Wasted Years (7 page)

“Hang on,” he said and disappeared a second time. When he came back from the kitchen there was a pair of scissors in his hand.

Ten

The black cat sprang on to the stone wall at the sound of Resnick’s footsteps, purred, and paced and turned as soon as he was in sight, stretched his head towards the passing touch of Resnick’s hand. Inside the front door, a second cat trilled and ran towards the kitchen, while Resnick stooped and scooped up the usual unappetizing batch of mail. Gas bill, electricity bill, a personal computerized letter from his bank manager offering to make him a loan on the most friendly of terms. The third cat was sitting on the hall chest, opposite the stairs; the fourth … there was a metallic clunk as Resnick entered the kitchen, a saucepan lid wobbling across the floor, a bewhiskered face peering from inside the pan.

“One of these days,” Resnick said, “you’ll wake up in there too late. End up as stew.”

The cat jumped out, unimpressed, and rubbed himself against Resnick’s legs.

Dizzy, Miles, Bud, Pepper.

A letter with handwriting he recognized but couldn’t place. Inside its clear wrapper, this quarter’s copy of
Jazz FM.
More reviews of reissues he would love to buy but the technology was failing him. You could count the vinyl albums in Virgin or HMV on the fingers of both hands. Cassette or CD. Oh, well … perhaps next month he’d take the plunge. Have a word with Graham Millington—he’d have a CD player, bound to; chosen by his wife after a careful perusal of
Which?;
something that would bring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
Greatest Hits
into their home with all the sterility they deserved.

Impatient, Dizzy jumped up on to the work top and Resnick, not unkindly, pushed him down. He opened a tin of kidney and beef heart and forked the contents into the four colored bowls, sprinkling a little KitEKat Supercrunch with liver and game over the top.

OPEN this envelope NOW and read all about your FREE holiday in the Algarve.
Resnick tore it in two and tossed it in the bin. The way Dizzy kept pushing Bud out of the way and chomping his food as well as his own, it was no wonder Bud stayed so thin.

The coffee beans were dark and shiny in the palm of his hand and he brought them, momentarily, to his face to savor the smell. Stocks were running low; tomorrow or the next day he must remember to call in at The White House and buy more.

While the water was dripping through the filter, he arranged thin slices of Gruyère cheese, slivers of smoked ham, halved black olives, onion, several pieces of sun-dried tomato, and, finally, some crumblings of blue Stilton on top of two thick slices of light rye bread. Careful to keep them level, he set both pieces on the grill pan and slid them beneath the flame which was already burning. Taking hold of Dizzy firmly and holding him in one hand, he unlocked the back door and released the black cat into the garden. If he was still hungry, he could forage out there.

When it had become clear that Resnick’s marriage was over, his wife of six years setting off for pastures new, his first reaction had been to sell the house, find a flat, make a statement that now he was on his own. But the kind of energy required to go through that process had been lacking. Whatever else it was, the house—big and rambling for two, absurd for one—was comfortable. He called
Family First
and made them a present of the three-piece suite from Hopewell’s that had almost cost a second mortgage, took himself down to the auctions at the cattle market and replaced it with something older, broken in, the shape of other lives already impressed into the upholstery.

So he had stayed there and got on with his life and, opening the door one day to say no thank you to a pair of neatly suited young men who wanted to interest him in attending a class in non denominational readings from the Bible, a skinny young black cat had wandered in, ribs visible through falling fur. Resnick had fed him with chicken scraps and cheese and warmed milk. The cat had bolted the food, all the while glancing round nervously, and as soon as both saucers were licked clean, dashed to the door, and demanded to be let out.

Three days later, he was back.

Then the second day.

Then every day.

The first time the cat jumped on to Resnick’s lap and allowed himself to be stroked, Resnick was listening to the Prestige album,
In the Beginning.
You know, the blue fold-out cover with the beautiful picture of a handsome Dizzy Gillespie boxed in red. “Oop Bop Sh’Bam” with Sonny Stitt on alto, Milt Jackson on vibes. Dizzy’s solo taking them into the final theme, vocal coda, slurred notes at the end.

“Dizzy,” Resnick had smiled, feeling the new weight beneath the cat’s improving coat, and the animal had looked back at him with wide green eyes.

A few months later, a younger cat had appeared.

Miles: who else?

The following year, Pepper and Bud had strayed and stayed. Resnick fed them with little fuss and they grew used to his odd hours, demanding as little of him as he did of them.

He drank some more of the black coffee and started on the second open sandwich, olive oil from the sun-dried tomatoes sliding into the cracks of his fingers and making small stains to join those he was already wearing on his tie. Last time he had tried, the assistant in Sketchley’s had given him a you-must-be-joking look and handed him his ties back.

The letter lay on the small table alongside the easy chair, beside the telephone, resting on the cover of the Spike Robinson he was now playing. The stamps, the air mail sticker, he could only think of a couple of people who might be writing to him from the States, but neither of them from—where was it?—Maine? Pete Barnard was a jazz fan he knew, a dermatologist who was now working in Chicago, and Ben, Ben Riley, he hadn’t heard from Ben in ages, seemed to have lost touch, but when he had, Ben had been out in Montana somewhere, wearing a deputy’s hat and driving a jeep. Surely that wasn’t Ben Riley’s writing?

Of course, it was.

Here I am, Charlie, out in Ellsworth, Maine, enjoying the good life and working none-too-hard for the County police department.

The first of the Polaroids Ben had enclosed showed him with his hat and badge and holstered gun and, those aside, it wasn’t only the handwriting that the intervening years had changed. Ben was a lot fuller in the face, something akin to jowls hanging down towards a neck that showed a tendency to spread over his shirt collar. Gun belt and trouser belt served to support a sagging stomach that would have been more alarming had it not been for the expression of contentment on Ben Riley’s face.

