Fedora

by John Harvey

  She looked beyond Kiley towards the window, distracted by the shadow of someone passing along the street outside.

  ‘You don’t smoke, I suppose?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘No. Well, in that case, you’ll have to join me in a glass of wine. And don’t say no.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to.’

  ‘White okay?’

  ‘White’s fine.’

  She left the room and he heard the fridge door open and close; the glasses were tissue-thin, tinged with green; the wine grassy, cold.

  ‘All this hoo-hah going on,’ she said. ‘people digging up the past, I’d been half-expecting someone doorstepping me on the way to Budgens.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Me and my shopping trolley. Some reporter or other. Expecting me to dig up the dirt, spill the beans.’

  Kiley said nothing.

  ‘That’s what he’s worried about, isn’t it? After all this time, the big exposé, shit hitting the fan.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That invitation he sent me, the private view. I should have gone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Seeing him again. After all this time. Afraid what it would do to all this.’ She gestured round the room, the two rooms. ‘Afraid it could blow it all apart.’

  ‘It could do that?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She drank some wine and set the glass carefully back down. ‘People said it was just a phase. Too young, you know, like in the song? Too young to know. You’ll snap out of it, they said, the other girls. Get away, move on, get a life of your own. Cradle snatcher, they’d say to Graeme, and laugh.’

  Shaking her head, she smiled.

  ‘Four years we were together. Four years. Say it like that, it doesn’t seem so long.’ She shook her head again. ‘A lifetime, that’s what it was. When it started I was just a kid and then …’

  She was seeing something Kiley couldn’t see; as if, for a moment, he were no longer there.

  ‘I knew – I wasn’t stupid – I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, I even forced it a bit myself, looking back, but then, when it happened, I don’t know, I suppose I sort of fell apart.’

  She reached for her glass.

  ‘What’s that they say? Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you strong. Having your stomach pumped out, that helps, too. Didn’t want to do that again in a hurry, I can tell you. And thanks to Graeme, I had contacts, a portfolio, I could work. David Bailey, round knocking at the door. Brian bloody Duffy. Harper’s Bazaar. I had a life. A good one. Still have.’

  Still holding the wine glass, she got to her feet.

  ‘You can tell Graeme, I don’t regret a thing. Tell him I love him, the old bastard. But now …’ A glance at her watch. ‘… Mr Collins – that’s that I call him – Mr Collins will be home soon. Golf widow, that’s me. Stops him getting under my feet, I suppose.’

  She walked Kiley to the door.

  ‘There was someone sniffing round. Oh, a good month ago now. More. Some journalist or other. That piece by Kate Moss had just been in the news. How when she was getting started she used to feel awkward, posing, you know, half-naked. Nude. Not feeling able to say no. Wanted to know, the reporter, had I ever felt exploited? Back then. Fifteen, she said, it’s very young after all. I told her I’d felt fine. Asked her to leave, hello and goodbye. Might have been the Telegraph, I’m not sure.’

  She shook Kiley’s hand.

  When he was crossing the street she called after him. ‘Don’t forget, give Graeme my love.’

  The article appeared a week later, eight pages stripped across the Sunday magazine, accompanied by a hefty news item in the main paper. Art or Exploitation? Ballet dancers and fashion models, a few gymnasts and tennis players thrown in for good measure. Unhealthy relationships between fathers and daughters, young girls and their coaches or mentors. The swimming pool shot of Lisa was there, along with several others. Snatched from somewhere, a recent picture of Graeme Fisher, looking old, startled.

  ‘The bastards,’ Kate said, vehemently. ‘The bastards.’

  Your profession, Kiley thought, biting back the words.

  They were on their way to Amsterdam, Kate there to cover the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum after nine years of renovations, Kiley invited along as his reward for services rendered. ‘Three days in Amsterdam, Jack. What’s not to like?’

  At her insistence, he’d worn the hat.

