Darkness, Darkness: (Resnick 12)

by Harvey, John

  Worshipped Petula, Millington had.

  Imagining him whistling along, Resnick had turned his head aside and wept.

  He loved you, Charlie.

  It didn’t do to think about it, not overmuch.

  No more than it did to think about Lynn. Except that he did.

  On the day of her funeral, the traitorous bloody sun had shone practically from dawn till dusk, motes of dust dancing in front of the church windows, rose, silver and green. The ground inhospitable and hard. Tears drying on his face before they fell. And the youth who’d killed her – nineteen, not over-bright, desperate for respect – would be eligible, before too long, for parole. The possibility alive, for Resnick, of walking past him in the city, the opposite side of the street.

  She had been in London, Lynn, a murder investigation, the last train from St Pancras home. When she’d phoned, Resnick had offered to meet her at the station.

  No need. I’ll get a cab.

  Too easy to accept her at her word, settle back into the comfort of the armchair, Bob Brookmeyer on the stereo, glass of good Scotch close to hand.

  No need.

  At the sink, he splashed water in his face, stared at his reflection in the glass.

  Wearing a black suit, calf-length skirt, hair tied back with purple ribbon, white flower in her lapel, Catherine met him outside the chapel. Behind them, small knots of people slowly gathered. Dour men in borrowed suits shaking hands.

  Sandford and Cresswell were there, too, both slightly awkward, out of place. Names to be gathered, addresses; some already known and logged, others new; interviews arranged.

  Barry Hardwick was talking to a younger version of himself, Colin, it had to be, the spitting image; a thin woman in a black hat, broad-brimmed, clinging on to Colin’s hand. Close by, the daughter, Mary, was still recognisable from her wedding photograph, a blown-up version now of herself; her husband standing alongside her, one of those round Irish faces, broad foreheads, thick scrub of curly hair; their son, secondary school age or thereabouts, sullen, awkward, hands in his pockets, hands out; the daughter, a year or two younger, freckled face, barely ever lifting her eyes from the ground.

  No sign yet of Barry Hardwick’s other son, the younger brother, Brian.

  A group of women of similar age, half a dozen of them so far and the number growing – miners’ wives, Resnick thought, wives and now widows both – stood talking earnestly, a little to one side, each new arrival greeted with exclamations, kisses and hugs. Edna Johnson, walking only slowly with the aid of two sticks, was the last to join them, each step an effort, her face creasing with pain and determination. Resnick had watched her getting out of the taxi, raised a hand in greeting; a half-smile of recognition in return. He’d thought to have seen her at Peter Waites’ funeral, heard she’d been unwell, a hip replacement that had gone badly.

  Catherine had seen Jill Haines earlier, talking to the vicar; her husband standing off to one side, in desultory conversation with someone she didn’t recognise. Mary Hardwick she had already spoken to, agreed to meet before her flight back to Ireland in a few days’ time.

  Finding a moment to talk to Barry, she had filled him in on what little progress they had made so far; the son, Colin, who’d been listening, impatient for some sign of breakthrough now that the investigation had started, something more specific about his mother’s death, someone to blame; Barry quieter, more resigned, weighed down, Catherine thought, by the occasion.

  Soon enough would come the hearse, the coffin with its catalogue of bones, the sound of the organ calling them in.

  Halfway through the service there was a commotion at the chapel door, raised voices, the door finally swinging open with a bang. The man who’d been arguing with one of the ushers fired off another curse and stepped unsteadily inside; almost immediately lost his footing, swore again loudly, and righted himself against the rear wall.

  Heads turned; tutted, murmured, turned away.

  Brian Hardwick – enough of a family resemblance to be sure it was him – suit unbuttoned, tie askew, shirt undone, made his way unevenly to an empty pew and lowered himself down.

  The service continued.

  From where Resnick was sitting, it seemed – and sounded – as if Hardwick had fallen asleep, but midway through the final hymn, he lurched awake and began to sing loudly, out of tune and off-key.

