Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  Hannah switched the wipers on to meet the first fall of rain. “Trevor,” she said, “he asked me to see it in with him.”

  “Sherry party at the Council House, that’ll be,” Resnick said.

  “Condominium in the Virgin Islands.”

  He turned his head to see if she were serious.

  “Those competitions, on the back of frozen food packets, gourmet pickle, something like that. Seems he won first prize. A Millennium holiday for two.”

  “And he asked you?”

  “He’s been on to me to go out with him the best part of three years.”

  “Bit extreme for a first date, isn’t it? The Virgin Islands.”

  “The best he could come up with before was cocktails in the Penthouse Bar at the Royal, followed by a dinner dance at the Commodore. At least this time he’s got me giving it some serious thought.”

  Trevor Lynton, Resnick was thinking, perhaps he did know him after all. Blue braces and spray-on stubble; waved his hands about like he’d just taken a course in semaphore. Not thirty-five if he was a day.

  As Freddy McGregor was fond of saying, any performer who doesn’t work New Year’s Eve might just as well be dead. And, as Freddy would have been the first to admit, there had been some close calls: the year he’d found himself stranded on the Isle of Man without his costume or the price of a ferry ticket to the mainland; the time the Pier Theatre in Hunstanton had burned down, taking his last chance to play Buttons along with it; worst of all, nineteen ninety-four, when he had lost his footing clambering over a greasy upper storey window ledge and broken one of his legs – the ward sister had finally agreed to let him sing ‘O Solé Mio’ from a makeshift stage on top of the linen cupboard, and Freddy had encored with ‘Crying in the Chapel’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the nurses blubbing into their blue uniform sleeves.

  Already it was late October and he was getting decidedly edgy. Calls to his agent yielded half-formed promises or, increasingly, the blank charm of the answerphone; pubs and clubs which had previously welcomed Freddy with open arms and used tenners, slotting him in amongst their regular array of strippers and comedians, now simply didn’t want to know. Plans for a fifty date Solid Silver Sixties revival tour broke down at the last moment, denying Freddy the chance to strut his stuff at the Flower Pot in Derby, the Regal Centre, Worksop, the Beaufort Theatre, Ebbw Vale. Even the landlord of the Old Vic, where Freddy had long been a regular star of Saturday Night Music Hall, took him to one side and wondered gently whether it wasn’t time for him to find another line of work. “Let’s face it, Freddy, there’s just so many times you can persuade the punters to shell out for a four-foot Elvis in a white satin suit, even if it is an exact replica of the one he wore in Las Vegas. Scaled down, of course.” And he slipped a crisp twenty into Freddy’s top pocket and patted him on the head.

  Patronising bastard, Freddy thought, crossing Fletcher Gate towards the car park. And besides, I’ve already got another line of work. Why else would I break a leg falling from a second-storey bathroom window?

  *

  Most times when Resnick and Hannah had been out together, one or the other, usually Hannah, would pose the traditional question, your place or mine? Once in a while, Hannah, especially if she were driving, would take Resnick’s answer as read and head for her place in Lenton without bothering to ask the question. But this particular Sunday, again without asking, she took a left at Mapperley Top towards the Woodborough Road and Resnick’s house.

  Dizzy, the largest and fiercest of Resnick’s four cats, stared at them from the stone wall, flexing his claws. Hannah sat with one hand resting on the wheel, engine idling.

  “You’re not coming in?” Resnick said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Quick cup of coffee? Tea?”

  “I ought to be getting back.”

  Clicking open the car door, Resnick suppressed a sigh. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Her cheek, when he kissed her, was marble against his mouth.

  Dizzy wound between Resnick’s legs as he walked towards the front door, pushed his head against Resnick’s shin as he fidgeted for the key. Behind them, Hannah pulled away a little too fast, shifting through the gears as she turned the narrow corner and accelerated towards the main road.

  When he woke it was a little after five, wind rattling the window frames. Bud, as usual, lay with his head close to the edge of Resnick’s pillow, one paw folded across his eyes. Miles and Pepper were curled in a black and grey ball near the foot of the bed, impossible to tell at a glance where one began, the other ended. Dizzy, Resnick knew, would be within reach of the rear door, chewing over whatever prey the night had providentially provided.

