by John Harvey
“You’ve no pictures of her, have you?”
“Who?”
“Whoever you bought this house with. Your wife.”
“You said something about a proposition.”
“That could mean,” she went on, choosing to ignore his interruption, “remembering still hurts. Either that or you’ve wiped her from your mind. Altogether.” She looked at him, sitting there, uneasy in the easy chair, doubting now why she’d come, the wisdom of an hour spent in a wine bar first, knowing that brashness was never what would attract him, turn him on. But when the recklessness was there, what did you do to calm it down?
“How about some music?” She sat opposite him, perching herself on the arm of the settee, tasting the wine.
“What do you fancy?”
“You choose.”
When last he had been in this situation, with Rachel, it had been easy; he had known what it seemed important for her to hear, wanted to impress her with songs that would send their own little messages like trip hammers along the vein.
Claire watched him stooping forward, hesitant; imagined, for a moment, getting up and standing close behind him, hands pressing hard against those shoulders, faint scrape of the day’s stubble as his face glanced against hers.
The stylus settled on to Ellington, “Jack the Bear,” 1940. Clipped phrases from the muted brass with their high reed responses. Jimmy Blanton’s bass carrying the melody into the first rocking notes from the piano.
“Charlie,” Claire said. “Is that what they call you?”
“Some of them.”
“It’s an old-fashioned sort of name, don’t you think?”
“Maybe it is.”
“I like it. Sort of makes you approachable.”
Resnick drank some wine, trying not to swallow it down as if it were Czech Budweiser, Guinness in the pub. It seemed hours since he had eaten that sandwich, probably was. There she was, this attractive young woman, right across from him, bored with what she was doing day-to-day, the people, the men that ordinarily she met. Your British policemen, they’re wonderful. No: you didn’t hear that any more, only in the reruns of old movies, between the snooker and the racing on slow afternoons. Still, there was something about what he did; the way, maybe, it merged with the illicit, illegal, somewhere one step over the line.
She was pretty, Claire Millinder, attractive and knowing it didn’t spoil her. You got the sense she dressed to please herself and if that didn’t suit, too bad. She was confident, a brashness about her that, almost reluctantly, Resnick admired. Why couldn’t all that be enough?
She was saying something now about growing up on a farm back on North Island, the beaches, playing possum. The wine was going down the glass too fast, going to Resnick’s head. But when she approached him with the bottle he let her pour more.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to find a buyer for your house.”
“That’s all right.” She was sitting on the side of his chair, the wine bottle at her feet. “I’m sure you’ve tried your best.”
“I have.”
Her fingers laid along the ridge of his upper arm, close against his neck. As he angled his face towards hers, the ends of her nails touched his cheek.
“D’you know why you’re such an attractive man, Charlie? Because I don’t.”
“Then maybe I’m not.”
She grinned. “I think that’s it. You’re not.”
Her tongue slithered either way along his teeth before exploring his mouth, warm and never still. The insides of her lips were soft and, of course, she tasted of the wine. What was it? Blackcurrant? His hand found her breast by accident and jumped away as if shocked.
“Charlie, I can’t kiss you and laugh at the same time.”
“Which would you rather do?”
Johnny Hodges was insinuating his way through Ellington’s “Warm Valley.” As they slid to the floor, Claire managed to kick clear her shoes and catch the over-balancing remains of the Shiraz at about the same time. Whatever was gently tickling her toes was probably one of the cats. Resnick rocked on to his side, not wishing to pinion her with his weight. “Ko-Ko” and the brass and saxes were back into their exchanges, call and response, come and then go. Claire’s fingers unbuttoned his shirt. “As your estate agent,” she said, “I think a viewing of the master bedroom is pretty essential.”
Resnick rolled away.
“Don’t,” Claire said.
“What?”
“Sigh. You were about to give out with that great, heavy sigh, and then close your eyes, shake your head a bit. You know? It isn’t necessary. It’s OK.” She was on her feet, smoothing down her skirt, straightening the stripes of her tights. “It’s happened before.” She grinned. “Just not that often.”
Resnick felt stupid sitting on the floor of his own living room, cross-legged.
She reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. “What does it have to be with you, Charlie? True love?”
Embarrassed, he looked away, “Probably.”
“Oh, Charlie!” She squeezed his arm, prodded his stomach, quickly kissed the side of his neck. “Come on,” she said, dragging him back towards the kitchen. “I’m feeling famished and you’re going to have to come up with something, if it’s only Rice Krispies. Besides, if we finish that bottle on an empty stomach, we’re going to be falling asleep in one another’s company and that would never do.”
“Is this all you ever eat?” Claire said, looking at her plate. “Sandwiches?”
“Most often.”
“But you’re not having one now?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“One of these?”
“Something like.”
“Then I can understand why you’re not up for another.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Oh, it’s great. I just won’t want to eat for another week, that’s all.”
“We still didn’t get around to your proposition,” said Resnick. “At least, I don’t think we did.”
