Rough Treatment (8 page)

Grabianski had a time-share in a Forestry Commission cabin in the Scottish Highlands and one of the smaller houses in Macclesfield, a location that put him within easy each of both the Peaks and the Pennines. Each year he traveled overseas with the Ramblers Association—so far, he had walked Turkey, Crete, the Himalayas, New Zealand and was working himself up to Peru.

They were two men with little or nothing in common, aside from a shared trade or craft. They didn’t like one another, but then they didn’t have to. What they both were was careful. Contacts they cultivated assiduously; usually Grabianski softened them up and then Grice took over and kept their spirits keen and their pockets never quite full enough. Cities they treated as provident farmers did their fields—every so often, they were left to lie fallow.

“I’ve been thinking about this kilo,” Grice said.

“Mm?”

“I think we’ll give them the chance to buy it back.”

Resnick ate his last piece of pastrami and washed it down with a mouthful of cold tea. He could see Naylor moving around in the outer office and knew he should call him in and have a talk—trouble with sleeping? Debbie still experiencing difficulties? Not to worry, happens to the best regulated of families. But if you’d like to talk about it …

Resnick knew that that was just about the last thing, right then, he wanted to do. He picked up Millington’s preliminary report and scanned it through. The man he was interviewing owned several restaurants and had a controlling share in others. His youngest son had incurred his wrath by marrying into a local family, non-Chinese, and opening his own restaurant and takeaway.

That had been three weeks ago. Since then there had been broken windows and worse. The fire officer seemed in no doubt that when the son’s new premises had flared up it had been arson. A large container of cooking oil had been maneuvered into the cellar and set alight; the result had been charred girders and melted chopsticks. Only because the place had been closed and the residents of the upstairs flat on their way back from a party had there been no fatalities.

Resnick hoped the young man had had time to obtain sufficient insurance.

Insurance.

He screwed paper and crumbs into a ball and bounced them off the rim of the waste bin on to the floor.

“Patel,” he called from the door.

“Sir?”

“Here a minute.”

There was Naylor, glancing across at him from above his typewriter, adding to the guilt.

“Patel,” Resnick said, “get yourself down to Jeff Harrison’s nick. Have a word with a young PC, Featherstone. He went out to investigate a burglary, Harold and Maria Roy. In through the back, out the front. Professional job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I had a word with the woman; what she told me and what she told Featherstone don’t seem to tie up. Shake the inconsistencies around a little, talk to her. See if you think she’s just confused or if she’s lying.”

“This will be all right, sir? With Inspector Harrison?”

“Help ourselves, he said. Well, in as many words. It’s been okayed from on high, so we’re covered. Which brings me to the other thing—find out some more about her insurance. Who’s the policy with? Were they recommended? She suggested they took over the insurance from the house owners, but that may not be accurate. If she wants to show you papers, let her. And perhaps you can encourage her to remember who it was came around and gave them a quotation to get their security updated.”

“That’s all, sir?”

With some of the others, Resnick might have pegged it as facetiousness. “For the present,” he said and then, because there was no way of avoiding it, he invited Naylor into his office.

The two men looked at one another with less than ease, Resnick having a strong sense of Naylor wanting to talk to someone, needing to, but sensed that it wasn’t himself.

“How’s Debbie?” Resnick asked.

“Oh,” Naylor shifted his feet awkwardly, “fine. She’s fine. She …”

“Lot of broken nights.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Strain on both of you.”

Naylor stood and shuffled his feet; the collar of his shirt was suddenly too tight. One hundred and one places you would rather be than here.

“You’re getting some help?”

Naylor’s eyes panicked.

“There must be somebody … I don’t know, district nurse …”

“Health visitor. Yes, sir. She comes round every so often, though Debbie says she doesn’t know what for.” Three times out of four, Debbie kept the door locked and pretended there was nobody home, but he wasn’t telling Resnick that.

“How about the doctor? Any use?”

