by John Harvey
“Unless there’s something else you’ve remembered?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If I may,” said Resnick, on his way to the front door. “I’ll ask someone to call round and go over your account with you. Just to set the record straight.” He paused. “Some time, I’ll have a word with your husband.”
“Harold? What on earth for? He wasn’t here.”
The corners of Resnick’s mouth wrinkled into a smile. “Try to convince him to do something about that alarm. You don’t want to run the same risks twice. After all-” he turned the catch to open the front door-“suppose they took it into their heads to come back?”
Six
“See this?”
Grabianski glanced up from his position at the window. Even standing on an oak dining chair, he was having to crane his neck to get the right angle for the binoculars.
Grice was standing a few paces into the room, newspaper folding back over one hand, bacon sandwich-white bread and brown sauce-in the other.
“You read this yet?”
Grabianski shook his head.
“This report, right, according to this, you know how many burglaries there were in this country last year?”
Grabianski didn’t know; that is, he knew for certain about seventeen, but, those apart, his knowledge was vague.
“Seventy-three thousand,” Grice informed him. “Seventy-three.”
Grabianski didn’t know if that was a lot or not: it sounded a lot.
“That’s less than the year before. Eight percent down.” Grice held the sandwich to his mouth while he righted the paper. “‘Welcoming this reduction,’” he read, “‘the Home Secretary stressed that effective action against crime required a commitment from every responsible citizen.’” Brown sauce blobbed downwards and settled into the newsprint.
“Neighborhood watch,” said Grabianski.
“Personal security.”
“Alarm systems.”
Grice shook his head. “Eight percent reduction at the same time as, get this, assaults and muggings have risen to the level of 420 a day. Now how many’s that in a year?”
Grabianski was working it out in his head. “Leaving out Christmas and bank holidays, about 150,000.”
“Right!” said Grice vehemently. “Over twice the number of burglaries.” He waved the remains of his bacon sandwich in Grabianski’s direction. “And if that doesn’t tell you something about the state this country’s got itself into, I don’t know what does.”
Nodding slowly, Grabianski turned back to the window.
Resnick stood in front of his superintendent’s desk, fighting the feeling that, although Jack Skelton wasn’t even in the room, he should be at attention. It was something about Skelton himself, of course, always so straight-backed, each graying hair of his head brushed into formation, shine of his shoes fresh and unblemished. Something, also, to do with the way everything on the surface of his desk was arranged in carefully regimented order: three pens angled against the blotter, black, blue and red; papers pinned inside their appropriate trays, notes in Skelton’s precise hand attached; the diary, black and padded, a marker of red ribbon in place at the day; inside three matching silver frames, Jack Skelton’s wife and daughter beamed perfect contentment from between matching hair-styles and almost matching dresses.
“Charlie.”
“Sir.”
Turning, Resnick saw the cuffs of his superior’s crisp gray shirt had been turned back once, then once again. His tie was held in place by a discreet silver-and blue-clip. The jacket to his charcoal gray suit was already hanging behind the door. It was Jack Skelton’s way of showing that he was still a working copper.
“Sit down, Charlie.”
“Sir.”
Seated himself, Skelton flipped his diary open and then closed. “This break-in over at Harrison’s patch, there’s some suggestion our old friends might be paying us another visit?”
“It’s possible, sir.”
“Likely?”
Resnick leaned one elbow on the edge of the desk, only to remove it quickly. A mistake. “They were professionals, no two ways about that. About as careful with the inside of the house as Pickfords. No reason they had to know what they were going to find, but they could have had a good idea they wouldn’t be wasting their time.”
“Unlikely out that way, eh, Charlie? Put in a thumb and pull out a plum every time.”
Or find the silver threepenny bit in each slice of the pudding, thought Resnick. “Could say the same here, sir. Big, old houses, expensive property. Unless it’s all going on the mortgage and keeping the kids in private school, there’s likely to be something around worth taking.”
“Jewelry, money, furs, the occasional negotiable bond-not interested in video recorders and stereos as I recall.”
“That’s right, sir. None of the stuff recovered. Each place they went into, either no security system had been installed or it conveniently failed to function. There was an alarm box on the wall at the Roy house, but it doesn’t look as though any attempt was made to neutralize it. That wasn’t because they were being sloppy, so what does that leave? Luck?”
“Not a great believer in luck, as I recall, Charlie.”
Resnick shook his head.
“We checked out the security firms,” said Skelton. “Last time around.”
“And double-checked. One lead, an engineer who’d been sacked and seemed to bear a grudge, we liked him for it for some little time, but in the end we couldn’t prove any connection.”
“Do we know if he’s still around?”
“We can find out.”
Jack Skelton set the palms of his hands against his desk and eased his chair back six inches. “Harrison’s not going to be happy at you meddling around down there without more than your sixth sense by way of justification.”
“It was the DCI put me on to it, sir. He’ll smooth Harrison over.”
