John Harvey - Rough Treatment

“Bit late, Jeff. Sorry.”

“Overtime?”

Resnick shook his head. “Feeding the cats.”

“Give them all the tit, do you, Charlie?”

Another shake of the head. “Whiskas, as a rule.”

Harrison looked towards a couple of empty seats in the back corner. “Want to sit down?”

“Suit yourself.”

Apparently it suited Harrison to stay as he was. They chatted sporadically, Resnick pacing himself down his glass, wondering how long it would take Harrison to get to the point.

“Anyone had asked me, Charlie, I might have said we were mates.”

Resnick looked at him along his shoulder. “Not that exactly.”

“But not enemies.”

“No, not enemies.”

“Then why all this?”

“Come on, Jeff, there’s no all about it.”

“Vendetta, that’s what I’d call it.”

Resnick didn’t answer. He’d known this was going to be difficult, one of the reasons he’d been putting it off as long as he had. Maybe he should have left it another forty-eight hours, or did he owe Harrison more than that, mate or no?

“You’ve had men going behind my back …”

“No.”

“I’m not stupid. Not a fool.”

“No one’s been doing anything behind your back.”

“Like buggery!”

“Jeff, you know …”

“Yes?”

“There were reasons for pushing on the Roy investigations. You were told what they were.”

“This has gone further than that.”

“All through the DCI.”

“Pals, together, that it, Charlie? Scratch my balls, I’ll scratch yours. Or is it the trouser leg rolled up the knee, the funny handshake?”

“Pursuing an inquiry, that’s what it is.”

“Yes?” Harrison stared at him. “Into that burglary or into me?”

The woman behind the bar was trying so hard to listen she’d developed a serious list to one side.

“Not here, Jeff.”

“No? Why the hell not here? Or would you rather wait till the interview room, back at the station?”

Resnick’s Guinness tasted sharper than usual. “Is that where this is all leading?”

“Right. You’re asking me. As if I know what’s going on. I’m the last to know what’s going on. Just ignore that fucker, waltz around him, make him dizzy. Don’t tell him a thing.”

“Jeff…”

“You’ve had that Paki nudging away at my lads behind my back, seeing if they won’t cough for some misdemeanor or other, own up to how far I tied their hands behind their backs. Questioning my evidence, my procedures. Going back to my witnesses …”

“I asked …”

“Once, once you came to me, face to face, and asked. This is something more, this is different.” He grabbed hold of Resnick’s forearm and pressed it hard against the edge of the bar. “Charlie, there’s blokes in the force get a hard-on doing that kind of shit. Shafting their own. That’s not you. Not without you’ve got a special reason.”

Resnick looked at Harrison, glanced down at the grip he had on his arm. Harrison released him and turned abruptly away. He might have been leaving and Resnick would have been glad to see him go, but all that happened was he went to the gents and came back.

“Promotion, Charlie-is that it?” Harrison signaled for another scotch and Resnick placed his hand down over the top of his own glass, not wanting more. “Fed up with plain inspector?”

Resnick didn’t answer. He could think of a great many places he would sooner be; not one that, right then, might be worse.

“You’ll be all right there, Charlie. Oh, you might be an odd sort of a sod, not exactly by the book, but, I’ll give you this, you get results. More than your fair share, I shouldn’t be surprised. But then, you’re still in the action. Nobody shunted you out to one side because your face didn’t fit; you hadn’t made the mistake to go mouthing off a few home truths to the wrong suits, the wrong faces.” Harrison downed his scotch in one, wiped the back of a hand thoughtfully across his mouth. “There’s more to life out there than this, sitting back behind a desk and waiting for a pension. Open a little shop somewhere, move out to Mablethorpe and start up in a bed and breakfast. You know the way things are going, Charlie. Law enforcement. Private security. There’s housing estates down in London pay for their own patrols, round the clock. Some bloke in a uniform, a guard dog and a flashlight. They don’t care who it is, just so long as they can look out of their window of an evening and see somebody there. The less we do it, the more they want it; the more they’ll pay. I don’t want to wait until it’s too late, until I retire.”

“You’ve got connections, then?” Resnick asked.

“Never you mind what I’ve got, just get off my back. That understood?”

Resnick lifted the glass to his mouth and Harrison grabbed him again, the elbow this time, the rim forced against the underside of his lip.

“Understood, Charlie?”

The pub noise went on around them. They both knew that Resnick was unlikely to do anything there and then.

“You don’t know anything, Charlie,” Harrison said, turning back to the bar. “If you did, you’d not be here now.”

“’Night, Jeff. Finish the crisps, if you want.”

Resnick shouldered his way between customers and stood for several moments outside on the street. A city bus went slowly past, one woman sitting alone on the top deck, staring out. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go himself, what he wanted to do, except that, rare for him, he didn’t want it to be alone.

Of course, the directory was missing from the phone booth and the young man fielding inquiries informed him that no Diane Woolf was listed. Resnick put the receiver back in place, lifted it back almost immediately and redialed. A different voice, a woman this time, gave him Claire Millinder’s number. Resnick looked at it, written in Biro on the back of his hand.

Charlie, we’re not talking major commitment here.

He left the booth and headed back to where his car was parked, erasing her number with even movements of his thumb.

“There’ve got to be other ways,” said Grabianski, a touch wistfully.

“Of getting inside?”

“Of earning a living.”

Grice looked up from the rear window-catch in disbelief. Until he saw Grabianski’s face clearly, it wasn’t possible to tell if he was being serious or just winding him up.

“Funny,” Grice said. “Can’t see her hand, but it must be there.”

“Where? What hand? What are you on about?”

“Her. The one who’s got you by the balls.”

“Nobody’s got me by the balls.”

Grice’s attention was back on the window. “What’s she after? Round-the-world cruise, is it? Then half a lifetime of happiness in Saffron Walden?”

“She isn’t after anything. She’s nothing to do with this.”

“Just your regular cold feet, then?”

Grabianski shook his head, “Considering the options, that’s all.”

The catch yielded enough for Grice to gain some real purchase. “We did that a long time back, the pair of us.”

“No reason we can’t think again.”

Grice smiled. “When we’re doing so well?” The window slowly lifted, only the slightest of squeaks from the sash.

“We can’t go on getting dressed up and turning over other people’s places for ever.”

Grice hoisted himself on to the sill. Inside the room he could see the outlines of heavy furniture, recently bought in sale-room auctions; hear the monotone of a grandfather clock. Small fortune passed over trying to reinvent an upstairs, downstairs sort of past. Stupid bastards!

He took a firm grip of Grabianski’s hand and helped him through the open window, pushing it down behind them. “You’re right,” he said.