by John Harvey
“Yes.”
“If your wife wanted to change her statement, for whatever reason—if, with time to think more clearly, calmly, she had reconsidered—she would let us know?”
“Of course she would. I mean … of course.”
“Nothing she said, to you, nothing she’s said, suggests she might be having—what shall we call it?—second thoughts?”
“Nothing.”
Through a succession of glass-paneled walls he could see people working at keyboards, speaking into telephones, drinking coffee. Should any of them glance up they would see me, Harold thought, closeted here with a shabby police officer when I should be getting on with the job.
“Inspector …” Harold Roy began to rise.
“Of course,” said Resnick, “I understand.”
They stood for a while longer, facing each other across the small, anonymous room.
“Maybe you’d speak with your wife; if there is anything, encourage her to get in touch.”
Harold Roy nodded, opening the door. “Whoever it was broke into your house, the sooner we can put them out of business, better for all concerned. Especially while there’s still a chance of recovering your property, some of it, at least; whatever they might not have been able to dispose of right away.”
In some indeterminate way, Harold felt he was being almost accused of something, without understanding what. “Back past reception, Inspector … you can find your own way out?”
“No need to keep you, Mr. Roy. Thanks for giving up your time.”
Designer clothes, expensive haircut, Resnick watched him move through a maze of rooms, stride lengthening with each one until he had gone from sight. For the present. Though he didn’t know exactly why, Resnick felt certain that he would need to talk to Harold Roy again.
From the heaviness of her body, the change in her breathing, Grabianski knew that Maria had drifted into sleep. If he angled his head, he could read the time on the clock-radio beside the bed. No wonder his stomach was beginning, gently, to complain. He should have had something to eat in the tearooms, that waitress trying to come on, all airs and graces. Grabianski smiled: how he’d enjoyed sitting there the way they had, feeling her up under the table and those others knowing it, trying hard not to look, trying their damnedest to look without making it obvious.
Saliva spooled on to his chest from the corner of Maria’s mouth.
It had been good, Grabianski thought, better than good, better even than he’d imagined. It was possible to go for months, years, believing sex was overvalued; sometimes, in the soiled beds of strange towns, over-priced: a quick loss of joy. Then this.
Maria groaned and rolled her head away, a trail of spittle stretching from her mouth like translucent gum until it bubbled and broke.
“I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep.”
“That’s okay.”
He took hold of an edge of sheet and dabbed carefully at the side of her mouth.
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“While you were sleeping? There wasn’t an awful lot I could do.” He smiled at her and she thought, God, here is this man seeing me like this, no makeup, bleary-eyed and slobbering, and he can smile like that. “Watching you,” he said.
“Is that all?”
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
The smile broadened. His hand started its move back towards her breasts.
“Is that all?” Maria said again.
Grabianski quickly pushed back the covers and didn’t miss the sharp look of disappointment in her eyes, concern. “If I don’t pee,” he said, “I’ll burst.”
“Second on the left,” she called after his disappearing buttocks.
But then as she lay back down she remembered that he already knew the house quite well.
Resnick walked back along the narrow corridor by which he had entered the studio, remembering Diane Woolf and regretting he had come up with no good reason for seeking her out, other than to get caught staring.
Again.
“Drooling at the mouth, Inspector?” He could hear her voice inside his head, imagine the expression on her face as she said it.
Resnick walked through into the car park and was face to face with Alfie Levin.
“Mr. Resnick.”
“Alfie.”
Born again or simply biding his time, Alf Levin was unable to disguise the alarm he felt at Resnick’s sudden presence: the old enemy.
“Still looking for Harold Roy?”
“This time I found him.”
“Not the most popular round here.”
“So I’m beginning to realize.”
“You’re not the only one looking for him, neither.”
Resnick stepped aside to leave room for two men in overalls carrying a fifteen-foot ladder between them, smelling of cigarette smoke and paint. “Are you about to tell me something, Alfie?”
“Not in the way you mean, Mr. Resnick.”
“Which way’s that, Alfie?”
“Merely passing on a bit of information, the kind that crops up in conversation. Not informing. Not that.”
Resnick nodded, waited.
“Skinny bloke, thin on top …” Without meaning to, Resnick found himself looking at Alf Levin’s toupee, searching for the join. “… hanging around when I parked the van. Did I know when they’d be through for the day, Dividends?”
“Did you?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t going to tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Kosher, he’d go through reception, wouldn’t he? Same as anybody else.”
“What did you think he was after, then?”
Alf Levin shook his head, took one hand from his trouser pocket and offered it towards Resnick, palm up. “Way I see it, that poor sod’s got troubles enough. He doesn’t want some feller who can’t afford decent shoes …”
“Shoes?”
“Yes, he was wearing them trainer things, filthy too. Hanging round to put the squeeze on him, if you ask me. Tap him for a loan or something like that. Probably some actor, down on his luck.”
“Have you seen him around before?”
“Maybe, once or twice.”
“Talking to Harold Roy, looking for him?”
Alf Levin thought about that. “Can’t say, Mr. Resnick. But I can say when I saw him last.”
