Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  “You off then?”

  She stood in the doorway, red hair pinned high above her head, light reflecting in the delicate green of her eyes and for a moment Terry’s heart seemed to stop. What had he ever done to deserve someone so lovely? What did he have to do to keep her?

  “You know you don’t have to wait up.”

  “I know.”

  They both knew he would.

  The cab dropped her at the corner and she went in through the rear entrance: a good crowd already, she could hear it, and Eileen felt the adrenalin start to race within her. All those faces fixed on her in the spotlight, the way she looked, the way she was moving. It was like a drug. As many as a hundred people, hers for as long as she held them.

  She was just getting into her stride when she noticed them, the same two plain clothes police, off to one end of the bar, glued to her like the rest. Eileen wondered if they were really working or whether it was more, well, social.

  Ever since Mark Divine had been away on extended sick leave, Naylor and Khan had been palling up more and more. The third time this they’d double-dated – Khan and Jill, Naylor and his wife, Debbie. And whereas Debbie would have been happy to go Chinese, Indian even as long as it wasn’t one of those really scruffy ones, Jill had insisted, no, it had to be Sonny’s, didn’t it? And Jill, as was too often the case, Debbie thought, had had her way.

  So there they were in a table near the window, surrounded by expensive suits and voices, Jill undecided between the crème brûlée and sticky toffee pudding, while Khan and Kevin, more than a little drunk already, pondered the advisability of a fourth bottle of wine. Debbie sat a little too stiffly in her chair and watched them, the men with their faces flushed and Jill ready to smile across the room at the least opportunity, showing off her boobs in a blue dress that looked like silk and must have cost what it took Debbie to keep both her kids in clothes for a six-month.

  “Fancy going on somewhere after?” Kevin asked.

  “Clubbing?” said Jill.

  “Pubbing?” grinned Khan.

  Jill leaned over towards Debbie and touched her sleeve. “You know why he said that, don’t you? Fancies getting another look at that fancy redhead doing tricks with her banana.”

  Kevin laughed while Debbie blushed and Khan, she thought, let his hand rest for the slightest moment close against her knee.

  “So long as I come back home to you right after,” Khan said with a smile.

  “It’s true,” Jill grinned, her face still close to Debbie’s. “Last time he came round after watching her I was in the kitchen fixing a drink for one of the kids, must’ve been two in the morning. All I could do to stop him having me against the sink. But then, you don’t need me to tell you that, your Kev must be just the same.”

  Jill glanced across at Kevin and winked broadly and Kevin hid his face behind his glass. It wasn’t a hand that Debbie could feel this time, but Khan’s leg, rubbing slowly, back and forth, against her thigh.

  “Another bottle, then,” Khan said, turning his head to look for the waitress. “That’s for definite.”

  Debbie thought about it on the way home in the taxi, the time a few years ago when she and Kevin had just got back together again after breaking up. A night like this it had been, a meal out, plenty of wine; not Sonny’s though and on their own. The minute they’d got inside the front door Kevin had grabbed for her, kissing her, hands everywhere, wanting to do it to her right there in the hall.

  The cab jolted across a speed bump and Debbie’s eyes closed, imagining the two of them stretched somehow across the narrow strip of carpet, her dress hiked up over her hips – Debbie looking down on them the way anybody would who happened to come up to the door and peer through the glass . . . or suppose they’d forgotten to shut the door properly and someone had walked right in . . .

  Christ! She knew she was wet and she wanted him.

  On the way from the cab she tried not to think how long it was since they’d last made love. Thank God the kids were at her mum’s. In the hallway she turned fast against him and caught at his hand before he could switch on the light.

  “Debbie, what . . .? Deb . . . Bloody hell, Debbie, you’re treading all over my feet, whatever’re you at?”

  With a sigh she pitched away from him and slammed her way into the kitchen, the bottle of vodka half-empty in the fridge.

  “Should’ve thought you’d’ve had enough already.”

  To spite him she put back the glass and drank from the bottle.

  Kevin’s face twisted in disgust. “Now I’ve seen bloody everything.”

  She listened to him, heavy on the stairs, the pronounced click of the bathroom door. “We all know what you’ve seen, Kevin. You and your mate going on about it all evening. Well, maybe you should see how much she charges, private? Take it out the fucking housekeeping!”

  She seized the jar in which she’d been saving towards the baby’s birthday and hurled it at the wall, glass and coins scattering wide across the floor.

  Resnick chewed at the last mouthful of his sandwich and brushed crumbs from the front of his jacket and the edges of his desk; a slither of mayonnaise continued its slow journey, unobserved, down the length of his tie. Full twenty minutes the superintendent had given him that morning, boring on and on about resources being wasted on toe rags the likes of Terry Cooke. “Neither here nor there, Charlie, when it comes down to it. Not worth arguing the overtime, not in my book.”

  But Skelton’s book didn’t have Ronnie Rather writ large in its pages, beaten half-daft and half-blind.

