Rough Treatment

by John Harvey

  “Leather jackets and jeans.”

  “Balaclavas”

  “Ski masks.”

  “They forced you to open the safe.”

  “Better,” said Grabianski, “made you tell them the combination.”

  “Right,” agreed Grice. “That is better.”

  He turned back into the room.

  “Where are you going?” Grabianski asked.

  “Wipe her prints from the safe,” Grice replied.

  Watching him, Maria felt her legs weaken. Grabianski was standing close alongside her, fingers pushing softly in and out of the softness of her best fur coat.

  Grice was standing on the bed, leaning towards the safe. Maria watched him as he used his gloves to smear whatever prints she’d left and continued to watch him as he reached into the rear of the safe.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, turning back towards the pair of them, looking straight at Maria, “you lied.”

  Two

  Resnick had despised estate agents ever since one of them ran off with his wife. Before that he had merely found them distasteful, on a par with the young men who worked in car showrooms, forever eager to hustle forward from their desks, breath smelling of too many cigarettes, hands moist at the center of the palm.

  Anxious to get them in place but slow to take them away, three agencies had kept their “For Sale” boards lined up against the dark stone of Resnick’s garden wall for much of the past month. Finally he had fetched a spade from the cupboard beneath the stairs and removed two himself, leaving the third—a small concern, lacking forty-eight offices all over the East Midlands, but having on its staff at least one man Resnick felt he could talk to. It had been this man who had phoned Resnick and urged him to be present when he showed round some prospective buyers, 8.30 that morning.

  “Busy people,” the agent had explained, “a couple, looking to start a family, professionals, it’s the only time they can both get there. I think you’ll take to them,” he had added hopefully. As if that really mattered.

  The house had been on the market now for twelve weeks and no one had as much as made an offer. It was a difficult size, the right property in the wrong location, the mortgage rate was up, the mortgage rate was down, prices were escalating, stabilizing—Resnick simply wanted to get out of the house. Lock the door and hand over the key. There.

  So Resnick had arranged for his sergeant, Graham Millington, to go through the night’s messages with the officer who had drawn the early shift, conduct the morning’s briefing and then, along with the uniformed inspector in charge, report to the station superintendent.

  “All right, Graham?” Resnick had said.

  Millington had stood there, mustache shining, like a man whose birthday has come as a surprise.

  When the couple arrived in their separate cars it was 8.43 precisely. The man got out of a shiny black Ford Sierra that had so many aerodynamic modifications that if he ever strayed in to the runway at Heathrow he would be sure to take off. His wife’s preference was for a simple white Volkswagen GT convertible. They were both wearing light gray suits and both checked their watches as they locked their cars and turned on the pavement.

  A minute or so later a green Morris Minor drew into the curb and a woman Resnick had never seen before got out while the engine was still coughing. Her black sweater was loose and large and had the sleeves pushed up to the elbows; a short skirt—dark blue with white polka dots—flared softly above thick ribbed tights and low red boots, which folded back in deep creases over her ankles. She had a clipboard bearing the details of the house in her left hand and she used the other to shake hands with her prospective clients.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lurie … good morning to you. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

  She steered them towards where Resnick was standing, amongst the flat grass and dark unflowering bushes of a winter garden.

  “Mr. Resnick, right?”

  Her smile was slightly lopsided as she touched his hand; the accent like a brisk but clipped Australian.

  “Ought I say Detective Inspector? That’d be more proper.” She stepped ahead of him towards the front door. “Shall we go inside?”

  “What happened to Mr. Albertson?” Resnick asked, low-voiced, as they passed through the hallway.

  “He’s left to go into the ministry.”

  “He rang me only yesterday. About this.”

  “I know. But isn’t that the way it always is? Sudden. Look at Saul. Paul.”

  Ahead of them Mr. and Mrs. Lurie were discussing the potential expense of ripping out the kitchen units and replacing them with natural oak.

  “I’m Claire Millinder,” she said to Resnick, smiling quickly with her eyes. She moved past him into the kitchen. “This is a perfect room in the mornings because of the light. You could easily fit a nice circular table over there and have it as a breakfast bay.”

  The Luries looked at their watches.

  “Shall we take a look at the reception rooms?” Claire Millinder said breezily.

  Resnick didn’t have the heart to follow them. One of his cats, Miles, came out of the living room as the visitors walked in and now rubbed the crown of his head against the side of Resnick’s sensible shoe.

  I hope they don’t run into Dizzy, Resnick thought. If Dizzy took a mind to it, he might just bite either Mr. or Mrs. Lurie through the expensive material of their trouser legs.

  They came out of the living room and Claire shepherded them in the direction of the stairs.

  “You have to look at the master bedroom. It’s really airy and you won’t believe the amount of storage space.”

  Resnick continued to stand there, a stranger in his own house.

  When they came back down again, Resnick was letting Miles out through the back door. How were his cats going to make the adjustment to somewhere new when after all this time one of them still couldn’t operate the cat flap that had been there for years?

  “Inspector?”