“Yes,” said Resnick, “so can I. I was there that night, remember?”
“Can I forget?”
“Then you won’t forget what we were talking about?”
“You were talking about.”
“You’ve been thinking it over.”
“I told you …”
“I’m not asking you to grass on anyone you know, Alfie. What I’m after—a little occasional conversation. Much like this one. Nothing more than that.”
“I don’t believe you, Mr. Resnick.”
“Might be better if you did.”
“Who for? For you, yes, okay. But me …?”
Resnick laid a hand on Alf Levin’s shoulder, aware of the memories it would bring rushing back. “Insurance, Alfie. Now you’re going straight that’s the kind of thing you ought to be thinking about, a little insurance.”
Resnick walked round him and headed towards his car, keeping his eyes open for Harold Roy’s Citroën on the way. It wasn’t impossible that a lean man, prematurely aging, would be skulking close by, rolling one of his own. I should have checked his description through records before, Resnick thought, I shouldn’t have been so sloppy. If it were Divine or Naylor, I’d have given him a bollocking.
He wondered, as he drove past the security guard at the gate, whether Kevin Naylor had fetched up with anything that would point them in a new direction, if Graham Millington had found the time to renew acquaintances with Lloyd Fossey. Something, somewhere had better move soon, or it would be like last time, over and gone before they even got close.
Maria Roy was wearing little enough and even that was a whole lot more
than Jerry Grabianski. She stood against the couch and it was impossible to stop her legs from trembling.
“I see you bought some more vodka,” he said, the same old smile (that’s what it was to her now, already). “I thought you might.”
There it was, the quiet cockiness about him that she liked. Not like his partner, the one he’d been talking about, Grice. That was different: harsh, totally without humor. The only kind of jokes she could picture Grice laughing at were those in which people suffered indignity or pain.
“Want one?”
Maria shook her head; it was light enough already.
This is where I first saw him, she was thinking, this room, the way he stepped through the doorway and made me shake as much as now. Just look at him, standing there so naturally, naked, as if he belonged. A man who knew he still had a good body and had no need to be ashamed of it; what it felt; what it did; the way it looked. Moving back towards her, he deposited his glass on the table so that both hands were free.
They were the kids who’d that day discovered what it was all about; couples sneaking into a borrowed bed after weeks of cars and cinemas. Maria recalled the first time she’d been away with a man, a boy—well, seventeen and straddled in between—she had lied to her mother, brazened out her father, caught the early evening train to Weymouth and met him on the front, close by the pier as planned. Two nights in a hotel with measured cornflakes and weak tea and she’d been so sore she could scarcely walk her way back to the station.
“We’ve got to talk,” Grabianski said.
“Not now.”
“Good a time as any.”
She looked down at him. “You sure about that?”
He grinned. “Well, maybe in a little while.”
“Yes,” said Maria, touching him, closing her eyes.
As he’d told both his mother and father, separately, and together and seemingly forever throughout his adolescence, he didn’t believe in God. Neither version. Not unless (he had loved the abrupt downturning of the mouth that signaled his father’s disapproval, the frisson of horror that had juddered like a migraine across his mother’s eyes) he had announced, He was born again in Tupelo, Mississippi, in a two-room country shack. But, the way things had started to turn around today, Harold Roy might be persuaded to believe in miracles. Even Jesus in blue suede shoes.
Once he’d got that policeman out of his hair, shut Deleval in a room with a typewriter and a ream of paper to do some more rewrites he had no intention of using, he had got on top of things. Costume and makeup had got their collective finger out, there had been a surprising absence of boom shadows, those artists who had forgotten their lines had covered with others just as good. When they finally wrapped, all of the scheduled scenes had been shot, along with one held in reserve, and they’d run through the first scenes from tomorrow’s order.
Freeman Davis, when he arrived, had been tanned from a week filming a chocolate commercial in Morocco and was affably on his best behavior. Keen to take the chance of working with one of the real pros in the business; when he said that he showed a line of perfectly capped teeth. Harold had shaken his hand with equally feigned enthusiasm before Mackenzie had whisked Freeman away to look at the material they’d shot so far.
Poor bastard! Harold had thought.
He was in such a good mood when he left the studio that, for the first time in ages, he actually felt like getting laid. Even by Maria. After dinner they could start in on a second bottle of wine, and he would find one of those videos he’d bought in Streatham High Street.
He was in such a good mood he didn’t spot Stafford until it was almost too late.
Hands in the pockets of his parka, one leg crossed behind the other and balanced on the toe of his trainers, Alan Stafford was leaning against the side of a transit van and waiting. Harold slewed to a halt even as Stafford’s head turned. He ducked back fast between a pair of matching Volvos, uncertain if he’d been fast enough. He wanted to wait, peer round the car and check, but instead he was walking fast, faster, running now, making a wide curve through the rows of parked cars, working his way round to where his own Citroën waited. Hasty glances over his shoulder told him that Stafford was not following; maybe his reactions had been quick enough and Stafford hadn’t seen him at all. By now it was dark, getting darker, he would have been little more than a shape, nothing to mark him out, register.