  The chapel had barely emptied before Colin Hardwick had his brother by the lapels of his coat and was half-pushing, half-dragging him across the sward of neatly mown grass between the path and the first line of gravestones.

  ‘You drunken feckless bastard, you should’ve fuckin’ stayed away!’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  Colin punched him full in the face. Already stumbling backwards, Brian sank down on to one knee, shook his head, and pushing himself up awkwardly to his feet, charged forward, arms flailing. Stepping aside, Colin thrust out a leg, sending his brother sprawling.

  ‘Bastard!’ Colin said, and kicked him as he lay. ‘Drunken piss-arse bastard!’

  ‘Colin! Don’t!’ His sister, Mary, seized hold of his arm, tried to pull him away. ‘Don’t, please.’

  ‘She’s right, lad,’ Barry Hardwick said, coming close. ‘Let it be.’

  Colin shook himself free of his sister’s hand, cast one last glance towards where his brother lay, and strode off between the graves. Mary bent low and, taking a tissue from her bag, dabbed at the blood dribbling from the side of Brian’s mouth.

  ‘Come away now,’ her husband said softly. ‘Come on away.’

  On the ground, Brian Hardwick groaned and was still.

  The first of the cars was starting to leave, the first few mourners already heading off down the path that curved towards the main gate.

  Resnick took hold of Brian Hardwick by both arms and hauled him to his feet. Led him to a bench between trees.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘I look fuckin’ all right?’

  Resnick said nothing in reply.

  ‘I said, do I look fuckin’ all right? Do I?’

  ‘You look like shit,’ Resnick said.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘You look like shit, you’ve a cut on your lower lip and you just came drunk to your mother’s funeral.’

  ‘Fuck her, too!’

  It was all Resnick could do to stop himself from slapping him hard. Instead, he stood up quietly and walked to where a group of women, Edna Johnson amongst them, had surrounded Alex Sandford and were teasing him unmercifully.

  ‘I was just telling your lad here,’ Edna Johnson said, ‘there was a time when all coppers in Notts were more’n six foot. Couldn’t get in else.’

  ‘Breed them for brains nowadays,’ Resnick said, ‘not brawn.’

  ‘Which are you then?’ one of the women asked.

  ‘Charlie here,’ Edna said, ‘he’s a bit of both.’

  ‘First-name terms, then, Edna?’ another woman said with a smile.

  ‘Got to know one another during the strike, didn’t we, Mr Resnick? After a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Which manner were that, Edna?’ someone else asked to much laughter.

  The look she got in return suggested the joking had gone just about far enough.

  Alex Sandford had taken the opportunity to back away. Over towards one of the cars, Catherine Njoroge was talking to Barry Hardwick and his daughter. Rob Cresswell was talking to a couple by one of the cars, notebook in hand.

  ‘I was wondering, Edna,’ Resnick said, ‘if you had time for a chat?’

  ‘Time? Aye, plenty of that.’

  ‘Here, or . . .’

  ‘Here’d be fine.’

  They sat facing the chapel entrance, Resnick with a hand to her elbow as she lowered herself carefully down.

  A little way off, Brian Hardwick lay curled along the bench where Resnick had left him, one arm trailing towards the ground.

  ‘Poor lad,’ Edna Johnson said.

  ‘Brian?’

  ‘Runt of t
he litter’d not be quite right, but he ran too much in his brother’s shadow for all that. Barry, he always favoured Colin, you could tell. And Mary, of course. So then, when his mum . . . when Jenny . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think he ever got over it, the thought that she just up and left them, left him. What’d he have been? Four at the time? Five, maybe. That at best. And then, learning his mum were killed, murdered. Maybe worse.’

  ‘We don’t know . . .’

  ‘Not stop it goin’ through his mind, all the same.’

  Heading now to where her car was parked, Catherine Njoroge raised a hand towards them in greeting.

  ‘Handsome woman that,’ Edna Johnson remarked.

  Resnick couldn’t do anything but agree.

  ‘How’s it feel, I wonder?’ Edna asked.

  ‘How does what?’

  ‘According to what lad talkin’ to us said, no matter the years you’ve put in, she’s the one in charge.’

