John Harvey - Rough Treatment

“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.”

“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?”