Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  Khan’s flat was by the Castle Marina, neat and small with whitewashed walls. Flowers in a narrow vase, she remembered that; one of them, Kevin or herself, assuming Jill had brought them, but no, he had bought them for himself. Kevin’s flat, before they’d got married, all there’d been was the spider plant his mum had given him and that was dead.

  “Number, duck?” the driver asked over his shoulder.

  Stammering she told him, scarcely able to force out the words.

  Khan came to the door in grey T-shirt, pale blue jeans; his feet were bare. From somewhere behind him came the sound of music, that single – what was it? – ‘Beautiful Girl’.

  He smiled. “I hoped it might be you.”

  Debbie pushed past him into the bathroom and bolted the door, certain she was about to throw up.

  “Are you all right?” Khan called.

  Not answering, Debbie leaned up against the mirror, her face against the glass. Her eyes refused to focus. For Christ’s sake, Debbie, she told herself, do something for once in your life!

  “Debbie?”

  She opened the door and he was standing there, amused and concerned. “Are you okay . . .?”

  “Shut up!”

  With one hand she pushed him back against the wall. Her other hand was reaching for his belt. Then she was kissing him, unbuckling his jeans.

  Khan kissed her back; half-pulled, half-led her to the living room at the end of the hall where ‘Beautiful Girl’ was on repeat. He reached for the catch at the back of her dress and, angry, she told him to stop. Thinking she was teasing he tried again and she pushed him away.

  “I said stop. Just stop and watch me. Watch!”

  Khan stepped away towards the settee, while Debbie slowly, inexpertly, removed her dress, the wisp of bra, her shoes.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Beautiful,” Khan said. “Lovely. Sexy, too.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “Does it look like it?” Khan asked, glancing down. “Now get yourself on over here.”

  “We don’t have to go into the bedroom, do we?” Debbie asked.

  Khan grinned. “Not yet.”

  Eileen did a quick twenty-first for a pimply youth who worked in the despatch department at Raleigh, snapped her fake handcuffs on the wrists of a middle-range executive from Fissons and then called it a night. Her other two bookings she passed on to her friend Gloria, who was getting over a nasty bout of glandular fever and pleased to get the work.

  She was home indoors – Terry’s home – by something after nine, Terry’s mum mumbling something about cocoa and an early night; Terry oddly subdued and scarcely able to look her in the eye. Eileen began to wonder if she shouldn’t have carried on as usual after all.

  But she poured Terry a large whisky and water, just the one cube of ice, no sense anaesthetising all the flavour out of it he used to say, and cuddled up alongside him in front of News at Ten; before the first commercial break, he curved his hand around her knee. Maybe it’ll be all right after all, she thought, just something we’re going through. Couples do. She had been thinking all evening, off and on, about what Resnick had suggested and knew she could never land Terry in it, no matter what he might do. He had taken her in, given her a home, looked after her, right?

  News over, Terry switched off the set and put on the Dionne Warwick CD he’d talked her into buying him for Christmas. By the time Dionne had found her way to San José, Terry had swallowed down two more scotches in quick succession.

  “Terry? Tel?”

  The look he gave her was one she didn’t recognise. She shivered a little as she stood. “I’m off to get ready for bed,” she said, leaving him alone with the bottle and ‘Trains and Boats and Planes’.

  Eileen intended to stay awake for him, curl like spoons about him and get him to tell her what was wrong. She only realised she’d fallen asleep when she felt something cold pressing hard against the side of her face, hard and cold enough to hurt.

  “Terry, what . . .?”

  Eileen realised it was the barrel of a gun.

  “Terry, you can’t . . .”

  “Sshh. Sshh.” He rested the middle finger of his free hand across her lips. “Sweetheart, ssh, don’t make it any worse.”

  “What? I swear I don’t under—”

  His hand clamped across her mouth. “I know you’ve been seeing him, Resnick. Meeting him. Last week. Today. Talking. About me.”

  With an effort, Eileen wrenched herself free and turned round in the bed, facing him. “It’s not true. It’s a lie.”

