Cutting Edge

by John Harvey

  Twenty-nine

  Cheryl Falmer looked at her watch for the second time in as many minutes and walked across to the desk to check that it was correct. She had arranged to meet Amanda on court at four and there she was, changed and ready, twenty past four and no Amanda. She was beginning to feel stupid, standing in the sports-center foyer in that skirt, pretending not to notice the rugby players staring at her legs as they came in from training.

  “It is four o’clock?” she asked the woman at reception. “Badminton. Booked in the name of Hooson.”

  “That’s right. Not turned up?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe she’s forgotten.”

  Cheryl moved away, shaking her head. Amanda wasn’t the kind to forget. Not anything. Every week they’d been playing, through the last two terms of the previous year and carrying on in this. She knew that Amanda marked it down in the little diary she always carded. Green dot with a four alongside it: badminton. Blue dots for essays in. Yellow for tutorials, red for you know what. Unlike a lot of her group, Amanda was serious, organized; not a stick-in-the-mud, not po-faced like the few feminist-Leninists or whatever they were, always scowling from behind their hand-knitted sweaters and hand-rolled cigarettes; a little older, more mature, she had chosen social sciences with a purpose, not fallen into it as an easy option or an academic back door.

  Even so: nearly twenty-five past and no sign.

  If it had been squash, it would have been worth going on to the court by herself and thwacking the ball against the wall for half an hour. But the prospect of lofting shuttles high above the net, practicing her serve, didn’t appeal. She would go back into the changing room and get into her Simple Minds sweatshirt, her denim jacket and jeans. If she cut across between the practice pitches, it was easy enough to call by Amanda’s hall of residence and find out what had happened, what had gone wrong.

  Jazz Record Requests was just finishing as Resnick entered the house. Hearing the signature tune, he assumed that Ed Silver had switched the radio on and left it playing, hardly expected him still to be there. But he was at the kitchen table, so intent upon Resnick’s battered copy of The Horn that he scarcely looked up. Miles, who had been spread the width of Silver’s bony knees, leapt off at Resnick’s approach and ran towards his bowl.

  “Thought you couldn’t stand cats,” Resnick said.

  “I can’t,” not looking round.

  Resnick shrugged off his damp coat and leaned his plastic bag of shopping against the fridge. The other cats were there now, all save Dizzy, and Resnick ministered to them before grinding coffee for himself.

  “Cup?” he asked Silver.

  Silver didn’t answer.

  The legs of Resnick’s trousers were wet through from the knees down, his brown leather shoes stained nearly black and he knew that when he took them off his socks would be ringed with dye and all but soaked through.

  “This book,” Silver said, eyes not leaving the page, “bloke who wrote it, wouldn’t know a real musician if one jumped up and bit him in the arse.”

  A novel about drugs and jazz in New York, Resnick remembered it as being romanticized but readable; at least it wasn’t Young Man with a Horn.

  “This, f’r’instance. Listen to this.”

  But Resnick wasn’t in the mood to be read to. He left Ed Silver competing with Radio Three and went into the bathroom. Clothes off and dumped in a corner he considered playing truth with the scales, but decided he wasn’t up to that either. In his experience, gray days such as this only got grayer. One hand holding in his paunch, he stepped under the shower. Having failed to sell the house he would have to get the bathroom retiled, cream wallpaper beginning to darken and buckle where it was exposed to the water.

  “Persistent, isn’t she?”

  Opening his eyes, Resnick realized that Silver was standing just beyond the open doorway, book by his side.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Same one as called before, I s’pose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “Sounded the same to me.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Asked her if she wanted to meet me later, buy me a drink.”

  Silver’s silhouette was fading behind a shimmer of plastic and steam. “What did she say?” Resnick asked.

  “Unprintable.” He flapped the paperback against his leg. “Even in crap like this.”

  “Did she leave a name?”

  “No.”

  “Number?”

