Still Waters cr-9

by John Harvey

  He had survived.

  Jerzy Grabianski had been born in South London, his mother a nurse from St George’s, his father sewing by electric light in the basement room in Balham, where they lived. Weekends, when his mother was working, his father would walk him on Tooting Bec Common, sit with him in the Lido, dangling Grabianski’s flailing legs down into the shallow water, never letting go.

  What would he think, Grabianski wondered, if he could be here now? His father, who had struggled with such tenacity, stubborn against almost overwhelming odds, each penny counted, every yard, each thread. And Grabianski, who, in contrast, had realized the profits on a stash of antique jewelry he had been saving and bought a spacious flat close to Hampstead Heath, where he was sitting pretty.

  He remembered a film he had seen twenty years earlier in a down-at-heel flea-pit cinema in Uttoxeter or Nuneaton: a rancher talking to one of Jack Nicolson’s ramshackle bunch of Montana outlaws. How did it go now? Old Thomas Jefferson said he was a warrior so his son could be a farmer, so his son could be a poet.

  Well, maybe that’s what this is, Grabianski thought. This careful, almost silent movement across other people’s lives, a kind of poetry.

  When the waiter brought him his café au lait, he ordered eggs Florentine, poached instead of baked.

  He was dabbing a piece of French bread at the last of the yolk, lifting spinach on top of that with his fork, when a shadow fell across the door. Resnick, blinking at the change of light, steadying himself before stepping in.

  “Charlie.”

  “Jerzy.”

  Grabianski waved a hand expansively. “Have a seat.”

  Resnick was wearing a gray suit with broad lapels, too warm for the changing weather. Taking off the jacket to drape it over the back of his chair, he was aware of perspiration rich beneath his arms, the cotton of his shirt sticking to his back.

  “I doubt this is a coincidence,” Grabianski said. “Day trip to visit Keats’ house, the Freud Museum perhaps?”

  Resnick shook his head.

  “I was afraid not. A disappointment anyway. Especially Freud. Don’t like to think of him here at all. Vienna. Fast asleep on his couch after an overdose of sachertorte.”

  The waiter fussed and fiddled with napkins and cutlery until Resnick asked for a large espresso and a glass of water.

  “Sparkling or still, sir?”

  “Tap.”

  “But here.” Grabianski leaned forward, voice lowered, “This place.”

  “‘If ever you’re in sunny Hampstead,’” Resnick quoted, “‘start your day at the Bar Rouge on the High Street. I do.’”

  Grabianski sat back with a rueful smile.

  “Postcards,” Resnick said. “Not exactly high security.”

  “I didn’t think you’d have people trawling the mail.”

  Resnick’s espresso arrived, not yet the water, and Grabianski ordered another coffee for himself.

  “Not quite.”

  Disappointment passed across the breadth of Grabianski’s face. “I didn’t know you and the good sisters were so hand-in-hand.”

  “Working in the community the way they do, we’ve things in common. Shared interests, I suppose you could say.” The espresso was good, very good. Strong without a hint of being bitter. “Sister Teresa especially.”

  Grabianski nodded. “A keen sense of duty. In excess.”

  “She seems to have an interest in you. In saving your soul, at least.”

  Grabianski couldn’t disguise the pleasure in his eyes. “And you? Is your concern for me spiritual, too?”

  “I think it’s your art collection I’m more interested in saving. Before it leaves the country.”

  “Ah.” Grabianski held a cube of sugar over his cup, immersing a corner and watching as the coffee rose upward, staining the sugar brown. “Once learned, never forgotten.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Osmosis. Third-year biology.”

  “General science myself.”

  “When we’ve finished this,” Grabianski said, “what do you say we take a stroll? That is, if you’ve got the time.”

  They walked a while without talking, entering the Heath across East Heath Road, then dropping down from the main path through a haze of shrubbery until they reached the viaduct. Half a dozen men and a couple of boys sat fishing at the water’s edge beneath. Nobody seemed to be catching anything.