  They were staying at a small but smart hotel on the Prinsengracht Canal, their’s one of the quiet rooms at the back, looking out onto a small square. For old times’ sake, she insisted on taking him for breakfast, the first morning, to the art deco Café Americain in the Amsterdam American Hotel.

  ‘First time I ever came here, Jack, to Amsterdam, this is where we stayed.’

  He didn’t ask.

  The news from England, a bright 12 point on her iPad, erased the smile from her face: as a result of recent revelations in the media, officers from Operation Yewtree yesterday made two arrests; others were expected.

  ‘Fisher?’ Kiley asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ When she tried to reach him on her mobile, there was no reply.

  ‘Maybe he’ll be okay,’ Kiley said.

  ‘Let’s hope,’ Kate said, and pushed back her chair, signalling it was time to go. Whatever was happening back in England, there was nothing they could do.

  From the outside, Kiley thought, the new extension to the Stedelijk looked like a giant bathtub on stilts; inside didn’t get much better. Kate seemed to be enthralled.

  Kiley found the café, pulled out the copy of The Glass Key he’d taken the precaution of stuffing into his pocket, and read. Instead of getting better, as the story progressed things went from bad to worse, the hero chasing round in ever-widening circles, only pausing, every now and then, to get punched in the face.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Kate said, a good couple of hours later. ‘Just amazing.’

  There was a restaurant some friends had suggested they try for dinner, Le Hollandais; Kate wanted to go back to the hotel first, write up her notes, rest a little, change.

  In the room, she switched on the TV to catch the news. Over her shoulder, Kiley thought he recognised the street in Ladbroke Grove. Officers from the Metropolitan Police arriving at the residence of former photographer, Graeme Fisher, wishing to question him with regard to allegations of historic sexual abuse, found Fisher hanging from a light flex at the rear of the house. Despite efforts by paramedics and ambulance staff to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

  A sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, broke from Kate’s throat and when Kiley went across to comfort her, she shrugged him off.

  There would be no dinner, Le Hollandais or elsewhere.

  When she came out of the bathroom, Kate used her laptop to book the next available flight, ordered a taxi, rang down to reception to explain.

  Kiley walked to the window and stood there, looking out across the square. Already the light was starting to change. Two runners loped by in breathless conversation, then an elderly woman walking her dog, then no one. The tables outside the café at right angles to the hotel were empty, save for an old man, head down, sleeping. Behind him, Kate moved, business-like, around the room, readying their departure, her reflection picked out, ghost-like, in the glass. When Kiley looked back towards the tables, the old man had gone.

  Read on for an extract from John Harvey’s new Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, out in paperback on 25 September

  Thirty years ago, the Miners’ Strike threatened to tear the country apart, turning neighbour against neighbour, husband against wife, father against son.

  Now, the discovery of the body of a young woman who disappeared during the Strike brings Resnick out of virtual retirement and back into the front line to assist in the investigation into her murder – forcing him to confront his past in what will assuredly be his last case.

&n
bsp; 1

  THE SNOW HAD started falling long before the first car departed. It fell in long, slanting lines, faint at first, then thickening. It gathered in corners and against the sides of buildings, funnelling between the broken brick and tile and rusted car parts that littered the back yards and paltry gardens. Covering everything. The sky a low, leaden grey, unrelenting.

  By the time the cortège pulled away from the small terrace of houses, there was little to see in any direction, flakes adhering fast to the windows, all sound muffled, the dull glow of headlights fading into the surrounding whiteness.

  Resnick was in the third car, sharing the rear seat with a solemn man in a threadbare suit he took to be one of Peter Waites’ former colleagues from down the pit. In front of them sat an elderly, pinch-faced woman he thought must be a relation – an aunt, perhaps, or cousin. Not the one surviving sister, who was riding in the first car with Waites’ son, Jack. Jack home for the funeral from Australia with his teenage sons; his wife not having taken to her new father-in-law the one time they’d met and grateful for the ten thousand or so miles that kept them apart.