Jesus! thought Harold. I oughtn’t to be carrying this much weight. Last week, was it? The week before? A designer he’d worked with on a couple of previous shows, he’d reached across the table for a cigarette and dropped face down into the linguine. Forty-seven years of age. Tragic!
“Harold.”
At the sound of the voice, Harold Roy’s mouth opened, his eyes closed, adrenalin raced through his body. Alan Stafford stepped out from alongside the Citroën, the dull orange of the overhead light shining oddly off his angular face inside the hood of the parka.
“What’s the matter, Harold?”
“Nothing, I …”
“You didn’t want to meet me.”
“No, I …”
“Avoiding me.”
“Alan, no, I didn’t know you were … I didn’t see you.”
“You didn’t see me?”
“No.”
“Just ran fifty yards to keep out of my way.”
“That’s not true.”
“You always go back to your car that way.”
“Yes. No. I …”
“Exercise for you, Harold. Jogging.” He reached out and caught hold of Harold with forefinger and thumb, a roll of flesh through the fine denim of his shirt. “No more than you need, Harold. Dangerous to be carrying so much weight, a man of your years …” he gave the flesh a sudden tweak, “… your appetites.”
“Yes, I, I know, funnily enough, I was just thinking …”
“What, Harold?”
“The same.”
“Huh?”
“The same, same as you’re saying, I ought to … do … some … exercise.”
Stafford brought his thumb and finger even closer and more painfully together before releasing his grip and letting his arm swing back down to his side.
“How’s our secret?” Stafford asked, smiling; edging closer. Two men, walking close to one another, talking excitedly, passed within fifteen yards of them; Harold almost called out.
“Still safe?” Stafford persisted.
Harold nodded.
“Safe and sound.”
“Of course.”
“Inside your safe.”
“Yes. Where else …?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Harold. Don’t sound so worried. It’s just that I’ll be needing it.”
“Soon?”
“Tomorrow. The day after. I’m not certain yet, but soon. Good news, eh, Harold? You can get your share of the investment. Five percent, wasn’t that what we …?”
“Ten.”
“Oh, yes,” Stafford laughed. “Of course, ten. Ten percent interest on one kilo, you’re looking at … £1,200, Harold. That’s a lot of money to be made just for storage. A solid profit, even if you take it out in kind.”
“I know,” said Harold. His mouth was dry, like ashes gone cold. He prayed he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt. Not for the first time in his life, he wished that he could act with a degree of conviction.
“A good enough deal for you not to get greedy.”
“Course it is.”
“That’s good, Harold.”
“Yes.”
“Good to hear.”
“This much to be made, there’s no call, that or anything else.”
He was close enough now for Harold to feel his breath on his face; smell—what?—cheese, cheap aftershave and, beneath that, what might be gin. Something pressed, hard, against the side of Harold’s leg, hard and metallic. Flinching, he wanted to look down but stopped himself, looking instead into Stafford’s face, searching for reason or meaning.
“The pub the other nigh
t,” Stafford said, “location. The bloke you were drinking with at the bar.”
“No one. I wasn’t. I talked to Mackenzie, a few minutes, nothing more.”
“In here again today. Seeing you.”
“That inspector …?”
“Resnick.”
“I never spoke to him before today.”
“Coincidence that he was in the pub, just a few stools away?”
“Must have been. I didn’t know, didn’t remember …”
Whatever was pressing against him pressed harder so that Harold had to choke back a shout of pain. Around them car doors were slamming, engines starting up. First one set of headlights then another swept over them and past.
“If I find you’ve been setting me up …”
“What reason could I have for doing that? Alan, listen …”
“That I don’t know yet. But I’m not taking chances.”
“Alan, look, I’ve told you before. This business with the police, it’s nothing to do with you, with … you know …”
A man with a heavy duffle coat stopped at the car immediately to Stafford’s left and unlocked his boot. He was whistling Butterfly’s first love song from Act One: Harold wished he were on a hillside overlooking Nagasaki, anywhere other than where he was.
Turning, the man nodded at Harold, who recognized his face but not his name. “Anything wrong?” the man said.
“No,” Harold said. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.” The man glanced sideways at Stafford, who had backed off beyond arm’s length. “I thought perhaps you had a flat battery, some problem like that.”
Harold’s tongue dampened his lower lip. “I’m fine,” he said. “The car’s fine.”
“Good.” The man nodded, turned and climbed into his car. Before he began to pull away, the sounds of an operatic overture filtered out into the dampening air.
“Eight o’clock, Harold. I’ll phone you. Tell you where to bring the stuff.”
“a.m.?”
“Bright and early. And, Harold …” Stafford patted the side pocket of his parka, “… if, for any reason, you don’t show up with what’s due to me, if anything’s out of line, I hope I don’t need to spell out what’s liable to happen.”
When Harold Roy ran the events through later in his mind, he could never clearly see Alan Stafford picking his way between the still-parked cars. What be could feel, with absolute recall, was the sharpness of the blade that moved upwards along the inside of his leg until it had been pressing against the heart of his groin.
