Off Minor cr-4

by John Harvey

  The information came; for almost two weeks they were flooded with sightings and rumors, accusations and prophecies, but then, when little seemed to happen, attention waned. Instead of the photograph of Gloria there was now a single paragraph at the foot of page five, and, after the police had followed every lead, sifted through everything, they had been told there was nothing.

  No clue.

  Nowhere to go.

  No Gloria.

  The photograph could still be found on posters round the city, smeared, stained and torn, ignored.

  Some bastard’s taken her.

  Sixty-three days.

  Three

  Whenever Raymond lifted his fingers to his face, he could smell it. Living there. His arms, too, inside, where the meat slapped against him as he struggled to free it from the hooks that swung from the conveyor running along the covered yard. No matter how hard he scrubbed, scoring his skin with pumice stone, harsh bristles of the brush, he could never drive it out. Fingers and arms, shoulders and back. Smell of it in his hair. Never mind the shampoo, the soap, deodorant and aftershave, splash on, spray or douse, Raymond carried it with him, a gray film, a second skin, like gristle.

  “Here, Ray. Ray, c’m here. Listen. You want, I can fix you up.”

  “Leave him, Terry, leave him. Don’t waste your breath.”

  “No, no. Serious. I’m serious. He wants a job, I know this bloke, I can put in a word.”

  “Wanted a job, he’d haul himself out of bed of a morning.”

  “He hasn’t got the need …”

  “My boot up his arse, that’d give him need enough.”

  “Jackie, he’s not a kid any more, he’s a grown man.”

  “Grown! Look at him.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “What’s bollocking right, more like.”

  “All he wants is a job.”

  “And the rest.”

  “Jackie!”

  “Any road, he’s not interested. Jobs, he’s had them till they were running out of his ears. And how long did he ever spend in any of them? Three weeks, no more. Maybe a month. Once, I think maybe once, he stuck it for a month. I tell you, Terry, son of mine or not, put yourself out for him and you’re the one’ll end up with his hands in the shit. He’s not worth it.”

  “Your flesh and blood.”

  “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “Jackie!”

  “What?”

  “Give the boy a chance.”

  “You’re so keen, you give him a chance.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I can help him. Ray, Raymond, here, listen. This bloke I know from snooker, I could pull a favor, only one thing, you got to promise not to let me down.”

  “Some chance.”

  “Jackie!”

  “What?”

  “What about it, Ray? You interested or what?”

  Raymond’s father and his uncle Terry talking about him in the public bar of their local, almost a year before. A pint of Shippos, pint of mixed, for Raymond a half of lager he’d been sitting over the best part of an hour. Not wanting his old man going on at him for never paying his whack, standing a round.

  “Butcher’s. Wholesale. Over by the County ground.”

  “That’s the abattoir,” Raymond’s father said.

  “It’s near the abattoir.”

  “I don’t fancy working in the abattoir,” Raymond said.

  “You don’t fancy working anywhere,” his father said.

  “It isn’t in the abattoir,” said his uncle. “Near it. Close. Suppose you could say, alongside.”

  “Handy,” his father said.

  Raymond had walked past there at night, turning right by Incinerator Road: steady hum of electricity through the wall, a warm smell that seeped into the air, sometimes so strong that you choked and held your breath and hurried past before your stomach heaved, your eyes began to water.

  “Ray-o,” his uncle said, draining his glass as he stood to get in another. “What d’you reckon?”

  “Tell you what,” said his father, passing up his own glass, “he thinks when he can carry on sponging off me a bit longer, why bother?”

  “Talk to him,” Raymond said to his uncle. “Tell him I’ll do it.”

  “Good on you!” His uncle grinned and scooped up Raymond’s glass too.

  “What the fizzing heck you want to do that for?” his father hissed, face close into his. “Why the hell d’you want to tell him you’ll work in the sodding abattoir?”

