Lonely Hearts

by John Harvey

  Colin Rich had a mug of tea in one hand and a wedge of bread pudding in the other. He was leaning up against a plate-glass window, one story up. Resnick put temptation behind him and tasted the coffee from the urn.

  “It’s as bad as these silly sods sticking bloody needles in themselves, or diddling some scrubber round the side of the pub without wacking a johnny on their plonker first. Daft bastards! Deserve what they bloody get!”

  Resnick threw the coffee out of the window instead.

  “How’s the intellectual life, Charlie?”

  “Quiet, sir.”

  “Did you go to university, Charlie, I can’t remember?” Skelton asked, scarcely looking up from the notes he was making with a meticulous hand.

  “No, sir. Never got round to it somehow.”

  “Lot of life on the campuses in those days, Charlie. Especially if you were in a bit of new red-brick. Spent more time sitting in and marching than studying, I’m afraid.”

  Bet you got a First, though, didn’t you, sir? Resnick didn’t say.

  “Matter of fact, anyone who dug deep enough into my record, they’d find me listed on a couple of Special Branch files—under Danger to the Security of the Realm, I shouldn’t wonder. Look at me now.”

  Resnick did as he was told.

  Skelton set aside his pen, screwing the cap back first. “Andy Hunt’s getting hot under the collar about the chap who works on the railway. Two women said he turned nasty when they wouldn’t let him have what he thought was his due at the end of the evening. Knocked one of them around a little, nothing too serious, though apparently she was sitting at the checkout at Sainsbury’s with a black eye for a week. The second one, however, that was nastier. Pulled a knife on her and held it to her throat while she…” the superintendent’s voice changed key…“masturbated him.”

  “Didn’t report it at the time?”

  Skelton shook his head. “Neither of them.”

  “This second lass, any chance she’ll make a complaint now?”

  “Unlikely. Doesn’t seem to think her husband will understand.”

  “If it goes to court, it’ll come out whatever she wants.”

  “Seems she’s prepared to take that risk. Besides…”

  “You don’t reckon him?”

  “Agreed to an intimate search right off. Paid no attention to his solicitor warning him not to. No comeback from forensic yet, but my bet is that the results will clear him, no matter how much Andy wants it to go the other way.”

  “Somebody ought to have words with that man about his courting technique.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Skelton. “Unofficially, somebody will. I thought I’d let Rich read him a sermon or two. Potential serious crime, after all.”

  “At least they’ll talk the same language.”

  Skelton uncapped his fountain pen, thought about writing something, stopped.

  “My hopes lie with this laddie Bernard Grafton’s come up with.”

  “His psychiatric case.”

  “Exactly. Spent nine months in residential care after finding himself up in court for exposing himself outside the nurses’ home.”

  “Wasting his time there, sir,” said Resnick. “They must be sick of it.”

  “There was some doubt about his intentions; he was worried himself he might have attacked one of them on her way back off shift. Nothing happened, other than in his mind, so there wasn’t any charge. But the probation officer put in a pretty useful Social Enquiry Report and hence the treatment. Apparently…” Skelton turned over some pieces of paper on his desk until he found the correct one…“while he was a patient he asked for a drug which would curb his sexual urges and was put on a course of Androcur. Things improved, chappie was released but the medication was terminated.”

  “Things deteriorated,” put in Resnick.

  “Quite. Nevertheless, by this time he’d given up being a Peeping Tom for more legal diversions.”

  “I think I can guess,” said Resnick.

  “He wrote off to two-dozen women in the space of three months and five of them agreed to meet him. One of these he passed up on, hasn’t said why. One look at her outside the wherever it was and he scarpered. But the other four—well, they’re still being interviewed, though none of them seem to have been in any doubt that they’d got themselves saddled with a right funny one. We should have full statements by this time tomorrow.”

  “Sounds interesting, sir,” agreed Resnick, almost reluctantly.

  Skelton stood up behind his desk, tapping the end of his pen lightly against it. “Tell you something you’ll likely find even more interesting, Charlie.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The fifth woman, the one he walked away from, according to him she was Shirley Peters.”

  The melody of “Moonlight Serenade” was unmistakable. Resnick zipped himself up and ran the tap as the toilet flushed and Graham Millington emerged, still whistling.

  “It is you,” Resnick said, drying his hands.

  “Sir?”

  “Glenn Miller all over the place.”

  “Yes, sir.” Millington squinted at his mustache in the mirror; why did it always seem fuller on the left than the right, no matter how carefully he trimmed it? “I’ve got this tape I play in the car.”

  “Don’t you get fed up with it?”

  “No, sir. That is, I don’t know really.” He shrugged, waiting for Resnick to finish with the roller towel. “Never thought about it, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  “Sir?”

  “Think about it. For the sake of the rest of us.”

  “Right, sir.” What is he on about, thought Millington, bemused. What’s Glenn Miller got to do with anything?

  “Anything fresh on your wrestler?” Resnick asked. They were heading back towards the CID room.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Tell you what to do,” said Resnick.