  ‘Too many years, Edna, that’s the trouble. And besides, she’s good at her job, getting better.’

  ‘You to guide her.’

  ‘Not the way I see it. Nor her, either, I don’t suppose.’

  ‘Then she’s a fool.’

  Despite himself, Resnick smiled. ‘Mind if I ask you something?’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘When Jenny first disappeared, what did you think?’

  ‘First? Thought she’d gone off, like most everyone else. Had enough. Flitted.’

  ‘On her own, or . . .’

  ‘I was never sure. She was a good-looking woman, Jenny, no getting away from that. And when she stood up to speak, meetings and the like, you could see the men in the audience, some of them – well, it weren’t just what she were saying that were holding their attention.’

  ‘And she was aware of that?’

  ‘Ever known a woman who wasn’t?’

  ‘There’s talk about a young miner down from Yorkshire . . .’

  ‘Danny, Danny Ireland. Trailed round after her like a needy dog.’

  ‘Red-headed lad?’

  ‘Gingerish, yes. That’s the one.’

  ‘You ever think she could have gone off with him?’

  ‘Copped off, maybe. Nice-enough-looking lad, all right.’

  ‘But nothing more?’

  ‘I never thought so. Not enough about him for Jenny to have upped and left a marriage. Home. Kids.’

  ‘Then you thought it was someone else?’

  ‘I thought it were possible, yes.’

  ‘Did you know who? Have any idea?’

  ‘Not really, no. But round about then, winter, that time of year, she’d been all over, making speeches, you know. South Wales once, I think it was. York. London. Union leaders, negotiators – brains and a pretty face, susceptible as anyone. And she had changed, Jenny, I could see that. As if all that had happened had made her restless, wanting more. Nor was she the only one, of course – changed a lot of women’s lives, strike did.’

  ‘For the better?’

  ‘In the long run, yes, I think so.’

  Briefly, she touched Resnick’s hand with her own.

  ‘P’raps I shouldn’t say this, but when I heard – you know, when her body was found, where it was, I was almost glad. Not for what’d happened, of course, God no, not for that, but ’cause it meant she’d not walked out on her kids to go off with some smart-mouthed bloke in a suit and tie, lookin’ for what she thought was a better life. Left her kids for that. That’s what I mean by glad. Glad that wasn’t the kind of person she’d become.’

  Away on the other bench, Brian Hardwick roused himself, stretched, stood uncertainly up, took a few paces, turned and sat back down.

  ‘I should be going,’ Edna said. ‘One of my old pals, offered me a lift.’

  ‘Been good to see you again,’ Resnick said.

  ‘Funerals,’ Edna said, ‘about the only time these days you get to see your friends. Fewer and fewer each time, mind.’

  He stood admiringly as, head up, she walked slowly away.

  19

  THESE LAST MORNINGS, Jenny has been getting up while it is still dark, hurrying down to the kitchen, bowls out for the kids’ breakfast, bread and jam for them to take to school, sandwiches for Barry’s snap – she’d not deny him that and if she did he’d only scraight and moan all the more.

  Out in the hallway, she pulls a comb through her hair, then reaches for her coat and shoes. Edna would be at the Welfare already, mashing tea, something hot for the lads before they set off for the day’s picket: bacon cobs, if they were lucky – where the bacon came from, the money to pay for it, no questions asked.

  There were collecting boxes on every street corner – not here, but in the bigger towns and cities, London even – miners standing beside buckets into which folk dropped coins, spare change, notes sometimes and not small. Stories of city bankers stuffing down ten-pound notes, twenties even. Drivers going past, sounding their horns in support. More donations, she’d been told, coming in from abroad. France, was it? That’s what she’d heard. And Russia? Was that possible?

  So many people acknowledging what they were doing was right.

  Telling them to stand firm.

  Stick together.

  As long as they did that, then surely they’d win through . . .

  Edna greets her with a smile and points towards half a dozen or more loaves, waiting for a scrape of margarine. On the table behind, one of the other women is peeling her way through a sack of onions for that day’s soup, tears streaming down her face. From the far side of the room, the radio plays George Michael, ‘Careless Whisper’.