  “Least it’ll get me out from under your feet,” said Raymond, not looking into his father’s eyes. “Stop you getting on at me all the time.”

  “You great pillock! Half the time you’d never think to wipe your arse without someone there to tell you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Aye, we’ll see right enough. See you come whinging home with your tail between your legs, that’s the only thing we’ll like to see.”

  “Here we are then.” Raymond’s uncle splashed the drinks down on to the table. “Sup up. Let’s drink a toast to the new working man. Good as.” And he reached down and gave Raymond’s ear a tweak and broadly winked.

  The house was in a cul-de-sac east of Lenton Boulevard, nursery school to the right, pub to the left. High-rise blocks of graying concrete poked from the grass and Tarmac ground behind. Like most of the terrace, it had been bought cheap, barely renovated, rented out to working men or students-“professionals” or “graduates” graced the Park, the suburbs, lived in flats instead of rooms.

  Raymond’s was the first floor back. Space for a narrow bed, a melamine wardrobe and three-drawer chest, a chair. The landlord’s promise of a table had never materialized, but supper was something eaten on his knees, eyes fastened on the faintly flickering images of a black and white set, breakfast instant coffee and curled toast he swallowed down while getting dressed. What else might he want a table for?

  In the shared living room a sagging three-piece suite, burn marks on its arms, was arranged around the communally rented TV, the VCR, rented copies of Casual Sex, Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel, American Ninja 4: The Annihilation. Unwashed mugs and encrusted bowls spilled from the sink and draining board onto the kitchen floor; the bacon fat layered round the grill pan could have greased any one of them through a cross-Channel swim. Every so often one of the shifting group of five tenants would draw up a rota and stick it to the door of the fridge; within a few days it would be pulled down to write a note for the milkman, light a cigarette.

  Raymond kept himself to himself, mumbled “hi” and “bye”; only got on the others’ nerves the way he would lock himself in the bathroom after work for hours, run the hot water till the tank was empty, all the taps were running cold.

  On this particular Saturday, Raymond had restricted himself to forty minutes, though he would have stayed longer had the door not been subjected to a series of sharp kicks and the air blue with suggestions as to exactly which perversions he was practicing under the cover of excessive cleanliness.

  He hurried out and down the threadbare stairs to his own room, probing the passages of his ears with a Q-tip as he went. The small, frameless mirror propped on the windowsill revealed a curving line of pimples-whiteheads rather than blackheads-at the corner of his left eye. He popped these with his fingernails, wiping them clean under the arms of his deep blue sweatshirt, where it was unlikely to be seen. He was wearing brown cords, ten quid in the sale at H amp; M, black shoes with a toecap that might have been Doc Martens but weren’t, red and brown paisley pattern socks; he lifted his leather jacket down from its wire hanger in the wardrobe, feeling good about the way the jacket tilted just a fraction to one side-the weight of the knife.

  Four

  As yet the Polish Club was quiet; recorded music filtered through from another room. The line of vodka drinkers at the bar was only one deep. Resnick allowed himself to be guided to a corner table, well clear of the crowd to come, the dancing that would inevitably start. He ha
d been no more than mildly surprised at Marian Witzak’s call, glad enough that the responsibility for a decision had been removed. A bone of contention from years before, when he had been a young DC and married to Elaine, that his nights off were so few and far between. Now they seemed so many.

  “You did not mind that I telephoned?”

  Resnick poured the rest of the Pilsner Urquel into his glass and shook his head.

  “Such short notice.”

  “It was all right.”

  “I wondered, perhaps, if you might think it rude.”

  “Marian, it’s fine.”

  “You know, Charles …” She paused and her fingers, narrow and long, moved along the stem of her glass. Resnick thought of the piano near the French windows of her living room, sheet music for a polonaise, the slowly yellowing keys. “… sometimes I think, if it were left for you to contact me, we would not very often meet.”

  Although she had been in England all of her adult life, Marian still talked as if her English had been learned from watching untold episodes of The Forsyte Saga in scratchy black and white, from lessons spent mimicking the teacher’s words.

