John Harvey: Rough Treatment

She had to push the pillows aside in order to kneel on the bed; she lifted away the Klimt print and handed it to Grice, who leaned it against the bed upside down. She thought she might genuinely forget the combination, but as soon as she touched the dial her fingers made all the right moves.

She swayed backwards as the door swung open.

“Empty it,” Grice told her.

There was another jewelry box, the real one with the real jewels inside, the ones that had come to her in her mother’s will, those that Harold had bought when he still had the need to impress her high on his agenda. There were two sets of bearer bonds, secured with thick rubber bands. Two wills, his and hers. A video a cameraman friend of Harold’s had shot when they’d spent a week on some wretched little Greek island in a foursome. Harold had got an upset stomach from all the olives he’d jammed down his throat, the cameraman had proved to be well hung but had preferred to fiddle with his lens and watch his string-bean girlfriend licking salt out of Maria’s navel, and when she got back to England Maria discovered she’d contracted a mild case of hepatitis.

Grabianski had a hand stretched out towards her, waiting for the cassette to be put into it.

“That everything?” asked Grice.

Maria nodded.

“Don’t worry,” said Grabianski, “you can claim it all back on the insurance.” He grinned down at the videocassette in his hand. “Except this.”

“You’re sure?” said Grice.

“Certain,” said Maria, getting off the bed without showing his friend any more than she had already. Now all she wanted was to get them out of the house as quickly as possible.

“Wait a good half hour before you call the police,” Grabianski was saying, the two of them on their way from the room. “You want to do yourself a favor, think about the descriptions you give them with a lot of care.”

“A couple of blacks,” suggested Grice, right behind them.

“Leather jackets and jeans.”

“Balaclavas”

“Ski masks.”

“They forced you to open the safe.”

“Better,” said Grabianski, “made you tell them the combination.”

“Right,” agreed Grice. “That is better.”

He turned back into the room.

“Where are you going?” Grabianski asked.

“Wipe her prints from the safe,” Grice replied.

Watching him, Maria felt her legs weaken. Grabianski was standing close alongside her, fingers pushing softly in and out of the softness of her best fur coat.

Grice was standing on the bed, leaning towards the safe. Maria watched him as he used his gloves to smear whatever prints she’d left and continued to watch him as he reached into the rear of the safe.

“Uh-oh,” he said, turning back towards the pair of them, looking straight at Maria, “you lied.”

Resnick had despised estate agents ever since one of them ran off with his wife. Before that he had merely found them distasteful, on a par with the young men who worked in car showrooms, forever eager to hustle forward from their desks, breath smelling of too many cigarettes, hands moist at the center of the palm.

Anxious to get them in place but slow to take them away, three agencies had kept their “For Sale” boards lined up against the dark stone of Resnick’s garden wall for much of the past month. Finally he had fetched a spade from the cupboard beneath the stairs and removed two himself, leaving the third-a small concern, lacking forty-eight offices all over the East Midlands, but having on its staff at least one man Resnick felt he could talk to. It had been this man who had phoned Resnick and urged him to be present when he showed round some prospective buyers, 8.30 that morning.

“Busy people,” the agent had explained, “a couple, looking to start a family, professionals, it’s the only time they can both get there. I think you’ll take to them,” he had added hopefully. As if that really mattered.

The house had been on the market now for twelve weeks and no one had as much as made an offer. It was a difficult size, the right property in the wrong location, the mortgage rate was up, the mortgage rate was down, prices were escalating, stabilizing-Resnick simply wanted to get out of the house. Lock the door and hand over the key. There.

So Resnick had arranged for his sergeant, Graham Millington, to go through the night’s messages with the officer who had drawn the early shift, conduct the morning’s briefing and then, along with the uniformed inspector in charge, report to the station superintendent.

“All right, Graham?” Resnick had said.

Millington had stood there, mustache shining, like a man whose birthday has come as a surprise.

When the couple arrived in their separate cars it was 8.43 precisely. The man got out of a shiny black Ford Sierra that had so many aerodynamic modifications that if he ever strayed in to the runway at Heathrow he would be sure to take off. His wife’s preference was for a simple white Volkswagen GT convertible. They were both wearing light gray suits and both checked their watches as they locked their cars and turned on the pavement.

A minute or so later a green Morris Minor drew into the curb and a woman Resnick had never seen before got out while the engine was still coughing. Her black sweater was loose and large and had the sleeves pushed up to the elbows; a short skirt-dark blue with white polka dots-flared softly above thick ribbed tights and low red boots, which folded back in deep creases over her ankles. She had a clipboard bearing the details of the house in her left hand and she used the other to shake hands with her prospective clients.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lurie … good morning to you. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

She steered them towards where Resnick was standing, amongst the flat grass and dark unflowering bushes of a winter garden.

“Mr. Resnick, right?”

Her smile was slightly lopsided as she touched his hand; the accent like a brisk but clipped Australian.

“Ought I say Detective Inspector? That’d be more proper.” She stepped ahead of him towards the front door. “Shall we go inside?”

“What happened to Mr. Albertson?” Resnick asked, low-voiced, as they passed through the hallway.

“He’s left to go into the ministry.”

“He rang me only yesterday. About this.”

“I know. But isn’t that the way it always is? Sudden. Look at Saul. Paul.”

Ahead of them Mr. and Mrs. Lurie were discussing the potential expense of ripping out the kitchen units and replacing them with natural oak.

“I’m Claire Millinder,” she said to Resnick, smiling quickly with her eyes. She moved past him into the kitchen. “This is a perfect room in the mornings because of the light. You could easily fit a nice circular table over there and have it as a breakfast bay.”

The Luries looked at their watches.

“Shall we take a look at the reception rooms?” Claire Millinder said breezily.

Resnick didn’t have the heart to follow them. One of his cats, Miles, came out of the living room as the visitors walked in and now rubbed the crown of his head against the side of Resnick’s sensible shoe.

I hope they don’t run into Dizzy, Resnick thought. If Dizzy took a mind to it, he might just bite either Mr. or Mrs. Lurie through the expensive material of their trouser legs.

They came out of the living room and Claire shepherded them in the direction of the stairs.

“You have to look at the master bedroom. It’s really airy and you won’t believe the amount of storage space.”

Resnick continued to stand there, a stranger in his own house.

When they came back down again, Resnick was letting Miles out through the back door. How were his cats going to make the adjustment to somewhere new when after all this time one of them still couldn’t operate the cat flap that had been there for years?