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “One or several?”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “I mean, this relationship, the earlier one, was it serious?”

  Karen dropped the end of her cigarette into a quarter-inch of cold coffee. “I suppose so.”

  “And the man?”

  “What about him?”

  “Was he serious?”

  “Ian?” Karen laughed. “Only things he gets serious about are anatomy and Blackadder.”

  “Is he over here?” Lynn went to the mirror, Karen almost grudgingly following. “One of these?”

  “There.”

  Karen pointed to a figure in a skimpy swimming costume, lots of body hair, posing at the edge of a pool with a champagne bottle in one hand and a pint glass in the other. There were three other pictures: Ian in a formal dinner jacket but wearing a red nose; Ian flourishing a stethoscope; Ian as Mr. Universe.

  Wow! thought Lynn. What a guy!

  “He looks a lot of fun,” she said. “Why did you stop going out with him?”

  “Is that any of your business?”

  “No.”

  Karen shrugged and wandered over to the kettle, shaking it to make certain there was enough water before switching it on. “Sure you don’t want one?” she asked, opening the jar of Maxwell House.

  “Thanks, no,” said Lynn. “What’s Ian’s last name?”

  “Carew.”

  “And he’s still a student here?”

  “A medical student, yes. He’s in his second year.”

  “But you haven’t seen him?”

  “Not since I started seeing Tim.”

  “Not at all?”

  “I don’t know. Once, maybe.”

  “How did he feel about you and Dr. Fletcher? I mean …” Karen was laughing, shaking her head, reaching for another cigarette, all at the same time. “I know what you mean. Poor old Ian was so heartbroken at being chucked, he couldn’t cope. Especially when the other man was a qualified doctor and he was only a student. So he waited for him one night and tried to kill him: jealousy and revenge.”

  The kettle had begun to boil and Karen did nothing to switch it off. Lynn reached down past her and flicked up the switch, removing the plug safely, the way her mother had taught her.

  “It’s the sort of thing you see on a bad film on television,” Karen said, “late at night.”

  “Yes,” said Lynn. “Isn’t it?”

  She turned back towards the mirror. Right across the top were the pictures of the man she assumed to be Fletcher. Young, young for a doctor, Polaroids that had been taken there, in that room, those strange reflections from the flash sparkling at the center of his eyes. Bottom left was a strip from a photo booth, one they had sat in together, goofy faces, weird expressions, only in the last were they serious, kissing.

  “Have you been to see him?”

  “No. I phoned. They said this afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. “After two.” She spooned milk substitute into the mug of coffee and went back to the bed, stirring carefully. “I’m a bit frightened to see him, I suppose. After what’s happened to him.” She sipped, then drank. “What he’ll look like.”

  Does it matter? thought Lynn. And then, of course it does.

  “You didn’t notice anybody?” she asked. “Walking to meet him. Hanging around by the bridge.”

  “No one. Traffic. No one walking. Not that I saw.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “This Ian,” Lynn said, nodding ove
r towards the photographs as she stood, “someone will most likely talk to him.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe. But I expect it will be done.” Lynn hesitated at the door. “If you do think of anything that might be important, give me a call.” She placed a card on the corner of the pillow. “Thank you for your time, I’ll see myself out.”

  Karen stood up but made no move towards the door. Lynn hurried down the stairs, remembering which step to beware, wondering why she had felt so hostile, offered the girl so little support. What combination had it been, she wondered, walking briskly up the street, that had made her withhold her sympathy? Why had she felt jealous and superior, the feelings hand in hand?

  Seven

  Mid-morning. Graham Millington was sitting in a smoke-wreathed room in Walsall, watching a DI write names and dates on a white board, using his colored markers with a definite flourish. A detective sergeant stuck flags into a map of the Midlands at appropriate points and offered commentary in a flat Black Country accent. What was it the wife wanted me to pick up from the shops, Millington was thinking, mushrooms or aubergines? Millington had never been quite clear what it was you did with an aubergine. He copied information down into his notebook, glanced about him. Nine out of eleven smoking away as if their lives depended upon it. He tried to remember what he had heard on the radio earlier that week, research some Americans had been doing into passive inhalation of nicotine. God, he thought, if this goes on beyond twelve that’s likely as not another six months off my lifetime … or was it six minutes?

