Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  “Reggie Dunn,” Resnick said. “Late in McStay’s employ. I thought perhaps you might find the time to have a word.”

  “Over a friendly pint.”

  “That sort of thing.”

  “Happy Return, then. Not been in for a while. Might give Reg Cossall a call, not so far from his place. He might fancy a chat with Dunn himself. Both Reggies, after all.”

  “Thanks, Graham,” Resnick said, rinsing his hands under the tap.

  McStay hadn’t called round on Mary Coles himself, hadn’t had the stomach for it. He sent Sonia instead, even though it had meant giving in to her about having some poncey sign stuck on her desk.

  “Yes, Mrs Coles,” Sonia had said. “Five hundred pounds, representing a repayment plus a substantial and generous bonus. And your old loan contract cancelled and returned. Now if you’ll just sign this form absolving the firm of any further liability, I’ll be hurrying along.”

  And she smiled her prim little purse-string smile and watched Mary fumble with her pen.

  “The thing is, Reggie,” Millington was saying, Cossall close alongside with a large scotch, Millington himself with a pint of mixed, “it’s because we don’t want to see you ending up with someone else’s shit on your shoes, we’re going out of our way to give you a hand.”

  “Photographs of that woman you nearly strangled in Radford,” Cossall said. “Don’t look good. And then, of course, there’s you up there alone with the little girl.”

  “Not so little,” Millington mused.

  “Thirteen.”

  “Almost.”

  “I never laid a finger . . .”

  “Course you didn’t,” Cossall said, “we understand that. But out there in this mistrustful world, who else is going to believe it?”

  “Eighteen months inside,” Millington said. “Assault. In there with the nonces.”

  “Look, I fuckin’ never . . .”

  “Right, right,” Cossall said. “We know. Graham and me, we believe you. Right, Graham.”

  Millington smiled, a terrifying sight. “Now, Reggie, before you say any more, how about another drink? Bitter was it, or perhaps you fancy something a little stronger?”

  Dunn sank what was left of his pint and then a swift Bells, followed by another, and told them about keeping watch with McStay in his new sports job while Mickey Threadgill and Pleasant John Taylor, McStay’s money in their pockets, swaggered down to the butchers across the street and torched it.

  It was Hannah’s half-term and she was off at an English teachers’ conference in Harrogate, which meant that instead of spending the evening round at her house on Devonshire Promenade, something he was increasingly likely to do, Resnick was spending a quiet evening at home with the cats.

  Of course, he’d put his Charlie Parker on the stereo, the collection with ‘Cheryl’ as one of the tracks. Not the greatest, perhaps. But honest, genuine. Miles, only young then, sounding a little uncertain in his articulation, hazy; and Bud Powell’s piano solo working too hard, perhaps, against the rhythm. But Parker’s chorus was fired by the presence of possibility, brilliance waiting for its spark.

  Cheryl told the story to her new fella a few weeks later. They were taking a break from dancing, a leaving do for a friend of a friend upstairs at the Irish and the DJ over the top on seventies disco. ‘Le Freak’ ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ ‘You’re the Greatest Dancer’.

  New fella. She presumed that’s what he was. They’d met at the exhaust centre when she’d taken in her van for some running repairs. Grease on his overalls and a great bum. Twenty-seven if he was a day. He confessed to her after, it was the leisure suit he’d noticed. She hadn’t told him yet how old she was, though he knew about Vicki so he could likely figure out she wasn’t exactly Liv Tyler. Closer, Liz Taylor. Still, pray for a little subdued lighting and hopefully the stretch marks wouldn’t show. Vicki was sleeping over with her mate Erica and her two kids, a favour returned.

  “And they nicked the lot of them?” Brian asked. A nice name, Brian.

  “All three. Pictures in the paper. Arson. Intimidation. Fraud. Enough for half a dozen episodes of The Bill.”

  “Let us know,” Brian said, his hand rather high on her thigh, “when you’re ready to leave.”

  It nearly popped out of her mouth. “Right now, sunshine,” but there was Gloria Gaynor winding up through the speakers. ‘I Will Survive’. She couldn’t let that go to waste now, could she?

  “Come on, love,” she said, dragging Brian back out on to the floor. “Just one more dance, eh?”

