Rough Treatment (9 page)

“Hallo,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

“Hallo.” Maria was watching
Dallas
on TV. Why didn’t her precious Harold ever get anything like that to work on?

“Hallo,” the voice repeated.

“Who is this?” Maria asked. The voice was familiar and she wondered if it was somebody from the studio, maybe even the producer. “Is that Mac?” she asked. Theodore James Mackenzie was the producer and originator of
Dividends;
when he was in a good mood he liked to be called Mac.

“No.” A pause. “You know who this is.”

Then she did. She spun around and leaned her head back against the wall. “You’ll never keep John Ross from me!” Sue Ellen was screaming at JR from the heart of their rented twenty-four-inch FST Sony.

“You do know, don’t you?”

Her hand less than steady, Maria set down the receiver.

Laurence had to walk ten yards along the pavement, look at his watch under the streetlight, walk another five yards, look up towards the bedroom windows of the semi-detached brick house and say: “Cheryl, you’re going to wish you’d never turned me out of your bed, so help me!”

It wasn’t
Dallas,
but it was trying, just not very hard.

He seemed to be required to repeat this a great many times and after the first few, Resnick wandered back to have a word with the constable on traffic duty.

“How much longer?” Resnick asked.

The officer checked his watch. “Won’t be above an hour, sir, you can be pretty sure of that.”

“Work to time, do they?”

“On the dot. Five, four, three, two, one, someone pulls the plug.”

“Not like some then,” said Resnick with a faint smile. “In need of a little time and half to ease the mortgage payments.”

“Bought a caravan with mine, sir—miners’ strike. Over at Ingoldmells. Get up in the morning and pull back the curtain and the only thing in view is the sea. Unless there’s a mist.”

“But not here?” Resnick persisted.

“Don’t think it’s so much the cash, sir. More a case of good will.”

“Good will?”

“Doesn’t seem to be a lot of it about.”

Resnick nodded and took a couple of paces away. Two of the undernourished kids who’d been tugging at the constable’s uniform trousers and trying to dribble spittle down on to his boots without him noticing were shifting their attention.

“You on telly?” one of them asked Resnick. He had a bright, liverish flare on one cheek, burn or birth mark, it was impossible to tell which.

Resnick shook his head.

“Told you!” said his friend, whose hair had been cropped so short it was possible to see the scabs across his scalp.

“He’s lying! You’re lying, aren’t you, mister? I’ve seen you.”

“No,” said Resnick, turning away.

“Go on,” shouted the boy with the blemish, “tell us.”

“I should watch out if I were you,” said the constable. “He’s a police officer. Detective inspector.”

Resnick gave him a quick look that said, thanks very much.

“He your boss, is he?”

“Not exactly.”

“Bet he is. Hey, mister, order him about, tell him what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what to do and that’s clear off from here. Scram.” The constable shooed the lads away with his hands and they skipped out of his reach, off to where the crew were standing around, to scrounge cigarettes.

“I suppose it’s naïve to ask where their parents are,” said Resnick, “why they’re letting them run the streets.”

“Better here in sight,” said the constable, “than nicking the radio from somebody’s car or shinning up the drainpipe and in through some old dear’s bathroom window.”

Which was when Resnick knew why the driver asleep under the
Sun
was familiar.

Maria Roy had drunk the first whisky too quickly, the second she had forced herself to sip slowly. Not that that was such a good idea. Hadn’t she read somewhere that sipping alcohol only made you drunker faster? Or was that only if you sipped it through a straw?

She paced the downstairs of the house from room to room, telling herself that when he rang back she was going to be ready, she was going to be calm. This time she would be reasonable, ask him what he thought he was playing at, what he wanted.

There were three telephones in the house and none of them would ring.

“Alf?”

He was no longer catching forty winks in the van. Instead, he was standing by the rear of the catering vehicle, talking to a man in a white apron who was slicing open four dozen soft bread rolls.

“Alfie?”

He was built like a whippet on two legs; so much so that it was difficult not to keep peering behind him, looking for the curled end of skinny tail that should have been poking out from beneath his coat.

“Sergeant.”

“Inspector.” Resnick corrected him.

“Didn’t think you’d made me.”