  Resnick eased open his office door and called Naylor and Khan through from the CID room. What they had to tell him gave him little joy: Terry Cooke had been behaving like an altar boy preparing for heaven; his girl friend, Eileen, had clocked them each time they’d showed but carried on regardless, unfazed by their attentions.

  “You’ve spoken to her?” Resnick asked.

  Khan glanced at Naylor before answering. “A few words. Not a lot.”

  “But she knows who you are?”

  Naylor nodded: yes. “Take more than us staring at her to get under her skin,” he said. “It’s what she’s getting paid for all the time.”

  “And loving it,” Khan said.

  Resnick stared at him a moment.

  “You should see her,” Khan continued. “The difference. When she’s performing, doing her act. I mean, she’s a good looker anyway; beautiful, even. But when she’s really getting into it . . .” He shook his head. “Amazing.”

  “What about the rest of the time?” Resnick asked. “Day times. What does she do? Help out Cooke and that nephew of his over in Bobber’s Mill? What?”

  “Got a couple of mates she meets sometimes,” Naylor said. “Jallans of a lunchtime, early afternoon. Sometimes she goes there on her own. I don’t think she goes near the shop.”

  Resnick pushed up to his feet. “Okay, leave it be. Let her go. I want Cooke’s place turned over. Every day if you have to, twice a day. Get a warrant to go through his house. Stolen goods, whatever. If he thought we were leaning on him hard before, now he’ll know better.”

  “What about the girl?” Khan asked, almost keeping the disappointment out of his voice.

  “Don’t worry,” said Resnick. “I’ll talk to the girl.”

  She had almost the same name as his wife; first wife, the only one he’d so far had. Elaine. Eileen. They could not have been more different.

  Resnick sat watching Eileen perched on one of the stools near the end of the bar and smoking a cigarette, toying with a Bacardi and Coke. Resnick listening to the Parker coming through the Jallans stereo. Parker and then – was it? – yes, Monk. One of those Blue Note trio sessions from the early fifties. Eileen with her red hair loose about her shoulders and wearing a loose silver-grey top, close-fitting black trousers in some material that invited touch. Yes, she was beautiful.

  Resnick’s club sandwich arrived and then a second bottle of beer. ‘Just a Gigolo’ had finishe
d and now Monk was playing something Resnick was stretched to recognise. A double bass intro, Latin feel to the rhythm, and Monk himself fleeter over the keys than his usual faltering, fragmentary self; as if, perhaps, to say, listen, you want the fancy, filigree stuff? Well, I can do that. ‘Work,’ Resnick smiled, remembering the title before the track had come to an end. ‘Work,’ that’s what this was.

  Eileen stubbed out her cigarette, pushed aside her unfinished drink and swung round from her stool; at first Resnick thought she might be heading for the ladies but she continued up the stairs and out towards the street and, wrapping the untouched half of his club sandwich inside a paper napkin and jamming that down into his coat pocket, he followed her.

  At first, Resnick thought, as Eileen headed north across the Old Market Square, that she had a particular destination in mind. But as she hesitated, first outside the Theatre Royal and a second time at the furthest corner of the Post building, he realised she was wandering aimlessly. Thinking, perhaps; filling in time. Seeing the downward cast of her shoulders, the dip of her head, he wondered what she might be thinking about.

  When she reached the Arboretum, Eileen twice circled the small ponds before setting off along the slight rise that would take her through the rose gardens towards the mounted cannons that had been shipped back from the Crimea. She flapped some dirt from one of the benches with her hand and sat down.

  Watching from a little way off, Resnick retrieved the club sandwich from his pocket and ate. Only when he had finished, the last snippet of bacon tasting almost as fine as the first, did he drop the napkin in a wastebasket and continue up the hill.

  Eileen scarcely raised her head when Resnick stood a moment near her, then took a seat at the opposite end of the bench. Probably no more than she was used to.

  “No,” she said after a while, flat and not moving her head to face him.

  “No, what?”

  “No, anything.”

  Resnick extended his hand. “Charlie Resnick. Detective Inspector, CID.”

  She stared at the hand a moment before dismissing it; too dangerous, too large, too real.

  “I wanted to talk about Terry,” Resnick said.

  “It’s you then, making his life a misery?”

  Resnick shrugged.

  “Both our lives. Why can’t you bloody leave us alone?”

  “Like your Terry, you mean? Like he left that old boy alone?”

  She looked at him then, white of her teeth biting gently into her bottom lip. “What old boy?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head nervously. “What old boy?”

  “Nice old bloke, not so far short of eighty.”

  “What about him?” Her voice was suddenly strident and a few pigeons lifted off from the cannons and flapped through the solid afternoon air before resuming their places.

  “I should take you to see him.”

  “Who?”

  “Took his eye out, your Terry. Beat him round the head with something sharp and metallic until he’d lost an eye and half a brain.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re lying. Winding me up. That’s not Terry, I don’t believe you.”

  He could see in her eyes that she almost did. Quickly, she got up but not so quickly that Resnick couldn’t catch hold of her hand. “I’ll be here, this time, tomorrow. The day after. Most days. Talk to me. We’ll talk. Find a way out.”