“For now, Charlie. For now.” Skelton took hold of the ribbon end and opened his diary; this time it remained open. Appointments had been entered in either red or blue ink and Resnick wondered what the significance of that might be. “If this proves to be no more than a one off, if there’s nothing else to link it to us, don’t get involved. Seventy-three thousand burglaries last year, Charlie. What do you think the clear-up rate on that lot was?”
Having to stand up on his toes for so much of the time was giving Grabianski a lot of trouble with the muscles at the back of his thighs. Hambones? Hamstrings? He moved the binoculars away from his eyes and eased himself back down on to his heels.
Best part of twenty minutes he’d been watching it now and still he couldn’t be certain.
First off, he marked it down as a wren, tiny brown bird with its tilted tail. Marvelous the way it crept between the branches and under wisps of dried grass the wind had lifted there and spread. Calling no attention to itself, like the best of thieves. Except, of course, when it sang. Then the sound it made was loud and clear, surprisingly penetrating for such a tiny bird. Which, of course, was what made him think that it was not a wren.
The song, when finally it came, was short and not so sweet. Grabianski had refocused, watched more closely. The tail-the tail was wrong; instead of tilting up it followed the curve of the back, spreading wide instead of moving to a point. And the underside-wasn’t that a show of white?
When it climbed, without faltering, straight up the sheer trunk of tree, he knew: it was certhia familaris. A tree creeper.
Grabianski went back up on to his toes and scanned along the branches, this way, then that. Ah! There! Finger and thumb turning a fraction, he honed in. Yes. Look at the way the beak curves down so it can get at insects buried in the bark.
“Grabianski!”
The shout surprised him and he had to grab the back of the chair to prevent himself from toppling off.
“You want to watch out. There’s a law against that sort of thing, you know.”
The entrance to t
he station was chock-a-block with Chinese. It was enough to make Resnick, as he made his way through with his lunch, guilty for not having sweet-and-sour pork, a couple of spring rolls at least. What he had was pastrami and horseradish on black bread, Jarlsberg and parma ham on caraway with rye, two fat gherkins wrapped in shiny white paper.
“What’s going on?” he asked the nearest constable once he was inside the door.
The PC gestured towards the stairs. “Your sergeant, sir. Got one of them in interrogation.”
Resnick nodded and continued on his way. When he knocked on the door of the interview room and peered around it, Graham Millington was face to face with a bespectacled Chinaman wearing a red tuxedo with dark velvet lapels. There was a tape recorder on the desk between them and it seemed to be recording a lot of silence.
Resnick closed the door softly and went along the corridor to the CID room. Patel was trying to reach the boiling kettle with one hand without losing his grasp of the telephone into which he was talking.
“Yes, madam,” he said with exquisite politeness, although Resnick sensed that he was saying it for the umpteenth time. “Yes, madam. Yes.”
Resnick stepped around him and lifted the kettle clear. He made a sign at Patel that suggested tea.
Patel smiled and nodded.
“Yes, madam,” he said. “I really think the best thing for me to do is transfer you to the duty sergeant. Yes, I am sure he will take care of the matter. Promptly, yes. Yes. Good day.”
Resnick dropped tea bags into the pot while the DC transferred the call.
“Anything interesting?” he asked when Patel had set down the phone.
“Peeping Tom,” said Patel. He seemed to find the idea mildly amusing.
“Bring me through a cup when it’s had time to mash.”
“Yes, sir.”
Before Resnick could retreat inside his office the phones had rung twice more. He slit the brown paper bag down one side with his Biro and opened it out, an improvised tablecloth. It was either that or get vinegar all over his team’s reports. Well, today it would be vinegar; most usually, a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise.
He was biting into his first gherkin when Patel came through with his tea; savoring the second when Millington knocked and entered, his face a picture of grief.
“I don’t want to be racist, but that bugger’s bleeding inscrutable.”
“You don’t need an interpreter?”
“Bloody mind-reader, more like.”
“Want me to have a go at him?”
“No disrespect, sir, but I was wondering if Lynn might have any luck?”
“Feminine wiles, Graham?”
“Not exactly, sir. Thought he might not find it so easy to stare at her and play dumb. Respect women in their culture, don’t they?”
What they did, Resnick thought, was bind their feet.
“Mean taking her out of the center,” Resnick said.
“No more than an hour, sir.”
“Okay.”
Millington nodded and rose to go.
“Fire officer’s report, Graham-got that now, have we?”
“Came through earlier, sir.”
Resnick made a point of looking at his desk. “Not to me.”
“I’ll pass it through, sir.”
“Good.”
Jesus! Millington thought as he shuffled papers around on his desk, I’ve just got to leave him one loophole and he gets me through it every time. Straightening with the report, he saw Patel smiling gently at him from across the room. You’re the one I should let loose on him, Millington said to himself, turning away, then you could have a high old time being sly and devious to one another. In for a racist penny, in for a pound.
The jewelry was sent Red Star to a highly respectable Glasgow silversmith, who, some short time later, made a transfer of funds under an assumed name, equally into two accounts. These accounts, needless to say, were also held under pseudonyms. At intervals which coincided with the determining of interest, money from these accounts was filtered through to the Isle of Man.