“Wasn’t sure at first.” Resnick stepped back and refocused. “It was the hair.”

“How about it?”

“You didn’t used to have any.”

Alf Levin brushed a hand across his head. “Wonderful, isn’t it? Modern technology.”

“You’re not telling me that’s all the result of a transplant?”

“No. False as evidence, isn’t it? Wig job. Toupee. It’s since I’ve been working for Midlands. Got to know a few of the boys in makeup. Measured me up, color samples, the works; I must be the only driver working for this company with a hundred percent guaranteed, architect-designed head of hair. Stand in front of a force-nine gale in this and all that’ll happen is it flicks up a bit at the ends.”

“Let’s talk, Alfie,” said Resnick, with a glance towards the caterer, who was now severing the links between large numbers of sausages.

“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“Over there,” said Resnick.

Alf Levin only hesitated for long enough to light a cigarette and toss the used match out across the forecourt. “If I’m not back for my sausage cob,” he said, “call my brief for me.”

Maria was sitting on the lavatory in the downstairs bathroom: the seat was down and her skirt was spread wide across her legs. The empty glass was being slowly rolled between the fingers of both hands, back and forth.

“Come on, you bastard,” she said aloud. “Pick up the phone.”

Eight

“Your DI not still around, I suppose?”

Millington jumped at the sound of the superintendent’s voice; his knee caught the edge of the table and, though he held on to the mug at the second attempt, most of its contents splashed over his hands, the magazine he’d been reading, the floor.

“No, sir. Not seen him since this afternoon.”

Skelton nodded and surveyed the room: halfway between a grammar school staffroom and the men’s locker facilities at the private squash club where he was due on court in twenty minutes.

“Any message, sir?”

A curt shake of the head, dismissive. “’Night, Sergeant.”

Graham Millington forced out his polite reply, watching the super turn back through the doors, sports bag in his hand. Five games with some sweaty barrister and then a couple of G and T’s before he drives home to whatever his wife’s keeping warm for him. All right for some. Millington’s own wife would be at her second-year Russian class and he’d stop off at the chippy on the way back, either that or a toasted ham-and-cheese in the pub, couple of quick halves.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the desk top, wiped between his fingers. That the superintendent should find him the only one left in the office, working late, was fine—but why did he have to come in when Millington was drinking half-stewed tea and browsing through the copy of
Penthouse
he’d found in Divine’s in-tray?

“Know about your form, do they?”

“Midlands,” said Alf Levin, “they’re an equal-opportunity employer.”

They were sitting at a corner table in the lounge, keeping as much distance as possible between themselves and a bunch of extras who were boasting about how many times they’d worked with Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins.

“How long?”

“Eighteen months, no, getting on two years, must be.”

“Sounds like a sentence.”

Levin lifted his pint, flicked away the beer mat that had stuck to the underside of the glass. “That was a twelve.”

“Out in nine.”

“Less.”

“Good behavior.”

“Overcrowding.”

Resnick leaned forward, one elbow resting close to his Guinness, largely untouched. “Nice to see that it works sometimes. Sets you back on the straight and narrow.”

“Wasn’t the nick.”

“You’re not going to tell me you found religion?”

“No. A good probation officer.”

“Needle in a haystack.”

“Sharp as one. Found me a place to live, made sure I kept the appointments, even got me along to a couple of meetings, counseling sessions.” His thin face wrinkled brightly; with that wig he looked a lot less than his forty-odd years. “Me, counseling sessions!”

“Useful, were they?”

“No,” Levin scoffed, “but that’s not the point. Point is, she put me up for this. First time I’ve been clean since I left school and headed north with nothing but my native wit and GCE Metalwork.”

“You make it sound like the Wizard of Oz.”

“More Dick Whittington, I like to think.”

“Wasn’t he heading for London?”

“Ah, only after he got turned around. Sound of Bow Bells. Remember?”

“And are you really turned around, Alfie?”

Levin clapped a hand to his breast. “God is my witness.”

Resnick set down his Guinness and looked round the bar. “Don’t think he’s in tonight, Alfie.”

“I thought he was everywhere.”

“Ah,” said Resnick, “so you did get religion.”

“Bought an LP by that Cliff Richard,” Alf Levin said. “Does that count?”