  “You know,” Grabianski said, “I heard a rumor about you.”

  Leaning on the parapet, head angled sideways, Resnick waited.

  “Seems you’ve got yourself a woman. Serious. Is it true?”

  “Probably.”

  Grabianski skipped a pebble down into the pond and watched the ripples spread. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” Resnick said. And then: “You heard this when you were in the city?”

  “Was I in the city?”

  “The Dalzeil paintings …”

  “Ah.”

  “You know they’re missing?”

  “I might have heard.”

  “Another rumor?”

  “Something of the kind.”

  “And this rumor, does it tell you whether the paintings have passed on into other hands?”

  Grabianski smiled, lines crisscrossing around his eyes. “Nothing so exact.”

  “And I don’t suppose a search warrant would help to clarify …?”

  “A warrant? For where?”

  “I’d have to fill in the details of your address.”

  “I’m surprised you think you’d have grounds, especially so far from home.”

  “We know you’re interested in the paintings, why else the Polaroids? We know you broke into the house once before. Given your professional reputation, I’d say we had probable cause.”

  Grabianski grinned. “If there’s anything to that reputation at all, I shouldn’t think you’d find what you’re looking for wrapped in brown paper underneath the bed.”

  “Maybe not.”

  A woman went by, running, a black baseball cap reversed on her head, black and white T-shirt, skin-tight black shorts; there was a small water bottle attached to her belt at the small of her back, a Walkman clipped to her side. Sweat shone on her perfect thighs.

  Watching, neither Resnick nor Grabianski said a word.

  “There’s nothing you can do to help me then?” Resnick said, the runner now out of sight.

  “Afraid not,” said Grabianski, smiling. “You know I would if I could.”

  They walked on southwards, climbing between a scattered grouping of beeches and down through thickish grass until another path led them past a group of youngsters playing frisbee and up toward the hill where kites flew high and wild and the city could be seen clearly, stretched out beneath them. The Post Office Tower, King’s Cross, the dome of St. Paul’s; the pale columns of Battersea Power Station away to the right, the transmitter blinking from the top of the Crystal Palace mast, the crest of Canary Wharf reflecting back the light in the east.

  “Some view, eh, Charlie? Worth traveling a distance to see.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Didn’t want it to have been altogether a wasted day.”

  “No fear of that,” Resnick said. “Old friend of mine to see later …”

  “Another?”

  “Down there somewhere, Scotland Yard. Transferred into another section recently. Arts and Antiques.”

  Back in his flat, Grabianski made a quick and careful inventory of those few items he had still to dispose of and which it might be embarrassing to have found in his possession. Not that he really imagined Resnick and a cohort from the local nick were about to come barging in mob-handed, but there was nothing wrong with taking a little precautionary action. The paintings, of course, were not there and never had been; they were safely bubble-wrapped in the security vault of his bank.

  Thumbing through the telephone directory, Grabianski wondered if Resnick had been bluffing about his contact at the Yard. Arts and Anti
ques-a growing area of expertise.

  Eddie Snow, he could see, had not been lying: there was his number, highlighted in bold. More than half-expecting the answer-phone, Grabianski was surprised when Snow himself picked up.

  “Eddie,” Grabianski said, “sooner rather than later. We ought to talk.”

  “You know the Market Bar?” Snow sounded as if he had been interrupted in the midst of something else.

  “Portobello, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll see you there. Eight o’clock.”

  Before Grabianski could acknowledge this, the connection was cut. He wondered if eight o’clock meant dinner; he’d heard the first-floor restaurant was expensive but very good.

  Thirteen

  He hadn’t seen it as a sightseeing tour, but that was what it was turning into. Instead of ushering Resnick up to the third-floor office which she shared with two other officers and a deficient air-conditioning unit, Jackie Ferris walked him through the narrow side-streets of Whitehall into St. James’s Park. Beyond a heavy scattering of shirt-sleeved tourists, tufted ducks, and pink flamingos, the broad swathe of the Mall stretched from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch.