  Work

  “I want you to pay me for my beauty

  I think it’s only right

  because I have been paying for it

  all of my life”

  Ani Difranco: Letter to a John

  She knew he loved her: really knew. It wasn’t the flowers, though they were frequent and effusive enough; it wasn’t the presents, each of them gift wrapped at whatever perfume counter or jewellery store he happened to be passing; it wasn’t even the scrupulous care with which he asked about her plans for this evening or that, which party, which friend, never wanting to appear intrusive, over-protective, fatherly. It was none of those things. What it was, Eileen thought, was the way Terry watched her whenever he was sure she wasn’t looking, the pain that gathered, waiting, at the backs of his eyes. Terry, waiting to be hurt.

  “I don’t care,” he said, “you know that. Where you go or what you do. You’re a grown woman. It’s your life.”

  But it wasn’t; not any more.

  She felt that pain, his pain, the burden of it: resented it so much there were times it was all she could do to stop herself from leaving, walking out and never coming back. The responsibility of his loving her: loving her that much, the way he did. Terry, this caring, crooked, just-shy-of-fifty, charming, balding man. And Eileen, who had left home at fifteen and was still not twenty-five; who had spent what should have been her childhood fighting off men who wanted to be close to her, greedy for her beauty, the glorious red of her hair, the glow of her skin. When she had stopped fighting it had been for a price.

  The first time Terry had seen her she had been booked to do a strip at a pub in Gedling, a private party, fifty quid and all the tips her g-string would hold. Terry had been at a table near the end of the bar, laughing with some mates. And then he hadn’t been with them any more; had been on his own, watching her as she turned her body to the music, swirl of her long hair. He was waiting outside for her afterwards in his car, the engine running. Quick to explain why he hadn’t poked a twenty between her legs like the others, not wanting to do anything that would make her feel cheap.

  At the time, smoke and the residue of sweat stuck fast to her skin, she had thought that was, well, sweet. Now she knew it was foolish: somebody always had to pay.

  “So what’s she like then?” Jill asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  Khan looked at her over his shoulder and grinned.

  “Bastard!” she said softly and slid her long body beneath the sheet.

  He was standing before her dressing table mirror, still faintly damp from the shower; the room lit by candles and his skin a honeyed hue. The way his back tapered in towards his waist, the tight curve of his buttocks – she loved his body. The tautness of it, its colours. Light and dark. She liked to tell herself that didn’t matter, the colour part, but she knew it did. So different from her own.

  Sometimes when she lay there with him, closed high in the house, safe inside this room, Jill would look at the way they wound around each other and marvel at the picture they made, leg and arm, chest to chest, all those shades from palest white to deepest brown.

  “Come here,” she said.

  “A minute.”

  “Stop titivating yourself and come here.”

  He screwed the cap back on the bottle of vanilla lotion he had been rubbing into his hands. “Just thinking of you,” he said.

  When he walked towards
the bed she could see that he had been thinking about somebody. She thought she could read those thoughts. With one leg she lifted back the sheet to let him in. Gasped as his hand pressed firm against her breast.

  “Are you sure the kids . . .?” he started to ask.

  “They’re my kids,” she said. “Let me worry about them, okay?”

  There was a faint breeze from the barely opened window, lightly stirring the candle flame, turning the mobile that hung, above her bed.

  “Jill . . .” he said later, breathing the word into her shoulder.

  “Hmm?”

  “Nothing. Just Jill.”

  He had met her at the television studio where she worked as a receptionist; there had been a disturbance, a small fracas involving a disgruntled design assistant and the head of production; blows had been exchanged, threats issued, the VDU screen Jill used had been splintered open. Khan, not yet made up to detective, had been the officer nearest to the scene. A month later he had seen her again at a bar in the city and been surprised that she remembered him.

  “I didn’t know if you would,” he’d said, handing her a gin and tonic, “you know, without the uniform.”

  “I’m good with faces. Have to be.”

  Khan had grinned. “Even faces like mine?”

  Jill had downed three or four already. “It’s a lovely face,” she said.

