Cutting Edge

by John Harvey

  That was autumn, not the poncey crap Yeats or Keats or whoever reckoned it to be. And he’d seen that other soft bastard, not Keats or Yeats, six foot under the pair of them, dead from the neck down now as well as up, not them but Quentin, that bloody teacher, the one who had them all learning that gobbledegook, standing up and reading it out. Clearly, clearly, what are you mumbling into your boots for? That’s it, Mark, you read it for us. Good and strong. Wonderful, Divine! Smirking at his own stupid joke, rest of the kids sniggering and making faces, bending their hands at him like he was some kind of poofter. As if it wasn’t hard enough, going through school with a name like Divine, without some clever-clever bastard taking the piss out of him in front of everyone.

  Still, he’d seen him, Quentin, just the other week, standing in line at the post office, waiting to get his old-age pension most likely, poor old sod with one leg locked like he had bad arthritis and dandruff spread over the back of his jacket as though someone had been at his scalp with a cheese grater. Given Divine a lot of satisfaction that had, thinking about him shuffling off home to read some crap about getting old, dying.

  It still brought a smile to his face now, signaling right going round Canning Circus, weather forecast on the radio, five to seven driving into the station for the early shift.

  Divine spun the wheel hard, loosening his grip as it swung back, straightening before turning again, left this time, across the pavement and into the car park. One good thing about coming in at this time, always plenty of room. He grabbed his jacket from the rear seat and locked the car door. The only good thing, just about. The night’s files to sort through, prisoners in and out, messages to be arranged into two sets, national and local, all of that so that the DI didn’t stand there with his mouth gaping open when he took the briefing at eight.

  Like as not there’d been the usual rash of burglaries in the small hours and that would account for the best part of his day, his responsibility, trying to have patience with some stupid cow who left the kitchen window open to let the air circulate and didn’t reckon on her new video and CD player being put back into circulation at the same time.

  And—pushing open the door past the custody sergeant’s office, the corridor leading to the cells—on top of all that, he had to make the sodding tea!

  Not this particular morning.

  “I’ve mashed already.”

  Bloody hell! What was he doing here? Hadn’t noticed his car downstairs. Resnick sitting at one of the desks in the middle of the CID room, not even in his own office, chair pushed back on two legs and reading the paper. He wasn’t supposed to be here for half an hour yet.

  “You can pour us a mug if you like. Milk, not too much, no sugar. Couple of juicy break-ins waiting for you, by the look of it. Just carry on as if I wasn’t here.”

  Resnick turned another page of the Independent, dreading the obituaries these days, always another film star you’d lusted over in your youth, another musician you’d heard and now would never get to see. DC Divine walked past him, draped his jacket over the back of his chair and turned the corner to where the teapot was waiting.

  Well short of nine the CID briefing was over and Resnick was back in his office, a partitioned rectangle with rotas pinned behind the desk and filing cabinets alongside. A number of the other officers were at their desks, finishing up paperwork before setting off. Mark Divine was already out knocking on doors, ringing bells, examining broken catches, faulty locks, standing straight-faced as homeowners practiced on him the exaggerated claims they would foist on their insurance companies by first-class post. Diptak Patel, thermos flask, telephoto lens, Milky Ways, and binoculars, was behind the wheel of a stationary Fiesta, watching a clothing warehouse on the Glaisdale Park Industrial Estate. His highlighted copy of Benyon’s A Tale of Failure: Race and Policing was in the glove compartment for when this, the third successive day of obs, became too boring.

  Lynn Kellogg, hair cut newly short and sporting a certain amount of shine from a henna rinse, was allowing Karen Archer an extra half-hour’s rest before calling to ask questions about last night. Kevin Naylor stood at the back of the lift making its way up to the ward where Tim Fletcher was now a patient; the last time he’d been in the hospital had been when Debbie had been giving birth and if he were silent enough, he could still hear her voice as she screamed for Entonox, an epidural, anything to stop the pain.