  Millington stopped outside the door and waited.

  “DI Grafton’s pinning his hopes on a one-time psychiatric patient who ducked out on a date with Shirley Peters. See if you can get a word with him, find out why.”

  Millington shrugged. “Didn’t fancy her.”

  “Or he’s lying about walking away from her without as much as a hello.”

  “I’ll get on to it, sir,” said Millington, pushing open the door.

  “Sooner rather than later.”

  Instead of following his sergeant into the office, Resnick turned down the stairs in the direction of the street.

  Once you’d tossed out the junk mail, there wasn’t a great deal left. Resnick ignored the persistent cries of his cats long enough to grind some coffee and dump it in the filter. A bit of Basie would serve to cleanse the good Major from his mind: there wasn’t a moon in the sky anyway, just a drizzle of rain, falling like fine gauze through the dark.

  “Dizzy! Eat that fast and you’ll have indigestion the whole evening.”

  There was a letter from a long-stay prisoner he’d nicked and seen sent down to Parkhurst, two sides of recycled paper explaining how he’d found peace through Buddha, though it hadn’t done anything about the quality of the food. In a brown envelope, a second reminder about his subscription to the Polish Association. Resnick lifted his elbows and flexed his shoulders backwards, seeking to do something about the stiffness along his spine. He took his coffee black with a shot of Scotch, carrying it, along with the remaining letter, to his favorite armchair. The postmark was local, the writing small enough to have had the postman reaching for his spectacles. Resnick slit the top of the envelope open with the end of his spoon.

  Dear Charles,

  I am not certain if forgetting the enclosed was a trick of the memory, or merely a straightforward attempt to ignore my own sentimentality. In either case, be so kind as to destroy it when it is of no further use to you.

  Sincerely,

  Marian Witczak

  Resnick slipped the card from beneath the paperclip
which held it to the sheet of writing paper. It was cream in color, an expensive, satiny surface, smooth to the touch. Pepper burbled at the side of the chair and jumped on to Resnick’s lap where he turned twice and settled.

  My Dear Marian,

  I can only hope uour evening was as pleasant as mine. I cannot recall attendinq a concert with a companion who was both as charming and as apposite as yourself!

  Let us both look forward to the time when the future presents us with as suitable an occasion for mutual delight and stimulation.

  In friendship and admiration—

  William Doria

  A quarter of an inch from the bottom of the card, a horizontal line was broken at its center by the embossed burgundy letters W.J. Doria. Above, the writing was in matt black ink, so studied that each word seemed drawn rather than written. The circles of the os and as were beautifully rounded, precise and not extravagant; only in the capitals was there a flourish, a sense of abandonment—the way the lower stroke of the L swerved beneath the rest of Let, the sweep of the W in his own name, continuing until it almost met the D of Doria, dipping to dot the is along the way.

  When Resnick had stared at the card long enough, he reached sideways towards his coffee cup, disturbing a disgruntled Pepper, who jumped clear of his legs in disgust.

  He was bringing the cup to his lips when the phone rang, startling a splash of lukewarm coffee over the front of his shirt.

  “I was about to ring off.”

  “Sorry. I was busy pouring coffee over myself.”

  “I hope you didn’t miss your tie.”

  “No chance,” said Resnick, rubbing at it with his free hand.

  “Just want to be able to recognize you when I see you.”

  “I thought you’d given up on me.”

  “I had.”

  Resnick shifted his weight from one foot to the other, switched the receiver from left to right. Was she serious?

  “I’ve been trying to phone you,” Rachel said. “Either you’re somewhere else and nobody knows when you’ll be back, or they don’t know where you are anyway.” She paused. “Charlie, you haven’t given instructions that I’m to be given the runaround, have you?”

  “Why would you think I’d do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I was sure you’d call me and you didn’t.”

  Resnick didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t try me at home, did you?”

  “You told me not to.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s wrong with…?”

  “I think it’s time we went out to dinner, Charlie.”

  He was smiling. “You think so.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “It’s twenty-past seven.”

  Resnick looked across the room. “Is that relevant?”

  “It is if you’re going to meet me at eight-thirty.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You haven’t already eaten, have you?”

  “No, but…”

  “Fine. I get to choose the restaurant.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m paying.”

  “Oh, no. If we’re…”

  “Charlie, just listen to me. It’s a celebration. My treat. All right?”

  He was picturing her that first day he had seen her at court. How could a disembodied voice conjure up so clearly the dark fall of hair against collar and face, the smallest splash of blue against brown leather?

  “What are we celebrating?” he asked.

  “Wait until I see you.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to pick you up, meet you, what?”

  “Meet me.”

  “Where?”

  “Between the lions, of course.”

  What had Colin Rich said about the idiots out there? “Aren’t we a little old for that kind of thing?”

  “Speak for yourself, Charlie!”

  He had been.

  “Half-eight, then,” he said.

  “I’ll try to be fashionably late,” Rachel said, a laugh in her voice.

  “Not too fashionable, it’s raining.”

  “Charlie, I promise you, we won’t notice.”