  She snatched her hand free and rubbed at it with the other, though his grip had not been strong enough to hurt.

  “I think that’s what you want to do,” Resnick said. “Find a way out.”

  Without answering, Eileen turned and walked away.

  “How come,” Debbie asked at breakfast, several days later, “you can get turned on by some slapper who does it for money and not by me?”

  Naylor pushed aside his plate and swallowed down a last mouthful of Shredded Wheat. “You’re not still on about that, are you?”

  “Just answer me.”

  “Debbie, I don’t know.” Naylor on his feet now and heading for the door.

  “Kevin . . .” Debbie’s voice was shrill and loud.

  “What?”

  “I am your wife, you know.”

  “Yeh, well, maybe that’s the problem.”

  He hadn’t started the car and slotted it into gear, before Debbie had uncapped the bottle from the fridge and poured a shot of vodka into her tea.

  Khan thought Terry Cooke had lost it this time, really lost it. He and Naylor and some carefully chosen back-up had turned up at his house with a warrant, going in nice and early with the milk, except in Terry’s street all deliveries had been cancelled and you had to fetch your pinta from the nearest corner shop.

  They were on their way upstairs when Terry’s mum, startled, came out of her bedroom, in curlers and a candlewick dressing gown and proceeded to give them a piece of her mind, lively for a woman of advancing years.

  All Khan did was attempt to move her back out of harm’s way, when Terry grabbed at his collar, jerked him round against the bannister and threw a punch. “That’s my mother, you Paki bastard!”

  “Found these, sir,” Naylor said, holding up quantities of coloured pills. “In his bathroom cabinet. Thought they might be something, you know, hallucinogenic.”

  “And?”

  “Beta-blockers, stress. Checked it out with his GP. Advised him to go for this massage . . .”

  “Shiatsu,” Khan said.

  “Yes, that’s it. Apparently chose the pills instead.”

  “Maybe he should double the dose,” Resnick said, “doesn’t seem as if they’re working.”

  “Living with that girl,” Khan said, “got to be a strain. Man of his age.”

  Resnick looked back at him without saying a word.

  She was wearing jeans and a loose leather jacket and her hair had been pulled back tight from her face; she seemed to Resnick to be wearing little or no make-up. He watched as she walked towards the bench, avoiding looking at him directly. She stopped and he waited for her to sit beside him and when she didn’t he got to his feet and asked if she would rather walk.

  They set off on an uneasy diagonal towards the bandstand, and from there down again to the road and the cemetery that rose gradually from the far side.

  “How’s it going?” Resnick asked. Overhead the sky was uncluttered Wedgwood blue.

  “You could put a stop to it,” Eileen said.

  Resnick shook his head. “Would it make a difference? To you, now, if I could?”

  She stopped in the middle of the path. “No, not now.”

  A woman carrying a bunch of what might have been chrysanthemums skirted round them, bent-backed.

  “Leave him,” Resnick said.

  Eileen shuddered as if someone had stepped over her grave. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “What of?”

  “That he won’t let me.”

  They walked on further, forking left by a headstone blurred with moss – Ethel Teasdale, departed this mortal toil, December 7th 1894, aged seventy three years: now she rests among the angels.

  “He’d try to stop you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think he might hurt you?”

  Resnick read the answer in her eyes.

  “Listen,” he said, steering her towards the eastern wall, “if we could find something on him that we could make stick. Something big.”

  “I’d never give evidence against him, I never would.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll not grass. Not on Terry. Not him.”

  “Of course. But like you said, you could be in danger. Circumstances like that, you’ve got to look out for yourself. No one would blame you for that.”

  They walked on almost as far as the top exit before Eileen stopped and said: “Terry, I don’t know where he keeps it. Your lot’ve never found it. But I think he’s got a gun.”

  *

&
nbsp; Debbie had called in sick. She knew that Kevin would be working late, overtime, this other case he’d been working on, hi-jacking. Just Kevin and the sergeant, that was all. Debbie had gone shopping in town. Back home and trying on things, wondering what she’d have to take back, what she’d keep, she knew what she was thinking about, just didn’t want to give it a name. Not till the second bottle of vodka had been breached.

  She looked Khan’s number up in the book out in the hall; after three rings, terrified, sweating, she put down the phone. She was still staring at it, disbelieving, shaking, when it rang.

  Picking it up she heard Khan’s voice. “Did you just ring?”

  “No.”

  “Shame.” Beneath the light ironic tone, she could feel the smile in his eyes.

  Fifty minutes later she was in a taxi heading west along Queen’s Drive against the tag end of the evening’s traffic. The long black dress she’d bought for the reception at her sister’s wedding and never worn since. Sleeveless, high at the neck and tight across her narrow hips and bust, it clung to her when she moved. Her shoes had two inch heels. At first she had taken her wedding ring off, then slid it back. When she blinked at her reflection in the taxi window she imagined she could smell the vodka on her breath. She thought about Khan, his voice, the softness of his hands; wondered if he knew that she would come, if he had thought about her while she was drying from the shower, putting on powder, getting dressed. God, she wanted him!