  “Any excuse to get out, Charlie, you know what I mean? Too much of the job spent in artificial daylight, staring into VDU screens.”

  Resnick nodded, noting the tones of the North East still lurking at the back of her now largely neutralized voice. Sunderland? Gateshead?

  “Once around the lake and then we’ll find somewhere to sit, that all right for you?”

  It was fine.

  He had first met Jackie when she was a sergeant in the Fraud Squad, seconded to help him out with an investigation into an insurance company scam involving two associate directors, one head of sales and three-quarters of a million pounds. She still wore the same glasses, round and steel-framed, the same or similar, but the Top Shop jacket and skirt had been exchanged for a Wallis suit with the faintest of stripes, a blouse the color of fresh chalk, shoes with a broad buckle and low heel.

  “How come the switch?” Resnick asked as they were crossing the bridge over the water. “Arts and Antiques. Promotion aside.”

  “I’d been taking this Open University course. Humanities. One of the modules was History of Art. After all that time with ledgers, spreadsheets, it appealed. Figures still, but a different kind. Besides, me mam wouldn’t let us sit down to us tea of a Sunday without the Antiques Roadshow was on tele.” Seeing her smile, Resnick caught himself wondering why there were still no rings on her left hand. “More of a music man, aren’t you, Charlie?” she said.

  Resnick nodded.

  “Jazz, isn’t it?”

  He nodded again, grateful that she made it sound more like an eccentric affliction than a disease.

  There was an empty bench between a trio of stocky Germans poring over their map of London and a man of indeterminate years whose clothing gave off an aura of chronic alcoholic abuse.

  From her shoulder bag, where they were jammed between mobile phone and electronic organizer, she fished a packet of Bensons and a slimline lighter. “Not entirely social, Charlie, that was what you said.” She tilted back her head and let the smoke drift out onto the air.

  Resnick asked her what she knew about Dalziel and she told him, ticking off his major influences and principal works along the way.

  “These days, what are the chances of his stuff coming up for sale?”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “But if it did, there are people who’d be interested?”

  She angled her head to look at him. “This is legit?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Hmm. Less easy. Museums, galleries, count them out, of course. But private collectors, there’d be a few.”

  “Abroad?”

  “Most probably.”

  The Germans brought over their map and asked directions to Shepherd’s Market; Jackie told them, clear and precise, and they went on their way.

  “How would I find them, these prospective buyers?”

  “Through an agent, a dealer.”

  “Even though he or she would know, presumably, they were stolen?”

  “Not many, but some. Supposing the money was right.”

  “And it’s a specialist field?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Resnick nodded. “So here I am sitting with my Dalzeils …”

  “More than one, then?”

  “A pair.”

  “You’d be looking to make contact with someone interested in late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century painting, Impressionism, British art in general.”

  “And how many … I mean, are we talking a lot of people here or what?”

  “Known to us, major players, half a dozen.”

  “You could let me have the names?”

  Jackie Ferris pursed her lips and exhaled. “You know how it is, Charlie. These days especially. Nothing for nothing. But, yes, I’m sure we could do a deal.”

  The girl in gold leggings talking to Eddie Snow was so thin you could have sucked her up through a straw. Grabi-anski stood there for several moments watching, sharing the corner door-space of the Market Bar with a tall black guy sporting silver and lime green. The black guy looking out, Grabianski looking in.

  Eddie Snow was sitting on a stool pulled up to the bar, the girl standing close beside him, Eddie’s forefinger easing its way along the cleft of her behind. Above their heads, what looked like several generations of wax cascaded down from heavy iron candle holders. Today Eddie was wearing his black leather trousers with a black roll-neck top, the sleeves pushed back along sinewy arms.

