Cutting Edge

by John Harvey

  Ed’s note was propped against the edge of the frying pan, Out for a quick one, back soon. He had washed the plate but not the knife and fork, rinsed out his cup and left the tea stewing dark and cold inside the pot. Three tea bags. The bacon and the sausage he had found in Resnick’s fridge, the oven chips he would have had to fetch from the grocer’s on the main road. Also, the half-bottle of cheap Greek brandy, empty between the cats’ bowls.

  Resnick picked up Bud and nuzzled him, conscious of the animal’s ribs like something made from a kit, balsa wood and glue. He dropped his coat over the back of a chair and, carrying the cat with him, pulled an Ellington album from the shelf. “Jack the Bear,” “Take the A Train,” “KoKo.” His friend, Ben Riley, twelve years in the job before he left for America, had sent him a card from New York. Charlie-Finally got to take the “A” train. Head-to-toe graffiti, inside and out, and anyone white gets off below 110th Street. Stay home. Stick to the music. Ben, he’d stayed there: Resnick hadn’t heard from him in more than two years, four.

  Ed Silver had scorned the Czech Budweiser and Resnick opened a bottle and slowly drank it as he sliced a small onion carefully into rounds and overlapped them along two slices of dark rye bread. He covered these with Polish ham, then cut slivers of Jarlsberg cheese. Backtracking to the fridge, he found one solitary pickled cucumber, set rounds of this on the ham, then added the cheese.

  The grill was gathering heat when he stood the sandwiches, open-faced, beneath it and finished the first beer, rolling his hand across his stomach as he reached for another.

  When the cheese was brown and bubbling, he forked some coleslaw on to a plate, used a slice to lift up the sandwiches and set them down next to the coleslaw, balanced two jars of mustard, Dijon and mixed grain, on the rim, pushed his index finger down into the neck of the Budweiser bottle and headed back for the living room.

  Ben Webster was just beginning his solo on “Cotton Tail,” rolling that phrase over the rhythm section, springy and strong from Blanton’s bass, round and round and rich, like rolling it round a barrel of treacle. Just when it seemed to have become stuck, sharp little phrases from the brass digging it out, and then the saxophone lifting itself with more and more urgency, up, up and into the next chorus.

  Resnick wondered what it must be like, being able to do anything with such force, such grace. Would he see Ed Silver that evening or the next and in what state? You spent half a lifetime striving to reach a point of perfection and then one night, one day, for no reason that any onlooker could see, you opened your fingers and watched as it all slipped away.

  In their two-bedroom, two-story house, Debbie Naylor had fallen back to sleep, mouth open, lightly snoring. Kevin still sat in the chair before the television, watching, soundlessly, as two boxers moved around the square ring, feinting, parrying, never quite connecting.

  Tim Fletcher lay on his back, awake in the half-light, counting stitches, trying to sleep.

  Like a metronome, the even click of Sarah Leonard’s low heels, along the pavement leading from the bridge.

  Ten

  Debbie Naylor stood looking down at her sleeping husband, alone save for the blue hum of the TV. The first time she had seen him, a friend had pointed him out, standing at the edge of half-a-dozen men at the bar, neither quite one of them nor alone. It hadn’t been until he was driving her home, oh, three weeks later, home where she still lived with her parents, Basford, that he had told her what he did.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Why?”

  “You just are.”

  She had learned, some of it soon enough, the rest later. After the lunchtime meetings, Sunday afternoons with her family, Kevin embarrassed, wanting to leave; after the jokes from her friends at the office, the wedding with all of Kevin’s friends, tall and short-haired and already three-parts drunk, lining up to kiss her open-mouthed; not above, some of them, trying to cop a feel through the brocade of her wedding dress. Posing for the photographer, one of the bridesmaids had jumped in front of them, slipped a pair of handcuffs over their wrists.

  After the honeymoon, the collision of late nights and early mornings; evenings with dinner in the oven and drying out, dreading the phone call that would, almost inevitably, come. Just a quick half. Wind down. With the lads. You know how it is.

  She knew.

  When Kevin had been accepted for CID it got better and then it got worse. Put your foot down, her mother had said, else he’ll walk all over you.

  Better, Debbie had thought, than walking out.

  She stood there, gazing down at him, asleep in the chair, looking little different at three and twenty than he had at nineteen. She couldn’t believe that after all that had happened in the past four years, he was still the same. When she was so different.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  Kevin didn’t hear her. She wanted to go down, carefully, to her knees and feel the side of her face against the warmth of his neck. Instead she left the room, puffing the door to but not closing it, not wanting to disturb him.

  Alone, Kevin stirred and, waking, heard the soft thunk of the freezer door; Debbie, he thought, sneaking out for another pigging midnight feast.

  The cats heard the phone moments before Resnick himself, jumping down from the bed and scuttling towards the bedroom door. Resnick blinked and groaned, lifting the receiver at only the second attempt.

  “Yes?” he said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “What is it?”