  In the depths of the house, he heard pipes rumble and stir as the central heating came awake. How far from winter, Resnick wondered? Black ice on the roads and mornings that defied the light; storm warnings on the shipping forecast, severe gales force 9, northeasterly winds becoming cyclonic all the way from Cromarty to German Bight.

  He massaged lather deep into his hair, stood with head tilted back, letting the water spray across his face and chest. Quickly dressed, he fed the cats, first depositing Dizzy’s ritual offering of rodent rump inside the bin. Buttering toast, he toyed with the idea of phoning Hannah before she left for work, but pleasantries aside, had no idea what to say. The first cup of coffee he drank standing up, the second he took into the living room, where the previous evening’s Post remained unread.

  A series of break-ins at late-night chemists in Aspley, Meden Vale and Selston; a children’s playground vandalised in Keyworth; two Asian youths attacked on the last bus to Bestwood by a gang of more than twenty; several people injured, two seriously, when a fight broke out during an American Line Dancing evening at Tollerton Methodist Church Hall.

  Resnick folded the paper and carried it through to join the ever-growing pile awaiting recycling in the hall. One of these days, he’d throw them in the back of the car, drop them off on his way to work, but not today. The traffic was beginning to build up as he passed the roundabout where Gregory Boulevard met the Mansfield Road and Sherwood Rise.

  The station where his CID squad was based sat just east of the city centre, squarely between the affluence of the Park Estate and the down-at-heel terraces either side of the Alfreton Road. The kettle was boiling away in an empty CID room, Resnick’s sergeant, Graham Millington, peering into the mirror in the Gents, counting the grey hairs in his moustache.

  Resnick flipped open the folder the officer on first call had left on his desk and thumbed through the night’s incident reports: sometimes it was easy to believe the houses on Tattershall Drive and around Lincoln Circus were as heavily targeted as Dresden or Hamburg during the last World War.

  “Anything on this last batch of break-ins, Graham?” Resnick asked, hearing Millington’s cheery rendition of ‘Frosty the Snowman’. Millington whistling early for Christmas.

  “Nothing as yet,” the sergeant said, adding one for the pot. “Kev’s down there now. Back entry, though, all accounts. Fire escape, drainpipe, neighbour’s balcony, you know the kind of thing.”

  On his return, an hour later, Kevin Naylor filled them in. Eight burglaries in all, two neat batches of four, nicely professional. Cash, credit cards, cheque books, jewellery – a couple of Rolex watches worth a week of Ravanelli’s wages, his and hers. Nothing that wouldn’t fit into a set of well-lined pockets.

  “Someone flying solo?” Resnick asked.

  Naylor shook his head. “Pair of them, sir. One to gain entry – bathroom window, that seems favourite – lets in his oppo, ten minutes later, fifteen tops, they’re back out the front door.”

  “These windows,” Resnick said, “ground level?”

  Another shake of the head. “Not a one. And small with it. Any of us, not get our head and shoulders through, never mind the rest.”

  “Kids, then?” Millington said.

  “Don’t think so, serge. To
o clean, no mess. Quiet, too. All but one, occupied. Slept right through.”

  “What was that father and son team, Graham?” Resnick asked. “Edwalton, Lady Bay – maybe shifted ground.”

  “Used to boost the lad up on his shoulders, I know who you mean. Regular couple of acrobats. Rydale, some such name.”

  “Risdale.”

  “Risdale, that’s it. Paul?”

  “Peter.”

  “Peter. Made his boy, Stephen, run five miles every morning, fed him fish and chicken. White meat. Leaner’n a whippet and about as fast.”

  “Back on remand, is he? Youth detention?”

  Millington stroked his moustache. “Easy enough to check. Won’t hurt to give Risdale a pull, any road. Nothing to say he’s not been down the job centre, found himself a replacement.”

