by John Harvey
It began with two of the tracks Parker had recorded with Max Roach and Miles Davis in 1951, but through some quirk of programming, the third tune didn’t appear till some way into the disc. One of those unison statements so beloved of boppers to begin and then Parker takes off in surprisingly light, long fluid phrases before giving way to the choppy sound of Miles’ muted trumpet; a chorus of so-so piano which Parker can’t wait to end before he’s muscling back in, stronger now, more aggressive, grabbing the piece by the scruff of its neck and hurtling it into four bar exchanges with the drums. Three minutes and six seconds later, abruptly, it’s over. She Rote.
Settled back in his chair, Resnick smiled: well worth three-pounds-fifty of anybody’s money.
The grandmother found the baby the next morning, searching through Sarah’s drawers for an old jumper to unpick for wool. He had been wrapped in several layers of clothing and set snug against the drawer’s edge, buttons across his eyes.
Her dad found the note in the kitchen, propped up between the stacks of plates near the back door.
Dear Dad,
I am riting to let you no you dont have to worry about me. I shall be OK. I’m sorry but I took the money from where you keep it in your room beside the bed and also from Grans bag. Im telling you this cos I didnt want you to blame Eileen or Ray-o.
Im sorry for what Iv done – and about the baby.
Love,
Sarah
xxxxx
Confirmation
Terry Cooke went to the pool every morning because it was good for his health. His doctor had told him so. Or, rather, his doctor had said, squinting above a pair of glasses held together with orange Elastoplast, “Terry, you’re going to have to change your lifestyle, that is if you’re going to have any life at all. Future tense.”
A quarter past eleven on a sunny January morning, Terry was finally in Dr Max Bone’s surgery after forty minutes shared with old copies of the Guardian magazine and the usual selection of bad backs, hacking coughs, and unmarried mums-to-be about to drop their firstborn on the worn carpet. The Guardian, for Christ’s sake, where did Bone think this was, West Bridgford? And there was the doc ignoring his request for a referral to a chiropodist so Terry could get rid of his troublesome bunion on the NHS, and engaging him instead on issues of mortality. Life or death. His. Terry’s.
“I’ll stop smoking,” Terry said, prepared to be alarmed.
“You should.”
“Cut back on the drink.”
“Yes.”
“For pity’s sake, I’m not even fifty.”
“You want to be?”
Terry got up from the chair and walked to the window. In the street outside, two kids in bomber jackets, neither of them above ten years old, and both wearing nearly-new Nike trainers that had come down the chimney with Santa, were dismantling a black and silver mountain bike whose owner had optimistically left it chained to a parking meter.
“Exercise,” the doctor said.
Terry couldn’t see himself in one of those poncey jogging suits, sidestepping the dog shit round the edges of Victoria Park.
“Specifically, swimming; that’s the thing.”
The only time in the last fifteen years Terry had been swimming, Carrington Lido had still been an open-air pool and not a bunch of cramped chi-chi houses with satellite dishes the size of dinner plates and shiny gold numbers on the doors.
“It’s not just the aerobic activity,” Bone said, “though you need that without question. It’s the effect of the water. Calming.” He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s the stress, Terry, it’s making too great demands upon the heart.”
His back to the window, Terry could feel it, angry and irregular against his ribs. Cautiously, he returned to the chair and sat down. “Swimming,” he said, uncertainly. “That’d really make a difference?”
Bone nodded. “If not, I know a wonderful masseuse. Shiatsu. Unfortunately not on the National Health.”
Terry thought he would try the swimming first. He shook Bone’s hand and, out on the street, clipped the ear of an eight-year-old demanding a pound to look after his car, make sure no one tried to nick the radio, see it didn’t get scratched.
“Listen, you, I find one mark on that motor you’re for it. This is Terry Cooke you’re talking to, right?”
“Yeah, and my Dad’s Frank Bruno.”