  She still thought so: she leaned over and kissed it lightly on the mouth, the closed eyes. Khan’s breathing caught but he did not wake. The candles had long since burned down and the only light, opaque, was from the window, the partly opened curtains. The digital clock told her it was nearly four. In a couple of hours, less, she would scuttle him into the shower and down to the kitchen, a mug of coffee and then he would be off across the city and changing for work before the first of her children woke.

  She had thought that when she told him about the two girls and a boy, the oldest eleven, youngest rising seven, that he would end it. Imagined the calculations inside his head. Lies of omission about her age. She went to the gym four times a week, took care with her clothes, make-up, looked after herself. But she was still the wrong side of thirty and losing ground fast.

  Khan had stayed.

  “In my community,” he’d laughed, “they teach us to revere our elders. Treat them with the respect their wisdom deserves.”

  “Bollocks!”

  “Exactly.”

  Somehow they had scarcely mentioned it since. And the children had rarely been a problem. Sometimes Jill’s sister slept over and Jill stayed in Khan’s flat near the canal; once in a while the kids stayed at her sister’s for most of a long weekend and Khan, shifts permitting, moved in. If neither arrangement were possible, like tonight, he came late and left early. It wasn’t perfect, but then, she asked herself, what was?

  He stirred against her and opened his eyes, smiling.

  “Pleasant dreams?”

  “Mmm, very.”

  “Bastard.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it was me you were thinking about. Hardly need to dream about me, do you? Not here in my bed.” She could feel his erection against her thigh.

  Khan’s smile broadened across his face.

  She punched at his shoulder with her fist, hard enough to hurt.

  “What?”

  “I was right, wasn’t I? Fantasising about some other bloody woman in my bed.”

  Khan caught hold of her wrists before she could hit him again. “Nothing I can do about it, right? I mean, out of my control. Sub-conscious and all.”

  “It was her, wasn’t it?” Jill said. “I’ll just bet you. That tart you’ve been watching . . .”

  “Eileen? She’s not a tart.”

  “Stripper, then. Same thing. Bloody fancy her, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No?” reaching down. “What’s this, then?”

  Khan grinned. “Didn’t notice.”

  Jill kissed him anyway, feeling for his tongue, and immediately he kissed her back. She kissed his nipples, kissed the dark swirl of hair at the base of his belly, the veins of his cock pulsing against her throat. Who cares if it came from thinking about somebody else? Waste not, want not, wasn’t that what her mum had said?

  Resnick woke abruptly, pushing back the covers and startling two of his four cats on to the bedroom floor. Seven forty-five. What the hell was he doing still in . . .? He was on his feet and heading for the door before remembering it was Sunday, once in a while his day of rest. By the time he emerged from the bathroom, showered and refreshed, Dizzy, whose hunger knew no days of the week, only the hours of the day, was nibbling at his toes.

  He drank his first cup of coffee in the kitchen, opening cans of Whiskas, watching toast beneath the grill, searching for news in Saturday’s Post; his second he carried out into the garden, musing a little on the disposition of his flower beds and the stubbornness of grass; the third, and positively, he made himself promise, his last this side of lunchtime, he enjoyed in an easy chair, listening to Stan Getz bossa novas and trying not to get worked up about Terry Cooke.

  Terry had been a small thorn in Resnick’s side for years: a petty thief who had graduated to being a petty fence, mostly working out of the premises he owned at Bobbers Mill, from which he and his nephew Raymond sold everything from second-hand refrigerators to almost complete sets of The Illustrated History of the Second World War.

  “No need to worry, Mr Resnick,” Terry had assured him. “Burma campaign and a fold-out map of the Ardennes, that’s all that’s missing. Make a good investment. Something to mull over in retirement.”

  He wished. Resnick was certain Terry Cooke had changed, got nasty, dangerous, and he wasn’t going to rest, never mind retire, until he had him nailed.

  The nub of it was a job Terry had allowed himself to get involved in, oh, months back. A break-in which had gone badly wrong, shotguns, two police in hospital, and fingers pointed at Terry Cooke and Seamus Coughlan, along with Coughlan’s cousin, Norbert Breakshaw, and a couple of real make-weights, young Frankie Farmer and Tommy DiReggio. But mostly it was down to Terry and Coughlan, sometime business partners and long-time friends – friends, that is, until Coughlan discovered Terry had been putting it to his wife, Marjorie, every other Friday afternoon, when Coughlan had thought she was doing yoga at the local community centre.