  “Good.” Resnick was on his feet. “Kevin, best get the details of those credit cards circulated; unlikely, but check if Scene of Crime fetched up anything by way of prints. And it might be worth a word with the home beat officer – might be time for another circular, see if we can’t encourage a few more people to keep their windows locked nights.”

  “Right.”

  Resnick nodded and looked at his watch. After the meeting with his DS, there was one line of enquiry he’d follow up on his own.

  Freddy had been busy since mid-morning, cold-calling bookers and agencies, club and pub managers within a fifty mile radius, anyone with a music licence and half a square metre of stage. Now it was scarcely short of one o’clock and all he’d to show was a kids’ party at Snape Wood Road Community Centre and a silver wedding at the Salvation Army Citadel, Main Street, Bulwell. After fifteen minutes haggling, Freddy had promised the proprietor of a new burger bar in Ilkeston that he’d get back to him about performing on the pavement outside to mark the opening, one number every quarter hour, ten a.m. till closing. And he was still waiting for a call back himself from the events organiser at the Rotherham Transport Club, Masborough – we’d love to have you, Freddy, you know we would, but not all that old Elvis, you’ve got to come with something different, something new. An angle. Find a way to work the Spice Girls in somewhere and then we’d be talking . . .

  Freddy lit the last of his king size and squeezed another half mug of tea from the same bag. It was all very well for someone stuck behind a desk to rattle on about trying something new. Over the years he’d tried them all – Laurie London, Little Jimmy Osmond, Michael Jackson with a full-out Afro and a kiddie voice singing that love song to a rat; once even Little Stevie Wonder, which had been fine until he’d fallen off the front of the stage doing ‘Fingertips’, unable to see where he was going through the dark glasses.

  But no matter what anyone said, none of them worked as well as his Elvis Aaron Presley – the first of Freddy’s pre-recorded tapes blaring out into the darkness and then the spotlight catching him from the waist down as his hips began to swivel, his little pelvis to gyrate, black leather trousers, blue suede shoes. A medley of ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, slow things down with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, whip them up again with ‘King Creole’. A break then for the strip show or the bingo and Freddy would be back in his shiny white jump suit, perspiration, get some of that chest hair showing, ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘Burning Love’, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ and the audience can’t help but sing along, then for his encore what else but ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ itself.

  How could it fail? How could he go wrong?

  The phone rang and he lifted the receiver on the second ring. “Derek, I knew you’d come round.”

  “Fuck Derek, you short-arsed little cunt, it’s Clayton. I’m in the back bar of the Portland Arms and if you’re not here by the time I’ve downed this pint I’ll take those excuses for legs of yours off at the knees.”

  *

  Clayton Kanellopoulos was the thirty-nine-year-old son of a Scottish mother, a Greek Cypriot father; his family had happily owned a succession of greasy spoons and gentlemen’s hairdressers, brother to brother, cousin to cousin, generation to generation: it had taken Clayton to break the mould. He had started out pimping for a string of scrawny girls in North London, got to know each nook and cranny of the Holloway Road, the Cali like the back of his proverbial hand. After that spell of enforcing for a loan shark in Edmonton, till one razor stripe too many sent him scurrying north for safety. Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Derby. Clayton settled down to an early middle-age of breaking and entering.

  “Freddy, what kept you?”

  “How d’you mean? I got here just as fast . . .”

  “I know, fast as fat little midgets can go.”

  “I’m not . . .”

  “What?” One grasp of the hand, and Clayton had Freddy firmly by the balls. “Not what?”

  “It don’t matter.”

  “Fat? Not fat?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Freddy wincing with the pain.

  With a laugh Clayton let go his hold and, tears blinking at the corners of his eyes, Freddy sat himself down.

  “Not fancy a half?” Clayton asked, gesturing towards the bar. “Maybe a short?”

  Freddy shook his head.

  All business now, Clayton leaned in close. “I thought what you and me had was a deal?”

  Knees clenched close together, not too close, Freddy’s mind was racing into overdrive. “We do, Clayton, so we do.”

  “Then tell me it weren’t you, did all them places up the Park?”

  “When?”

  “You know all too fuckin’ well when.”