“Are you alone?” Grabianski asked.

“Yes,” said Maria, so quietly he hardly heard.

“Sorry?”

“Yes.”

At the other end of the line, she could imagine his smile.

“We’ve got to meet.”

“No.”

“We have to.”

“Why?”

“Why are you pretending?”

She didn’t know: she didn’t try to say.

“How about now?” he asked.

“No. You can’t. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s that impossible.”

“Harold …”

“Your husband?”

“My husband.”

“What about him?”

“He’ll be home soon.”

“Get out before he does. Meet me.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“No!” Too hasty, a shout.

She heard him laugh, and then: “All right, then. Meet me tomorrow. And don’t say you can’t.”

Maria could feel the sweat along the palm of the hand which was holding the receiver, knew without needing to see that it was trickling down towards the curve of the mouthpiece. Knew that she was just as damp in other places, damper.

“All right,” she said, eyes closed tight.

Alf Levin decided that since they’d started bringing out all those curry flavors, poppadums and the like, crisp-eating had become a part of international cuisine.

“What it is,” he said to Resnick, who shook his head when Levin offered him the packet, “is you’re asking me to grass.”

“Not in so many words,” said Resnick, wondering how he might put it better.

“Inform on my previous associates, if such they were.”

“Assist. Assist, Alfie. Your duty as a citizen.”

“A reformed citizen.”

“Exactly.”

Alf Levin tipped back his head and shook what was left in the packet down into his mouth; trouble with crisps was, all the buggers did was make you hungry. And thirsty. No matter what the flavor.

“Another, Mr. Resnick?”

“I’d rather have an answer.”

When he pulled back his upper lip, Leven revealed two remarkably long front teeth; strong, as if they could break a weasel’s back with a single bite.

“It’s not as if I mix in those sort of circles.”

“But you could.”

“I could do a lot of things.”

“For the right reasons.”

“How many of them?”

“Righteousness breeds its own rewards.”

Alf Levin screwed up the spent crisp packet and got to his feet. Across the bar, the extras were starting to move, noisily, towards the exit.

“Come on, Mr. Resnick,” Alf Levin said, “before I have to drive that lot back I want a couple of those sausage cobs.” He winked down at Resnick. “Hot snack on wrap.”

Harold Roy stood off on his own, not eating, turning his back with an automatic gesture when he unscrewed the top of his small silver flask and tipped it over into his polystyrene cup of coffee. Resnick, watching, found it easy to sympathize. The director looked like a man with anxieties aplenty; besides which, the coffee was dreadful.

Harold bunched up the empty cup in his hand and dropped it into the refuse sack as he walked past, heading for the lounge. Fair enough, thought Resnick, taking a seat at the bar, three stools along.

Resnick heard Harold order a large vodka and tonic and smiled. That should be me, he thought: every night for supper his grandfather had sat down to a plate of pickled herrings, raw red onion thinly sliced across the top, thick yellow mayonnaise at the side. Black bread. Vodka. Every night.

“Yes, duck?” asked the woman behind the bar.

“Guinness,” said Resnick.

“Pint?”

“Half.”

He took the first sip, the flavor rich and the temperature pleasingly cool beneath the creaminess of the head. From outside came the sound of engines starting up, but not everyone was leaving. Clusters of people came in, their voices shriller than usual, the occasional “fuck” for emphasis beautifully articulated. Close to Resnick’s right shoulder a young man with a gold stud in his ear and a leather jacket artistically dabbled with paint asked for a St. Clements and got a hard look.

“Cheer up, Harold!” Someone clapped him on the shoulder. “Could be a lot worse.”

Evidently Harold didn’t think so; he didn’t acknowledge the remark at all. Coins had found the jukebox and for the first eight bars a few voices sang along with Tom Jones. For some little time Resnick had been aware that he wasn’t the only one with an interest in Harold Roy. Leaning back against the wall, between the cigarette machine and a large plastic yucca, a prematurely balding man wearing a loose-fitting leather jacket was talking to a pretty, dark-haired girl in moon boots, every now and then sneaking a look over the top of her head towards the bar. If he doesn’t want a word with me, thought Resnick, it must be Harold. Advice or condolences, either way he was being polite, waiting for the perfect moment, biding his time.