  “This is a pencil. What is this?”

  “This is a pencil.”

  She was wearing a plain black dress with a high neck and a white belt, tied at one side into a loose bow. As usual her hair had been tightly drawn back and pinned precisely into place.

  “You know, Charles, I was to go to the theater tonight. Shakespeare. A touring company from London, very good, I think. Highly spoken of. All week I have been looking forward to this. It is not so often there is something cultural coming now to the city.” Marian Witzak sipped her drink and shook her head. “It is a shame.”

  “So what happened?” Resnick asked. “It was canceled?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Sold out?”

  Marian sighed a small, ladylike sigh, the kind that would once have made drawing-room pulses race. “My friends, Charles, the ones who were taking me, late this afternoon they telephoned. I was choosing already my dress. The husband is ill; Frieda, she has never learned to drive …” She looked sideways at Resnick and smiled. “I thought, never mind, I shall go on my own, I can still enjoy the play; I run my bath, continue to get ready, but all the time, here in the back of my mind, I know, Charles, that I can never go there alone.”

  “Marian.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not clear what you’re saying.”

  “Charles, which night is this? It is Saturday night; Friday, Saturday night, it is no longer safe to go into the city, a woman, a woman like myself, alone.”

  Resnick glanced at the glass and the Pilsner bottle alongside it: both were empty. “You could have ordered a taxi.”

  “And coming home? I telephoned the theater, the performance finishes at ten thirty-five, you know the only places I can get a taxi at that time of the evening, Charles. All the way down to the square, or by the Victoria Hotel. And every pavement, everywhere you go, there are these gangs of young men …” Two bright spots of color showed high on her cheekbones, accentuating the paleness of her face, her concave cheeks. “It is not safe; Charles, not any more. It is as if, little by little, they have taken over. Bold, loud, and we look the other way; or stay at home and bolt our doors.”

  Resnick wanted to contradict her, say that she exaggerated, it simply wasn’t so. Instead he sat quiet and toyed with his glass, remembering the senior officer at the Police Federation conference warning that the police were in danger of losing control of the streets; knowing that there were cities, and he did not just mean London, where bulletproof vests and body armor were routinely carried in police vehicles on weekend patrol.

  Marian touched his hand. “We do not have to think back so many years, Charles, to remember gangs of young men marauding the streets. It was right to be afraid then.”

  “Marian, that wasn’t us. It was our parents. Grandparents, even.”

  “And so we should forget?”

  “That wasn’t what I said.”

  “Then what?”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  Marian’s eyes had the darkness of marbled stone, of freshly turned earth. “Because of those young men, our families fled. Those who were not imprisoned, not in the ghetto, not already dead. If we do not remember, how can it not happen again?”

  Raymond had been sitting in the Malt House for the best part of an hour, two pints and a short, watching the women flocking in and out again, brightly colored and shrill voiced. Off to one side of the room, a DJ played songs Raymond half-remembered, without ever knowing either the singer or the words. Only now and again something would strike a chord, Eddie Van Halen, ZZ Top, one of those white bands that came straight at you with plenty of noise.

  Raymond was getting fidgety, trying not to notice the youths near the bar, putting the eye on him every so often, wanting him to stare them back, cock an eyebrow, respond. Oh, he knew they’d not start anything right there; wait till he got up to go and follow him out on to the street. A few shouted remarks as he turned down towards the Council House, jostling him then as they fanned out around him, pushing past. He’d seen another lad bundled into a dress-shop window just the week before, right there, that street. By the time they’d finished with him, both eyes were closing fast, his face like something Raymond might heft on to his shoulder at work, blood smearing his overalls.

  Not that they would deal with Raymond that easily; not like before. Not now he had something with which to strike back.