  He closed the door and moved back towards the hall.

  “Darling, do you realize what a new bathroom suite would cost?” Mrs. Lurie was asking her husband. “To say nothing of the redecoration. And that poky little room at the back, I can’t imagine what it could be used for, apart from storing things in boxes. What else could you get in there?”

  “A cot,” Resnick said quietly.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing.”

  Claire was looking at him from over the end of the banister rail.

  “Darling,” said Mr. Lurie, pushing back the sleeves of his suit and shirt to show the face of his watch.

  “Yes, of course. We have to dash.”

  “Work, you see.”

  “Work.”

  They stood in the doorway, arms almost touching. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Of course,” Claire said.

  “Thank you for letting us see the house.”

  Resnick was on the point of telling them it had been a pleasure, but stopped himself with little difficulty.

  The heavy door fitted solidly back against the frame.

  “Has he really joined the ministry?” Resnick asked. “Albertson.”

  “Anglican, I believe.”

  For some moments they stood there, Resnick in the hallway close to the low table bearing a hat he almost never wore and a pile of old newspapers he’d been meaning to throw away, Claire with one hand on the dark brown banister while the other held the clipboard close along her thigh.

  “I don’t know what makes people do things like that, do you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “D’you think they hear, you know, bells, voices?”

  “The Sound of Music.”

  “Running away.”

  “Perhaps.”

  She looked at him, considering. “Why do we do anything? Why, for instance, do you want to move from this house?”

  “That’s difficult.”

  “To explain or understand?”

  “To explain.”r />
  “But you do know?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well,” moving down the stairs, past him along the hall, “that’s all right then.”

  At the door, she turned.

  “They didn’t think much of it, did they?” Resnick said with the beginnings of a smile.

  “They hated it.” Grinning.

  “You think it’s saleable?”

  She fingered the paper close by the door frame where it was coming unstuck from the wall. “Yes, I guess so. You might have to drop the price a little.”

  “I already did.”

  “I’m sure we can sell it.”

  Resnick nodded, pushed his hands down into his trouser pockets and pulled them out again. A skinny cat, dove gray with a white tip beside its nose and another on the end of its tail, wound between the edge of the now open door and Claire’s boots.

  “Is that yours too?”

  “That’s Bud.”

  “There was a tabby with a chewed-up ear asleep in the bowl inside the sink.”

  “Pepper.”

  “Three cats.”

  “Four.”

  She glanced down for a moment towards her clipboard, shifted the balance of her weight from one foot to the other. “Got to go.”

  “There’s a set of keys at your office.”

  “I suppose there is.”

  “Anytime …”

  “Right.”

  “As long as you come with them.”

  She looked up at him, almost sharply.

  “I mean, I don’t want you just doling out the keys and letting people wander around.”

  “No, no. Understood. We wouldn’t do that.”

  Resnick nodded to show that he understood also.

  Claire opened the door wide and went through on to the first step. “I’ll do what I can, Inspector.”

  “Of course.”

  “You just might need to be patient, that’s all.” Another step and then she swung her head back with a final grin. It wasn’t only that her smile was off-center, Resnick realized, she had a couple of teeth near the front that overlapped. “But you’re good at that, I’ll bet,” she laughed. “Being patient.”

  It would have been easy to have stood in the doorway and watched her walk the length of the slightly meandering path, out through the gate and all the way to the car. Instead, Resnick went back inside, into the kitchen: one more cup of coffee for him to enjoy and Graham Millington to be thankful for.

  The station at which Resnick was based was in the inner city, far enough from the center to feel its own identity, not so distant that it was like being in the sticks. North-east, between the fan of arterial roads, were turn-of-the-century terraced houses, infilled here and there with modest new municipal buildings and earlier, less successful, blocks of flats with linked walkways waiting to be demolished. Most of those living there were working-class poor, which meant they were lucky to be working at all: Afro-Caribbean, Asian, whites who had clocked in at the factories producing bicycles or cigarettes or hosiery, before those factories had been torn down to make way for superstores or turned into museums celebrating a lace-and-legend heritage. To the west was an enclave of Victorian mansions and tennis courts, tree-lined hilly streets and grounds big enough to build an architect-designed bungalow below the shrubbery and still have room for badminton. Once a year these people opened up their gardens to one another and served weak lemonade they’d made themselves, a small charge, of course, for charity. The only black face ever glimpsed belonged to someone cutting through or lost.

  There was blood on the floor in the reception area, bright enough to be recent. A uniformed constable slid back the reinforced-glass panel as Resnick entered.

  “Nosebleed?” Resnick asked, nodding towards the floor.

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  He pushed open the off-white door and at once he could hear the slow clip of a typewriter, several typewriters, the bright hiccup of telephones breaking into life, the low, persistent swearing of a man who knew four words and used them, without connection, over and over.