Terry shrugged; anything was possible. He walked as far as the corner of Carlton Road and sat in the side bar of an empty pub with a half of bitter and a large Bells. Stress, the doc was right. Terry had it in spades.
There was his daughter, Sarah, for instance. Several months back she had followed her mother’s inexact path and taken the overnight National Express north to Edinburgh. No note, no reason, though Sarah’s gran, Terry’s own mum, that is, had acted strangely about the whole thing and Terry was sure she knew more about it than she was letting on. One of these fine days, when she’d suckled enough gin, it’d all come pouring out. Till then, it was the occasional reversed-charge call from Sarah and a postcard of Greyfriar’s Bobby with a scrawled message to say that she and her mum were fine. Terry could imagine the pair of them shacked up in some scabby flat, more likely than not a squat. As long as her mother wasn’t into sharing needles, it might not work out so bad.
At least it made it easier with Eileen, Terry’s live-in girl friend. Eileen was a stripper of considerable abilities who, since moving in with Terry, had taken herself upmarket and now specialised in delivering personalised birthday messages dressed in her own version of a WPC’s uniform.
Terry tried to tell himself he didn’t mind Eileen going out and cuffing some spotty car salesman to a chair while she gave him a tongue lashing, but the truth was that he did. After all, the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her himself, it had been the speed with which she’d got down to her spangled g-string that had taken his eye. Slowly, very slowly. Now whenever Eileen went out on a job, part of him was terrified she’d encounter some muscled hard boy who worked out six days a week and made love like a power machine on the seventh. Twenty-three, Eileen, and young enough, just about, to be Terry’s daughter herself.
Sarah . . . then Eileen . . . and the star over the sodding stable hadn’t long faded before Inspector bloody Charlie Resnick had been sniffing round the second-hand shop Terry rented out by Bobber’s Mill. Resnick like some scruffy Santa with a ho-ho-ho and turkey gravy on his tie, offering to do a special New Year inventory of suspect goods. It was only good luck that Terry had been there himself that day, and not his gormless nephew Raymond, otherwise it might not have been so easy to steer Resnick away from the several gross of Sega and Nintendo that had escaped the Christmas market. To say nothing of the camcorders.
Stress? Of course he was suffering from stress. A life like this, how could it be anyway else? But fifty was something he did want to see. It wasn’t altogether off the cards that he and Eileen might want to start a family.
Terry lowered himself into the water gradually, none of those bravura dives off the pool edge for him, and began the first of thirty slow, laborious lengths. Not so very long from now he’d be back out and across the road, sitting in the market café with a strong tea and a sausage cob.
Resnick got into the station that morning late and less than happy. His own car was in for what might prove to be its last ever service and the Vauxhall he’d borrowed had recently been used for a spot of undercover observation and smelled of hastily bottled urine and too many Benson Kingsize. Halfway along Lower Parliament Street a corporation bus driver had ploughed into the back of a Burger King delivery truck and the consequent brouhaha had blocked the traffic both ways from the Theatre Royal to the Albert Hall and Institute.
“Bit of a lie-in?” Millington asked when Resnick finally pushed his way through the door to the CID room, the smile edging its way, ferret-like, from beneath the sergeant’s moustache. “Deserved.”
“Last night’s files on my desk?” Resnick asked, b
arely breaking stride en route to the partitioned-off section that was his office.
“Likely need a bit of an update by now.”
“Tea, Graham,” Resnick said. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea?” Coffee was his preference, but experience had long since taught him that within the confines of the station the cup that cheers was the safer choice.
“Kev,” Millington called, head inclined towards the far corner of the room.
“Boss?” Telephone in hand, Kevin Naylor peered round from his desk.
“When you’ve a minute, get kettle on, mash some more tea.”
Naylor sighed, spoke into the receiver, made a mark alongside the list of names and addresses on his desk and got to his feet. He glanced across at Lynn Kellogg as he passed, Lynn sitting impervious at her computer, strolling through the county database detailing offenders with a penchant for carrying firearms with malicious intent. That’ll be the day, he thought, when anyone dares ask her to make the bloody tea in this team.