  Patel pushed his tongue up against the back of his teeth, trying to ease away the last remnants of Milky Way. You could sit for just so long watching cream-colored breezeblock without going into a trance. Meditation. Hadn’t he been toying for ages with the idea of taking it up? He could hear them in the canteen if ever they found out. Yeah, great, Diptak, what comes next? Swallowing fire? Sleeping on nails? Except that they never called him Diptak. Or much else. To his face, anyway. He picked up his camera as two men in blue overalls came out of the nearest building and almost immediately set it down again. The men settled themselves up against the wall, facing what sun there was, unpacked their sandwiches, unscrewed their flasks. Patel wondered how long he could go before opening the empty orange juice container under the seat to take a pee.

  “I think they must have got in through here.”

  “Yes,” murmured Divine, “most likely.”

  He stood at the window of what estate agents liked to call a utility room, looking out over a quarter-acre of lawns, fruit bushes, shrubs with unpronounceable Latin names and flowers fading down into wooden barrels. Beyond that, on a lower level, was a full-sized tennis court, complete with green wire surround and floodlights. He wondered where they kept the swimming pool. Probably down in the basement, along with the steam room and the jacuzzi.

  “You will do your best to catch them?”

  Daft cow, standing there in some sort of silk dressing gown, rings down her fingers enough to open a branch of Ratners and a bit of tangerine cloth round her head like she’s thinking about joining a very select order of nuns.

  “Yes,” said Divine, choking back the word “madam.” “We’ll do what we can. You’ll let us have a full list of what’s missing, of course?”

  The doorbell chimed four bars of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

  “Excuse me,” she turned smoothly away, “that must be the cleaning woman.”

  Oh, yes, thought Divine, coming in the front door too, must have had good references. He was glad he’d forgotten to wipe his feet on the way in.

  Lynn saw Kevin Naylor sitting on his own at the far side of the canteen and wasn’t sure whether to go and sit with him or not. Up until recently she would have had no hesitation, but lately Kevin had been short with her, abrupt and eager to keep his distance. She knew there were problems at home with Debbie, with the baby. There had been an evening when they might have talked about it, Kevin and herself, almost had. Tired, he had come back to her flat for coffee, but instead of talking he had fallen asleep. Waking, he had only hurried away, half-guilty. Lynn recalled from that evening her hand momentarily against Kevin’s upper arm. What had that been about? And asking him back—coffee? Come back for coffee? She thought about Karen Archer saying that to Fletcher after the Medics Ball, that or something like it. What had he understood by that?

  There had been a film they’d shown on the TV, a year or so before, between the adverts. A young woman moving around her flat, making sure the bedroom door was open, clear view of the bed; the camera on the man’s face then, suggesting what he was thinking, condoms, AIDS, wouldn’t you like to stay the night? Was that what Kevin had been afraid of? She doubted it. She took her cup of tea and pulled out the chair opposite him. If he didn’t want to talk to her, he could get up and move away.

  “How did it go at the hospital?” she asked.

  “It’s your wife, sir,” called someone as Resnick left his office.

  “What?”

  “Your wife.” A young DC leaned back from his desk, holding a receiver aloft.

  “Don’t be so bloody daft!”

  Resnick shouldered his way through the door and hurried down the stairs. He was already late for his appointment with the DCI. He wondered whether Ed Silver had woken and, if so, if he were still in the house. Remembering his remark about the cleaver, Resnick felt a twinge of apprehension on behalf of his cats. No, he thought, stepping out on to the street, if he tries anything funny Dizzy’ll soon sort him out.

  Ignoring his car, Resnick crossed in front of the traffic at an ungainly trot and set off downhill past the new Malaysian restaurant, raincoat flapping awkwardly around him.