  The room was shaped like an L, high-ceilinged, tables ranging along both outside walls beneath windows opening out on to the street. Not late enough to be really crowded, the space between tables and bar was thick enough with drinkers that Grabianski had to excuse himself to pass through.

  The old man in the corner aside, the mouth of whose white beard was stained ginger with nicotine, Grabianski thought he and Eddie Snow were the oldest in there by at least ten years.

  “Eddie.” Grabianski held out his hand but Snow ignored it, patting the matchstick girl proprietorially instead. “Later, babe.”

  Without giving Grabianski a second glance, she stepped away on the slenderest of high heels, and Grabianski leaned forward to order a pint of Caffreys at the bar.

  “You know the kind of money she can get,” Snow said, eyes following the girl, “few times down the catwalk, couple of fancy turns? You just wouldn’t believe.”

  The bartender held Grabianski’s twenty up to the light.

  Snow readjusted his position on the stool. “I’ve been asking questions about you.” He was drinking Pernod with a splash of lemonade.

  “I should hope so.”

  “Word is, you and Vernon Thackray are like that.” Snow cradled his long fingers together and squeezed tight.

  Grabianski slipped his change down into his pocket; the cloudiness was slowly disappearing from his beer, leaving it light and clear. “I suggest you ask again.”

  “You saying it’s wrong?”

  “I’m saying it’s stale news.”

  “Thackray, he’s not interested in these Dalzeils?”

  “Once upon a time.”

  “Oh, yes, how’s that story go?”

  “Look,” Grabianski said, “never mind all that. Do you want to do business or not?”

  Snow put on a show of being surprised. “Why all the sudden urgency?” he said.

  Behind them the general conversation lulled and Grabianski recognized the music that was playing without being able to give it a name.

  “Clapton,” Eddie Snow said, “‘Tears in Heaven.’ Poor bastard. How d’you hope to get over a thing like that?”

  “Let’s just say I’d like to realize some profit, move on.”

  “Not anxious, then?”

  “Anxious?”

  “These friends of yours, police, not nosing uncomfortably around?”<
br />
  “I don’t have friends in the police.”

  “Not what I’ve heard.”

  Grabianski leaned closer toward him. “I’ve already told you, you’re hearing wrong.”

  Snow caught the bartender’s eye and another Pernod appeared. “Unnecessary chances,” he said, “it’s what I can’t afford to take.”

  Grabianski drank some more of his beer, set the unfinished glass back down, and turned around. Snow detained him, a hand on his arm.

  “No call to take offense.”

  “Offense nothing. Have you got a buyer or not?”

  “Thackray and myself crossing swords, conflict of interest, I should want to avoid that.”

  “So you have?”

  “Thackray …”

  “Forget him.”

  “I might have, yes. Overseas, of course. Percentages’ll be high.”

  “But you can do the deal?”

  Snow nodded. “I shall need to see the paintings, of course. And the buyer, he’ll want verification. In writing. Too many forgeries about these days by half.”

  “So arrange it,” Grabianski said. “Whatever’s needed. I’ve done my part.” The bar was more crowded now, jostling up against him where he stood.

  “If I can look at the paintings tomorrow afternoon, bring someone with me, someone I trust. Long as that goes okay, I can start setting things up, putting out feelers, you know the way it goes.”

  Grabianski nodded. “Tomorrow then. I’ll call you first thing.”

  “Right.” Suddenly Snow was standing, fingers tight round Grabi-anski’s wrist, the smell of aniseed sharp on his breath. “But if I find out you’re setting me up …”

  “Tomorrow,” Grabianski repeated. “First thing.”

  Back out on the street, Grabianski could feel the sweat, slicked over his body like a second skin.

  Resnick had called Hannah three times and each time got her machine. Bored, he watched fully fifteen minutes’ television in the hotel where he was staying, one of several fending off dilapidation close to Euston station. A bus took him through the low-rent ravages of King’s Cross to the Angel, where Jackie Ferris had recommended a restaurant near Chapel Market. Cheapish and good.