  There was something akin to a smile on Terry’s face, though it was nothing to do with happiness, nothing to do with joy. “You haven’t been seeing him?”

  “We weren’t talking about you, I swear.”

  “What then?”

  Eileen’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I don’t know, nothing really, I . . .”

  “Having it off with him, are you? Our Charlie? Bit on the side? An affair?”

  “That’s stupid; that’s ridiculous; you know that’s ridiculous; you . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Look, Terry . . .”

  “Mm?”

  “It was nothing. I just . . . I bumped into him, that’s all. Honestly, that’s all it was.”

  “Twice?”

  “What?”

  “You bumped into him twice?” The muzzle of the gun was resting now against the space between her breasts.

  Eileen tried to swallow air. “Yes.”

  “And Jallans?”

  “What about Jallans?”

  “Lunch in Jallans; little – what-d’you-call it? – tête-à-tête.”

  “I never saw him in Jallans.”

  “He saw you.”

  Silently, almost silently, Eileen had begun to cry.

  “You been a bad girl, Eileen?”

  “Yes.” Her voice no more than a croak.

  “A silly little girl?”

  “Yes.” The barrel of the gun was pushing lightly now, up beneath her chin.

  “You know he’s not going to be satisfied, don’t you, that fat bastard, till he’s done for me once and for all? You know that? Business, family, home, you – he wants all of it. Shut me inside and chuck away the key. Christ, Eileen, I had a life. Mum, Ray-o, a life here with you. And he’s going to take it away on account of the stupid old josser, that imbecile toss-pot who grassed me up. Well, he got what was coming to him and nothing less. What the fuck did he expect? Mouthing me off to the law. Anyone who grasses up on me, they know what they’re going to get. No matter who. You know that, Eileen, don’t you? You know there’s nothing else I can do?”

  Eileen shook so hard it would have sounded from the next room as if they were making love.

  Terry raised her head with the muzzle of the gun and kissed her through her sobs, kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Then he pressed the gun against his left temple and squeezed the trigger once.

  Eileen screamed and pushed back in the bed, frantically rubbing at her face and brushing blood and brain and broken bone away.

  When Terry’s mother came into the room moments later, Eileen lifted one of the pillows and covered Terry’s head.

  Five minutes past midnight and on the edge of sleep, Resnick was woken by the phone’s insistent tone.

  Ronnie Rather had his wheelchair wedged between the sideboard and the bed and had exhausted himself trying to get free. Resnick dragged the bed to one side and pushed Ronnie over to the centre of the room, where his record player stood on an old card table, the records themselves in an apple box on the floor.

  “Soup, Ronnie? Bread?”

  “Not that Polish muck, is it? Rye something or other, can’t stomach that, gives me indigestion something awful.”

  “Wonderloaf, I promise. White and ready-sliced.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  While Resnick poured the soup from a thermos and buttered the bread, Ronnie found the Lew Stone recording he’d been l
ooking for earlier.

  “Cock an ear to this, Charlie. That section work, the brass. Lew Davis that is, leading the trombones. Nat Gonella, the trumpets. Should’ve paid Lew to work in that band – and we did work, mind you, two, three in the morning at the Monseigneur, tea dances on top.” He laughed. “Not that I’d’ve told him that at the time.”

  “How’s the soup?”

  “Grand. Champion. Tomato, is it?”

  “Chicken and vegetable.”

  “Oh, well.”

  Resnick tried a spoonful of it himself. “You heard about Terry Cooke?”

  “Topped himself, didn’t he? Useless bastard.”

  “Bullet through the head.”

  “No more than he deserved. Still, like to have seen it, one eye or not.”

  Resnick reached towards the thermos. “Want to finish this off?”

  “Why not?” Ronnie said, holding out his bowl. And then, “That kid he was kipping with – Elaine?”

  “Eileen.”

  “Yes, that’s it, Eileen. What’s happened to her?”

  “London, apparently.”

  Ronnie folded a piece of bread and carefully wiped it round the inside of the bowl before squashing it into his mouth and starting to chew. “Lovely girl,” he said eventually.

  “Lovely,” Resnick agreed. “Beautiful.”

