Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  True, there were one or two things missing, bits and pieces really, incidentals. No manual, but then anyone with a bit of intelligence could work out which switch did what for himself. And the box: no, there was no box. Who needs a box, when the whole unit tucked so neatly under the front of a loose-fitting leather jacket, or, for ease of carrying, under one arm? The remote control transmitter, though, Nicky had to admit that was more of a problem; nobody wanted to be jumping up out of the armchair every few seconds to fiddle through the tracks by hand. But he’d dropped it, hadn’t he? Sliding his skinny arse back out through the bathroom window, the remote had squeezed out of his hand like a bar of soap and landed in the open toilet bowl with a splash.

  Shit!

  Legs waving in the wind, CD-player clutched to his chest, Nicky had not reckoned the risk of going back for it. Especially considering where it had fallen. Given on a quiet night he could hear the Turveys farting from four doors away, Nicky didn’t fancy diving his hands into their khazi without a pair of rubber gloves.

  No matter, he’d boost one from the electrical shop on the corner, one of those universal jobs that lets you programme everything from the telly to the microwave. Legs up on the settee with a can of Tennents, few flicks of that and you could take EastEnders, listen to a tasty bit of Jungle, and make yourself a toasted ham sandwich all at the same time. Meet us here tomorrow and it’s yours for a tenner, right? Five, then. Five, OK? Five. Do without, you tight cunt!

  But Resnick had neglected to make his way into the city via Radford Road and so missed sampling the sales patter and burgeoning entrepreneurial skills of the fourteen-year-old Nicky Snape. What Resnick did was leave his car in the Central Police Station car park, nip into the market for an espresso, then wander down Market Street to SuperFi and purchase a brand-new Rotel RCD965BX at fifteen per cent off, last year’s model. Box, manual and remote control included.

  Now at last he had something on which to play the Billie Holiday boxed set he had bought himself the Christmas before last.

  One thing Nicky was good with, his hands. Arms, too. Slide them down inside the smallest window crack, delve into the deepest letterbox, ease back the tightest bolt, slip the toughest lock. Like most things, it came with practice.

  When Nicky got back home that Saturday afternoon he was feeling cool. Black denim shirt loose over baggy black jeans. Reversed on his head, the Chicago Bulls baseball cap he’d swapped with some kid from school. Music zapping through his Walkman at nearly 200 beats per minute and bright new Reeboks on his feet. Nicky felt like . . . Nicky felt like a fucking star!

  Then smack! Three paces into the room and his mother caught him such a round-arm slap that he went stumbling sideways, legs jellying under him, cap flying and one earpiece of his headphones all but piercing his inner ear.

  “What? What the fuck was that for? What?”

  Norma hit him again: once for asking stupid questions and once for using language like that inside her house. “Don’t you come in here swearing at me, you loundering trail-tripes, don’t you bloody dare! This is your mother you’re talking to and don’t you bloody forget it!”

  Nicky pulled off his headphones and, scooping up his cap from the floor, jammed it back on his head. “What?” he shouted in his mother’s face. “What?”

  At five-foot-eight, Norma Snape was a couple of inches taller than her youngest son and outweighed him by some forty pounds. It should have slowed her down more than it did. The next blow Nicky ducked, but not the one after. Norma’s open hand struck him on the same side of the face, right around the ear, and Nicky’s skin burned red.

  “What the fuck’ve I done now?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you . . .?”

  “Don’t!” When Nicky scrambled back around the settee, he was close to tears.

  “For fuck’s sake!” shouted Nicky’s seventeen-year-old half-brother, Shane. “Why don’t the pair of you cut it out and let me watch this in peace?”

  Neither paid him the slightest heed. The four o’clock at Kempton was under starter’s orders and Shane had a twenty each way riding on the second favourite.

  “Look,” Norma said, pointing at her youngest son’s feet. “You think I’m blind or stupid or what?”

  “What?”

  “Jesus and Mary, can’t you ever say anything but that?”

  “If I knew what you were talking about,” Nicky said, “I might.”

