by John Harvey
“I’ve only this minute got in from work,” Lynn said, shorter-tempered than she’d intended.
“I tried the station once. The line was busy.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s the holidays, we’re more understrength than usual. And you know there’s a girl gone missing.”
Most often, any such remark would have brought forth from her mother a warning about being extra careful, bolting the door top and bottom, checking the window locks before going to bed; to her mother, any city bigger than Norwich was a place of constant danger, the worst she’d read about New York and New Orleans combined. But now there was nothing, a dull silence. Then, out in the courtyard, the sound, muffled, of a car starting up, misfiring. Lynn wondered if she could excuse herself a moment, pour the tea, bring it back to the phone.
“Lynnie, I think you should come home.”
“Mum …”
“I need you here.”
“I was there just a couple of days ago.”
“I’m at my wits’ end.”
Lynn suppressed most of a sigh.
“It’s your dad.”
“Oh, Mum …”
“You know he was going to the hospital …”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“It was changed, the appointment was changed. They rang to tell him. He’s been already. Yesterday.”
“And?”
In the hesitation she heard the worst, then heard it again in her mother’s words. “He’s got to go back. Another test.” I don’t want to know this, Lynn thought. “To check, that’s all it is, the doctor explained. Only to make sure that he hasn’t got … well, what they thought, you know, he’d got, he …”
“Mum.”
“They thought, all this trouble he was having, his eating, going to the lavatory and that, it might be a growth, there, you know, in the, the bowel.”
“And it’s not?”
“What?”
“It’s not a growth, is that what they’re saying? Or are they still not sure?”
“That’s why he’s got to go back.”
“So they’re not sure?”
“Lynnie, I don’t know what to do.”
“There’s nothing you can do. Not until we know for sure.”
“Can’t you come?”
“What do you mean? You mean now?”
“Lynnie, he won’t sit, he won’t eat, he won’t as much as look me in the eye. At least if you were here …”
“Mum, I was there. Just days ago. He hardly spoke to me either.”
“You won’t come then?”
“I don’t see how I can.”
“He needs you, Lynnie. I need you.”
“Mum, I’m sorry, but it’s a difficult time.”
“You think this is easy?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Your poor dad’s not important enough, that’s what you said.” She was close to tears, Lynn knew.
“You know that’s not true,” Lynn said.
“Then go with him to the hospital.”
Lynn rested the top of the receiver against her forehead.
“Lynnie …?”
“I’ll see if I can. I promise. But you know what hospitals are like, that won’t be for ages yet.”
“No, it’s soon. The man your dad saw, the consultant, he said he wanted him in as soon as possible. The next few days.”
Then it is serious, Lynn thought. “This consultant,” she said, “you can’t remember his name, I suppose?”
“It’ll be written down somewhere, I don’t know, I’ll just see if I can find it if you’ll …”
She heard her mother scrabbling about among all the scraps of paper that were kept by the phone. “Mum, call me back, okay? When you’ve found it? All right. Talk to you in a minute. Bye.”
The skin along the tops of Lynn’s arms was cold and her face was unusually drained of color. The small medical primer she kept with her dictionary and handful of paperbacks almost fell open at the page she wanted: the alternative name for cancer of the bowel was colorectal cancer. Its highest incidence was in males in the sixty to seventy-nine age group. Fifty percent of colorectal cancers are in the rectum. She let the book fall from her fingers to the floor. In the kitchen, she tipped away the remains of a carton of milk that smelled sour and struggled to open another without splashing too much over her hands. She put one spoonful of sugar in the mug and then another. Stirred. Two sips and she carried the mug back to the telephone.
When her mother rang back, she was crying at the other end of the line.
Lynn let her sob a little and then asked her if she’d found the name. She got her to repeat it twice, spelling it out as she wrote it down.
“Is Dad there?” Lynn said.
“Yes.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“He’s out in the sheds.”
“Call him in.”
There was a clunk as the phone was set awkwardly down; Lynn drank her tea and listened to the voices of youths in the street at the rear of the flat, raised half-heartedly in anger. One of her neighbors was listening to opera, a young man who wore black turtlenecks and ignored her when they passed on the stairs.
“I can’t get him to come in,” her mother said.
“Did you tell him it was me?”
“Of course I did.”
Her upstairs neighbor was not only singing along, now he was stamping his feet in time with the chorus. “I’m going to get in touch with this consultant,” Lynn said, “see if I can find out when Dad’s likely to be in. Then I’ll see if I can get leave. Okay?”
She listened to her mother a few minutes more, reassuring her as much as she could. She tipped away what was left of her tea and poured herself a second cup. Turning on the hot tap in the bathroom, she sprinkled some herbal bubble bath into the stream of water. Only when she lowered herself into the steamy warmth did she begin to relax and the pictures she had begun to conjure up of her father begin to fade, at least for the time being, from her mind.