  In the event, the only way Terry had been able to keep himself from a long term inside had been by shopping Coughlan, Breakshaw and the rest. Not that he’d been pleased to do so, Coughlan aside. Grassing up to the law wasn’t only against Terry’s principles, it was bad for business; quite a lot of choice stuff had failed to come his way since this had happened and Tommy DiReggio’s brother had threatened to put a razor to his cheek if he ever passed him in the street. Terry didn’t take offence at that; family, it was to be expected. And there was something charmingly old-fashioned about the razor – whoever used razors nowadays except for shaving?

  No, what Terry had exercised himself about had been those he rightly assumed had grassed on him. Doris Duke, who had a flower stall in the market, he had let his nephew, Ray-o, deal with – something, he thought, that had involved matches and paraffin. But the other – Ronnie, Ronnie Rather – that was different. Ronnie had sat with him at the window table of that café in Gedling Street more mornings than the pair of them had had bacon cobs and mugs of tea; Terry allowing himself to be bored shitless while old Ronnie sucked on one of his vile black cigars and warbled endlessly about his days as a trombone player with Lew Stone and Geraldo. And for that Ronnie had dropped him in it without as much as a second thought.

  Well, not any more he wouldn’t. Slippery bastard! Terry had bought a pistol in the back room of a pub and gone round to Ronnie Rather’s pathetic bed-sitter with the pistol in one pocket, a half-bottle of Bell’s in the other. First he had forced the muzzle of the gun so far into the wattles of Ronnie’s grizzled neck, the old boy had pissed himself on the spot. Then he had got h
old of the trombone that stood, unplayed now and highly polished, in the corner and proceeded to beat Ronnie around the head with it until his anger was spent.

  “Drink, Ronnie? Old times sake?”

  But Ronnie hadn’t wanted a drink.

  “Suit yourself.” Terry had taken two good pulls from the bottle and then left, calling an ambulance from a pay phone down the street. Never let it be said he wasn’t a caring man.

  And Ronnie Rather, seventy-eight years of age, now spent his days in a wheelchair with severe headaches, slurred speech, and the use of only one eye. Resnick dropped in to see him whenever he could and took a box of Panatellas, occasionally something to eat; they would sit listening to scratchy old recordings, waiting for the moment when the trombone would take its short, eight or sixteen bar solo and Ronnie Rather’s good eye would light up.

  Resnick knew the old man would make no kind of witness in court, and besides, Terry Cooke had made sure he was alibied three times over. What Resnick had to do was keep the pressure on, squeeze hard, let him know he was being watched, watch that young woman of his too, Eileen, apply pressure where it hurt. Sooner or later, Resnick was sure, Terry would let it get to him, panic, make a mistake. Resnick intended to be there when he did.

  Nine-thirty. The cab was coming for her at a quarter to. Since all of this recent trouble Terry had gone back to asking her if she wouldn’t like him to take her himself, drop her off at the job, pick her up once it was over. No call to advertise, just discreet. “You’re not my chauffeur, Terry. You know that.”

  “No?” he had said across the top of the Mail. “What am I then?”

  Eileen had kissed him, leaving a clear Cupid mark on the bald patch near the back of his head. “You’re a sweetheart, that’s what you are.” But it was a question, she thought, that increasingly had to be faced.

  Before the mirror, she applied the final touches to her make-up, turning to see the back of her dress and smooth it over her behind – just a g-string, nothing showing – the rest of her paraphernalia was snug in the white leather case Terry had bought her last Christmas. Tassels, holster, police cap and handcuffs, the plastic banana she sometimes used for an encore. Once she and Terry had actually started living together, Eileen had called a halt to regular stripping, concentrated on Strip-o-Grams instead. Coming in bold as brass and placing some half-pissed bloke under arrest before teasing him down to his y-fronts, that was what went down best. But since the police had been all over Terry money had been tight and when Eileen suggested going back to working a few late-night lock-ins – a hundred quid at least and tips – Terry had turned his head and nodded okay.