Rough Treatment

by John Harvey

  “Who …?” gasped Harold, clinging to the handle of the bathroom door. “Who the fuck are you?”

  He was staring at a naked man, a few sad bubbles of foam hanging desolately from his erection. Behind him his wife was trying to submerge herself below the level of the water.

  Harold wasn’t tempted to have any truck with Sodom or Gomorrah, never mind Babylon. “Go to it, you bitch!” he encouraged. “Drown your fucking self!”

  “Harold Roy,” said Grabianski, extending a soapy hand. “Jerry Grabianski. Let’s go outside,” he said, grabbing at a towel. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Twenty

  Resnick pushed pieces of paper around his desk: Grabianski’s visits to the King’s Court, burglaries following the same MO—there was no denying the overlap. A call to Milton Keynes had established that while the industrial estate Grabianski had given as a business address existed, there was no textile factory on the site, nobody had heard of any Grabianski.

  Resnick laughed. Even now he couldn’t be certain what it was that had alerted him. A man steps into a fight when he could easily turn away; not a tearaway, some youngster looking for a buzz. This was a man close to Resnick’s age, choosing to go up against a violent gang and an ax and why? Because he liked the way the waitress had taken his order, brought his tea? Did Resnick believe that? Ah, I’ve always been too much of a romantic. And did it mean that any time a citizen did what the police encouraged citizens to do, their duty, they immediately came under suspicion? Friends say it’ll be my downfall. No, it had been something about Grabianski’s plausibility that had started a nerve somewhere beneath Resnick’s skull tapping. A man so used to dancing on thin ice, he’d long since ceased to look down and see how black and cold the water was beneath, how close.

  “Naylor!”

  The young DC was sitting at the computer keyboard, worrying away at the inside of his lip with his teeth. He knew there was a way of getting from one file to another so as to transfer information between them, but he was damned if he could remember the command. Last night he’d taken home the manual intending to work his way through it, but last night had been no better than the rest.

  “Naylor, are you wedded to that thing, or what?”

  “Sorry, sir.” He executed the command for save and hurried towards the inspector’s office.

  “How’s it going?” Resnick was back behind his desk, one leg crossed over the other.

  “Okay, sir.”

  “Supposed to save us time, those things.”

  “Oh they do, sir. No doubt about that. Just a matter of getting the hang of them.”

  “Sergeant Millington, he’s your man.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Took a course.”

  Naylor nodded. He’d heard all about it in the canteen: the drinking, the lecturer from Stirling University, all five-syllable words and nancy gestures, the detective inspector who went knocking on a woman sergeant’s door at two in the morning and found his superintendent had beaten him to it.

  “Here.” Resnick pushed the first of his pieces of paper in Naylor’s direction. “This man. Grabianski. He was at the King’s Court Hotel during the periods these”—another piece of paper—“burglaries were committed.”

  Naylor looked expectant.

  “I’ve had him checked through CRO, nothing. When I interviewed him about something else altogether, he spoke of having a partner, a business partner. Implied they traveled together, but it doesn’t look as if they stayed at the same hotel. According to Millington, this other man’s name is Grice.”

  Naylor groaned inwardly, seeing what was coming. “Right, sir. So check all hotels and guest houses, those dates, any man booking in alone.”

  “They arrived on the same dates, left on the same dates; this last time, they pulled out early, after three days.”

  “Right, sir.” It was fine; a whole lot better than he’d feared. Naylor left and went back into the main office. He wondered whether he should phone Debbie and what the chances were that he’d catch her at the wrong moment, in the middle of changing the baby, mixing her feed, even—blissfully—sleeping. He sat back at the keyboard and pushed the disk into place; the odds of finding this particular needle in a haystack were more in his favor.