  “Kevin,” said Lynn, unable to lift the testiness from her voice.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been sitting here for almost twenty minutes and you’ve either said nothing or gone on about some nurse you reckon fancied you.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought we were supposed to be comparing notes, seeing if we’re any closer to understanding why that doctor was attacked.”

  “Funny. I thought we were having a tea break. Bit of relaxation. Besides, I never asked you to sit here.”

  “Maybe you’d prefer me back in uniform—just a different kind.”

  “Maybe I would.”

  When she stood up, Lynn scraped her chair back loudly enough for several others to turn around. “If you’re thinking of going over the side,” she said, “I should keep it to yourself.”

  “What’s the matter, Lynn?” said Naylor. “Jealous?”

  “You bastard!”

  She pushed her way between the close-set tables, the backs of jutting chairs, her normally ruddy cheeks redder still.

  “What’s up?” said Mark Divine, all mouth and mock concern. “Getting your period?”

  Lynn Kellogg rocked back on her heels, swiveling to face him. Divine standing there with his tray balanced over one arm, the rest of the canteen watching.

  “Yes,” she said, “matter of fact, I am.”

  Once before, in the CID room, she’d struck out at him, smack across the face, marks from her fingers that hadn’t soon faded. She moved a half pace towards him now and his arm went up instinctively for protection. There was a large glass of milk on the tray, a cream cake, pie and chips.

  Lynn reached out and took a chip. “Thanks, Mark. Nice of you to be so concerned.”

  The roar from the rest of the canteen cowboys was still loud around Divine as he found a seat, echoes of it following Lynn all the way back along the corridor.

  “Espresso?”

  “Large.”

  Resnick looked at the girl as she turned away. Short hair like bleached gold at the tips, mud at the roots. Two silver rings in her left ear and a fake diamond stud at the side of her nose. He hadn’t seen her before and he wasn’t too surprised. Mario would take on a girl, teach her to work the machine and then she’d leave.

  “Thank
s,” he said as she set down the small cup and saucer, brown and white. He gave her one pound thirty and she looked surprised. “Half’s for the next one,” Resnick explained.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  There had been a period of almost six weeks when the stall had closed down and Resnick had felt bereft. Usually, when he went to the indoor market near the Central police station and shopped at either of the Polish delicatessens, or bought fresh vegetables, fish, he would stop off at the Italian coffee stall for two espressos. Sometimes—the luxury of half an hour to kill, more than usual to read the paper in—he would have three and spend the rest of the day tasting them, strong and bitter, at the back of his throat. Then, suddenly, no warning: it was closed.

  Resnick had asked around. He was, after all, a detective. There were rumors of grand changes, expansion, everything from toasted ham and cheese to microwaved lasagna. One morning, local paper under one arm, half a pound of pickled gherkins, soused herring and a dark rye with caraway in a carrier bag, it was open again, Mario himself behind the counter. There were new covers on the stools, fresh red and green paint on the counter, the cappuccino machine had been moved from one side to the other. Everything else seemed the same. Resnick had greeted Mario like a long-lost brother, a material witness he had never thought would show up at the trial.

  “Coffee? Wonderful coffee!” sang Mario, as though he had never seen Resnick before. “Best coffee you can buy!”

  “What’s happened?” Resnick asked. “What’s been happening?”

  “The wife,” Mario said, “she had a baby.” Explaining nothing.

  Then, as now, Resnick drank one espresso and slid his cup back across the counter for another.

  Across from him a mother and daughter, similar hair styles, identical expressions, listened to Mario declaring undying love to the pair of them and were pleased. A serious young man who had strolled in from the poly refolded his Guardian as he spooned chocolatey froth from the top of his cappuccino. No more than eighteen, a woman prised the dummy from her three-year-old’s mouth so that he could drink his banana milk shake. Along to Resnick’s right, a man with check cap and a hump glanced around before slipping his false teeth into his handkerchief, the better to deal with his sausage roll.