  “Too busy hanging up.”

  Resnick tilted his face towards the stream of water and soaped his belly, buttocks, beneath his arms. He thought Silver had walked away, but when Silver spoke again, the voice was as close.

  “The other call, some bloke, he said for you to ring back. Soon as you could.”

  “Great.”

  “What?”

  “Telling me when I got in.”

  “Forgot.”

  “Yes. Too engrossed in that appalling book.”

  “No,” Silver said. “‘S’not that bad.”

  “This bloke,” Resnick said, “any chance he left a name?”

  “Skelton,” Silver said. “Wrote the number down somewhere. Lessee.” He fumbled through his pockets. “Know I got it here somewhere.”

  But Resnick had already switched off the water and was stepping out of the shower, reaching for the towel; the number he knew by heart.

  The hall of residence was built around a central courtyard, dark pointed brick and uniform windows, a path that wound down towards it through a meadow of grass from the university itself. Only the police vehicles parked off the inner ring road suggested anything less than ideal. Resnick nodded at one of the forensic officers who was leaving, followed the directions of the constable standing inside to keep any of the curious at bay.

  “DI in shot,” grinned the scene-of-crime officer with the video camera. Resnick held his ground while the man zoomed in hard on the bed and then out. Stick a camcorder in their hands and suddenly they’re Alfred Hitchcock.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Resnick. “Came as soon as I could.”

  “Not to worry, Charlie.” Skelton dropped the pair of white cotton pants he was holding into a plastic envelope and left it to be labeled and sealed. “Just about through.”

  The room looked as if it had been in the eye of a storm. Bookshelves had been torn from the walls, books strewn over the ground. Bedclothes were almost anywhere but on the bed. Shoes, a sports bag, articles of clothing; a tube of toothpaste caught inside a trainer. A4 file paper bearing orderly writing in purple or green ink, diagrams designed to give comparative readings in levels of employment, take-up of housing benefit.

  “Lucky the girl found her when she did,” Skelton said, crossing towards him. “Even so, she lost one hell of a lot of blood.”

  Resnick hadn’t needed telling, evidence of it enough on the striped duvet, sheets of paper, a pillow; a splash of it like paint someone had flicked against the porcelain of the sink.

  “This done after or before?” Resnick asked, still surveying the mess.

  “During. She put up quite a fight.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  Skelton shook his head. “Let’s go outside.”

  They stood in the courtyard, two middle-aged men in raincoats, Skelton still wearing his gloves, heads together, talking. From different parts of the building, a handful of students stared down at them through glass. Not long from now, Skelton was thinking, my Kate could be one of these. He did not allow himself to think she could have been the one they were discussing.

  “How long,” Resnick was asking, “between when it happened and she was found?”

  “Not less than two hours, likely not more than three. She was due to play badminton, four o’clock. When she didn’t show, her friend came looking for her.” Skelton glanced at Resnick and then off towards the middle distance, trees glimpsed against the horizon, dark against darkening clouds. “She was found arou
nd half four. Last anyone had seen her before that, as far as we can tell, far as we’ve been able to check, about half twelve she walked up that path to the university.”

  “No one saw her come back?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Resnick turned in the direction of the room. “No matter how quick that all happened, somebody must have heard.”

  Skelton shook his head.

  “There must be—what?—sixty students living here. More.”

  “Most of them home for the weekend. Those that weren’t, out somewhere. Shopping in the city. Working in the library. Just out.”

  “Any sign of the weapon?”

  “Not so far.” Skelton stood looking out across the slope of meadow. “If it’s out there somewhere, we’ll find it but it’ll take time.”

  “The wounds,” Resnick said, “were they …?”

  “Not too similar to the hospital incidents, if that’s what you’re thinking. More random. Frenzied. Whatever she was cut with, my guess is that it was a heavier instrument altogether, a thicker blade.”