“Not a lot, sir. Debbie says …”

Resnick switched off. What was that old game he’d played at school? Simon says this, Simon says that, whatever it might be, no matter how daft, that was what you did and fast. No questions asked. He glanced up at Naylor, who seemed to have finished.

“You know, we could arrange some counseling, from this end. If it’s interfering with your work.” Resnick could see from the look in the young DC’s eyes that he’d as well have suggested something bizarre in the way of sexual practices. “If you wanted to talk things through, the pair of you, with some professional—it’s available, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Anxious to be away.

“All right, Kevin.”

Out of there like the proverbial clockwork rabbit. Resnick shook his head, gave himself a few moments to ponder whether he should have taken a place on that course in man-management, then picked up the phone and dialed Midlands TV.

“Mr. Roy is out on location,” announced a voice like high-gloss makeup. “I can put you through to the production secretary if you wish.”

Resnick wished.

“Engaged, will you hold?”

Resnick held.

Seven

Harold Roy’s father had named him after a bandleader, who specialized in comic songs and second-rate, searing clarinet. After thirteen years of alternately bullying or buying young Harold into spending his evenings and weekends practicing a number of instruments—piano, violin, clarinet (of course), even, for a particularly uncomfortable three months, the tuba—he had given in. His son would never emulate his namesake: he would not be a musician. Even Harold’s one attempt at a comic song—wearing a gingham tablecloth to entertain a Christmas gathering with “I’m Just a Girl who Can’t Say No”—had ended in failure. There had been muted applause and an aunt saying loudly, “Can’t carry a tune for his life, bless him!”

Aware of disappointing his parents and seeking to make amends, Harold had shown an interest in drama school. Sure enough, they had clapped their hands and given him all the encouragement he had needed. That is to say, money in his bank account and a tilting end-terraced house on the borders of Lewisham and New Cross.

Almost from the first, Harold knew that he had made a mistake. Classes in improvisation reduced him to a stuttering wreck; movement and dance brought back all those afternoons wasted with the metronome, only this time it was his feet and not his fingers that refused to obey the rhythm. A one-line part as an attendant lord in
Macbeth
made it clear to him that the only person who survived the entire experience without humiliation was the director.

So a career was born.

Harold knew he could ill afford to be proud and he espoused those projects no one else considered. A black comedy involving a legless man trapped in a cellar with twelve radios, each tuned to different stations; an autobiographical piece by a fiery working-class lad whose mother was a drudge, whose father was dying from pneumoconiosis and whose sister was selling herself on the streets of Cardiff; a wordless epic, thirteen hours with intervals, about Vietnamese peasants, for which the props included twenty-seven hoes and a gallon bucket of pigs’ blood nightly.

Well, this was the sixties and Harold Roy knew better than to look back. Before the bubble burst he went into rep. Salisbury, Lancaster, Derby;
Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, Charley’s Aunt.
For every four Agatha Christies he put on a John Osborne revival.

This was how he met Maria. Hard-bitten, attractive, opinionated, coldly sexy, Maria was perfect as the best friend who encouraged Jimmy Porter’s wife to leave him and then stays on to share his bed and do his ironing. When the curtain rises for the second act, she is in her slip at the ironing board and Harold took to secreting little notes between the folds of the creased shirts. Maria found this charming; she was at a loose end and, in Chester, Harold seemed the acme of sophistication. She hitched her wagon to someone she thought was going to make her a star and all he did was make her pregnant.

All right, Maria thought, coming round from the anesthetic, the least you can do is make money.

Harold’s first work in television was directing live drama for Granada. He waved his arms a lot, called actors of any sex “love”; most importantly, he got on first-name terms with the crew and saw to it that the cameramen were never in need of a drink after the unit had wrapped. He hung an expensive lens from his neck and was forever squinting through it, always looking for angles. He said yes to everything, no to nothing, he was always in work. His agent put him up for the latest Dennis Potter, the new John Mortimer; what he got was another
Emmerdale Farm,
an
Eastenders,
a
Grange Hill.