  Resnick’s DS, Graham Millington, knocked on his door before leaving for a liaison meeting with officers from the West Midlands. A spate of organized thefts of cigarettes and liquor, lorries hijacked or broken into at service areas where they had been parked, had spread from the West Midlands to the East and back again.

  “If this takes as long as it might, sir, OK if I nip straight home? Wife’s got her Spanish class, starting tonight.”

  “Thought it was Russian, Graham?” said Resnick, looking up.

  “New term, sir. Thought she’d have a go at something different.”

  Resnick nodded. “Right. Ring in if that’s what you’re going to do. You can fill me in in the morning.”

  He watched through the glass of the door as Graham Millington automatically adjusted his tie and gave a quick downward tug at the front of his jacket. If he wasn’t necessarily going to be the brightest over at Walsall, at least he could be the best pressed. Cleanliness and godliness: a drawer full of perfectly folded shirts and seven pairs of well-buffed shoes set you right on the road to heaven. Millington’s father had worked all his life for Home Brothers and at weekends been a lay preacher for the Wesleyan Methodists.

  Resnick checked his watch and collected his files. If he failed to knock on the superintendent’s door by a minute short of nine Jack Skelton would count him as late.

  “Charlie. Maurice.”

  Skelton nodded at Resnick and the uniformed inspector in charge, Maurice Wainwright, recently down from Rotherham and still with a little coal dust behind the ears.

  “Have a seat.”

  While Wainwright was making his report, Resnick kept his attention on the superintendent’s face. Since Skelton’s daughter had run wild not so many months back, shoplifting, truanting, acquiring a taste for Ecstasy, the lines around his eyes had bitten tighter, the eyes themselves more ready to flinch. A man who no longer knew where the next blow was coming from. Resnick had wanted to talk to him about it, allow the senior man the chance to unburden himself, if that were what he wanted. But Jack Skelton kept offers of help and friendship at a careful arm’s length; his response to the rupture of a life that had seemed so symmetrical was to withdraw further, redraw the parameters so that they seemed even more precise, more perfect.

  “How’s the house-hunting coming along, Maurice?” Skelton asked, the inspector’s report over.

  “Couple of possibles, sir. Wife’s coming down for a look at weekend.”

  Skelton pressed together the tips of his spread fingers. “Sort it soon, Maurice. Down here with you, that’s where they should be.”

  Wainwright glanced across at Resnick. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “So, Charlie,” said Skelton, replacing one sheet of paper square on his blotter with another. “This business at the hospital, doesn’t look like your ordinary mugging?”

  “Had nigh on fifty pounds on him, small wallet in his back pocket. One of those personal stereos. Credit cards. None of it taken.”

  “Lads out for a spot of bother, then, drunk. Lord knows they need little enough reason, nowadays. Wrong place at the wrong time, wrong face, that’s enough.”

  “Possible, sir. You do get them using the bridge on the way back from the city. Anyone who’d tried a couple of clubs after the pubs’d chucked out and found themselves turned away, they might have ended up there around that time.”

  “No reports?”

  “Nothing obvious, sir. I’m getting it double-checked.”

  “We know there was more than one assailant?” asked Wainwright.

  Skelton shook his head. “We know nothing. Ex
cept that he was badly cut, lost a lot of blood. Blow or blows to the head. More than one looks the most likely, either that or someone pretty strong and fit.”

  “And presumably not pissed out of his socks,” Wainwright said.

  “Someone with a reason, then, Charlie,” said Skelton. “Motivation other than robbery, if we can leave that aside.” The superintendent uncapped his fountain pen, made a quick, neat notation and screwed the top back into place.

  “Hopefully we’ll be able to talk to the victim this morning, sir. Any luck, he’ll be able to tell us something. And we’re having a word with the girl who found him.”

  “Chance, was that?”

  “Girlfriend, sir. On her way to meet him, apparently.”

  “Funny time of night.”

  “Funny hours.”

  “Worse than ours,” said Wainwright.