Leaning over the shuffle of folders and papers that covered his desk, Resnick scanned through the outline of the previous night’s events. Three men had been arrested and held in the cells overnight: two on charges of drunk and disorderly; the third, apparently sober, had driven his fibreglass-bodied invalid tricycle into a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise and attempted to run over his ex-lover, who was one of the customers.
There had been eleven burglaries reported from the Victorian splendours of the Park estate and seven more, all of them in the same short street, from the less salubrious east side of the Alfreton Road. Carl Vincent was out there now, checking some of these door to door, while Naylor was talking to other aggrieved homeowners on the phone.
All routine: it was the last entry in the night’s incident file which claimed most of Resnick’s attention. At eleven minutes past three a message had been received giving information of a burglary taking place at a television and electrical goods suppliers in Radford. The officers who had responded, PCs Mark McFarlane and Mary Duffy, had initially reported seeing no obvious signs of forced entry, but in the narrow alley at the rear had run into a gang of four men armed with a sawn-off shotgun, iron bars and a long-handled sledgehammer. A mercy, Resnick thought, that the shotgun had not been brought into play, though he was by no means certain the officers would have agreed. Mark McFarlane was in Queen’s with a suspected fractured skull and Mary Duffy was in an intensive care bed in the same hospital, a splintered rib having pierced her lung. Such descriptions as they had been able to give of their assailants were necessarily brief and incomplete – balaclavas and coveralls, boots and gloves – it had been dark in the alley and McFarlane’s torch had been smashed early in the struggle.
Resnick snapped open the door from his office. “Graham . . .”
“On its way. Kev, what you doing with that tea?”
“This pair in hospital,” Resnick said, “when did we last get a report?”
“Not above half-hour back. No change.”
Resnick nodded. “Any list yet of what was taken?”
“I’ve called the owner twice,” Millington said, handing Resnick his favourite Notts County mug. “Promised it within the hour.”
“Get on to them again, Graham. Sitting on it this long, likely all they’re busying themselves with is massaging the totals for the insurance. If they keep stalling, maybe you should get down there yourself.”
Millington nodded, right.
“Sir,” Lynn said, swivelling at her desk. “I’ve got a printout of likely candidates for carrying the shotgun. Local, anyhow.”
“Good. Cross-check with the information officer at Central, might be a body or two worth pulling to get things started. Let me know how it’s going when I get back.” Resnick took a couple of swallows at his tea and set it down. “I’m off out to the hospital, take a look at the wounded, see if anything’s jogged their memory.” He hoped the traffic had died down and that Duffy and McFarlane would be up to talking to him when he arrived.
He was hoping in vain. McFarlane had lost consciousness again by the time Resnick got to his side and all that Mary Duffy could tell him through bruised lips was that one of their attackers had seemed taller than the rest, two or three inches over six foot, and another might have been stockier and shorter than the other two.
“Voices?” Resnick asked. “Accents?”
Quietly, Duffy began to cry. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry.”
Resnick patted her hand and hoped she wouldn’t notice when he glanced at his watch.
Terry Cooke collected his tea and roll from the counter and went to his normal seat by the window. Across Gedling Street, the stalls of the open market were attracting a slow scuffle of elderly shoppers, collars turned up against the keenness of the wind. He watched as a lean, slope-shouldered figure, white haired, turned away from where he had been buying what looked like a couple of pounds of potatoes, a few carrots and onions, and crossed towards the café.
Like Terry, Ronnie Rather was a creature of routine. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, he would push his olive-green shopping trolley sedately from stall to stall, before treating himself to tea and toast and a small cigar that burned like anthracite and had a similar flinty smell. On alternate Fridays, he splashed out on beans as well.
Since Ronnie had been adhering to this particular routine longer than Terry himself, and had made a habit, when it was vacant, of sitting at the window table, Terry could hardly object when as today the old man parked up his trolley against the table edge and joined him.