Getting myself across to the east of the country has worked out fine, especially since I met Ali, my second wife.

Resnick wasn’t sure that he had known about the first.
Mentally, she’s made me face up to a few things, knuckle down, cut back on the drinking, and learn to take myself more seriously. Of course, young Max has had a lot to do with that.

Alison was a broad-faced blonde who stared straight at the camera lens as if daring it to talk back. She looked thirty-four or -five, ten years younger than Ben, arms folded across her chest, wearing a check shirt and blue jeans. Max had her hair, his father’s eyes and looked pretty steady on his feet for the two years Ben assigned to him elsewhere in the letter.

Put together some of that holiday time you’re never using and get out here and see us, Charlie. There’s this little restaurant right by the Grand cinema, serves the best Thai food outside the Pacific. I guess, whatever else has happened to you, you do still enjoy your food.

The music clicked off and the cat that had wandered onto Resnick’s lap jumped down again and ate the fragments of ham that had dropped to the floor. Resnick slid the letter and the photographs back into their envelope and walked across the room, poured himself a drink. In 1981, when Resnick had been standing in that garage, staring into Prior’s face, reaching out to take his gun, Ben Riley had been the first officer through the door.

Eleven

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing. What d’you mean?”

“I hardly recognized you.”

They were in the café on West End Arcade, opposite the bottom of the escalator, Darren and Keith, the place in the city where they met, mornings, table close against the window. Every now and then there’d be some woman, short skirt, ascending in front of their eyes.

Keith was still staring at Darren, gone out. “How much’t cost, get it done?”

Darren ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Nothing.”

“How d’you mean, nothing?”

“Got someone to do it for me.”

“What someone?”

“Some girl.”

There was an old boy in the corner, chewing his way through two of toast, careful to break off the ends of brittle crust rather than risk his teeth. A young mum with a tired face was dipping her baby’s dummy into sweet tea and pushing it against the child’s squalling face. Couple of retro-punks waiting for the record shop back down the arcade to open, rifle through the racks of rare singles they couldn’t afford to buy.

“’Nother tea?”

Keith nodded. “Yeh, ta.”

“Anything to eat?”

Keith shook his head. “Skint.”

“I’m buying.”

While they were waiting for the sausage cobs, Keith marveled at the difference Darren’s haircut made to his face. Suddenly it was sharper, harder, his nose seemed larger, jutting out from the center of his face; and the eyes … Keith didn’t think he’d ever noticed them before, not really, blue-gray but bright, dead bright, as if for the first time they’d been let out from under a cloud.

“So what d’you think? Suit me?”

“Yeh. Yes. It’s good. Really is.”

“But you didn’t recognize me, right?”

“Well, I …”

“When I come in, you said …”

“I knew, but not straight off.”

“It’s the hair, right?”

“Yeh, of course …”

“Anyone as saw me before, just saw me, that’s what they’d pick on, what they’d say—hair, he’s got all this curly hair.”

“Yes.”

“That girl yesterday …”

“The one you got to cut it off?”

“The one in the building society. Lorna.”

“’S’that her name?”

“Lorna Solomon.”

“What about her?”

“I was wondering …”

“Yeh?”

“If she walked in here now …”

“Which she won’t.”

“But if she did.”

“What about it?”

“If she’d know who I was.”

Keith watched Darren lift the top off his cob and smear the pieces of sausage with mustard, shook tomato sauce over his own until it lay in it, like a puddle. Darren had been likely to go off at half-cock before, quick fits of temper: dangerous, though he hadn’t looked it. Now he did. As Darren bit down into his cob and grinned across at him, Keith saw again that newfound glint in his eyes and felt a chill slide over his skin because he knew then that Darren was capable of anything.

Anything.

“Shouldn’t take that long,” the workman said at the door to Resnick’s office. “Hour or two at most.”

Resnick nodded and picked up a cluster of files from his desk, resigned to losing the use of the room for the rest of the day.

“Just got a call from forensic,” Millington called over the noise of furniture being dragged across bare floorboards.

“And?”

“Seems there’s some kind of logjam. Lucky to get anything this side of teatime.”

“Managed to dig out three more witnesses, boss,” said Divine. “Out at Sandiacre. Couple stuck their heads out after they whacked into the road sign, nothing new there, but this … Marcus Livingstone … had his motor nicked from outside a newsagent’s less than quarter of a mile away. Heard this engine revving like crazy, realized it was his own. Got to the door in time to see them driving off down Longmoor Lane.”

“And we’re certain it’s the same pair?”

“Likely.”

Resnick nodded. “Which direction, Longmoor Lane?”

“South.”

“Double back this side of the rec,” said Millington, “Junction
25.
Once they’re on the motorway, any place from Chesterfield down to Leicester in half hour.”

“’Less they carry on going,” Kevin Naylor said, “swing round Chilwell and Beeston and back into the city.”

“This car,” Resnick asked, “it’s been reported missing?”

“Yes, boss. Vauxhall Cavalier, D reg. Not turned up as yet.”

Resnick nodded. “Let’s put some pressure on. Have a word with Paddy Fitzgerald, Graham, make sure uniform patrols keep their eyes skinned.”

“Right.”

Resnick turned back to Naylor. “That witness yesterday …”

“Lorna,” Naylor said. “Lorna Solomon.”

Divine sniggered.

“How good a description could she give of the youth who threatened her?”

“Pretty good, sir. Detailed.”

“It agreed,” said Lynn Kellogg, “with what I could get from Marjorie Carmichael. Not that I’d like to rely on her in court.”

“But from the pair of them—if we needed to—there’s enough to bring an artist in, get a composite?”

Naylor and Kellogg glanced at one another before answering. “Yes, sir,” said Naylor.