Now he was working on a series for Midlands Television about a working-class family who win a fortune on the pools.

Dividends.

Resnick parked his car in the forecourt of the pub, hoping that his cats would forgive him for not calling home first to feed them. But he didn’t think this would take very long. A double-decker bus, fitted out with narrow tables between the seats, stood alongside the location catering van. The remnants of the evening’s salads clung to the edges of large bowls; trays of fruit and cheese stood close to urns of tea and coffee. Jam roly-poly said the board by the serving hatch, bread-and-butter pudding. There was the unmistakable smell of chip fat over everything.

Resnick tapped on the window of a transit van bearing the Midlands TV logo. The driver lifted the open pages of the
Sun
from his face and wound the window down.

“Harold Roy,” Resnick said. “I’m looking for him.”

There was something familiar about the driver, but he couldn’t place what it was.

The man squinted out towards the close streets of the Broxtowe Estate. “In there.”

“Thanks,” said Resnick and waited while the window was raised and the newspaper returned to its previous position. He stepped over the low fencing and across the main road. The constable in his uniform overcoat, diverting traffic, recognized Resnick by sight and stepped clear of the four or five small children who were hanging round him.

“Evening, sir. Didn’t know you were out this way.”

“I’m not.”

“Right, sir.”

“Hope they’re paying your overtime for this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Resnick left him entertaining his kindergarten. The oldest of them wasn’t more than ten and most would be there until the pubs had closed.

Two more vans were parked at the curb, inside which the artists played cards, filled in crosswords, read, waited their calls. Thick cables ran to and from a third van, close to the corner. Arc lights had been set up on stands and just outside their beam, groups of men stood around in donkey jackets, rubbing their gloved hands together, smoking. Resnick was reminded of photographs he’d seen of the general strike.

A young woman wearing a harassed expression and a violent blue bomber jacket bounced past Resnick in red baseball boots with white stars at their sides. Embroidered on to the center of the jacket’s back was a fist with the middle finger thrusting skywards.

“Naomi!” she spat in the walkie-talkie in her hand. “I want Laurence here and I want him now!”

There was a squawked reply that Resnick failed to understand.

“You!” she said, pointing hard at Resnick. Each finger of her glove was a different, bright color. “Get back behind the van. Back!”

“I’m looking for …”

“Back!”

Resnick raised an eyebrow and turned towards the van. As he did so, the man he had seen earlier behind the wheel of the red Citroën threw back the sliding door and jumped out. Harold Roy was wearing a waist-length blue jacket and brown leather boots beneath his designer jeans. A white scarf spiraled round the collar of a red wool shirt.

“Chris, would you mind telling me what in God’s name we’re waiting for? This shot’s been lit and ready for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Laurence,” said the girl, the evenness of her voice scarcely disguising her antagonism.

“What about him?”

“He’s changing his costume.”

“Now? Now he’s changing his costume? Half an hour after he’s been called?”

“We didn’t have any choice. Continuity.”

“Well, if costumes didn’t spend the entire day with their heads up each other’s arses, they might have noticed that sooner.”

“It’s being taken care of, Harold. It’s in hand.”

“I don’t want him in hand, I want him here, now.”

“On his way.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Harold Roy took a couple of steps back and looked around; some of the crew and the extras had been watching the exchange, most were carrying on with their conversations or simply standing motionless, leaning against something, bored.

“Next thing we know,” Harold announced to everyone and no one, “Mackenzie’s going to be asked why we’re behind schedule again. And I’m going to make sure the blame for that goes where it belongs.”

Chris turned her back on him and walked away, letting her embroidered finger make her reply.

She came back towards the lights a few moments later with an actor Resnick recognized from a coffee commercial. A slim man with a ponytail, wearing a shiny black jumpsuit, bustled behind them, pulling stray threads from the back of the actor’s jacket.

“All right everybody, positions please.”

Harold Roy slid the van door shut behind him. Resnick didn’t think it was the best moment to go and talk to him about his house being burgled.