  Or whoever attacked her was angrier, more frightened. Frenzied—the superintendent didn’t throw words like that around carelessly. Resnick looked directly at Skelton and Skelton read the question in his eyes.

  “I don’t know, Charlie. From the visual evidence alone, it was impossible to tell. But only the upper half of her body was clothed.”

  “She could have been dressing when whoever it was broke in.”

  “Or while he was there.”

  Both men knew the other alternative. Until she was well enough to give an account of what had happened, or there had been time to examine all the evidence more closely, reconstruct as best they could what had taken place, they would not know.

  “God help me, Charlie,” Skelton said, “I know nothing good can hope to come of this, but something’s been nagging away at the back of my brain denying any connection with all that other business; this isn’t another Tim Fletcher, another Karl Dougherty. Poor woman, at least she was a student and not a nurse.”

  “Was, sir?”

  Skelton lowered his head. “Figure of speech, Charlie, slip of the tongue. Let’s pray it’s nothing more than that.”

  Resnick nodded. Amen to that.

  Patel was sitting in the common room opposite Cheryl Falmer, notebook on his lap. The curtains had been drawn part way across and no one had thought to switch on the lights. It had been made clear to her that she could make her statement later, when she was feeling stronger, after she had recovered from the shock. But if you waited for that, you might be waiting forever.

  Patel had been patient, letting the words fall out in broken clusters, content to piece them into sentences, a picture, a sequence of events. First she had knocked on the door, knocked again and turned to go away, and for no reason she could think of now she had gone back and tried the handle. She did this and then she did that. Yes, Amanda had been inside.

  “Would you like me to get someone to take you home?” Patel asked, when the story was finally told.

  Cheryl shook her head. “I think I’d like to sit here for a little longer.”

  “All right.” Patel nodded understanding and sat with her, waiting as the shadows claimed the room.

  The faces had disappeared from the windows. Lights burned behind several, illuminating photographs of families and boyfriends, posters for Greenpeace. A few TV sets or radios had been switched on. Those students who were in residence either sat on their beds stunned or got ready to go out for the evening. Saturday night. The search for a weapon had been abandoned and would be resumed at first light. Resnick had no excuse for not returning to his car and as he did so he was intercepted by a constable who had just taken a message on his personal radio: Resnick knew from the officer’s expression that Amanda Hooson was dead.

  Thirty

  He wanted Ed Silver still to be there, reading his borrowed book with rapt attention and complaining about every paragraph, every other word. It was a night for company, conversation, a little controlled drinking: it was not an evening Resnick wished to spend alone. There were cups and glasses, unwashed, in the sink; upstairs Resnick’s wardrobe door stood open and he wondered which of his clothes would come home next morning stiff with puke and cold. He thought of all the people he might call on the off chance and the list did not amount to much. Graham Millington had said to him, a month or so back, you must come round again and have a meal, the wife was asking. But Millington was parked in some motorway service area, a lorry park off the Al, cold and getting colder, asking himself over and over if all he’d joined the Force for had been this.

  By the morning a murder incident room would have been set up, more uniformed officers drafted in, civilians to access all information, checking it via the Holmes computer. The investigation into the hospital attacks would continue side by side; CID resources would be stretched and stretched again. The DCI would be breathing down Skelton’s neck, wanting a result. All of that was tomorrow: tonight Resnick didn’t trust his own company.

  Never having removed his coat, he let himself out again and hesitated between his front door and the gate. He sat in his car for fifteen, twenty minutes, letting the blackness thicken around him. Once, he thought he heard the telephone, muted, from inside the house. When it was quiet he got back out of the car and Dizzy ran along the top of the wall towards his hand. Against the black sheen of his coat, Dizzy’s eyes were alive and dangerous. This was his time. Where Resnick wanted to be was somewhere dull and safe. Known. Hands in his pockets, he set off towards the main road, past homes where the plates were being dried and stacked away, something good on the box at half-past eight, be quick, don’t be late.

