John Harvey: Confirmation

‘One thing, Graham, isn’t he still inside? Lincoln?’

‘I’ll check first thing. If he’s out and we can put the pair of them together, Breakshaw and Coughlan…’

‘Confirmation, Graham, that’s what we need. Confirmation.’

‘Right,’ said Millington. ‘Sup up and we’ll have another before I get home to the missus. Chicken chasseur tonight, unless I’m much mistaken. Say what you like about Marks, you know, can’t fault ‘em for reliability.’

Resnick’s quip about Karl or Groucho remained frozen on his lips.

Terry Cooke had fallen asleep with the Mail open on his lap and orchestral versions of Burt Bacharach’s hits lilting out of the stereo. When he opened his eyes with a start, Eileen was framed in the living-room mirror and the violins were just cascading into the theme of ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’. There were times, Terry thought, life could be pretty nearly perfect.

‘I was just going,’ Eileen said. She was wearing a red dress, tight at the hips, high black heels, and her red hair was pinned high above her head. A camel coat was slung over one arm.

‘Without saying goodbye?’ Terry smiled.

‘You looked so peaceful.’

‘So?’

Smiling, she crossed the room and he turned to greet her, Eileen bending to plant a red-lipped kiss on the oval of thinning hair where the scalp showed through.

‘What time’ll you be back?’

‘Late.’

‘Why don’t you let me meet you?’

She took a step away. ‘Terry, let’s not start all that again, eh?’

When they had first started living together he had insisted upon picking her up outside whichever hotel or club she had been working, but Eileen had insisted it was bad for business and finally convinced him it was true. No birthday boy for whom she’d just table-danced in a g-string and policewoman’s hat would enjoy the sight of her being whisked away by her live-in lover, likely back home to a bowlful of hot cereal and his and hers mugs of Ovaltine. ‘It won’t do, Terry, it’s bad for the image. You’ve got to see that?’

Terry knew she was right; knew, too, what she wasn’t quite saying-picked up by some bloke old enough to be my father.

Most nights now, unless he had to go out on a bit of business himself, Terry stayed home, television turned low so he’d hear the cab pulling up outside, the clatter of Eileen’s heels up to the door.

‘What is it tonight?’ he asked.

‘A stag night and two twenty-firsts.’

‘OK, see you later. Have fun.’

Eileen hated lying to him, but sometimes he didn’t leave her any choice. If Terry knew she’d gone back to working the pubs-not often, and then only when the landlord had organised a lock-in, which meant bigger tips and less chance of the punters getting out of control-he would not be happy. But that was what Eileen missed, working an audience, feeling all their eyes on you and knowing if you played it right you could keep them there, glued. That feeling of control.

For tonight, she’d been brushing up one of her old routines with a banana and half a dozen ping-pong balls; if that didn’t put at least a couple of hundred quid in the pot, she didn’t know what would.

No chicken chasseur for Resnick to go home to; no wife. A predatory black cat to greet him, hungry, at the front door and three others, more docile, waiting inside. After seeing to them, he fixed himself a sandwich from gorgonzola and smoked ham, forked two pickled cucumbers from a jar and snapped open a bottle of Pilsner Urquel. In the front room, he fished out an old vinyl album, Eddie Condon’s ‘Treasury of Jazz’, bought a hundred years ago, and set it to play. When Billy Butterfield was taking the introduction to ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’, trumpet and piano with the verse to themselves, Resnick recalled seeing Butterfield in person-the ‘seventies it would have been-down the M1 at a club in Leicester, a portly old boy wearing stay-pressed flannels and a blue wool blazer. The number was coming to an end, Ralph Sutton filigreeing under the final chords, when the telephone rang. Resnick recognised Ronnie Rather’s voice right away.

Ronnie was in the downstairs bar of the Old Vic. ‘Get your skates on, Charlie, and you’ll just catch the last set.’

The band were into something modal, bluesy; sax and rhythm set up on a low stage deep to the rear of the low-ceilinged room. Maybe half the tables were taken, couples mostly, caught up in quiet conversation. Ronnie Rather was sitting midway between the door and the stand, his white hair resting back against the wall, eyes closed, listening.

Resnick went over to the bar, and when the girl had solved seven across she got to her feet and served him a bottle of Worthington White Shield, which she left him to pour for himself, and a large brandy with a touch of lemonade. Dropping his change back into his suit pocket, he stayed there listening: all of the musicians he recognised, was on nodding terms with; he had seen them playing in everything from pubs like this to the pit band at the theatre: they were of an age. ‘Second Nature’ was what they were calling themselves now; the last time he had seen them it had been something else. The pianist, Resnick thought, had likely been with Billy Butterfield when he had seen him in Leicester.

As the number came to an end, a tenor cadenza over bowed bass, Resnick walked back across the room and placed the brandy down alongside Rather’s empty glass.

‘Cheers, Charlie.’

‘Pleasure.’

Ronnie nodded in the direction of the band. ‘Heard Mel Thorpe do his Roland Kirk, have you?’

‘Not recently.’

Ronnie tasted his brandy and lemonade and smiled. ‘Considering he’s not black or blind, he does a pretty fair job.’

On flute now, the soloist sang, hummed and grunted as he blew, spurring himself along with intermittent shouts and hollers which raised the temperature of the playing to the point that one or two of the audience began drumming on their tabletops and the barmaid set aside her crossword puzzle in favour of polishing glasses. The applause was sustained and earned.

‘I saw him, you know, Charlie. Roland Kirk. St Pancras Town Hall. Nineteen sixty-four.’

Resnick nodded. He had seen Kirk once himself, but later, not more than a year before the end of his life-Birmingham, he thought it had been, but for once he wasn’t sure. The musician had already suffered one stroke and played with one side of his body partially paralysed; it had been like watching a tornado trapped in a basket, a lion shorn and bereft in a cage.

‘This business with the copper, Charlie. The girl…’

‘Mary Duffy.’

‘If you say so. I don’t like it, treating women like that.’

Resnick allowed himself a smile. ‘One of nature’s gentlemen, that what you’re saying, Ronnie?’

‘Oh, I’ve known a few in my time, Charlie. Young women, I mean.’

‘I’ll bet you have.’

‘And never raised a finger, not to any of them. Not one.’

Resnick nodded again, drank some beer. The band were playing a ballad, medium tempo, ‘The Talk of the Town’.

‘Bumped into Terry Cooke,’ Ronnie said, ‘cafe by the market, Victoria Park. Soon as I mentioned it, the break-in and that, he turned all pale and couldn’t wait to be on his way.’

‘You don’t think he was involved?’

‘Terry? Not directly, no. Have a heart attack minute anyone said boo to him in the dark.’

‘What then?’

‘Mates with Coughlan, isn’t he?’

‘And this was Coughlan’s job?’

‘Word is, on the street.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Resnick said, ‘Cooke and Coughlan were close.’

‘Who Cookie was close to,’ Ronnie explained, ‘was Coughlan’s wife.’