  Norma narrowed her eyes as if she were in pain; someone knocked at the front door and she yelled at them to go away. “Those shoes,” she said. “Those trainers you’ve got on your feet. They’re new, aren’t they? Brand sodding new.”

  “So?”

  “So you picked ’em off the trees alongside the Park and Ride, did you? You thieving little bowdykite, you’ve been up the Viccy Centre, thieving again, that’s what.”

  Nicky’s face contorted into a smirk. “Yeah, well, that’s just where you’re wrong, ’cause I never nicked them at all.”

  “And I’ve told you before, I’ll not have you lying to me.”

  Nicky tried vaulting his brother’s legs in a dash for the kitchen door, but Shane’s kick caught him high on the back of the thigh and brought him low. “Get out the bloody way!” The leaders were only at the second furlong mark and Shane’s horse was back amongst the stragglers already.

  “Right. Now, you listen.” Norma had Nicky jammed up against the open door, holding him by his hair. “You’re going to get those off your feet and take them back right now.”

  “No way.”

  She pulled his head back before slamming it against the door. “You’ll do what you’re sodding told.”

  Nicky wriggled the fingers of his right hand down into the back pocket of his jeans and came up with a crumpled receipt. “Don’t believe me, look at that.” There were tears in his eyes now and no mistake.

  “What?”

  “Now who can’t say nothin’ else?”

  Norma slapped him for being smart and took the receipt. “One pair Reebok training shoes, forty-nine pound, ninety-five.”

  “Yeah, and today’s date, see there, today’s date, date and time, where and when I bought ’em, today.”

  “Forty-nine, ninety-five.”

  “Yes.”

  “Almost fifty quid.”

  “Yes.”

  “For those?”

  “Yes.”

  Norma punched him so hard in the chest that Nicky nearly stopped breathing. “Where in the name of buggery did you get fifty pound to spend on your scuttering feet?”

  It had been snowing when Resnick arrived back at his car; just lightly, a thin skein of flakes filtering down from an almost blue sky. Careful, he had locked the CD-player inside the boot, knowing better than to tempt providence even in the police car park.

  Phoning through to his own CID room at the Canning Circus sub-station, he half smiled at Kevin Naylor’s diffident voice, asking him to please hold. Blurred down the line, he heard the fall and rise of voices, the scrape of chairs, the computer printer’s broken rhythm, the sound of whistling that could only come from Graham Millington, a shrilly confident version of ‘The Way We Were’.

  When Naylor returned to the phone it was to report the normal mix of break-ins and minor assaults, drunk and disorderlies, and vehicles taken without consent. Like CID teams up and down the country, those of Resnick’s officers who were not hard-pressed by long-term investigations were busy sweeping up the leftovers of another urban Friday night. And there was still Saturday to come: the traditional weekend of two halves.

  “Not at the match, sir?” Naylor asked.

  Resnick hung up. These past weeks of the season, frustrated by a series of games in which, if their visitors could not find a way of doing it for themselves, his team’s defence had all but kicked the ball into their own net – and sometimes done exactly that – Resnick had voted with his feet and stopped attending. Since when, predictably, although County were still in prime relegation position, they had achie
ved some memorable results. Had actually won matches.

  With a small degree of guilt, Resnick thought that, had he stopped going sooner, the team might have had a chance of staying put.

  To cheer himself up he set out for the Old Market Square, spurred on to brave the youth of the city, clustered with numbed insouciance around the listening posts in the Virgin Megastore, and brush his way into the jazz section at the rear in order to supplement his meagre collection of CDs.

  There were times when Norma Snape thought that if she’d not come south from Huddersfield, things would have been all right. No one had told her that, aside from being the self-confessed ‘poetry capital of the country’, Huddersfield had recently been voted the town in which folk were most likely to be burgled. West Yorkshire police statistics, official. Put her Nicky in with a chance of knocking off another sonnet or knocking over the corner shop, it didn’t take fourteen lines of iambic pentameter to tell which was the most likely.

  At least tonight she knew where he was, playing pool with his Uncle Vic and under pain of death to be back in the house before eleven. Shane was . . . well, the Good Lord alone knew where Shane was . . . and Sheena – Sheena was sitting here alongside Norma, sipping a rum and Coke to make it last, knowing after that she’d be on halves of lager like everyone else.

