Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  “I don’t know,” Resnick said. “But we’ll find out.” He squeezed Nolan’s shoulder hard. “We’ll find out for sure.” Even as he was speaking, he knew it was less than the truth.

  Back home, Resnick fed the cats then showered the soot from his hair, lathered, as best he could, the stench of burning from his skin. Forty minutes later he was backing through the door into the CID room, an espresso from the Canning Circus deli in one hand, an almond croissant in the other.

  Lynn Kellogg and Kevin Naylor were both busy on the phones, Graham Millington, tie at half-mast, top button of his shirt undone, was artlessly two-fingering his way along the computer keyboard.

  As soon as he saw Resnick, Millington pressed Save and got to his feet. “Pathologist, got through half-hour back. Deceased was male, young, likely between fifteen and twenty-four, cause of death carbon monoxide inhalation. At this stage not a lot more she can say. Ceiling collapsing on top of him the way it did. Badly burned. Identification’s going to be a bugger. Dental records, of course, but outside of that . . .” He shrugged. “Possible to build up some kind of reconstruction of the face if all else fails, but it’ll not come quick. Or cheap.”

  “Missing persons?”

  Millington nodded across the room. “I’ll get Lynn or Kevin off down there soon as one of ’em’s free.”

  Resnick lifted the lid from his espresso. “Nothing from the Fire Investigation Team yet, I suppose?”

  Millington shook his head. “Early days.”

  Resnick checked his watch. “I’ll give it a couple of hours, call the Station Officer. See if I can’t hurry things along.”

  Resnick’s own office was a deep corner, partitioned off from the main room. He was almost through the door when Millington spoke again. “Jimmy Nolan, make a lot of money out of that place, did he? Jazz being the fashion item that it is.”

  Resnick wasn’t certain how sarcastic he was being. “Last couple of times I was there, the band just about outnumbered the audience.”

  A leery smile creased Millington’s face. “This business last night then, might’ve done Nolan a bit of good?”

  Resnick was thoughtful. “Yes. Yes, one way or another, it might.”

  The sun was breaking through the clouds as Resnick crossed Bath Street and re-entered Victoria Park. Mothers sat in small clusters, watchful of their children; red-faced men with wiry hair and veined hands sat nursing cans of cider, cursing their fate; a shaven-haired youth, elongated swastika tattooed on one cheek, sat with two mongrel dogs curled asleep at his feet. From Nolan’s house the sound of a saxophone rose, rough and uncertain, above the shuttle and hum of traffic. Scales, broken phrases, runs that began and never finished: music without flow or melody.

  “I didn’t know you still played,” Resnick said when Nolan answered the door.

  Nolan’s face was flat and unsmiling. “I don’t.”

  “I thought I heard . . .”

  “You heard nothing.” Nolan had shaved and combed his hair, changed into a faded green shirt and dark corduroys.

  Resnick followed him into the cramped front room, the saxophone, Resnick noticed, no longer in its case but resting on its stand, its sling draped across the back of a chair. The cassette boxes which had been piled haphazardly, were stacked now along the piano lid, some freshly labelled: Pharaoh Saunders, Art Pepper, Art Themen, Pete King.

  “Just about everyone ever played at the club,” Nolan said. “I’ve got ’em on there. Good quality too.” He chuckled, low in his throat. “Marvellous stuff.”

  “Worth something, I should be surprised.”

  The room was heavy with the scent of tobacco and last night’s scotch. Or maybe it was today’s. “There’s been one or two, sniffing around. Record companies, you know. Nothing major, not your Blue Note or one of those, but straight up, legit. Course, there’d be permissions to be worked out, rights; even so, end of the day, might fetch in a quid or two.”

  “Those debts.”

  “Eh?”

  “The insurance, for the fire. You said that’s where it would mostly go, paying off debts.”

  Nolan lit a fresh cigarette. “Tea, Charlie? Not take more’n a few minutes to mash.”

  Resnick shook his head.

  “Coffee, then. Instant, that’s all it is. Or a drink, maybe. A beer. There’s a decent lager in the fridge, I . . .”