  “Well shot of him.”

  “Absolutely.”

  When Resnick left, some twenty minutes later, Ronnie Rather was leaning to one side in his wheelchair, eyes closed, lips drawn tight, listening to the only session he played with Jack Hylton’s Orchestra, the one where they recorded ‘Dancing in the Dark’.

  Stupendous

  Raymond hadn’t recognised her at first. Not till she climbed out of the first car, the one that had been travelling smack behind the coffin. Face all pinched and red from crying. Terry’s daughter, Sarah. Black coat, leggings and boots with a three inch clumpy heel. Raymond wondered how long it had been since he’d see her. Best part of a year, had to be. Eighteen months? Filled out, though, he’d say that for her. If it hadn’t been for the cold sore, raw at the side of her lipsticked mouth, she might even have been worth fancying. Not like all those times he’d kept his eyes jammed shut while she was feeling him up, evenings at his Uncle Terry’s house when Terry was out down the pub or off for an Indian with his girl friend, Eileen; nights he’d slept over and she’d sneaked her skinny little body into his bed, done the business, some of it anyway, then scarpered bare-arsed back to her room before anyone else woke. His little cousin, Sarah: Raymond had been knobbing her, one way or another, since she was thirteen.

  “I shouldn’t like to think, Ray-o,” Terry had said, the time he nearly caught them at it on the settee, “that you were taking advantage of me.”

  “No, course not,” Raymond stumbled, “nothing like that. Nothing at all. Your Sarah, she’s just a kid.”

  “Got a crush on you, though,” Terry had grinned, “Blind not to see that.” Raymond had laughed and blushed and nipped out to the kitchen for a couple more beers. Well, he was hardly going to tell his uncle the truth, not the way Terry had looked out for him in the past, stuck up for him even against his own brother, Jackie, Ray-o’s old man. Not only that, it was Terry got him a job, working out at the shop he had by Bobber’s Mill, managing it more or less, second-hand furniture, stereos, quite a few things that came Terry’s way still sealed inside their boxes. Bargain price and no questions asked. Except by the police.

  It had been them, Raymond thought, the bastards, Resnick and that lot from Canning Circus, as had made Terry’s life a misery, driven him to do what he did. What else? Not money worries, that much seemed certain. And certainly not Eileen, not much more than half Terry’s age but with a head on her shoulders, as well as a pair of tits that could earn her several hundred easy at an after-hours lock-in in this pub or that. Eileen up on the bar, eyes half closed, red hair spinning out around her, doing her slow strip to Portishead or Neneh Cherry. Nothing old-fashioned about Eileen.

  She was over there now, head bowed, listening to the vicar, no doubt running over what was expected once they’d all gone inside. Eileen, pale faced and serious, her hair died black as a sign of respect. Raymond liked that, admired her for it, that and the way she’d hung around after it had happened, helped the family with the arrangements, sponged off the bedroom walls. Not a lot of women would have had the bottle, Raymond thought, not after watching the bloke you were living with blow his brains out all over the pillow.

  Raymond stubbed out his Silk Cut and turned aside as Sarah started to walk towards him, not wanting her to think he’d been watching her, not wanting her to think that he was interested. Sarah leaning a little on her mother’s arm, the pair of them back down from Scotland for the funeral. Her mum looking out of it almost before it had begun.

  The chapel doors were open now and the mourners starting to edge their way, reluctantly, inside. After you; no, after you. Raymond’s dad had been one of the pallbearers along with Norbert Breakshaw and two cousins from Kirkby built like brick shithouses.

  “No use asking you, Ray-o, you puny bastard, drop him arse over tip like as not. Ashes, Ray-o, more your mark. Hang about later, youth, see if you can’t manage the urn.”

  Raymond could see his father staring at him now, face sour as last night’s piss. Rumour had it his old man had smiled once, summer of ninety-two, but no one had been on hand with a camera to prove it.

  “Hope you’re not wetting yourself,” his father said as Raymond passed, “not on account of Terry’s will. Hadn’t turned the gun on hisself, most like he’d’ve come after you with it, once he’d found out what you was up to with his daughter.”