  “It would be useful if we found the weapon,” said Skelton. “Attack like that, especially not premeditated, likely to have thrown it.”

  “Maurice has sent a couple of men out,” said Resnick, with a nod of acknowledgment in Wainwright’s direction. “Pretty wide verges either side of the bridge, front of the hospital to one side and all that warren of university buildings on the other. A lot to search.”

  Skelton relaxed his frown sufficiently to sigh. “As you say, Charlie, the poor bugger on the receiving end, he’s our best hope.”

  A more superstitious man than Resnick would have been crossing his fingers; touching wood.

  Since being carried into the hospital in the middle of the previous night, Tim Fletcher had encountered a considerable amount of hospital practice from the receiving end. After some cutting away of clothing, preliminary cleaning of the worst affected areas—right leg, left arm, face and neck, both hands—pressure bandages had been applied in an attempt to staunch further bleeding. A drip had been set up to replace the lost blood with plasma expanders. Those were the essential emergency procedures: the ones which kept him alive.

  The casualty officer injected lignocaine into the wounds before beginning the careful, laborious process of stitching them up. Outside, in the corridor, sitting in wheelchairs, chairs, slumped over crutches or girlfriends’ shoulders, stretched across the floor, the procession of those waiting for surgery grew. Traffic accidents, disco brawls, teenage bravado, domestic misunderstandings. The casualty officer, conscious of this, took his time nevertheless. As a fellow doctor, Tim Fletcher merited his best attentions—and trained professionals were not so thick upon the ground their potential could be easily wasted. The officer took especial care with Fletcher’s hands.

  After crossmatching his blood, the plasma was followed up by two units of packed cells. Fletcher, who seemed to have been shifting uneasily in and out of consciousness for hours, was given injections of intramuscular pethidine to help control his pain.

  When Kevin Naylor stepped, somewhat self-consciously, on to the ward, Fletcher was lying in a side room, a single bed with its attendant drip attached to the back of his arm. One sleeve of the pajama jacket he had been given had been cut to allow for bandages, which also swathed his hands and partially masked his face. When Naylor leaned over him, one of Tim Fletcher’s eyelids twitched sharply, as if in response to something dreamed or remembered.

  “Are you a relative?”

  The nurse looked West Indian, though her accent was local enough, Midlands born and bred. Her hat was pinned none too securely to thickly curled hair and the blue of her uniform lent a gleam to her skin.

  “Relative, are you?”

  Naylor realized that he hadn’t answered. “Kevin Naylor,” he said. “CID.”

  “Sister know you’re here?”

  Naylor shook his head. “I phoned from the station, make sure it was okay to come. Not sure who I spoke to.”

  The nurse moved alongside him, glancing down. “I don’t know how much sense you’ll get out of him, sedated to the eyeballs. Still, he’ll have to be woken soon for his obs. Every half hour.”

  Turning back, she saw a smile crossing Naylor’s face. “What’re you laughing at?”

  “Obs.”

  “Observation. What about it?”

  “We call it that as well.”

  “Same thing, is it then?”

  “Similar.”

  The nurse grinned: “If you want to know your temperature, ask a policeman.”

  Naylor looked back towards the bed; maybe he’d be better leaving, trying again later.

  “I’ll let Sister know you’re here,” the nurse said, heading back on to the main ward.

  Tim Fletcher had been aware of various bodies around him during the preceding eight hours; pale faces, white or blue uniforms. Voices that were hushed to hide their urgency. In the midst of it all a single shout, sharp and clear. At one point he had been certain that Sarah Leonard had been standing there in her staff nurse’s uniform, smiling down at him, telling him to rest, be assured it would be all right. But when he had tried to speak her name she had disappeared. And Karen. He had not seen Karen, awake or sleeping.

  This time there was a young man, twenty-three or -four, wearing a pale blue shirt, a dark check jacket, dark blue tie. Brown hair that didn’t seem to be obeying any rules. Doctor? No, he didn’t think he was a doctor.