It was Grice’s idea and his particular pleasure, annually, to fly over to Douglas, ostensibly to check on their financial affairs; in reality his cherished ambition, so far in vain, was to be present when one of the TT riders came off his bike going into a hairpin bend.
Once a year, Grice and Grabianski had what Grice liked to call a financial summit. Aside from those periods when they were “working,” this was the only occasion the two men met. They took their equal share of any proceeds and used it only in such ways as would not compromise the operation or increase the risk of discovery. Grice had purchased a small villa in the north of Portugal, well clear of any riff-raff (by which he meant the British or German varieties), and occasionally indulged himself on a flight to visit an old friend in Australia, via a number of Far Eastern brothels and massage parlors.
Grabianski had a time-share in a Forestry Commission cabin in the Scottish Highlands and one of the smaller houses in Macclesfield, a location that put him within easy each of both the Peaks and the Pennines. Each year he traveled overseas with the Ramblers Association-so far, he had walked Turkey, Crete, the Himalayas, New Zealand and was working himself up to Peru.
They were two men with little or nothing in common, aside from a shared trade or craft. They didn’t like one another, but then they didn’t have to. What they both were was careful. Contacts they cultivated assiduously; usually Grabianski softened them up and then Grice took over and kept their spirits keen and their pockets never quite full enough. Cities they treated as provident farmers did their fields-every so often, they were left to lie fallow.
“I’ve been thinking about this kilo,” Grice said.
“Mm?”
“I think we’ll give them the chance to buy it back.”
Resnick ate his last piece of pastrami and washed it down with a mouthful of cold tea. He could see Naylor moving around in the outer office and knew he should call him in and have a talk-trouble with sleeping? Debbie still experiencing difficulties? Not to worry, happens to the best regulated of families. But if you’d like to talk about it …
Resnick knew that that was just about the last thing, right then, he wanted to do. He picked up Millington’s preliminary report and scanned it through. The man he was interviewing owned several restaurants and had a controlling share in others. His youngest son had incurred his wrath by marrying into a local family, non-Chinese, and opening his own restaurant and takeaway.
That had been three weeks ago. Since then there had been broken windows and worse. The fire officer seemed in no doubt that when the son’s new premises had flared up it had been arson. A large container of cooking oil had been maneuvered into the cellar and set alight; the result had been charred girders and melted chopsticks. Only because the place had been closed and the residents of the upstairs flat on their way back from a party had there been no fatalities.
Resnick hoped the young man had had time to obtain sufficient insurance.
Insurance.
He screwed paper and crumbs into a ball and bounced them off the rim of the waste bin on to the floor.
“Patel,” he called from the door.
“Sir?”
“Here a minute.”
There was Naylor, glancing across at him from above his typewriter, adding to the guilt.
“Patel,” Resnick said, “get yourself down to Jeff Harrison’s nick. Have a word with a young PC, Featherstone. He went out to investigate a burglary, Harold and Maria Roy. In through the back, out the front. Professional job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I had a word with the woman; what she told me and what she told Featherstone don’t seem to tie up. Shake the inconsistencies around a little, talk to her. See if you think she’s just confused or if she’s lying.”
“This will be all right, sir? With Inspector Harrison?”
“Help ourselves, he said. Well, in as many words. It’s been okayed from on high, so we�
�re covered. Which brings me to the other thing-find out some more about her insurance. Who’s the policy with? Were they recommended? She suggested they took over the insurance from the house owners, but that may not be accurate. If she wants to show you papers, let her. And perhaps you can encourage her to remember who it was came around and gave them a quotation to get their security updated.”
“That’s all, sir?”
With some of the others, Resnick might have pegged it as facetiousness. “For the present,” he said and then, because there was no way of avoiding it, he invited Naylor into his office.
The two men looked at one another with less than ease, Resnick having a strong sense of Naylor wanting to talk to someone, needing to, but sensed that it wasn’t himself.
“How’s Debbie?” Resnick asked.
“Oh,” Naylor shifted his feet awkwardly, “fine. She’s fine. She …”
“Lot of broken nights.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Strain on both of you.”
Naylor stood and shuffled his feet; the collar of his shirt was suddenly too tight. One hundred and one places you would rather be than here.
“You’re getting some help?”
Naylor’s eyes panicked.
“There must be somebody … I don’t know, district nurse …”
“Health visitor. Yes, sir. She comes round every so often, though Debbie says she doesn’t know what for.” Three times out of four, Debbie kept the door locked and pretended there was nobody home, but he wasn’t telling Resnick that.
“How about the doctor? Any use?”
“Not a lot, sir. Debbie says …”
Resnick switched off. What was that old game he’d played at school? Simon says this, Simon says that, whatever it might be, no matter how daft, that was what you did and fast. No questions asked. He glanced up at Naylor, who seemed to have finished.
“You know, we could arrange some counseling, from this end. If it’s interfering with your work.” Resnick could see from the look in the young DC’s eyes that he’d as well have suggested something bizarre in the way of sexual practices. “If you wanted to talk things through, the pair of you, with some professional-it’s available, okay?”