  He wondered what she would say if she could see him standing there, grinning like—yes, Colin Rich had been right for once—like a happy idiot.

  “Oh, and Charlie…”

  “Um?”

  “Whatever you’re wearing…”

  “What about it?”

  “Change it.”

  Twenty-Eight

  To the north of the Old Market Square was the site of the Black Boy Hotel, designed by Watson Fothergill and where Resnick and his friend Ben Riley used to drink early on a Saturday night before things started to move too fast. Now it was an expanse of ugly brick wall barely disguised as a Littlewood’s store. On the south side the front of the Running Horse hotel was dated 1483, but the rubble behind it was more recent. On their rare trips up from Hayward’s Heath to visit, his in-laws had stayed there and complained about the service and the sound of the traffic.

  The steps between the stone lions were peopled with punks and kids in leathers, girls in coats from Top Shop or Miss Selfridge trying not to keep looking at their watches, a couple of lads in shirtsleeves being “tough.”

  Half of them, Resnick thought, have me figured for a copper on duty, the rest are imagining something worse. He knew Rachel was in the square before he saw her, a tensing of the nerve-ends turning his head and opening his eyes. She was crossing behind one of the fountains, hands resting easily inside the pockets of her camel coat, face glowing in the street lights and the shine of wet paving. The heels of her boots clicked a crisp rhythm against the steps as Resnick stepped out to greet her. Her hair was up and her face lifted towards him, smiling.

  “See. I’m not late.”

  “Not very.”

  The corner of her mouth when it brushed against his cheek was almost warm, though her face was cold.

  “Come on,” Rachel said, linking her arm through his and turning him to walk up King Street. “We’re going this way.”

  He had no sense of it still raining.

  The restaurant was on the first floor, alongside a Chinese supermarket. There were tables lining both sides of an L-shaped room, most of them occupied. The waiter who took their coats said, “Good evening, Miss Chaplin,” in a voice that was already more East Midlands than either Hong Kong or Peking. He showed them to a table by the window and Resnick knew that this was where she usually sat, those times she had been there with Chris Phillips, possibly with others too; her place, her territory, her celebration.

  A waitress in starched white brought Resnick a bottle of Chinese beer and Rachel a vodka and tonic.

  “Cheers,” Resnick said, lifting his glass. “To whatever.”

  “Independence,” Rachel said.

  The waiter opened large, leather-bound menus in front of them and stepped discreetly away.

  “I’d never seen you as anything else,” said Resnick.

  “All I can say is, I wish others saw me through your eyes.”

  “You mean Chris?”

  She drank a little more vodka. “We had it all spelled out, the two of us. What it was about and what it wasn’t. Lots of dos and don’ts. Top of the list: don’t become possessive, don’t become dependent. We spent evening after evening talking it through, testing one another, what we thought we wanted.” She laughed disparagingly. “Making lists.”

  Love, Resnick wanted to ask, what about love?

  “Lists are all right for Tesco’s,” he said.

  “And as long as you remember to take them with you.”

  “You’re saying Chris got forgetful?”

  She shook her head. “We both did.”

  Resnick was wondering for how much of his marriage his wife had lain aside her ten-point plan: how to find true happiness in easy stages and still be one of the six percent in the country to own a dishwasher.

&n
bsp; “Eighteen months…”

  That long, thought Resnick.

  “…and it was as if nothing had ever been said. We were like everyone else. What time will you be back for a meal? Saturday night we’ve been invited to a party, to dinner, a wedding anniversary.”

  “Sounds pretty normal.”

  Rachel looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Normal, Charlie? Is that the way you live?”

  “The way I live may not be altogether through choice.”

  “All right, but still that choice is yours.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  She didn’t answer. “I’d stopped thinking of myself as myself,” she said. “I wasn’t me, I was part of a couple.” She finished her drink. “I didn’t like it.”

  “Couple or not,” said Resnick, “I can’t see you—what?—feeling threatened, submerged, losing your identity.”

  “Nor could I until it began to happen.”

  The waiter was hovering, an encouraging smile around his eyes.

  “Well, Rachel Chaplin,” Resnick said, taking her hand, “there’s no doubt in my mind exactly who you are.”

  “That’s what I’m banking on,” Rachel said, moving her hand away to turn a page of the menu. “Now, shall I tell you what’s good…?”

  The monkfish and black beans spat and sizzled from a patterned iron plate.

  “Sit back, Charlie. No sense in spoiling a clean shirt.”

  It had taken him minutes to find one, dry and rumpled and needing water splashed liberally over it before it could be ironed. He had used his thumbnail to remove a blob of horseradish sauce from his best tie, dark red with diagonal white stripe. The shoes that he had quickly rubbed over had soon had the shine splashed out of them while walking to meet Rachel.

  Rachel was wearing a pale blue blouse, ruffed and tight at neck and wrists. Silver drop earrings that caught the light whenever she tilted her head.

  “Stop staring at me, Charlie,” she scolded, not seeming unhappy about it at all.

  “It’s difficult,” he said.