John Harvey - Rough Treatment

“How many kilos could you put me in touch with, regular?” Grabianski had him, thought he had him, close enough to try a smile: his winning smile. “Anything close to five, six, we could be in a lot of business.” Stafford heading back towards him, sitting back on the bench. “A lot of money.”

“I already make a lot of money.”

“Yes. But there’s always room for more.”

“You’re a burglar. A house burglar, for Christ’s sake,”

“Hitler was a house painter, that didn’t mean he was in the same trade all his life.”

“What the fuck’s Hitler got to do with anything?”

“Nothing.”

Stafford was staring at him; a nerve beside his right eye was doing somersaults.

“Moving stuff around,” Grabianski explained, “I meet a lot of people. I know they’re in the market for other things. Your kind of thing. But regular. It would have to be regular. You understand?”

“Think I’m fucking stupid?”

“I mean, if this …” pointing at the bag, “… if this is just a one-off thing, we can forget it.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“I mean, I could go elsewhere …”

“I told you. As much as you want. I can get.”

“Cocaine?”

“Of course, cocaine. You think I’m talking …”

Suddenly Stafford wasn’t talking any longer. The sun slipped out from beneath a cloud and a reflection leaped from the college roof right into Alan Stafford’s eyes. Binoculars, telephoto lens, it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t have been there.

“Wait …”

But Stafford was on his feet, arching away from Grabianski, turning and then having second thoughts, swinging back; his hand came out from his car-coat pocket and something else bright flickered in the sun. Grabianski saw and dived back fast but never fast enough. The top of the blade broke the skin at the wrist beneath the arm: broke and sliced across the ball of the thumb, the palm, through the webbing taut between center fingers. Grabianski screamed and pulled his hand away, flinching as the knife arced away before flying in again for his face.

Resnick was already up and running. Norman Mann behind him, shouting orders through the microphone.

Something splashed across Grabianski’s eyes and he blinked it away; when he touched it with his fingers, then he knew that it was blood.

Alan Stafford was running full-tilt towards the bandstand; swerving left between German visitors complete with guide books, nearly colliding with an elderly man who had stopped to replace his shoe. Resnick changed his direction on the slope, veering towards the exit, keeping it between Stafford and himself. Stafford charging at him now, airline bag in one hand, knife in the other.

Belatedly, somebody along the avenue of benches pointed a hand and began to shout a warning.

Resnick, stitch sharp in his side, breathing heavily, stood his ground. The knife, he told himself, whatever else, watch the knife. It was the bag that struck him, low and to the left of his stomach, doubling him forward. Resnick felt his knees going, a blur of movement racing past him, a shrieked curse; he threw himself sideways as he fell and grabbed at whatever he could.

Stafford’s leg.

The thin material of the trousers slithered through his hands and Resnick’s fingers caught ankle and heel. Stafford swore and yelled as he struck the path and kicked his other foot viciously at Resnick’s body. The first blow connected with the collar bone, sending him numb. The second hit the jaw below the ear and the third never landed because Grabianski had Stafford by the hair and collar and was dragging him back, grazing his face along the surface till it bled.

“Right,” said Norman Mann, loud to be certain he was heard. “You can let him go.”

Grabianski, blood running from a four-inch cut across his own forehead, released his hold and stepped back. On his knees, face to the ground, Stafford allowed his arms to be held behind his back while he was handcuffed.

“You okay?” Grabianski watched as Resnick, still breathing unevenly, got to his feet.

“Better than you,” Resnick said, looking not just at the wound to Grabianski’s head, more the freedom with which he was losing blood from the cut across his hand.

There were police officers around them everywhere: uniform, overalls, plainclothes. What they wanted were nurses, surgeons, an ambulance.

“Did you get it all on the tape?” Grabianski asked.

Resnick nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Every word.” He wanted to go forward and shake Grabianski’s hand but wasn’t certain that if he did that one of them might not fall over. “Thanks,” Resnick said instead. “Thanks.”

Bleeding, Grabianski grinned.

They were sitting in Mackenzie’s office on the upper floor of Midlands Television. The company retained to service the rubber plants had gone into liquidation and the specimen behind the producer’s desk was drooping dangerously and beginning to brown around the edges. Mackenzie was at his most businesslike, tenting his fingers together over a sheaf of faxes and the current copy of Broadcast. Seated discreetly to one side, Freeman Davis sipped Perrier from a plastic cup and looked cool.

“What you have to realize, Harold,” Mackenzie said, “we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was right. For the series. That’s what we’re all concerned about, after all. The series. Dividends. ”

Harold Roy didn’t say a thing. After what had been happening he was numb; in his mind, numb. The police had intimated that he might not be charged, at least not with anything major, but they still weren’t making promises. Not until he had given them everything they needed: on the dotted line. “Keep your nose clean,” the drugs-squad detective had said, tapping one nostril. “We’ll be in touch.” Maria had packed and unpacked her suitcases a half-dozen times, whether for a holiday or a divorce was uncertain.

“Harold,” Mackenzie said.

“Um?”

“You heard what I said?”

“Um.”

“You know I’ve talked with your agent.”

Harold nodded.

“Your name stays on as long as you want it that way. Beneath Freeman’s.”

“Be …” Harold swallowed it back. Freeman Davis looked smugger than usual, if that were possible. When you were in the catbird seat, the only things were to get fat and smile.

“… so there’ll be no problems with residuals,” Mackenzie was saying. He may have said more, but if so Harold had missed it. There had been a letter that morning from the insurance company: since they understood the updating of security measures they had advocated had not been carried out, the level of cover was in doubt. Harold tugged at his trousers, just above the knees. Mackenzie was staring at him; Freeman Davis at the rubber plant. Had he missed something else?

Executive-like, Mackenzie strode around the desk and lifted Harold’s coat from the black ash-and-chrome stand. He held it out and waited for Harold to get up and step into it.

“’Bye, Harold,” Mackenzie said, pushing the door to behind him. “You can find your own way out.”

Grinning, Freeman Davis made his two first fingers and thumb into a gun, set it against his temple and pulled the trigger.

Resnick knocked on Skelton’s door and waited. The superintendent called him in, seeming sprucer than at any time in the past few days. When he’d walked into the station that morning, much of the snap had been back in his stride.

“How’re the bruises, Charlie?”

“Deep purple, sir.”

“Picture in the Post makes it look as if you’ve gone three rounds with Mike Tyson.”

POLICE BREAK CITY DRUG RING the headline had read. Inspector makes dramatic arrest in shadow of Robin Hood. There had been a paragraph about a police informer, suitably vague; Grabianski had not been named. In a column on page two, Norman Mann of the Drugs Squad was quoted as saying the arrest had come about as the result of months of undercover work and coordinated investigation.