  Please come, Charles, we would all love to see you.

  Only a dull light seemed to be burning deep in the hallway, faded orange through the triptych of stained glass beside the heavy wooden door. Resnick tried the bell again and heard another door, within the house, being firmly closed. Footsteps, brighter light, turning of the lock: when Marian Witczak appeared, the first of several clocks began to chime from different rooms, none pitched or set the same.

  “Charles.” Surprise and pleasure mixed in her voice.

  “The invitation, I know I should have replied …”

  “Charles! Really, you are going to come? How nice.” She reached forward and took his hands, leading him into the tiled hall. “I hoped, of course, but never really expected …”

  “I know. I’ve not been a good friend.”

  “Always, you are so busy.”

  Resnick nodded and offered up something of a smile. He was already beginning to wonder if he should have come. Marian had obviously spent time getting ready. She was wearing a tightly waisted orange dress that fell away in loose pleats almost to her ankles; her collar bones stood gaunt below thin straps, a silver brooch like a spider above her breast. Lifted off her face and tightly coiled behind, her hair accentuated the hollowness beneath her cheekbones. Her flat, black shoes had silver buckles, large and square.

  “I shall not be the only one pleased to see you,” Marian said. “There is a feeling, perhaps you have deserted us.”

  Resnick shook his head. “Don’t make me feel guilty, Marian. Besides, it’s you I’ve come to see, not the whole damned community.” He saw her disapproving face and found a more convincing smile. “You did say it was a party. I remember how you like to dance.”

  Marian reached out again and patted his hand. “Please come and wait for me. I shall not be long.”

  Holding his arm, she led him along the wide, tiled hall into a room of oak and dried flowers that had scarcely changed since Resnick had first seen it, more than thirty years before. Marian left him for a moment then returned, pressing a small cut glass into his hand. It was sweet plum brandy and he sipped at it as he stood by the French windows, looking out. It wasn’t simply that Marian, more or less his contemporary, made him unusually conscious of his age—stepping across this threshold was like
stepping into another country. One which had little place in reality, least of all, perhaps, in Poland itself.

  During the strikes, the demonstrations, the celebrations of democracy, Marian and her friends had watched in fascination every television picture, scanned newspaper after newspaper, each of them searching for a face they recognized, a street corner, a café. Resnick had never been there, where Marian Witczak still called home. Whenever he said the word, Resnick saw different pictures in his head, heard different voices, St. Ann’s rather than the Stare Miasto, not the Vistula but the Trent.

  “See, Charles, I am ready.”

  She stood in the doorway, a shawl of rich, black lace around her shoulders; small, white flowers pinned above her waist. She smelt of lilies of the valley. “Of course, Charles,” she said, “I am grateful that you are here. But let us face the truth: I have written you such notes before. What brings you here is less to see me, more whatever it may be you wish to turn your back upon.”

  She put Resnick’s glass aside and offered him her gloved hand. “Tonight,” she said, “we will have a fine time. You see,” glancing down at the gleaming buckles, “I have on my dancing shoes.”

  At first Resnick sat near the back of the main room, nursing his beer while Marian moved from table to table, table to bar, greeting those she had not seen since last year or last week with grave enthusiasm. The younger men stared at Resnick sullenly, knowing who he was and what he did.

  At the head of the main table, the guest of honor drank peppermint vodka on the quarter hour and chainsmoked small dark cigars pressed upon him by his eager sons-in-law, mindful of what might one day soon be theirs. His daughters brought out a cake, festooned with chocolate flakes and candles and icing in red-and-white horizontal stripes: the committee made him a presentation and in the middle of his speech of thanks, the old man lost interest and sat back down to light a fresh cigar.

  Resnick and Marian waltzed and polkaed and once essayed a nifty quickstep, until Resnick’s subliminally remembered fishtail came to grief amongst the swirl of small children that jigged about his legs.