  “Answers, Jimmy. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Nolan stopped short of the door and turned his head. “Christ, Charlie, I thought . . .”

  “You thought what?”

  “We was mates. History together. History.”

  Resnick touched him lightly on the arm. “A fire, Jimmy. Somebody dead. So far, we don’t know how or why.”

  “And you think that I . . .?”

  “I don’t know.” Resnick’s voice was even, almost reassuring. “Jimmy, I don’t know. But a business that’s not faring well, debts needing to be paid, sometimes all you want to do is throw in the towel, walk away. Find some other way out.”

  “You think I torched it.” Pain edged its way round Nolan’s eyes.

  Resnick lowered the saxophone sling to the floor and sat down; after a moment Nolan sat opposite him, tipping ash into an empty mug.

  “Ten or twelve years back,” Nolan said, “this brewery came to me, all over ’emselves wanting to buy the place, rip the guts out, turn it into one of them state-of-the-fuckin’-art café bars with all the personality of dog turd on the underside of your shoe.” Nolan snorted. “Daft bastard that I was, I wouldn’t listen. Course, the club was losing money even then, leaking it, but I thought, no, I’ve got out of worse holes before, I can bring things round.” He glanced over at Resnick and shook his head. “Like bloody buggery I could!”

  “I tried everything, Charlie, everything I could think of. Fly-posting, ads on local radio, prices cut back to the bone. Nothing seemed to make a scrap of difference. Oh, you’d pick up a few new faces here, lose ’em a week or so later.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “I thought, right, it’s the music, that’s what’s got to change. Too old-fashioned, maybe, too straight ahead. So I tried it all: jazz funk, jazz fusion, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, hip hop even. Got in a DJ – what they call acid jazz.” Nolan shook his head. “By the time the accountants had finished going over the books I need scarcely’ve bothered.”

  “You couldn’t sell up then?” Resnick asked.

  “Too late. Too fuckin’ late.”

  “So you borrowed?”

  Nolan watched a smoke ring drift, widening, towards the ceiling. “The bank reckoned I was over-extended already. Well, they’re not stupid.” He shrugged. “I had to go elsewhere, cap in hand.”

  Music was seeping through the wall from the house next door, the theme from some television programme, Resnick thought. He looked at Nolan and waited.

  “Russell Venner,” Nolan said eventually. “You know him, I daresay?”

  By reputation, Resnick did. Local businessman made good. At one time or another, Venner had been a member of the City Council, a Justice of the Peace, on the board of County or Forest or both. He guessed he was still director of more firms than you could shake a stick at.

  “He bailed you out?”

  Nolan lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last. “Someone at the club knew I was in trouble; he was on some board with Venner, volunteered to put in a word. I told him there was no need. Knew him, you see, Venner, could’ve gone to him myself, we had connections. Anyway, this bloke, he wouldn’t listen. Upshot of it was, Venner came round, called me a fool for not going to him sooner. Offered to lend me ten grand there and then, interest free. Cheque book in his bloody hand.”

  “Philanthropist, is he?”

  “So he’d like you to think. And I didn’t want the money, not from him; reasons of my own, personal, but in the end I agreed.” Ash fell along Nolan’s trousers and, absent-mindedly, he smudged it away. “Of course, it wasn’t enough. It never is. Next t
hing you know he’s offering to buy a share in the club. Nothing threatening, ten per cent; then twenty, twenty-five. A few more shares for his pals, eager to help out. His wife, Nicola, fifteen per cent in her name.”

  “But the controlling interest, that’s still yours?”

  Nolan held his gaze. “On a good day, Charlie, I can just about control where I piss, inside the bowl or out.”

  “And Venner didn’t try and force you to sell out altogether? Stop throwing good money after bad?”

  Nolan sighed. “He talked about it once or twice; knew I’d never agree.”

  “Surely he could’ve forced the issue, all those shares?”

  “His wife, he couldn’t do it without her, her say-so, her shares.”

  “And she sided with you against her own husband?”