  “Where you off to now?” Norma asked, as Sheena shuffled from her seat, smoothing her skirt down in the far direction of her knees.

  “Loo.”

  “Be sharp, then. Karaoke’s set to start any minute.”

  Sheena made a face and wiggled away, more than half the eyes in the pub turning to watch her go. Norma had put her on the pill to celebrate her fifteenth birthday, but knew that was never enough. Times had changed since she was a lass herself, and there were things far worse you could catch now than a baby.

  “Been gone long enough to piss for me too,” Norma said, as Sheena finally returned. Up at the mike a Barton bus driver, still wearing his uniform trousers, was making a passable meal of ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’.

  “Party upstairs,” Sheena said, sitting down. “Cheryl Rogers’ eighteenth.”

  “Not a mate of yours, is she?”

  “Can’t stand her, stuck-up cow. And her vol-au-vents taste like cardboard stuck round sick.” Sheena leaned back and used a chipped fingernail to pick some shredded chicken from between her teeth.

  For Resnick, it was a pretty basic sandwich. Ham, a few slices of strong Lancashire, some shallots, what remained of a green pepper and a smear of mustard pickle. The bread – his favourite caraway and rye – he had toasted on one side. Lately, he had been drinking Worthington White Shield.

  The Billie Holiday tracks with Ben Webster and Barney Kessell were coming to an end, and he was looking at his purchases from Virgin, wondering how on earth you were supposed to read the notes on CDs without a magnifying glass. He turned the cases over in his hand. Spike Robinson: The Gershwin Collection. Spike, who had dedicated a number to Resnick’s late friend Ed Silver from the stage at Ronnie Scott’s. Monk, of course. The set of piano solos which included ‘Memories of You’. Duke Ellington’s New Orleans Suite, with Johnny Hodges playing one of his last solos on ‘Blues for New Orleans’. And Charlie Parker – Bird: the Dial Masters. Resnick set the disc to play.

  Broadway at 38th Street in New York, 28th of October, forty-seven. A Tuesday. Duke Jordan at the piano, Max Roach on drums. Miles Davis was just twenty-one. The rolling, rubato opening to ‘Dexterity’, before muted trumpet and alto play the theme, a little riff repeated clean and simple before the band drops out and leaves Parker wheeling through space alone, fingers, breath and soul manoeuvring together with agile blue grace.

  Smiling, Resnick touches the remote and plays the track again.

  Norma and Sheena had arrived home a shade after ten-thirty to find that Nicky was already there, head bent over some new computer game or other, can of Coke close to hand. He barely shrugged when his mother and sister came in.

  “Where’s our Shane?” Norma asked.

  “In his room.”

  “What doing?”

  “Sara Johnson.”

  Norma’s coat dropped to the floor. “He better not gecking be! He . . .”

  She was at the foot of the stairs before Nicky’s laughter stopped her in her tracks, Nicky all but doubled over, Sheena joining in with it, pleased to see their mum caught out.

  “You little bugger!” But Norma was laughing too, pleased she could still see the funny side.

  “What’s all the racket?” Shane asked, appearing in the doorway, magazine at his side.

  “Never mind,” Norma said happily, picking up her coat. “Sheena, just set kettle on, there’s a love.”

  “God,” said Sheena, “why’s it always me?” But it wasn’t a real protest, only routine. “Maybe we could all watch a video?” she called from the sink.

  “What? Like together?” Shane laughed. “What d’you think this is all of a sudden, happy families?”

  “Why not?” Norma said.

  The tea hadn’t had time to mash before Pete Turvey and his cousins were hammering at the front door.

  The Turveys, all three of them, along with their respective wives, had spent the early part of the evening in their local before moving on to Radford Boulevard and Cheryl Rogers’ birthday party. Cheryl’s mum and Pete Turvey’s wife worked the early shift at Player’s, grateful to be hanging on to their jobs longer than most.

  “Come back to the house after,” Bev Rogers had said. “Trevor’s got some drink in, haven’t you, Trev?”