  That last a confidence Jack Waites had imparted the night before, when he and Resnick had met for a pint to chew over old times, Jack once a young PC, stationed at Canning Circus under Resnick’s command.

  ‘He was never the easiest bloke to get on with,’ Jack said, ‘the best of times. My old man.’

  Resnick nodded. ‘Maybe not.’

  They were drinking at the Black Bull in Bolsover, the local pub in Bledwell Vale long boarded up; the village itself now mostly derelict, deserted: only a few isolated buildings and the terrace of former Coal Board houses in which Peter Waites had spent most of his adult life still standing.

  ‘You should’ve lived with him,’ Jack Waites said. ‘Then you’d know.’

  ‘You didn’t come out of it so bad.’

  ‘No thanks to him.’

  ‘That’s harsh, lad. Now especially.’

  Jack Waites shook his head. ‘No sense burying truth. It was my old lady pushed me on, got me to raise my sights. God rest her soul. He’d’ve dragged me down the pit the minute I got out of school, else. And then where’d I be? Out of work and drawing dole like every other poor bastard these parts. That or working in a call centre on some jerry-built industrial estate in the middle of bloody nowhere.’

  Less than twenty-four hours back and you could hear the local accent resurfacing like rusted slippage in his voice.

  No sense arguing, Resnick raised his glass and drank. There was truth, some, in what Jack Waites was saying, his father obdurate and unyielding as the coalface at which he’d laboured the best part of thirty years until, after strike action that had staggered proudly on for twelve months and come close to tearing the country apart, the pit had finally been closed down.

  Resnick had first met Peter Waites in the early days of the strike, and somehow, despite their differences, they’d gone on to become friends. Waites’ one of the strongest voices raised in favour of staying out, one of the loudest at the picket line, anger and venom directed towards those who would have gone back to work.

  ‘Scab! Scab! Scab!’

  ‘Out! Out! Out!’

  Recently made up to inspector, Resnick had been running an intelligence gathering team, its function to obtain information about the principal movers and shakers in the strike, assess the volume of local support, keep tabs, as far as possible, on any serious escalation. Right from the earliest days, the first walkouts, the Nottinghamshire pits had been the least militant, the most likely to drag their feet, and Peter Waites and a few others had shouted all the louder in an attempt to bring them into line.

  Around them, tempers flared: fists were raised, windows broken, things were thrown. Resnick thought it was time he had a word.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Waites had exclaimed when Resnick – battered trilby, raincoat belted tight; wet enough outside to launch the ark – had walked into his local and sought him out. ‘Takin’ a bit of a risk, aren’t you?’

  ‘Know who I am, then?’

  ‘Not the only one wi’ eyes in their backside.’

  ‘Good to hear it.’ Resnick stuck out his hand.

  The men, five or six, who’d been standing with Waites by the bar, watched to see what he would do, only relaxing when he met that hand with his own.

  ‘My shout then,’ Resnick said.

  ‘Shippos all round in that case,’ said the man to Waites’ left. ‘Skint, us, you know. Out on strike. Or maybe you’d not heard?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Resnick said.

  One of the miners spat on the floor and walked away. The others stood their ground. Some banter, not all ill-humoured, and after another round bought and paid for, Waites and Resnick moved to a table in the corner, all eyes watching.

  ‘It’ll not work, tha’ knows.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You and me, heads together. Makin’ it look like I’m in your pocket. Some kind of blackleg bloody informer, pallin’ up with a copper. That what this is about? Me losing face? ’Cause if it is, your money’s gone to waste an’ no mistake.’

  Resnick shook his head. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘More a word of warning.’

  ‘Warning!’ Waites bristled. ‘You’ve got the brazen balls …’

  ‘The way things are going, more and more lads coming down from South Yorkshire, swelling your picket line …’

  ‘Exercising their democratic right …’

  ‘To what? Put bricks through folks’ windows? Set cars alight?’

  ‘That’s not happened here.’

  ‘No, maybe not yet. But it will.’

