Twenty-two
Lennie Lawrence had been born in St. Anne’s. Before the buggers knocked it all down and modernized the guts out of the place. Resnick had never quite grasped what was so wrong about giving folk bathrooms, indoor toilets; besides, buying a detached house in Wollaton didn’t smack of a hankering for the good old days of back-to-backs.
“What’s your interest in this assault then, Charlie? Not desperate to break into the media, are you? Television pundit?”
“Harold Roy,” said Resnick. “I’d like a chance to have another crack at him. Something fishy about a burglary out at his place. Wife’s statement, it didn’t gel.”
“Out to rook the insurance, are they?”
Resnick shrugged. It was one of several possibilities, though it didn’t explain Maria Roy’s blatant misidentification.
“Good luck to ’em, eh, Charlie?”
“Maybe, sir.”
“God, you’re a cautious bugger! Never mind you’ve this reputation for setting your track the wrong road up one-way streets, you don’t like to put yourself closer to the wind than the rest of us. Not where rules are concerned; regulations, right and wrong. Bit of a bloody puritan, that’s you, Charlie Resnick.”
“Maybe, sir.”
“Maybe, sir.” Lennie Lawrence mimicked him. “Not a man to give a lot away, either, are you?”
“Is it all right, then, this complaint? Can we handle it? Keep your lads in the picture.”
“You better, Charlie.”
“Yes, sir.”
Resnick was at the chief inspector’s door when Lawrence called him back. “The old man …”
“Skelton?”
“Any idea what’s getting his bollocks knotted?”
Resnick shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Lost his temper the other morning. Nothing in particular. Just went. Not like him at all. Most likely male-what d’you call it? — menopause. Hot flushes. All right, Charlie. Keep me posted.”
“Sir.”
Resnick walked past the door to Jack Skelton’s office, half wondering whether he should knock, ask the superintendent what was the matter. He didn’t, of course; would have been too much like going up to the Queen at one of her garden parties and making a polite inquiry about the state of her bowels.
The Midlands minibus was parked across the street, between two of the regulation plane trees that rose slowly up the hill, curving to the right. Alf Levin saw Resnick’s approach in his wing mirror, stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it towards the gutter.
“Known worse weather in May,” he said, coming diagonally towards the gate.
Dizzy was parading his backside up and down the stone wall, making imperious noises.
“Selling up, then?” Alf Levin gestured towards the sign.
“Trying.”
“Talking to this bloke back at the studio. Come up from Elstree when they closed it down. Like a lot of them, he bought this place out in Lincolnshire. Small village, like. Couldn’t believe it at the time, how cheap it was. Wouldn’t have got a kennel, back south. Anyway, right pissed off he’s got with living out there. Local pub doesn’t do a decent drop of bitter and when the wind’s in the east there’s not a lot between him and Siberia. Old lady and electric blanket, you’re still cold at nights. Even this weather.”
“Is there a point to this, Alfie?”
“Only that he’s had it on the market eighteen months. Can’t shift it, love nor money.”
“Thanks. You’ve made a good day feel a lot better.” Levin lit another cigarette, automatically cupping it inside his hand after the first drag. “This might, Mr. Resnick.”
Resnick eased the end of his forefinger through the short fur behind Dizzy’s ear and waited.
“It’s not that I’ve changed my mind, grassing. Not that I know anything you’d want, break-ins. Anyone who might be on a bit of work, I know less about it than you lot.”
“What is it then, Alfie?”
“That feller you was interested in, the one hanging around.”
“Thin on top. You didn’t care for his footwear.”
“Name’s Stafford. Drugs, that’s his mark. And not just the funny cigarettes.”
“You’re sure?”
“God is my witness.”
“You wouldn’t like to …”
“No, Mr. Resnick. I never said nothing, never saw you. Haul me up in court and I’ll play stum. But that sort of thing, the thought of him, the Lord knows what it leads to, needles, all this HIV business. Locking away, that’s what he wants.”
Dizzy jumped down impatiently and headed for the front door.
“I owe you, Alfie.”
Levin shook his head.
“Cup of tea, at least.”
Alf Levin looked towards the house. “Some other time, Mr. Resnick. Studio canteen. Not here.” He edged away, shoulders hunched. “Don’t mind me asking, you married?”
“Not any more.”
“Just you, eh.” He glanced again at the house. “Must rattle around in there like a pea in a drum.”
“Thanks, Alfie.”
“Nothing of it.”
Resnick was already thinking about Norman Mann, the sergeant he knew with the local drug squad: wondering if he had Mann’s number, if it was unlisted or whether it would be in the book?
Don’t mind me asking …
For some moments, no longer than it took him to lay three slices of smoked ham across toasted bread, mustard, slivers of Jarlsberg cheese, Resnick regretted that he had torn up his wife’s letter, his ex-wife’s letter, he still assumed it to have been hers, before reading it.
… you married?
If he moved from here, where would he go? Somewhere her letters wouldn’t find him. Not that they were many. The first, this, in several years. Before that there had been three, close together. One threatening to take him to court for more money; another apologizing, claiming a bout of nerves, despondency, a job that had been pulled out from under her-sorry, Charlie, I won’t bother you again. A gap of three months before she sent an oddly distant description of the house she shared with her estate-agent husband, views of Snowdon through the upstairs bedroom window. As if she were writing to a second cousin once removed. Resnick had no sense of why she had sent that, what she had been thinking. That they might, perhaps, be absent friends, nods and glances across a hundred and more miles by courtesy of the postal services. Whatever her reasons, they had not been followed through. Years was a long time between letters, even for absent friends.
Not any more.
There were two signs Resnick had grown to recognize, markérs of his mood: one when he couldn’t drink coffee, the other, when his fingers ran back and forth along the spines of his record collection without pulling anything out.
A man who is sick of jazz is sick of life. Has somebody said that? And if they had, would that make it any more or less true? Charlie, he said to himself, I don’t like you so much when you’re like this.
He found Norman Mann’s number and left a message asking that the detective call him back. Ground some coffee anyway, Colombian dark, and sat while it dripped through the machine, Miles and Bud curled on his lap, eating the last half of his sandwich. When the doorbell rang he had almost forgotten about Claire Millinder, her self-invitation to call.
“I took a chance on the red.” She was standing just a little way back from the door, a smile brightening her face and a long wool coat, dark blue, open over a short black skirt, broad striped tights. The top was beige, loose around the softness of her shoulders; except that she didn’t seem the type, she could have knitted it herself. “I tried to find some New Zealand”-walking past him into the broad hallway-“but I had to settle for this. Murray Valley. Aussie Shiraz.” She swiveled to face him. “It’s not plonk. Good stuff.” Now she was holding the bottle out towards him. “I’ve been keeping it warm on the journey.”
Resnick accepted it from her; at the door through into the kitchen, he stood aside to let her by. There was a high flush to her cheeks, a definite shine to her eyes; her shoulder brushed him as she passed.