  Cheryl’s dad had nodded with less than enthusiasm. What the chuffin’ hell did she want to be asking that pack back for? Piss up your leg as soon as look at you, most of the time. But all Pete Turvey had done was drop a shoulder in Trevor’s direction and nod his head. “Nice one, Trev. We’ll be there, no problem at all.”

  “Look here,” Bev said, once they had all arrived and were standing, the three Turvey men close to six foot apiece, planted in the centre of the Rogers’ living room with glasses in their hands. “This lot of presents our Cheryl got. Too much really. Way over’t top. But then, like I was saying, you’re only eighteen once.”

  “Aye,” Pete Turvey had said, lifting his glass and winking in the girl’s direction. “Sweet eighteen and scarce been kissed.”

  Cheryl’s face and neck showed several shades of red and Turvey, who knew a few things about her that her mum did not, grinned and winked again.

  “See what her dad give her, here, look,” Bev said from across the room. “Stereo, all of her own.”

  Turvey could see it right enough, units stacked on one another, not quite matching: twin-deck Technics cassette-player, JVC amp, Kenwood tuner and, perched on top of them all, a Panasonic CD-player, almost new.

  “Nice,” said Turvey, moving in for a closer look.

  “Course,” Bev said, “Trevor had to match them up himself, piece by piece, didn’t you, Trev?”

  “Very nice,” Turvey said over Trevor’s grunt. “CD, specially.”

  “That was what I really wanted most of all, wasn’t it, Dad?” Cheryl said, colour almost back to normal.

  “Shame,” Pete Turvey had said, turning back into the room, “the one he got you had to be fucking mine!”

  “Let me get my hands on the bastard!” Pete Turvey said now, pushing his way across the Snape’s front room; but he had Norma to get by first and then there was Shane. “Thievin’ shit-arse!”

  “Let him be.”

  Eyes wide, Nicky was crouched down beside the TV.

  “Sort him out of there,” Turvey said to his cousins, pointing, but when one of them moved there was Shane to block him and the other one stood his ground. “Go on!”

  But nobody did.

  “Happen,” Norma said, “you should tell us what this is all about.”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s all about,” Turvey shouted.

  “Right. Then why don’t we all sit down first?”
<
br />   “I don’t want to fucking sit down!”

  “Suit yourself.”

  From the kitchen doorway, Sheena glanced over at Nicky and saw that Nicky was fit to piss himself with laughter. “I don’t suppose anyone’d like a cup of tea?” she asked.

  Nicky clapped a hand across his mouth and headed for the door.

  “You stay bloody there!” Pete Turvey called.

  “Nicky, stay there,” Norma said.

  Still fighting the urge to laugh, Nicky leaned against the wall. “Tell ’em what happened,” one of Turvey’s cousins said.

  “What happened,” said Pete Turvey, “is that sniggering little toe-rag over there broke into my place Friday, stole the CD and sold it to Trevor Rogers for thirty quid so’s Rogers could give it to his kid for her soddin’ birthday.”

  Now it was Shane’s turn to laugh.

  “Shut it!” Norma said. And then, “Nicky, is that true?”

  “Course it isn’t.”

  “Don’t you lie to me now.”

  “I’m not.”

  “He fucking is!” Turvey made to get at him, but this time the settee was in the way. The settee and Shane.

  “You bring him round here, this bloke then,” Shane said. “Rogers, that his name? Get him round here tomorrow, first thing. Say it all to Nicky’s face. And mine. If he does and Nicky’s lying, we’ll sort it out.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll sort it out.”

  Turvey stared hard into Shane’s face, but Shane didn’t waver. Turvey knew he was heavier, older, taller; he had to ask himself if he fancied it, and the truth was he did not. Not there and then.

  “Right,” Turvey said, backing off. “Tomorrow, right?” He nodded at his cousins and with a hunch of their shoulders they turned and went, slamming the door at their backs.

  Norma moved fast and she had hold of Nicky before he could dodge from the room.

  “Mum!”

  She slapped him both ways with her open hand, both cheeks, forward and back. Then slapped him again, tears hot against the laughter that still clung to the corners of his eyes.