  He walked around to the far side of the bar; one more half, then time to make a move. A girl, laughing, swung her arm back into him as he passed and laughed some more, dance of permed blond hair as she swiveled her face towards him, eyes, quick and greedy, summing him up, dismissing him out of hand. Raymond waited to be served, half-watching the girl, blue dress with straps, finer than his own little finger, running tight along the pale skin of her back. Watched as for a moment her eyes closed, singing along with the music, some soul shit from last year’s charts. Always the same crappy lyrics, always touch me, baby, always all night long. Raymond stepped clear of the bar with his glass. The girl was perched on a stool now, his age, younger, Raymond remembered watching the singer, his video on TV, one of those bloated coons in ruffled shirts and bow ties, dress suits. He thought it was the same one, what was the difference? Women wriggling out of white knickers, throwing them up on to the stage so he could wipe the sweat from his face, Raymond staring at the girl now, feeling sick.

  “Here! What d’you reckon you’re looking at?”

  He put down his unfinished drink and left.

  “Charles, you should not leave now. It is still early.” A smile, small but imploring. “We could dance.”

  The last time Resnick and Marian had danced at the Club, his ex-wife had interrupted them on their way back off the floor. Elaine’s voice recognizable instantly, but not her face; not her hair, always so carefully tended, set and brushed and teased out with a comb, now stiff and dry and chopped with neither rhyme nor reason; not the blotched skin nor the stained clothes; not her face. Her accusing voice.

  All the letters I sent you, the ones you never answered. All the times I rang up in pain and you hung up without a word.

  If he had not left then, he would have struck her, the only wrong thing he had never done.

  Resnick didn’t think that he would dance. He said goodbye to Marian and touched his mouth to her powdered cheek. Back home the cats would be eager to greet him, jumping on to the stone wall for the warmth of his hand, running between his legs as he neared the front door. Of course, he’d fed them before he left, but now he had come back, hadn’t he, and surely there would be a shaking of Meow Mix, shavings of cheese if, as often, as usual, he made himself a sandwich, milk for them, warmed gently in the pan, if he were feeling soft at heart.

  Dark beans of Nicaraguan coffee shone rich and smooth inside his hand. It was still minutes short of ten o’clock. Elaine had st
epped out of the darkness and back into his life, back into his house and he had not wanted her, only as a vehicle for his anger, his storehouse of pain, yet after she had told him about the abortion of her remarriage and all that had come after, he had wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms about her and seek absolution for them both. He had not done even that. She had gone away again, not telling him where she was going, refusing, and Resnick had seen, had heard, nothing of her since.

  Resnick carried his coffee into the living room, poured himself a healthy Scotch, set mug and glass on the floor on either side of the high-backed armchair. He had not switched on the overhead light and the red dot of the stereo burned bright. Without really knowing why, he began to play Thelonius Monk. Piano, sometimes vibes, with bass and drums. Hands that attacked tunes from corners, oblique and disarranged. “Well, You Needn’t,” “Off Minor,” “Evidence,” “Ask Me Now.” “Sounds as if he’s playing with his elbows,” Elaine had once disparagingly remarked. Well, fair enough, sometimes he did.

  Raymond had tried for a last drink at the Nelson, but one of the bouncers had taken against him and refused to let him in: the result was he ended up in the same pub where he’d encountered his attacker, just the week before. Brave enough this far into the night to half-hope him there again. But no. Raymond stood squashed up against the furthest end of the bar, the ledge behind him overcrowded with empty glasses and hard against his back. Only when he was able to maneuver himself a little to the left did he notice the girl. Not dolled up, tarty, like the one in the Malt House, her hair brown and straight and cut to frame her face, the face itself just this side of plain.

  She was sitting at a crowded table, chair angled away as if to make it clear she was on her own. Legs crossed, her black skirt rode above her knees, white top hanging outside, silky and loose, the kind that would be good to touch. In the half-pint glass beside her elbow, the drink was oddly red; lager, Raymond guessed, and blackcurrant. When she realized that Raymond was staring at her she did not look away.