  Raymond flushed and carried on walking, slow now between the rows of pews. What was his old man on about? Terry, he’d swear, hadn’t known a thing, at least not for certain, and who’d have told him different? Sarah herself? Unlikely. Old Ethel? He glanced at the grandmother now, the old woman staring at him from her place at the front of the chapel. Something gouged deep in Raymond’s gut and he stumbled, steadying himself against the dark polished wood before sliding along towards the wall.

  He hadn’t been there two minutes before Sarah left where she was sitting beside her mum, and settled herself down at his side, bold as you like.

  “Hello, Ray-o,” she said, “how’ve you been?” And then, whispering. “I’ve missed you, Ray, you know that, don’t you?”

  Whatever hymn was being played on the organ wheezed asthmatically to a close and the vicar rose to his feet in the corner pulpit. “We are here to commemorate the life of Terence Albert Cooke . . .”

  Sarah ran the hand not holding the hymnal down along Raymond’s thigh and cupped his balls.

  Khan and Naylor had stationed themselves some forty yards back from the gates, close enough with a long lens, and a plentiful supply of stone angels to lean on while they went about their business. Several rolls of HP5 aside, they’d armed themselves with flasks of coffee, Naylor’s nicely laced; chocolate bars, extra-strong mints and a pair of fine-tuned, police issue binoculars. Naylor, who’d drawn this surveillance often enough before, had pulled on his Marks & Sparks thermals first thing, whereas Khan, cold and virginal in this at least, was fast realising the uselessness of the silk-cotton mix boxers Jill had bought him as anything other than an erotic artifact. Gloves and a tightly wound scarf helped a little, without ever really hitting the spot.

  “Why,” Khan asked, “couldn’t he have had the common decency to top himself in summer?”

  “Suicides,” Naylor said, shaking his head, “fewer the hours of daylight, more you get.” He’d read it somewhere, most likely on the back of a packet of tortilla chips.

  There had been four cars at the head of the procession, long and black and hired by the hour, bouquets and wreaths in the first displayed all round the coffin. Then came the grieving relatives, dark suited, sullen, a flotilla of small time crooks and wasters, at least two allowed out on compass
ionate grounds through the good offices of Her Majesty’s prisons.

  Trailing in their wake, half a dozen Mercs and BMWs, even an antique Ford Granada with every sign of being Turtle Waxed that very morning. Naylor had phoned in the registrations and they were being checked through the computer. If at least one didn’t show up as stolen, he stood to buy Khan a pint of Shippo’s and a whisky chaser, large; whoever was it said Asians didn’t drink? The same fool, he thought, who put it about Catholics won’t eat meat of a Friday.

  Once the cars had passed and they were sure there were no stragglers, they shifted position, giving the crematorium a wide berth as they slipped between close rows of gravel and tombstone before setting up with a clear view across a half moon of dodgy lawn and the pruned stems of the memorial rose garden, sighting on the paved area at the rear of the chapel where the flowers would be laid in display.

  “That was Cooke’s woman,” Khan asked, “next to his mum?”

  “Eileen. Yes, that was her.”

  “Nearly didn’t recognise her at first.”

  “With her clothes on, you mean?” Both he and Khan had witnessed more than one of Eileen’s performances, strictly in the line of their enquiries.

  “No, it’s the hair,” Khan said. “She’s changed the colour of her hair.”

  “Half-surprised she’s here at all,” Naylor said. “Now Terry’s gone.”

  “Got her reasons.”

  Naylor nodded. “I daresay.”

  They were both thinking about the contents, so far undisclosed, of Terry Cooke’s will.

  From the building in front of them came the faint, brittle sound of voices raised in praise of the recently departed, while above the roof rose the first wisps of smoke, ash grey against the glowering sky.

  Ethel Cooke, mother to Terry and Jackie and several others she’d sooner forget, stood just outside the chapel door, grim faced, straight backed and no more than a handful of days off her seventieth birthday, accepting condolences with a nod of the head while her insides were screaming for a piss. By this stage of her life, Ethel’s bladder was as much use as a pint pot in a thunderstorm.