Claire laughed and waited until she had chewed her way to speech. “What we’ve been doing, properties that have got badly stuck-not that I’m saying that’s the position here, not yet, far from it-but what we’ve been discussing with owners is the possibility of a short let. Three months, six at most. It means there’s some income coming in, part of the deal is that we can still show clients round. If people have already found somewhere else to move on to, sometimes they have to on account of their job, whatever, it suits all round.”
“I think I can hang on here.”
“Like I said, I’m not talking right now. Just thinking, if nobody’s nibbled by spring …”
“And if I happen to find the bachelor flat of my dreams …”
“Precisely.”
“I don’t know.”
“There’d be safeguards.”
“I don’t know if I’d be happy about strangers …”
“Charlie, who did you think you were going to sell the place to? Friends?”
“Selling and letting, they’re not the same. Suppose it just didn’t sell …”
“Not ever?”
“Not ever.”
“You can sell everything, sooner or later.”
“But if I moved out and then for whatever reason had to move back …”
“Charlie.” Coming up to him, close, but nothing sexual now; physical, yes, but different, that passion had evaporated. “You don’t want to move, do you? This is your house; you’re at home here.”
His eyes were focused past her head, seeing other things. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
She kissed him deftly on the cheek and stepped back. “Are we friends, Charlie Resnick?”
Now he was the one smiling. “Maybe.”
“Charlie,” she said with mock sternness, “we’re not talking major commitment here.”
“Look,” Resnick said, “now that wine’s gone, I’ve got a couple of beers in the fridge.”
Back in the mai
n room he played her Mose Allison, Ben Webster with Art Tatum; early, carefree Lester Young. She told him about waitressing her way through university, summers picking kiwi fruit before that crop became cheaper to grow elsewhere. Resnick listened, nodded, asked questions here and there; all the time, pecking at the back of his mind, something she had said earlier.
“Claire.”
“Yes?” She looked up at him, curling her lower lip against the tip of her tongue. The tall beer glass was balanced between the fingers of both hands. That was the moment at which he could have moved towards her, kissed her on the mouth.
“The kind of rental you were talking about before,” Resnick said, “you wouldn’t have set one up for someone called Grabianski?”
“Male or female?”
“Male.”
She shook her head. “It’s not such a usual name. I’d have remembered.”
If Grabianski had moved out of his hotel, Resnick thought, he might have had reason enough to use a pseudonym. He tried describing him to Claire instead.
“He sounds a lot like you,” Claire said.
“You haven’t seen him?”
Smiling, she held her head to one side. “I’d have remembered,” she said.
When the record came to an end, she finished her beer and got to her feet. “I should go,” she said.
At the door she paused, the hum of traffic rising along the Mansfield Road to her left. “Some men,” she said, “they can only see women as something to patronize or screw. With most of them it’s both within the same five minutes. Ten, if you’re lucky. You’re not like that.”
Resnick wanted to say thank you, but didn’t; he wasn’t sure it was that simple.
“Good night, Charlie.”
“’Night.”
I’ll bet, Resnick was thinking, heading for the kitchen, we’re still only checking the agencies that specialize in rented property; firms like Claire’s, I doubt if we even gave them a call.
At the start of office hours the following morning, that was set right. The rental Resnick was interested in was a top-floor flat, unsold for too long and in this market unsaleable at a decent profit. The man who signed the lease had paid in cash, moved in right away, a short let exactly what he wanted, long enough to finish up his business, nothing more.
Of course, it hadn’t been Grabianski who had seen about finding them alternative accommodation. It had been Grice, Trevor Grice, whose business address was in Milton Keynes.
Twenty-three
Lloyd Fossey had grown up in a small mining town north of the city, in a street where four families out of five were known to the probation service, receiving social security or both. He had left school at sixteen, skirted around trouble, fallen for a girl who had talked him into enrolling for further education. The girl had soon gone, but the qualifications had stayed; Fossey had surprised everyone by getting a job and holding it down. He found-this lad who’d never spoken in the house for fear of his dad clouting him, who’d said little all through school lest he be mocked-that he had a way with words. Nothing too flash, never seeming-back then-too full of himself, Lloyd Fossey had discovered that people could be impressed by him; they trusted him. Most of them: at first meeting.
It was while working for his first security firm that Fossey had allowed his plausibility to run away with him. Little extras that were offered unofficially, private arrangements to make installations in his own time. It was all suggestions from the side of the mouth, money from the back of the hand. His employers suspected him of more than cowboy activity on the side-alarms, wiring, whole systems that had disappeared somehow found their way back on to the open market, into people’s homes.
Fossey was sacked and the police called in. Graham Millington interviewed him on four separate occasions and each time he found Fossey more elusive than before. He knew all the answers, anticipated half of the questions; wore his best clothes and smoked ratty little cigars. His nose was too long, his cheeks had that sunken appearance that sometimes comes with poverty and never quite goes away.