  Resnick nodded at a WPC who went past with a woman leaning on her arm, a traveler of sorts, a few weeks here begging door-to-door and then, somehow, she would hitch a lift to another city, twenty miles distant, and do the same. Gone and then back. Today there was a dark swelling below her left eye, purple shading into black; the upper corner of the other eye was ridged with scabs that broke to leak a little pus. The policewoman walked her slowly, patting the back of her hand.

  Resnick walked along the corridor towards the cells, turning into the first room, where the custody sergeant, crisp white shirt, neat dark tie, was entering an admission in his book.

  At first it was difficult to tell whether the young PC or his prisoner was injured. A knife, its blade broken off an inch or so from the point, lay on the custody sergeant’s desk.

  “Anything I can do for you, sir?” the sergeant inquired, continuing with his entry.

  Resnick shook his head.

  He could see now that most of the blood had come from the prisoner, a gash to the side of his head, another wound high beneath the soiled shirt that stuck to him like a bandage.

  “He was brandishing a knife and making threats, sir,” the young constable said. He didn’t need to explain himself to Resnick, but he did need to talk. His face was bleached, unnaturally pale. “I told him to calm down, put down the weapon, but he refused. Carried on shouting and swearing. Offering to cut me open.”

  The man was swearing still, less loudly, the intervals between each of his four words growing, so that just when it seemed he had stopped, run out of breath altogether, the next one would topple into place.

  “Argument over the day’s cider supply,” put in the sergeant.

  “It couldn’t have been much after nine o’clock,” Resnick said.

  “Early risers, this crew.”

  “While the rest of the world is polishing off its Shreddies.”

  “I called for assistance,” the PC said, his voice less than level, “but I didn’t know how long I could wait.”

  “Chummy’d already marked one of his friends’ cards for the hospital. He’s there now, getting a piece of his nose sewn back on.

  With any luck.” The custody sergeant looked round at Resnick. “This young man did well.”

  “I took the knife off him, sir, only he got … he injured himself in the process.”

  Resnick looked at the man, whose eyes were now closed, though his mouth kept opening at still lengthening intervals. “You don’t think he should be over at casualty, too?”

  “Just as soon as the doctor’s had a look at him, Charlie. It’s all in hand.” Resnick turned towards Len Lawrence, the chief inspector, a man who’d once read a novel full of earthy Midlands grit and had believed it.

  “Anything special, was it, Charlie?”

  Resnick shook his head. “Common or garden interest. Following the trail of blood. You know how it is. Instinct.”

  “Thought maybe you were seeing how the other half lives.”

  “Pounding the streets, you mean? Out amongst the real folk.”

  “Something like that.”

  “We get our fair share, you know.”

  “CID. Thought it was all white-collar crime for you lot. New technology. Voice prints and visual identification courtesy of the nearest VDU.”

  Resnick stepped past the chief inspector, out into the corridor. From one of the cells came a sudden, startled shout, as if someone had woken out of a dream, not knowing where he was.

  “My sergeant acquit himself all right this morning?” Resnick asked.

  “Loved every minute of it, didn’t he? Had his shoes shining so bright, could’ve trimmed his mustache in them.”

  Probably had, Resnick thought on his way up the stairs. Somewhere early in his career, someone influential had told Millington that a smart appearance at all times was the one sure way to the top. In the drawer of his desk he kept, alongsid
e the necessary forms and a copy of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984, a zip-up bag containing shoe-cleaning gear, a needle and thread for sewing back on stray buttons and a pair of nail scissors in a crocodile case. Resnick presumed it was those Millington had been using when he went to the gents and found tiny trimmings of hair trapped against the porcelain of the sink.

  It was Graham Millington, too, and not Resnick, who was interested in the uses of computer-based technology. Aside from the superintendent’s, his had been the only name signed up for a weekend seminar at the Home Office Scientific Research and Development Branch down in sunny Hertfordshire.

  The door to the CID room was ajar and through the glass panel Resnick could see Mark Divine single-fingering his way through a scene-of-crime report as though the typewriter had only been invented the day before yesterday.

  So much for the new technology!

  Lynn Kellogg and Kevin Naylor were talking energetically about something urgent, over towards the rear of the room. None of them as much as noticed his arrival.

  His own office was a partitioned section, a quarter of the room immediately to the right of the main door. He would have taken bets on Millington being behind his desk and he would have won.

  “All right for size, Graham?”

  Millington flushed, banged his knee on the edge of the desk trying to get up, juggled with the telephone but clung on to it at the third attempt.

  “It’s for you, sir,” he said, handing the receiver towards Resnick.

  “Thought it might be.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Resnick took the phone, making no attempt to speak into it. Millington hesitated by the door.

  “Spare me five minutes, Graham, fill me in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Later.”

  Millington drew in air, nodded, closed the office door behind him.

  “Hallo,” Resnick said into the phone, moving aside some papers so that he could sit on the corner of his desk. “DI Resnick.”

  “Tom Parker, Charlie.”

  “Morning, sir.” Tom Parker was the detective chief inspector based at the central station and each morning that Resnick was on duty he would call through and discuss what was happening on his patch.

  “Thought you were taking time off?”