Twenty-three
Resnick had fed the cats, made himself coffee, squeezed half a lemon on to a piece of chicken he’d rubbed with garlic, and set it under the grill. While that was cooking, he’d opened a bottle of Czech pilsner and drank half of it in the living room, reading an obituary of Bob Crosby. One of the 78s his uncle the tailor had prized had been “Big Noise from Winnetka” by the Bobcats. Bob Haggart and Ray Bauduc, bass and drums and a lot of whistling. If Graham Millington ever came across it, the whole station would be in peril.
Back in the kitchen he turned the chicken and poured some of the juice back over it with a spoon. The last half of a beef tomato he cut into chunks and added to some wilting spinach and a piece of chicory on its last legs; these he tipped into a bowl and dressed with a trickle of raspberry vinegar and a teaspoon of tarragon mustard, a liberal splash of olive oil.
He ate at the kitchen table, feeding Bud with oddments of the chicken, washing it all down with the rest of the beer. There was something nagging at him, the impression he had got of Robin Hidden that afternoon, and the idea of a man attractive and lively enough for Nancy Phelan to take willingly to her bed—two sides of a puzzle that refused to come together.
He cut the last of the chicken into two and shared them with the cat; licking his fingers, he went towards the phone.
“Hello, is that Dana Matthieson?” Hearing the voice, Resnick remembered a biggish woman, lots of hair, round faced. Not unlike Lynn, he supposed, but more so. Colorful clothes. “Yes, this is Inspector Resnick. We talked … I was just wondering, if you’re not too busy, if you could spare me a little of your time? Say, half an hour? … Yes, okay, thanks. Yes, I know where it is … Yes, bye.”
Dana had been ironing some several-days-old laundry until she had got bored and now blouses and cotton tops and brightly colored trousers lay across the backs and arms of chairs and in a loose pile on the ironing board. The television was on with the sound at a whisper, a film with James Be
lushi, a great many car chases, and at least one large dog. All five attempts at writing her letter of resignation to Andrew Clarke and Associates, Architects, had been torn in half and half again and were now spread, unfinished, over the glass-topped table.
She had been well into a bottle of Shingle Peak New Zealand Riesling when Resnick had phoned and there was just a glass left to offer him when the door bell rang. If it came to it, Dana thought, not that she could see why it should, she could always open another.
Resnick shook off his coat, exchanged a few pleasantries, and took the offered seat. Dana’s face was fuller than he had pictured it, swollen around the eyes, from drinking or crying he couldn’t tell.
She held the bottle out towards him and he shook his head, so she emptied the contents into her own glass.
“There’s no news,” she said, scarcely a question.
Resnick shook his head.
Dana poked at the hem of an orange top that was either half inside her belt or half out. “I didn’t think so or you would have said. On the phone.” She tilted the glass back and drank. “Unless the news was bad.”
He looked up at her steadily.
“Oh, God,” Dana said, “she’s dead, isn’t she? She’s got to be.”
Resnick reacted in time to catch the glass as it fell from her fingers, what was left of the wine splashing across his sleeve. With his other arm he steadied her, fingers spread high behind her waist so that she fell heavily against him. Eyes closed, her face was close to his; he could feel her breath on his skin.
“That’s not what I came here to say.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
Through the soft material of her clothing he could feel her breast against his chest, hip hard against his thigh.
“It’s all right.”
She opened her eyes. “Is it?”
He was more aware of her body than he wanted to be. “Yes,” he said.
Just a simple movement, the way she raised her mouth towards his. A moment when something tried to warn him this was wrong. Her breath was warm and she tasted of wine. Their teeth clashed and then they didn’t. He could scarcely believe the inside of her mouth was so soft. Gently, she took his bottom lip between her teeth.
Without Resnick knowing exactly how, they were on the floor beside the settee. The sleeve of his jacket, the cuff of his shirt were dark from the wine.
“I’ve ruined your clothes,” Dana said.
They managed to get his jacket half off; one at a time, she licked his fingers clean.
“I don’t know your name,” she said. “Your first name.”
He touched her breast and the nipple was so hard against the soft flesh of his finger that he gasped. Dana moved beneath him so that one of his legs was between her own. She took his face in her hands; she didn’t think he could have kissed anyone in a long while.
“Charlie,” he said.
“What?” Her voice soft and loud, tip of her tongue flicking the lobe of his ear.
“My name. Charlie.”
Face pressed into the softness of his shoulder, she began to laugh.
“What?”
“I can’t believe …”
“What?”
“I’m about to make love to a policeman called Charlie.”
He moved his leg and rolled away but she rolled with him and as she leaned over him her hair fell loose about her face and the laugh was now a smile.
“Charlie,” she said.
The look of shock was still there in his eyes.
Taking his hands again, she brought them to her breasts. “Careful,” she said. “Careful, Charlie. Take your time.”
“Charlie, are you all right?”