  ‘Not while I’ve a say in things.’

  ‘Listen.’ Resnick put a hand on Waites’ arm. ‘Things escalate any more, pickets going from pithead to pithead mob-handed, what d’you think’s going to happen? Think they’re going to leave all that for us to deal with on our own? Local? Reinforcements enough from outside already and either you back off some or they’ll be shipping ’em in from all over. Devon and Cornwall. Hampshire. The Met.’ He shook his head. ‘The Met coming in, swinging a big stick – that what you want?’

  Waites fixed him with a stare. ‘It’s one thing to walk in here, show your face – that I can bloody respect. But to come in here and start making threats …’

  ‘No threat, Peter. Just the way things are.’

  Light for a big man, Resnick was quick to his feet. Waites picked up his empty glass, turned it over and set it back down hard.

  As Resnick walked to the door the curses fell upon him like rain.

  The church interior was chilly and cold: distempered walls, threadbare hassocks and polished pews; a Christ figure above the altar with sinewed limbs, a crimped face and vacant, staring eyes. ‘Abide with Me’. The vicar’s words, extolling a man who had loved his community more than most, a husband and a father, fell hollow nonetheless. A niece, got up in her Sunday best, read, voice faltering into silence, a poem she had written at school. The former miner who’d ridden with Resnick in the car remembered himself and Peter Waites starting work the same day at the pit, callow and daft the pair of them, waiting for the cage to funnel them down into the dark.

  Resnick had imagined Jack Waites would bring himself to speak but instead he remained resolutely seated, head down. With some shuffling of feet, the congregation stood to sing the final hymn and the pall-bearers moved into position.

  As they stepped outside, following the coffin out into the air, it was the dead man’s voice Resnick heard, an evening when they’d sat in his local, not so many years before, Waites snapping the filter from the end of his cigarette before stubbornly lighting up.

  ‘Lungs buggered enough already, Charlie. This’ll not make ha’porth of difference, no matter what anyone says. Besides, long as I live long enough to see the last of that bloody woman and dance on her grave, I don’t give a toss.’

  That bloody woman: Ma
rgaret Thatcher. The one person, in Peter Waites’ eyes, most responsible for bringing the miners down. After the strike had been broken, he could never bring himself to say her name. Not even when he raised a glass in her hated memory the day she died.

  ‘Says it all, eh, Charlie? Dead in her bed in the fuckin’ Ritz.’

  Resnick’s feet, following the coffin, left heavy indentations in the snow.

  A blackbird, unconcerned, pecked hopefully at the frozen ground close by the open grave. Out beyond the cemetery wall, the land offered no angles to the sky.

  As the coffin was lowered, a small group of men who’d kept their own company since before the service began to unfold a banner, the red, black and gold of the NUM, the National Union of Mineworkers.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Jack Waites said angrily. ‘What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like?’ one of the men replied.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Honouring a comrade.’

  ‘Honouring be buggered! Not here, you’re bloody not.’

  ‘Dad,’ Waites’ eldest said, pulling at his sleeve. ‘Dad, don’t.’

  Waites shrugged him off. ‘Wanted to honour him, should’ve done it when he was still alive. Out of work thirty years near enough, poor bastard, after your union helped bring the industry to its bloody knees …’

  ‘Don’t talk so bloody daft.’

  ‘Daft? Course you bloody did. You and Scargill, arrogant bastard that he was, delivering up the miners on a sodding plate and you were all too blind to see.’

  ‘I’d watch my mouth if I were you,’ another of the union men said, showing a fist.

  ‘Yes? Where is he now, then, Scargill, tell me that? In the lap of luxury in some fancy flat in London while your union pays out more’n thirty thousand a year for his rent, and has done since God knows when. And my old man, all that time, scraightin’ out a living in some one-time Coal Board house as was fallin’ apart round his ears. And you want to raise a fucking banner in his honour …’

  ‘Jack,’ Resnick said, moving towards him, ‘let it be.’