  Strange, Resnick was thinking, waiting at the sandwich counter, the way bits and pieces drifted into your mind, no clear reason. What he was recalling then, an afternoon, would have been late fifties, he’d been pally with this lad, family had friends with a place in the country. Rare back then, not a second home exactly, above an hour’s drive from London, north-west. It had been a farm, the name on the gate still, Lower Brook Farm, white letters fading into graying wood that was mottled over with moss. God! He’d been shy then. A group of village girls, chalking on the wall beside the local shop, hanging from the ends of open gates. “Charlie! C’m here, Charlie!” This time, walking down the lane alone, his friend off somewhere else, running errands, one girl had fallen into step beside him. Pat. Patricia. She was taller than him, looked older, but that didn’t mean she was. “Can you, you know, do it yet?” He could still remember how his ears had burned, how he had wanted to run away. Sitting on the chipped white railing round the bridge, she had leaned her face into his and kissed him; rested, so sparingly he still wondered if it had been true, her hand between his legs. “Come on, then, Charlie,” she had laughed, mockingly. “Half a crown over the hedge!”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” said the young man behind the counter.

  “That’s okay.”

  Resnick passed over a five-pound note and waited for his change. Brown bag in hand, he left the deli and cut back left, past a row of fireplaces stripped from town-down houses and about to be rehabilitated into the homes of the tastefully well-to-do. Waiting for the lights to change at the main road, he saw Skelton, smart in track suit, blue-and-white Reeboks on his feet, jog down the station steps and begin his run away from the city, stride already beginning to lengthen.

  In the lobby he recognized Mackenzie’s face straight off, although it took him a few moments to remember where from. What was Harold Roy’s producer doing there? Come to that, who had given him a thick lip?

  “You might be better off going to central station,” the uniformed officer at reception was saying.

  “I don’t have time for that. This is the nearest to the studio. This is where I am. Okay?”

  “Everything all right?” Resnick asked, leaning his head towards the reinforced glass.

  “This gentleman wishes to lodge a complaint, sir. Assault.”

  “You were mugged?” Resnick said to Mackenzie.

  The producer scowled. “More like a dispute at his place of employment, sir,” said the officer.

  “Not Harold Roy?” said Resnick.

  Mackenzie assumed the expression of someone who’d been punched a second time, this one from behind. “You know that bastard?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “He’s blown his marbles. Utterly. Punched me in the face in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation, not the least provocation, and then walks out of the studio in the middle of a scene. I’m telling you, that man wants psychiatric help; that man needs hospitalization; that man needs locking up.”

  “Carry on,” said Resnick to the officer. “You might let me see a copy when you’re through.”

  He hadn’t got his sandwich out from its white waxed paper before Millington was knocking on his door. “Don’t let me interrupt you, sir.”

  Resnick had no such intention. Millington watched the inspector push several wayward slices of dill pickle back between the salad and the chopped liver before taking the first bite.

  “Graham?”

  “That Olds woman, sir, never thought I’d be grateful to have her around.” Resnick knew the feeling. “Don’t know how she’s done it, but somehow Chao and his lad are in there shaking hands, lot of bowing and smiling, sorry things became a little heated, so sorry. Like the end of
a Charlie Chan movie, sir.”

  Quite often, when Millington had been on early shift, he had found himself sitting down with one or other of his kids, eating crisps while they drank tea and watched the late afternoon film on TV. Charlie Chan in the City of Darkness, Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (they’d seen that one at least twice), Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum. Twenty-seven of them there were, all told; his son had looked it up in the library down on Angel Row.

  “No charges, Graham?”

  “Only that bunch of yobos. Affray, aggravated assault, carrying a dangerous weapon with intent. He must have paid them a lot, cause they’re not budging from their story.”

  “Frustrating,” Resnick suggested.

  “Not really, sir,” Millington shook his head. “Glad to see the back of them.”

  Resnick bit into his sandwich again and a blob of gray-brown chicken liver landed on his blotter. If I ate like that, Millington thought, the wife would make me sit out in the garage.

  “This man Grice,” Resnick said.

  “The one from the restaurant? Grabianski’s mate.”