  The bone inside Freddy’s left leg began to sing; the last time he’d gone in for a bit of B&E in the Park, he’d ended up on his back in Queen’s. “Not down to me, you got my word.”

  “Who then?”

  All Freddy could do was shrug.

  Clayton stared him down a while longer before stretching back and lighting a small cigar with a match that he flicked against the front of Freddy’s shirt. “All right, this weekend coming. Sat’day night. I got a job.”

  Freddy fingered anxiously the ring on the pinkie finger of his right hand. “I can’t.” The words only just carried across the small space between them.

  “Sorry? I could’ve sworn you said . . .”

  “Clayton, any other time, any other night. Even if you’d asked me – what? – an hour earlier, everything would have been fine. But I’ve got this booking, Saturday, all agreed. No way I can let them down, you got to see that, no earthly way . . .” Freddy’s voice fading now, words failing him as he watched the broad planes of Clayton’s face break into a smile.

  Resnick had phoned Hannah mid-morning, knowing full-well that she would be out and leaving a message on her answerphone: hope everything’s okay, maybe if you’ve got a minute when you get in, you’ll give me a call.

  Immediately after that paperwork claimed him, quarterly crime figures to be checked and okayed before passing on to the Detective Chief Inspector of CID downtown. It was almost two before he crossed Canning Circus to the deli and bought a brace of brie and ham sandwiches and a large black coffee to go. The lunchtime traffic had thinned enough for him to be in the upper reaches of Carlton in time to catch Freddy McGregor just back from the Portland Arms and still looking a touch anxious around the gills.

  “Mr Resnick . . .” Freddy thinking one shock was enough for one day, one unwelcome interview; though he had no reason to believe Resnick was the sort to use force – not like some of his compatriots – Freddy covered himself instinctively, both hands cupped in front of his crotch as if anticipating a Psycho Pearce free kick.

  Without exactly being invited, Resnick found himself inside the living room of Freddy’s ground floor flat: posters advertising Freddy McGregor, the Miniature Elvis vied for wall space with pictures of the man himself, snarling from the stage of the Mississippi-Alabama Fair in Tupelo in 1956, thoughtfully biting his thumbnail in an off-set still from Loving You. Underneath the latter, Freddy had neatly written out one
of the lines Presley spoke in the film –

  “That’s how you’re selling me, isn’t it? A monkey in a zoo. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Freddy hovered nervously, watching Resnick’s face.

  “Working, Freddy?” Resnick eventually said.

  “Oh, you know, bits and pieces here and there. Mustn’t grumble, Mr Resnick, you know how it is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Just fixed up a few things this morning, matter of fact. Small stuff, private parties, just while I’m putting a new act together. I . . .”

  But Resnick was already shaking his head. “Not the kind of work I mean.”

  Freddy could feel himself starting to blush, guilty or innocent, the colour spreading up from his neck to brighten his cheeks.

  “I was thinking more,” Resnick continued, “the second storey kind.”

  “Never, Mr Resnick.”

  “Never?”

  “Not any more. Not since, you know . . .”

  Resnick nodded. “Lost the nerve for it, that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Heights.”

  “Giddy these days, Mr Resnick, climbing on to that table there, change a bulb in the lamp.”

  “Vertigo, acrophobia.”

  “If you say so.”

  Resnick seemed to think for a while, then moved towards the door. “All this, Freddy,” he swept his hand towards the wall, “profession, a career. Show business. Something to be proud of. Shame to see it all fall by the by.”

  Freddy nodded most emphatically. He knew; he knew.

  Resnick hesitated, half in, half out of the room. “Christmas on the way, New Year. Busy time for you, I dare say. Shame to be unavailable for work that festive season, shut away.”

  For a long time after Resnick had gone, Freddy sat pondering over ways to avoid carrying through on what he’d promised – two twenty-minute spots either side of a buffet supper at the silver wedding celebrations; gaining entry through the fourth floor skylight of a large detached house in Church Lane, Watnall Chaworth, its occupants booked into a banquet up in Buxton and due to stay the night.