  Nolan’s face twisted into a rueful smile. “Not that straightforward, Charlie. Nicola, she’s not only Venner’s wife, she’s my god-daughter too.”

  Parker’s café nestled in the shadow of the flyover which carried the ring road west from hospital and university towards the airport and motorway. A single-storey building close alongside the fire station, it was a regular mecca for personnel coming on and off duty, a comfortable haven, cholesterol rich and welcoming of tobacco.

  “Eight sharp, Charlie,” Tom McLean, officer in charge of the Fire Investigation Team, had said on the phone. “And if you’re there first, mine’s a mug of tea, two sugars, and the full works.”

  As it was, when Resnick entered, more or less to time, McLean was already settled in a window seat, sleeves rolled back, a heart-defying fry-up overlapping the edges of his plate.

  Eating habits regardless, the Fire Safety Officer was a fit-looking mid-forties, bright-eyed, brown hair that he had worn cropped short long before it became fashionable. Resnick had worked with him before and had learned to trust his judgment, enjoy his somewhat brittle company.

  The two men shook hands before Resnick went to the counter and ordered a sausage sandwich with brown sauce. “Nothing on the body, Charlie?” McLean asked as Resnick pulled in his chair. “No idea who the poor sod might’ve been?” Though he’d been living south of the border for most of his adult life, there was still a recognisable Scottish tang in his voice.

  Resnick shook his head. “List from missing persons longer than your arm. Not a lot of help as yet.” Lynn Kellogg had a meeting scheduled that morning with the manager of the City’s Homelessness Support Centre, to see if she could get any leads from there.

  McLean sliced through a length of sausage, speared an inch with his fork and dabbed it into a pool of yellow mustard. “Far as we’ve been able to establish, the fire started in the basement. Place’d been used for dumping rubbish: old papers, boxes, broken bits of furniture – not been cleared out for years. Lad we found, could’ve sneaked in there, not difficult apparently; looking for shelter, place to doss down, skin up maybe, enjoy a quiet smoke.” McLean took a swig of tea. “Wouldn’t’ve taken much to get it started. Stray match would have done the trick. Once it took hold nothing to stop it reaching the storage cupboard on the ground floor – turpentine, several litres of paint, white spirit. That and a good draught . . .” McLean brought his hands together with a sharp clap, causing conversations to break off, heads to turn.

  Resnick chewed at his sandwich thoughtfully. “All this gubbins in the store cupboard, enough to make you suspicious?”

  “Of its own accord, no. Little bit of DIY, place that size, pretty much what you’d expect.”

  “Not arson, then? That’s what you’re saying?”

  McLean broke the yolk of his second egg. “If it’s something in black and white you’re after, something I might stick my signature to, it’s too early. Too many questions still to be answered. I’ll need a few more days. But gut feeling, no, likely not.” He pointed his knife towards Resnick’s chest. “Unless there’s something you know and I don’t.”

  Resnick laid out the bare bones of Nolan’s financial situation, as far as the club owner himself had explained them.

  McLean pushed his plate aside and reached for a cigarette. “Like I say, Charlie, we’ll keep looking. A little patience, we’ll have it sewn up, one way or another.”

  *

  Back at the station, Resnick had scarcely time to check through the overnight reports before Lynn Kellogg was back from her meeting and knocking at his office door. Brown hair cut short and shaped close to her face, a faint suggestion of make-up, Lynn was wearing a pale T-shirt, tan chinos and a jeans jacket, Reeboks on her feet. A leather bag, satchel-shaped, hung from one shoulder and she was balancing two polystyrene cups in her opposite hand.

  “I called in at the deli on the way back.”

  Resnick grinned his thanks as Lynn set a double espresso on his desk. Lifting the lid from her cappuccino, she sat down.

  “How’d it go?” Resnick asked.

  Lynn pushed her fingers into the edges of her hair. “Interesting. Depressing. Probably not a lot of help.”

  Resnick sampled his coffee and waited for her to explain.