  He listened for less than a minute then set down the receiver. He had sat up for too long, hoping that Ed Silver might return, chasing the Budweiser with shots of vodka brought back by a friend from Cracow, the real thing. Setting his feet to the floor gingerly, he pushed himself up and padded to the kitchen. Miles and Bud had beaten him to it and were sniffing at their empty bowls expectantly. Pepper, who had taken to sleeping in an old plastic colander, yawned a greeting and reclosed his eyes, forgetting to put the red tip of his tongue back inside his mouth.

  Knowing he was unlikely to get back to sleep, Resnick made coffee, drank half and put the remainder into a flask which he carried out to the car. Overhead lights shone a dull orange along the empty street. He went straight across the lights at the Forest, keeping the cemetery to his right. One last prostitute lingered against the wall near the next junction, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, face pale in the glow of her last cigarette.

  When he began driving Resnick hadn’t known for certain where he was going, but now he did.

  Large blocks of brick and glass, by day the hospital didn’t have enough character to be ugly. By night, most of its lights extinguished, some of them burning here and there, it was more inviting, mysterious. Resnick went slowly around the one-way system and parked fifty yards short of the medical school entrance.

  A few swallows of black coffee and he took a torch from the compartment alongside the dash, locked the car and started to walk towards the bridge. It was a good hour later than the time Fletcher had been attacked, the flow of traffic was sporadic, there was no one else on foot. A short avenue of bushes and trees separated the hospital from the road. He flicked the torch on and shone it up the metal spiral before beginning to climb. Whoever had followed the houseman had either come directly after him from the hospital, or taken this route up from the road. This way, Resnick reasoned, pausing as his head came level with the glass above. Less likely to create suspicion, loitering about; easier to wait for your victim, pick him out.

  The door at the top could have been locked, likely would have been if someone had not removed the bolt. Wonder, thought Resnick, exactly when that was done.

  He pushed the door open and stepped through, turning left so that the hospital lay behind him, the bridge stretching out ahead. The occasional vehicle now, headlights sliding down the glass panels as they sped along the ring road, north or south. Resnick stood quite still, listening to the muted thrum of engines, concentrating on the double doors at the far e
nd, the bridge spanning six lanes of highway, those doors a long way off.

  Do people feel unhappy only during office hours? Black print on white paper, Blu-tacked to the wired glass. Phone NITELINE 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. Resnick tried to imagine being trapped in there, terrified, desperate to escape. He began to walk, slowly, towards the other side, the smell of rubber clearer with every step.

  Whoever had seen Fletcher, followed him, what had determined his choice? Being there, now, the middle of the night, Resnick found it difficult to believe in a chance attack. Whoever had stalked the exhausted houseman almost the length of the bridge had done so for a reason. Resnick needed to believe it had been personal. He hesitated for a moment, staring down. He had to believe that, cling to it, knowing that if it were not true, there was somebody still out there, somewhere in the city, who had wreaked terrible havoc on Tim Fletcher’s body for reasons that only a psychologist might ever understand. And who might do the same again.

  City Life, read the poster facing Resnick as he went through the double doors. A bicycle had been left chained to the railings on the broad platform, two-thirds of the way down the steps. The air that touched Resnick’s hands and face was surprisingly cold, driving up from the flyover. Something caught his attention, low by the wall of the first building and he brought up the torch.

  It was only boxes, crammed with computer printouts: metallurgy, something close. Resnick switched off the torch and stood them, feeling the adrenalin in his body. Seek and you shall find. He crossed back over the ring road, stepping easily over the metal safety barriers at the center.

  Sitting in the car, he dribbled the last of the coffee into the plastic cup. There had been no mistaking his ex-wife’s voice on the phone, nor, in those few not-quite-coherent sentences, the mixture of resentment and pleading he had thought forgotten.

  Eleven

  He had the kind of profile that could have been selling aftershave; thick hair, naturally curly and dark, a hunk wearing a black vest and loose-fitting sweatpants with a draw-string waist. He was wearing a pair of running shoes that had cost him close to eighty pounds, but that didn’t mean he was running. He had walked down the street and now he stood outside Number 27 and rang the bell. When nothing seemed to happen, he hit the door with the flat of his hand, enough to make it shake. Pushing back the letter flap, Ian Carew called Karen’s name.

  A couple of minutes and he saw her through the couple of inches of door: salmon socks, double-knit and large and folding loosely back down her calves; hem of a white T-shirt bouncing as she came down the stairs, enough to give him a glimpse of expensive underwear, beige lace and broderie anglaise. There was a large Snoopy in relief on the front of the shirt. Carew let the flap snap into place and stood back.

  Not far.

  “What …?”

  He stepped in without speaking, anger in his face, forcing her back along the threadbare carpet at the other side of the mat.

  She looked at him and shook her head and for a moment he thought she was going to bite down into her lower lip, like a child. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and there was sleep in the corner of her eyes.

  A woman walked past on the opposite side of the street, Asian, wearing a purple and gold sari and pushing a pram, twins. Karen didn’t think she’d ever noticed Asian twins before.

  Carew moved forward, blocking her view.

  “Good at it, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Natural. Comes natural. Something Mummy fed you along with the milk.”

  “Now you’re being stupid.”

