by Harvey, John
Resnick had just negotiated an empty bench at the edge of the square when he saw Catherine walking past the stone lion on permanent guard outside the Council House, a takeaway cup in either hand.
If he hadn’t known that her natural stride was more forceful, stronger, he might not have noticed much different about her at all. The same black trouser suit or similar, a silver instead of purple ribbon in her hair. And the eyepatch was, beyond any doubt, a stylish addition.
‘Flat white, I hope that’s okay?’
‘Fine.’
They sat for a while in near silence, comfortable, despite all that had happened, in one another’s company, watching the good folk of Nottingham go about their daily business.
‘I handed in my resignation yesterday,’ she said.
Resnick took a beat before replying. ‘You don’t think that’s a waste of a good copper?’
‘Come on, Charlie. Whoever heard of a one-eyed detective?’
‘Depends how much they can see.’
Catherine shook her head. ‘I’m going back to uni. To study law. It’s probably what I should have done all along. Needless to say, my father’s beside himself with joy. Sees me as some kind of lost sheep come back to the fold.’
‘You’ll go here or . . .?’
‘Manchester.’
He nodded. Dredged up a smile. ‘I can just see you standing up in court, sweeping all before. Black robes and that eyepatch, made for each other, I’d say.’
‘You’re a pal, Charlie. A good friend.’
‘I like to think so.’
They continued to sit, chatting easily about this and that, nothing of great importance.
‘I’ve just realised,’ Resnick said suddenly. ‘What’s different.’
‘What’s that?’
‘All this time outside, coffee, and you haven’t had a cigarette.’
‘I’ve given up.’
‘New leaf.’
‘Something like that.’
With a glance towards the Council House clock, she got to her feet. ‘Are you going back or . . .?’
‘I’ll sit here just a bit longer. Finish this.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’ll stay in touch.’
‘Of course.’
He didn’t watch her walk away.
He might wander up to Music Inn, he thought after a while. There was a new Monk album he’d seen advertised, concerts in Paris and Milan. ‘Off Minor’, ‘Straight No Chaser’, that kind of thing.
Why play the right notes . . .?
You know the rest.
AFTERWORD
So, Resnick’s last case. When I sat down with my friend, the late Dulan Barber, sometime in 1988, and began putting together the bits and pieces of Charlie’s character, it would not have occurred to either of us that he would still be around some twenty-five years later. If only just. But after twelve novels, some sixteen short stories, two television adaptations and four radio plays, to say nothing of various e-books and audio versions, he’s still standing. More accurately, sitting, and appropriately, on a bench overlooking Nottingham’s Old Market Square.
Which is where I propose to leave him, nursing a cup of takeout coffee and hankering after a fresh helping of Thelonious Monk. In one early draft, not ever properly committed to paper, I did what is I suppose the obvious – what many readers might have expected – and killed him off. No Reichenbach Falls. No return. But it just didn’t feel right.
So at the end of Darkness, Darkness he’s still alive, Charlie, and though in some ways he’s central to the novel, this time he’s more and more a witness, observing rather than influencing the action; understanding, perhaps, less and less of the world moving fast around him. And in that, I suppose, Charlie and I, we’re alike. Writers are witnesses after all, and as we get older our vision, however much we might fight against it, clouds over.
By the time this book is published, I shall have inched closer towards the end of my eighth decade than I shall be from its beginning. And there are things I still want to do. Things that don’t seem to involve Charlie.
He’ll be okay. He’s got a flat white and yet another version of ‘Blue Monk’ to keep him warm.
In the writing of this book, in particular those sections relating to the Miners’ Strike, I’m grateful to a number of people who were involved in the strike in differing ways for their comments and observations – in particular, Sylvia and Gordon Abbott, Peter Coles, Peter Jarvis and John Morgan. My thanks, also, to Graham Nicholls, for his perceptive reading of the manuscript.
For a detailed overview of the strike and its political and social background I’m indebted to the following: Marching to the Fault Line – The Miners’ Strike and the Battle for Industrial Britain by Francis Beckett and David Hencke (Constable, 2009); The Enemy Within – The Secret War Against the Miners by Seamus Milne (Verso, 2004) and Strike – 358 Days that Shook the Nation, a Sunday Times Insight Book written and edited by Peter Wilsher, Donald Macintyre and Michael Jones (André Deutsch, 1985).
For more detailed and personal observations of the strike, I’m grateful to The Miners’ Strike Day by Day – The Illustrated Diary of Yorkshire Miner Arthur Wakefield, edited by Brian Elliott (Wharncliffe Books, 2002) and The 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire – ‘If Spirit Alone Won Battles’, The Diary of John Lowe, edited by Jonathan Symcox (Wharncliffe Books, 2011); also to Queen Coal – Women of the Miners’ Strike by Triona Holden (Sutton Publishing, 2005), The Cutting Edge – Women and the Pit Strike, edited by Vicky Seddon (Lawrence & Wishart, 1986), Never the Same Again – Women and the Miners’ Strike, by Jean Stead (The Women’s Press, 1987) and Hearts and Minds – The Story of the Women of Nottinghamshire in the Miners’ Strike, 1984–1985, by Joan Witham (Canary Press, 1986).
I gained a great deal of insight from watching DVDs of Mike Figgis’s film of Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave (Artangel Media), The Miners’ Campaign Tapes (BFI) and Dole Not Coal – The 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, The Striker’s Story (Compress Media).
Conscientiously, I avoided reading any fiction which uses the strike, to a greater or lesser degree, as subject or setting – though I will admit to sneaking a look inside David Peace’s excellent and incomparable GB84 (Faber & Faber, 2004) whenever inspiration sagged. It was in the course of several conversations with David at Quais du Polar, the annual crime fiction festival in Lyon, that he convinced me to go ahead with the book which became Darkness, Darkness, and for that I’m truly grateful.
Without publishers and editors there would be no Charlie Resnick, no books. It was Tony Lacey at Viking Penguin who first said yes to Charlie and set him on his way. In the US, Marian Wood, then at Henry Holt, guided him through the first ten books with acuity and enthusiasm, and, in France, François Guerif at Rivages has been steadfast in his active support. Writers need agents, too, and I’m grateful that in Carole Blake and latterly Sarah Lutyens I have been blessed with the best combination of professional guidance and unbridled enthusiasm.
My thanks, finally, to everyone at Random House – be it sales, marketing, design or editorial – all of whom have worked hard to make this and earlier books a success – and to Mary Chamberlain, whose conscientious copy editing, book after book, has helped me to avoid the worst errors of misdating and slovenly punctuation.
Anyone who knows anything about publishing will know how very fortunate I have been to have had Susan Sandon as my editor for the past nine books; it was she who held my hand and Charlie’s to the end, encouraging, cajoling, applying just the right amount of pressure when the time was right. Susan, thank you!
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Epub ISBN: 9781448185641
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Published by William Heinemann in 2014
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Copyright © John Harvey 2014
John Harvey has asserted his right, in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
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ISBN 9780099590958