“Ron.”
“Terry.”
There would be no more said until Ronnie had cut his slices of toast into thin strips – soldiers, Terry’s mum would have called them, when she had been readying them for the young Terry to dip into his boiled egg – which Ronnie would then sprinkle with salt before chewing methodically.
Two or three pieces despatched into the gurgles and groans of Ronnie’s antique digestive system and Terry’s breakfast companion would lean forward across the table, resting on one elbow, and engage him in conversation.
Which usually meant, as was the way with those old jossers well above the pensionable age, talking about the dim and distant past when a pint of beer was a pint of beer and the sound of a horse-drawn cart approaching along the road outside was enough to send every self-respecting householder running for his dustpan and broom. Or, in Ronnie Rather’s case, when there was a dance hall on every corner, each of them keeping a dozen or more musicians in full-time employment, and when names like Joe Loss and Jack Hylton were enough to quicken the pulse and set up a tremble at the back of the knees.
Trombone, Ronnie had played; first or second chair with every dance band ever to grace Mayfair and the West End or tour the provinces, where, according to Ronnie, so many women would throng round the stage door it often needed the police to clear them away. If he had really done all the things he had claimed, played with all those people in all those places, Terry figured Ronnie Rather had to be the wrong side of eighty if he was a day. Which was just about right.
“Here, Terry . . .” Ronnie began, and Terry waited for the night the Prince of Wales came into the Savoy and insisted that everyone else was sent packing so that he and Mrs Simpson could dance alone. Or the time at the Queensbury Club just before the end of the war, when Glen Miller recognised him in the audience and insisted that he step up and sit in with the band.
But no, it was “Terry, you hear about them two poor bloody coppers, got their heads smashed in?”
Terry nodded; he had heard it on the news driving to the pool. A gang of four masked men, heavily armed, disturbed while carrying out a burglary – well, he reckoned he could fit names to at least two of those hidden faces, possibly three, and it wouldn’t surprise him if by the time he got out to the shop there hadn’t been a call enquiring, in the most roundabout of terms, if he might be interested in enlarging his stock to the tune of a couple of dozen state-of-the-art wide-screen, dig
ital sound TVs.
“One of ’em a woman, an’ all, that’s what sticks in my craw. The bloke, copper, I mean, whatever’s comin’ to him, fair deal. But not the woman – only a kid, too.” Ronnie Rather shook his head in disgust and a piece of undigested toast reappeared at one corner of his mouth. “Call me old-fashioned, if you like. Don’t hold with hitting women, never have.”
“No, no,” Terry said. “I agree with you there. Ninety-nine per cent.” And he did. “Listen, Ronnie,” he said, checking what remained of his tea was too cold to drink, “like to stick around and chat, but you know how it is, got to run. Business. See you soon, yes?”
Ronnie nodded and watched as Terry scooted out through the door and hurried off to where his car was parked on a meter outside the leisure centre doors. Ulcer, Ronnie thought watching him, that’s what he’s going to get if he doesn’t watch out. An ulcer at least.
*
Millington and his merry team had stuck the proverbial pin in Lynn Kellogg’s list of likely candidates and, backed up by a crew of eager uniforms, each and every one of them anxious to avenge their fellow officers, had gone knocking on doors and feeling collars on the Bestwood and Broxtowe estates and in those all-day pubs and twenty-four-hour snooker halls where villains of like minds were wont to congregate. Great sport, but to little long-term avail.
“Anything, Graham?” Resnick asked.
It was late enough in the afternoon for any pretence at daylight to have given up the ghost, and the sergeant’s moustache was drooping raggedly towards his upper lip. “Bugger all!”
It would have taken Petula Clark herself to have walked into the CID room and given out with ‘The Other Man’s Grass (Is Always Greener)’ – a perennial favourite of Millington’s – to bring the smile back to his eyes.