  “And don’t do that!” His hand was on her face before she could move, fingers squeezing against the sides of her jaw, forcing her mouth slightly open so that she could no longer bite the soft flesh inside her lip.

  “Lying,” he said. “That’s what you’re good at. Lying. ‘No, Ian, there isn’t anything wrong. I’m not seeing anybody else, of course I’m not seeing anybody else.’ Weeks until I found out.”

  Karen turned her head aside, laughed dismissively. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Tim.”

  “Gets himself mugged and you send the police round after me.”

  “Oh, Ian.”

  “Oh, Ian, what?”

  She didn’t want this conversation, didn’t want this to be happening. She might have guessed that cow of a policewoman would put two and two together and come up with the wrong answer. Probably she should have warned him, but she hadn’t. Now he was there in the house, angry, and she didn’t think she could make him leave against his will, not by herself. She didn’t think there was anybody else in the house.

  “Look,” Karen said, “let me get dressed. It won’t take a minute.”

  Carew didn’t move.

  Shrugging, she turned and went back upstairs, conscious that he was following her, looking at her legs.

  “Mind the …”

  “I remember.”

  The room was much as he’d remembered it as well, clutter and last night’s cigarette smoke. It had almost been enough to put him off her, the way, after a meal, after the cinema, after sex, she would automatically light up. Cheap. Expensive to look at but cheap underneath. He watched as she pulled on a pair of faded blue jeans and exchanged her socks for a pair of sports shoes, white with a pink trim.

  She picked up the kettle. “Tea?”

  “When did I ever drink tea in the mornings?”

  Karen spooned instant coffee into mugs, relieved that he seemed to have calmed down, feeling safer now that he was almost friendly, wanting to keep him that way, only not too much. Carew watched her as the water boiled, lounging with one of his bare elbows against the wall, posing.

  “I should be really pissed off with you,” he said, as she spooned sugar into her own mug, ready.

  “You mean you’re not?”

  “I ought to be.” Not leaning any more now, standing close as she lifted the kettle, almost touching her, touching her. “Desperate without you, that what you reckoned? Thought of someone else in there with you, in bed, picture of it driving me insane?” His knee was resting against the back of her thigh, knuckles sliding gently up and down her arm.

  Karen moved away, turning back towards him at arm’s length, offering him the coffee.

  “Thanks,” smiling through the faintest shimmer of steam.

  Smug bastard! Karen thought. “It was the police who asked me about you,” she said. “I didn’t mention your name.”

  “I have been thinking about you, you know.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s because you’re here. If you weren’t here, you’d be thinking about running, getting drunk, lectures, somebody else.”

  “Well,” he said, reaching for her, hands up under the sleeves of her T-shirt, alternately pushing and stroking, someone who read an article on massage once but became distracted midway through the third paragraph. “Well, I’m here now.”

  Somebody along the street shouted at a dog, a cat or a child and slammed their back door so forcefully that Karen’s window, despite folds of yellowing newspaper, rattled in its frame.

  “Look,” said Karen, pushing his hands away, moving across the narrow room, picking up things and putting them down, trying to seem businesslike, “I’m sorry about the police. Really. But now I’ve got to go. I’m already late for a lecture.”

  “What?”

  Hand on hip, she looked at him. Unmade, the bed was between them, a tatty stuffed animal poking out from beneath the rumpled duvet.

  “What lecture?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I mean it doesn’t matter to you, what does it matter, what bloody lecture I have to go to?”

  “Hey, Karen. Calm down.” Oh, God! Trying the smile, giving his teeth their best shot. Don’t bother! She opened the door to the room and left it open, wide to the stairs.
>
  He didn’t move.

  Neither of them moved.

  Karen prayed for the communal phone to ring, someone to come to the door, postman, milkman, double-glazing salesman, anyone, one of her fellow tenants to return. She considered leaving him there and taking off down the stairs, but knew he would come after her and catch her, haul her back before throwing her down on the bed. It had happened like that several times before but then it had been different, she had enjoyed it, they’d been going together.

  “What I can’t understand,” Carew said, “is why you’d prefer someone like that anyway.”

  “Someone like what?” Karen said, knowing as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she shouldn’t.

  “Oh, you know …” He gestured with his hands. “Small.” Karen shook her head. “You don’t know the first thing about him.”

  “I’ve seen him in the hospital. Scurrying around with those headphones on, like whatever, the white mouse, white rabbit.” He started around the bed. “What’s he listening to all the time anyway? Special little tapes you make for him?” He patted the duvet, patted the mattress, caught hold of the toy animal and tossed it to the floor. “Little fantasies. Used to be good at those, I remember. Train carriage fantasy. Swimming pool fantasy.” Close again, voice low in his throat and that look in his eyes: she knew that look. “Burglar fantasies.”

  Karen turned and ran, swung herself round by the banister rail and jumped the first four steps, stumbled the rest. He caught hold of her before she reached the bottom, hip thrust into her side, a hand fast in her hair.

  “All right, Karen,” he said, “just like the old days. Like it used to be.”

  “Someone with something against him, this Fletcher? That what you think, Charlie? Someone with a grudge?”

  Resnick nodded.

  “Professional or personal?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “But if you had to guess.”