  “Didn’t get involved in the fighting, did he?”

  “Didn’t even hold his coat.”

  “Careful, then?”

  “More than that, sir, now you mention it. More—cagey, I’d say.”

  Resnick was regretting not bringing back a slice of treacle tart. Sugar highs might be artificial, but when you were still eating your lunch and it was tea-time, anything that did the trick was a bonus.

  “You haven’t forgotten Fossey, Graham?”

  “Tomorrow, sir. Now this other business is sorted.” Resnick nodded dismissively; Millington turned to go. “Let’s see about pulling Lynn out of the shopping center, shall we? Aside from what it’s likely doing to her mind, she hangs around there much longer she’s going to be spotted for what she is.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  The door had hardly closed when the phone rang. Picking it up, Resnick thought, damn, it’s Jeff Harrison, why haven’t I taken him up on that drink? But the accent was from the other side of the world.

  “It isn’t exactly good news, I’m afraid,” said Claire Millinder.

  Resnick made a face and listened.

  “I nearly, so very nearly, came close to a sale this morning. That family I told you about. Loved the size of the rooms, the garden, everything.”

  “What didn’t they like?”

  “It was on the wrong side of the city.”

  “Jesus, what are the buses for? Haven’t they got a car?”

  “Schools, that’s the thing. One kid in secondary, another in the last year of primary, little girl about to graduate from the infants come September. Not that she’s got anything against ethnic minorities, the mother said, but if her sweetheart was outnumbered by Asians eight to one, what sort of a start was she going to get?”

  “I hope you told her,” Resnick said with more than a trace of anger.

  “I smiled my nice professional smile and told her, should they reconsider, be sure to call me.”

  “But she won’t.”

  A pause. “No.”

  Resnick glanced at his watch. “Okay. Thanks for keeping me in the picture.”

  “No problem. Look … it may be nothing, I mean, you may not like it, but I’ve got this idea.”

  “About the house.”

  “Of course.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “See, I’d rather talk to you about it, you know, face to face so to speak.”

  Resnick didn’t say a thing.

  “You’re not in this evening, I suppose?”

  Charlie. Oh, Charlie! “Yes,” he said, “later.”

  “Around nine?”

  “Fine.”

  “Great. Red or white? I’ll bring a bottle.”

  “I thought this was …”

  “Some propositions, they’re best made when you’re not quite sober.”

  “Look …”

  “Joke. Joke. Hey, I was joking, okay?” “Yes. Sure.”

  “But I will bring the wine. It’s good to unwind after a long day, don’t you think?”

  When Lynn Kellogg finally got back to the station and wrote up her report of another largely wasted day, her stomach was beginning to send warning signals that must have been audible twenty yards away.

  She was halfway along the canteen queue when she noticed Kevin Naylor. He was sitting at a corner table, close against the far wall. He was slumped well forward, one arm hanging down towards the floor; his face was in his bread and butter and a lock of his hair curling into his soup.

  Twenty-one

  Lynn Kellogg’s flat was in the old Lace Market area of the city: finely proportioned Victorian factories built by philanthropic entrepreneurs who thoughtfully provided chapels on the premises. A little uplift for the soul before a sixteen-hour day. Most of these tall brick buildings were still in existence and were gradually being restored, at least to a state of better repair. There were also a number of car parks and, angled between three of these, the housing-association development where Lynn lived.

  She led Naylor across the interior courtyard and up the stairs towards the first floor. The post inside the door was the usual collection of unwanted solicitations, glossy offers to lend her money; the usual letter from her mother, Thetford postmark, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days she went shopping.

  “Take off your coat, Kevin. I’ll put the kettle on.”

  The living room was small, not poky, a haven for pot plants and paperback books left face down and open, a uniform shirt and a towel draped over the radiator.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  “Whatever’s easiest.”

  “Kevin.”

  “Tea.”

  “Coffee might keep you awake better.”

  “Okay, then. Coffee.”