  “Detective Constable Naylor,” said the man, younger than Fletcher himself though not looking it—except now, except today. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  Fletcher would have loved to have answers. The why and the who of it. Especially the who. All he knew for certain, it had been sudden, unexpected; he had been frightened, hurt. He remembered a black sweater, gloves, a balaclava that covered all of the head save for the eyes and mouth.

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  “The eyes?”

  “Balaclava.”

  “And the eyes?”

  Fletcher thought about it, tried to formulate a picture. Identikit, isn’t that what they call them? “Blue,” he said, almost as much a question as an answer.

  “You’re not sure?”

  Fletcher shook his head; just a little. It hurt.

  “It could be important.”

  “Blue.”

  “For certain?”

  “No.”

  “But …”

  “As far as I know, as far as I can remember … blue.”

  “Dr. Fletcher,” said the nurse, “if I can just put this under your arm?”

  Naylor watched as the nurse slid the thermometer into the pit of Fletcher’s bandaged arm and wrapped a cuff about the other, inflating it prior to checking his blood pressure.

  “Go ahead,” she said to Naylor. “Don’t mind me.”

  “The weapon,” Naylor asked, glancing at his notebook, “did you see what it was?”

  “I felt it,” Fletcher answered.

  The nurse continued to pump up the rubber balloon, inflating the cuff.

  “Then you didn’t see it?” Naylor persisted.

  Downward sweep of the blade, illuminated in a fast curve of orange light.

  “Not clearly.”

  “Was it a knife?”

  “It could have been.”

  “An open blade?”

  Flinching, Fletcher nodded.

  “Can you remember how long?”

  “No, I … No, I can’t be certain.”

  “This long?” Naylor held his Biro before Fletcher’s face, tight between the tip of his middle finger and the ball of his thumb.

  “Blood pressure’s fine.”

  Fletcher closed his eyes.

  The nurse eased the thermometer out from beneath his arm and held it against the light. “Well?” she said, glancing down towards Naylor with a half-grin.

  “Well, what?”

  “Temperature, what d’you think?”

  “Look,” said Naylor, a touch of exasperation.

  “Thirty-seven point eight.”

  “Smaller,” said Fletcher weakly, opening his eyes.

  “
You’re doing fine,” the nurse said, touching his shoulder lightly, almost a squeeze. “Soon be up and about. Dancing.” She looked at Naylor. “The doctor here, he’s a great dancer”

  “It was smaller,” Fletcher said again, an effort to breathe now, an effort to talk. “Smaller. Like a scalpel.”

  Six

  Lynnie love, I know your job keeps you awful busy, but it do seem such a long time since your dad and me seen you. Try and come home, even if it’s just for a couple of days. That’d mean a lot to your dad specially. I worry about him, Lynnie, I do. More and more into himself he’s getting. Depressed. Sometimes it’s all I can do to get him to talk, sit down to his supper. Make an effort, there’s a love.

  Her mother’s words jostled inside Lynn Kellogg’s head as she crossed University Boulevard, dark green of the rhododendron bushes at her back. Ahead of her was the brighter green of the Science Park, technology disguised as an oversized child’s toy. Lynn had a friend she’d gone through school with, bright, but not much more intelligent than Lynn herself. “My God! You can’t be serious? The police? Whatever d’you want to throw your life away like that for?” The friend had gone to Cambridge Poly, got interested in computers, now she was earning thirty thousand a year plus, living with a zoologist in a converted windmill outside Ely.

  Thrown her life away, is that what Lynn had done? She didn’t think so, glad most of the time that she was in the job, enjoying it, something more worthwhile maybe than writing software programs to record the fertility and sexing of Rhode Island Reds. What did it matter, what other people thought? The neighbors in her block of housing association flats, who only spoke to her if someone had been tampering with their locks, trying to break into their parked car. Patients in the surgery, where Lynn was waiting for her check-up and a new supply of pills; nudging one another, staring, know what she is, don’t you? The way most men she spoke to in a bar or pub would evaporate at the mention of what she did, as if by magic.