Millington would have loved to have made him: for anything. More than the theft from his employer’s, he wanted to tie him into that run of burglaries. If anyone was better placed to pass on information and expect to profit from it, the sergeant didn’t know who was. But Fossey had continued to sit there in his expensive ill-fitting clothes, lighting one after another of those objectionable cigars. Where most suspects talked themselves into trouble, Fossey talked his interrogators into a stupor.
When Millington told him he could go, finally walk free, Fossey had shaken his hand and offered to fit his house with a burglar alarm at 40 percent discount, estimates free of charge.
Now he was here in the kind of place Millington and his wife would only dream about after a Saturday-night bottle of Chianti and a cuddle in front of the TV.
“Lloyd Fossey?”
“Yes.”
“Remember me?”
One thing Fossey had learned from those paperbacks he’d read about succeeding in business, never forget a face. He offered his hand and a welcoming smile. “Inspector.”
“Sergeant.”
“Sorry, thought you might have been promoted by now.”
Bastard, Millington thought.
“You’re lucky to catch me,” Fossey said, “only got back last night …”
“From your honeymoon. Yes, I know.”
Fossey’s left eye twitched. What was going on here?
“Right now, I’m on my way to a client.” He glanced at his watch, pushing back the sleeve of his dark blue blazer. “Late as it is.”
“Phone.”
“Sorry?”
“Phone and tell him you’ll be later still.”
“I can’t do that, I …”
“Tell them the flight was delayed, jet lag, tell them something.”
“What is it, Lloyd?” The new Mrs. Fossey was still rubbing sleep from her eyes and the remains of yesterday’s eye-shadow along with it. She was wearing what was certainly Fossey’s dressing gown over what was probably one of his shirts. Millington wondered if he’d buy her some clothes of her own some day. Probably when she grew up. With that puppy fat still clinging to her, Millington didn’t put her at much over eighteen; she made Fossey, who was all of twenty-five, look touched by age.
“Make us some coffee, love. This gentleman and I have got to have a chat.”
“It’ll have to be instant, I can’t work that machine.”
“It doesn’t exactly need a degree in physics.”
“If it’s as easy for you,” said Millington, “I’d rather have tea.”
She gave him a thankful smile, pulled the dressing gown closed and went off towards the kitchen. She’d learn, Millington thought, learn or leave him and most likely the latter.
Fossey left the sergeant in a room with a studded white leather suite, black ash and glass tables and enough spotlights to stage a floodlit Scrabble tournament. In one corner there was a bar, stacked along which Millington counted five different malts and three brandies while Fossey was outside in the hall making a quick, apologetic phone call.
Millington waited for him to come back into the room and then sat facing him. The jacket looked as expensive as before, but now it fitted; the pale gray trousers had creases only in the right places and his shoes looked as if they’d just come out of the box. To Millington, he was still a weasel; now he was a well-dressed one.
“Come on in the world,” he remarked, echoing his superior.
“What it’s about, isn’t it?”
“How d’you mean?”
“This country.”
“Is it?”
“All thanks to her, isn’t it?”
Millington didn’t think Fossey meant his young wife, coming into the lounge now with the tea tray. She obviously did have clothes of her own-a pink-and-blue cotton top and tight white jeans-but that didn’t prevent her from looking out of place in her own home.
“Thanks, love.”
Millington started to pour and then stopped; it needed time to brew.
“So private enterprise really works?” Millington said.
“Course it does. How else would 1 have got all this? How else?” Fossey leaned back against the leather of the easy chair. “Ambition, that’s all it needs; ambition, a bit of know-how, a lot of drive. Listen, any man”-he repeated it, hammering out the key words with two fingers in the palm of his hand-“any man who wants to succeed in this country, can do it. And don’t waste your breath telling me about unemployment and high interest rates, industries closing down, cause I don’t want to know. Me, look at me. Ten-what? — fifteen years ago I’d’ve been out of school and down the pit like a whippet.” (Like a weasel, Millington thought.) “Now they’re shutting down those places ’cause they don’t pay, throwing up nuclear power stations, putting money where it works, where it makes more money. Listen, anyone who wants to get started in business, they can do it. Start-up schemes, bank loans, Enterprise Allowance, the Prince’s Trust, they’re bloody throwing money at you and the trouble with all those moaning whingers is they’d rather sit round miserable and collect their dole than do something for themselves. Now, that’s a fact.” He swung forward, elbows on knees. “Right?”
“Rees Stanley,” said Millington, choosing not to look at Fossey directly, pouring his tea now it had stood long enough. “Harold Roy.” No point in side-stepping with you, sunshine. A little something to go with your cuppa, sharper than sugar. Any luck, take his breath away, shut him up a few moments. Millington found himself wishing Fossey still smoked cigars.
By the time Millington had sat back, saucer balanced on one hand, cup in the other, Fossey still hadn’t thought of the right answer.
Got you, you bugger!
“You advised them on security, burglar alarms, stuff like that.”
For the first time since the sergeant had knocked at the door, Fossey dropped eye contact.
“Don’t get too worried,” said Millington, a smile in his voice.