  As she stands there, Peter Waites comes breezing in, loud-voiced and cheerful, a quick word with Edna, barely a glance in Jenny’s direction, and he’s gone again. The first of the men drifting in now, that lad, the red-headed one, at the back there, jostling with one of his mates. Pushing and shoving like kids in the playground.

  Laughing.

  Jenny eases the hair back from her face and when she glances up again, moments later, he’s staring in her direction, bold as brass.

  Pressing her lips together, she bends her head back down to the task in hand.

  She’s back in the Welfare at lunchtime, helping serve soup to those miners who are on strike, and then again that evening, the two youngest in bed. There are always jobs that want doing: trips to the cash and carry for weekly supplies; donations of food to be fetched from the central collection point at the Friends’ Meeting House in Mansfield, then bagged up into family parcels; bags of second-hand clothes to be sorted through; fund-raising materials to be made for the stall by St Peter’s Church in Nottingham. Never time enough, it seems, or hands.

  There’s talk amongst the women, some uncertainty, Jenny can tell, as to how long they can carry on as they are, and Edna Johnson listens for a while, just long enough for them to feel they’ve had their say, then quietly but firmly sets them to rights. As long as they’re needed, one way or another, they’ll find the means to carry on. End of discussion.

  Not for the first time, Jenny finds herself admiring Edna for her clear-sightedness, the way she always seems able to say what’s needed without fuss or bother; up on the platform at meetings, more often than not the only woman speaker amongst all those men, and the audience taking in her every word, listening. Not a little envious, Jenny wonders if, as Peter Waites had suggested, she will ever have the courage to do the same.

  She’s on her way home, the street next to her own, when he comes out of the shadows just ahead of her, making her gasp.

  ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

  The street light close enough to show up the red in his hair.

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doin’?’

  ‘Won’t be seeing you again, not after tonight. Thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘Seeing me? Is that what you’ve been doing?’

  ‘Camping out, had a barrelful o’ that. Back home, proper bed, sheets. Got ma
tes’ll drive me, wherever we’ve got to go.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  She makes to move around him, and he shifts his balance to block her path.

  ‘Reckoned, before I went, you know, that drink you promised.’

  ‘I promised nothing.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  He’s standing close enough now for her to see the small scar on his cheek, close by his mouth.

  ‘A goodbye kiss, then . . .’

  When he lowers his head towards her, she swings an arm and slaps him hard across the face; pushes angrily past as, grinning, he steps aside.

  ‘Another time then, duck, eh?’

  Quickening her pace, she strides for home, the memory of his breath still warm on her face.

  20

  THE BAND CLOSED their first set with a tearaway version of ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside’, the young tenor player up from London taking advantage of the tempo to show off the speed of his fingering and romp up and down the scales with such speed as to leave the listeners practically seasick.

  ‘Play that many notes, Charlie,’ one of the regulars said, falling in step alongside Resnick as they headed for the bar, ‘some of the bastards got to be the right ones, eh?’

  Resnick nodded agreement, paid for his pint and, not feeling overly sociable, took it off to the side room, a seat in the far corner, fifteen, twenty minutes of his own company before the band regrouped.

  Two days now since the funeral and for all the information they’d gathered, they were little closer to the truth of what happened. Catherine Njoroge was due to have a meeting with Martin Picard at headquarters later that week in order to outline their progress, a meeting she’d not been anticipating with any particular pleasure.

  From the friends and neighbours of the Petersons that Sandford and Cresswell had so far been able to track down, it was clear a number of different people had been working with Geoff Cartwright on the Church Street extension, sometimes for as little as a morning, a day at most. Mixing cement, laying concrete. There was one period, close to Christmas itself, the nearest neighbour said, when no work seemed to be being done at all; but then, almost before you could turn around, everything seemed to have been sorted in double-quick time. When the Petersons got back from wherever – Wales, was it? Somewhere of that fashion – everything seemingly done and dusted.