  “Single people recognised as being homeless, by the City that is, numbers’ve stayed pretty constant the past few years. Two, two and a half thousand. Close to a thousand of those in the age range we’re interested in, eighteen to twenty-four.” She freed her note book from her bag and flipped it open. “A thousand youngsters, right? A hundred or so’ll be found permanent accommodation, another hundred and fifty some kind of shelter.”

  “And the rest?” Resnick asked.

  Lynn shook her head. “I suppose they get by as best they can. And remember, that number, all it includes is those who apply to the Housing Department for help. There could be twice as many who’ve never even bothered. The youth that died in the fire, he could be any one of those; any one from a couple of thousand.”

  Resnick nodded. “Have a word with Kevin, farm it out. Check the hostels, trawl back through missing persons, you know the routine.”

  A resigned look souring her face, Lynn got to her feet; she knew the routine only too well.

  Alone in his office, Resnick sat at his desk, scarcely moving, thinking about the youths he was now so used to seeing, palms outstretched, around the edges of the bus station or along the newly pedestrianised shopping streets, sitting cross-legged on the grassed areas close by the fountains in the Old Market Square, the man with his dogs in the park; people he mostly walked past, hands tight in his pockets, staring straight ahead. His espresso, when he picked it up, was bitter and growing cold.

  South from the city, Resnick drove between fields studded with cattle, patches of arable land that rose towards a calm horizon. When he turned off, it was along a narrow, tree-lined road that opened gradually on to a small enclave of houses sitting back, detached, deep into their own grounds. Venner’s house was the last on the left, three storeys of mock-Tudor with a modern extension to one side, a two-car garage to the other. A broad drive curved between neatly landscaped lawns towards an arched portico and a front door that looked to be made from Sherwood oak. Resnick was surprised they’d missed out on the drawbridge and the moat. When he pressed his finger to the bell he was treated to an abbreviated version of ‘Greensleeves’.

  The woman who answered the door was younger than Resnick had anticipated, fair hair tied back from her head, blue eyes that didn’t seem immediately to focus. A white silk shirt hung loose outside black trousers, black flip-flops on bare feet. Resnick noticed that her toenails and her lipstick matched.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs Venner?”

  “Nicola Venner, yes.”

  Warrant card in hand, Resnick identified himself.

  “This isn’t something to do with Neighbourhood Watch?” The slur in her voice was only barely noticeable; Resnick wondered how many drinks she was into the day.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I was hoping I might have a word with your husband.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’m sorry?”


  “Which word?” Amusement brightened her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to ask that. When they say, on telly, you know, all those sad little policemen, Frost and Morse and the rest – I just want to have a word.”

  “I rang your husband’s office,” Resnick persevered, “the woman I spoke to, she didn’t seem too certain of his movements. She knew he was due at a meeting, but after that she wasn’t at all sure.”

  “And you thought he might be here?” Nicola Venner leaned sideways against the doorway and stared.

  “A possibility, yes.” He tried for a smile. “It seemed worth a try.”

  “Chance to get out of the city.”

  “Yes.”

  “Grime and dirt, carbon monoxide.”

  “Exactly.”

  She shifted her balance, standing away from the door. “Well, he isn’t here. Not since this morning, early.”

  “I see, I . . .”

  “These days you’d have to move pretty fast to catch him here at all. Always working, Russell. One deal after another. Whatever it takes to keep us in this place. Safe and secure.” She looked beyond him towards the road. “Glimpsed through the shrubbery, driving by.”

  “Mrs Venner?”

  “Mm?”

  “What I wanted to talk to your husband about, it was Jimmy Nolan.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment she seemed to hold her breath. “What do they say, all those women, when people like you turn up on their doorsteps unannounced? I think, perhaps, Inspector, we should go inside.”

  He followed her across a tiled hallway and into the kitchen. Pans, copper-bottomed, hung down from a square iron frame; a stainless steel industrial oven dominated the end of the room. Glass bowls of varying sizes, some in use, clustered on the surface near the sink; a cookery book stood open behind a perspex shield. On a movable butcher’s block, where Nicola Venner had been chopping spears of asparagus into one inch lengths, there was a vodka bottle, two-thirds empty, and a lipsticked glass.