They were in Dana’s big bed beneath a duvet cover awash with purple and orange flowers. The room smelled of potpourri and sweat and sex and, faintly, Chanel N° 5. Dana had opened another bottle of wine and before bringing it back she had put music on the stereo; through the partly open door, Rod Stewart was singing “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”; inside Resnick’s head Ben Webster was playing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Our Love is Here to Stay.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just fine.” Aside from the obvious, he had no idea what was happening and for now he was happy to keep it that way.
“Quiet, though,” Dana said. He looked to see if she was smiling; she was.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Probably.”
Kissing him on the side of the mouth, she pushed herself off the bed and took her time about leaving the room. It amazed him that she was so unselfconscious about her body; when he had needed to go to the bathroom, he had fished his boxer shorts from the bottom of the bed with his toes and pulled them back on.
Dana had taken off Resnick’s watch because it was scratching her skin and now he lifted it from the bedside table: eleven-seventeen. Cupping both hands behind his head he closed his eyes.
Without meaning to, he dozed.
When he came to, Dana was walking back into the room with a tray containing two cold turkey wings, one leg, several slices of white breast meat, a chunk of Blue Stilton, plastic pots of hummous and taramasalata two-thirds empty, a small bunch of grapes browning against their stems, one mug of coffee, and another of orange and hibiscus tea.
“Budge up,” she grinned, settling the tray in the center of the bed and then sliding in behind it. “We haven’t,” she said, “a slice of bread or a biscuit in the place.”
Slowly, she slid her forefinger down into the pink taramasalata and brought it, laden, to his mouth.
“When you rang, asked to come round,” she said, “is this what you had in mind?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Honestly?”
“Of course not.”
Dana sipped her tea. “Why, of course?”
Resnick didn’t know how he was supposed to respond, what to say. “I just didn’t … I mean, I wouldn’t …”
“Wouldn’t?”
“No.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Clean in thought, word and deed, the policeman’s code.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“What you mean is, you didn’t find me attractive.”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t, or no, you did?”
“No, that isn’t what I mean.”
“What is then?”
To give himself time, he tried the coffee; it was almost certainly instant, certainly too weak. “I meant I knew you were an attractive woman, but I hadn’t thought about you in this … like this, I mean, sexually, and if I had I probably wouldn’t have called up like that and invited myself round so as to …”
“Why not?”
He put the mug back down. “I don’t know.”
“You’re involved with somebody else?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
Not knowing why this was so embarrassing, nonetheless he looked away. “It wouldn’t have seemed right.”
“Oh.”
“And besides …”
“Yes?”
“I’d never have thought you’d be interested.”
“In sex?”
“In me.”
“Oh, Charlie,” touching the side of his face with her hand.
“What?”
“Don’t you know you’re an attractive man?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
Smiling she let her hand slide around to the back of his neck as she leaned towards him for a kiss. “Of course,” she said, “that’s one of the most attractive things about you.” And then, “But you are pleased to be here?”
He didn’t have to answer; she could see that he was.
“Before it’s too late,” she said, “why don’t we just move this tray?”
She was stretching to set it on the floor when Resnick ran his hands down her back on to her buttocks, then, more slowly, out along her thighs. He heard her breathing change.<
br />
“Dana,” he said.
“Mmm?”
“Nothing.” He had just wanted to hear how it sounded when he spoke her name.
It was after one. The second mug of coffee had been stronger and black. The same Rod Stewart selection was playing, more quietly, in the next room. Resnick lay on his stomach, Dana with one leg and arm carelessly across him. This time she had been the one to fall asleep, but now she was sleepily awake.
“You know, I saw him once,” Resnick said.
“Who?”
“Rod Stewart. That’s who it is, isn’t it?”
“Mm.”
“Years ago. He was with the Steam Packet. Club down by the Trent. Almost couldn’t get through the doors.”
“Not surprising.”
Resnick smiled over his shoulder. “Could’ve counted on one hand, most likely, those who’d as much as heard of him then, never mind gone specially to see him. Long John Baldry, he was the one they were there for.”
Dana shook her head, she hadn’t heard of him.
“Him and Julie Driscoll, they were the main singers with the band. Stewart came on first, did a few numbers at the start of the set. Skinny kid with a harmonica. Rod the Mod, that’s what he was being called.”
“Good, though, was he?”
Resnick laughed. “Terrible.”
“Now you’re having me on.”
“No, I’m not. He was dreadful. Appalling.”
Dana’s face went serious. “You’re not, are you, Charlie?”
“What?”
“Having me on? Messing me around?”
Resnick pushed himself around, sat up. “I don’t think so.”
“Cause I’ve had enough of that. One night stands.”
She had turned away from him, shoulder slumped forward, and although he could neither see nor hear, Resnick knew she was crying. He didn’t know what to do; he left her alone and let her cry and then he moved close and kissed the top of her back, just below the dark line of her hair, and she turned into his arms.
“Oh God!” she said. “It doesn’t seem right. Doing this. Feeling this good. After what’s happened to Nancy. You know what I mean?”
Her tears had smeared what little makeup remained on her face.
“We don’t know,” Resnick said, “what’s happened to Nancy. Not for sure.”