  By the time she carried the mugs through from the kitchen, he was keeled over in the high-backed armchair she had bought at the auction by Sneinton Market, asleep.

  The best part of an hour to fill, Harold Roy had wandered into a wine bar in Hockley. All he knew was that he wanted somewhere quiet to sit, a couple more drinks, something, maybe, to eat; think things through. What he was going to say.

  It wasn’t the place.

  The lighting was right, subdued enough to give the table candles relevance; neither was it crowded. But the music was amplified to the point of rendering conversation difficult, meditation impossible. He made a brief pretence of looking for somebody who wasn’t there and left. In—what?—he checked his watch—fifty minutes now he would be face to face with Alan Stafford.

  “Look, Alan, Alan, the way I see it is this …”

  He went into a corner pub, ordered a large vodka and tonic, yes, thanks, ice and lemon (there didn’t seem to be any point in asking for fresh lime), and sat on a long bench-seat towards the fire. There was a smattering of other drinkers, a few kids who looked like they might be students, a man in a brown three-piece suit talking earnestly to somebody else’s wife, a dog roaming from table to table in search of crisps. Retriever, Labrador, he could never tell the difference.

  His first reactions to Maria’s infidelity had been expected and unthinking: anger, disillusion, shock, rage. Hours later he was beginning to see it in a different light. After all, if someone else wanted to get his jollies humping that tired old body, where did that leave him except off that particular hook? And what was so great about what they had going for them that it was worth keeping together, even regretting? The way to go, the light at the end of what had seemed an infinitesimally long tunnel, let him take her off his hands, see what waking up with the back of that pushed up against you every morning did for romance. Let him. This guy. This Grabianski.

  Extraordinary.

  Extraordinary fellow.

  Like his suggestion about what Harold now realized was a mutual problem. Knowing that, somehow, made Harold feel stronger; gave him a sense of, almost, solidarity. He’d been worried about meeting Staf
ford, afraid the whole situation might turn against him, turn nasty. Whatever else, Harold hadn’t forgotten the knife that had been in Stafford’s hand. But, as Grabianski had pointed out, when it came down to it, what Alan Stafford was was a businessman. And this was business. Nothing personal. Business.

  He looked at his glass, surprised to find it empty.

  On the way back to the bar he stooped down and patted the dog. He hadn’t as much as stroked a cat since he didn’t know when. He was feeling good: liberated. He bought another large vodka and a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps to share with his new-found friend.

  Lynn couldn’t put it off any longer. Kevin was still sleeping and she had already ironed her shirt, sorted through the next day’s washing, cleaned the top of the gas cooker, dusted—what was she doing?—the spaces on the kitchen shelves. Dear Lynnie, it would start, the last thing I want to do is moan, it isn’t as though you haven’t enough on your own plate, I realize that…

  But …

  But since her aunt had moved to Diss, it wasn’t as though there was anyone close she could talk to; since that last time at the doctor’s nothing she did or took seemed to rid her of those pains at the top of her head which came and went, some of them, Lynnie love, like a red-hot poker pressing against the inside of my skull, you wouldn’t believe, and there wasn’t anything she could do other than go and sit in the dark until they were over.

  Lynn used the handle of a spoon to tear along the top of the envelope, her mother’s less-than-steady writing, blue Bic Biro on Woolworth paper.

  Dear Lynnie …

  She cast a glance at Kevin Naylor, possibly the longest undisturbed sleep he’d had in weeks. It was, she realized, the first time a man had been in her flat since the one she had lived with had up and pedaled away. Somewhere in the back of a drawer there was a puncture outfit he’d left in his haste and which she had been meaning to throw out with the rubbish, but somehow had failed to get round to.

  Lynnie, it’s your father. Ever since he had to slaughter all those birds, the whole twelve hundred …

  She could picture him, a brittle-boned man in a plastic raincoat and wellington boots, back and forth between hen houses, pushing at the ground with his stick.