John Harvey: Cutting Edge

“Jane Wesley.”

That was it. He thought she was about to offer him her hand, but she thought better of it She was a well-built woman, tall, five nine or ten, and she had the nervousness in her voice pretty much under control.

“I didn’t send for you.”

“I was passing. Quite a crowd you’ve got outside.”

“They’re all waiting to see what happens before they come back in.”

“What is going to happen?”

She glanced towards the stairs. “That depends.”

“On what?”

When she grinned, the dimples at the edges of her mouth made her seem much younger, more carefree; the way she was before she got into social sciences and Christianity. “On what he does with the meat ax,” Jane said.

“What seems to be his plan?”

“The last I heard, he was threatening to chop his foot off.”

“Unless?”

“Unless I stayed on this side of the door.”

“Which is what you’ve done?”

“So far.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

Jane frowned; the dimples were a long time gone. “He’s not on his own. There are two others in with him.”

“Friends?”

She shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”

“Has he threatened to harm them?”

“Not yet.”

Resnick looked at his watch. It was a quarter to one. “Why didn’t you call the station?”

“I was about to. I think. With the best will in the world, every time somebody steps in here in uniform, we lose somebody else’s trust.”

“Better than their foot,” Resnick suggested.

“Yes.”

“Besides, I’m not in uniform.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“Will you shut up,” bellowed a voice from the corner, “and let me get some sleep!”

Resnick went towards the stairs. “Which room?” he asked.

“Straight ahead,” Jane answered. “The reading room.”

Resnick depressed the switch for the landing light, but it remained stubbornly off. He knocked on the door and waited: nothing. Knocking again, he identified himself. No response. If there were three people inside and all three of them still alive, they were exhibiting more than usual control. It occurred to him that the excitement might have exhausted them to the point where they had all fallen asleep.

He tried the handle and it turned.

“All right,” he called. “I’m coming in.”

“No!” The muffled voice stretched the word into two syllables.

“Stand well back,” Resnick warned.

“Open that door and I’ll use this fucking thing! Don’t think I’m fucking kidding!”

Resnick went in fast. Several piles of books had been strewn across the floor, mostly discarded paperback westerns and old copies of Reader’s Digest donated by well-wishers. More books, dog-eared, sat on shelves to one side: Leon Uris, Wilbur Smith. Of the three people inside the room, however, none was showing the least interest in reading.

One man, his feet bare within open leather sandals, sat on the floor, a soiled gray blanket with red stitching at the hem, covering his head and shoulders. Another, eyes closed and aimed at the ceiling, sat on a straightbacked chair, hand inside his open fly, thoughtfully masturbating.

The third, narrow-cheeked, gray-haired and bespectacled, stood clutching a butcher’s cleaver threateningly above one foot, from which, as if in preparation, he had pulled off both shoe and sock.

For some moments he didn’t look up at Resnick and then he did.

“Just heard a kid who thought he’d rediscovered bebop single-handed,” Resnick said. The man’s eyes flickered. “Bit like hearing somebody fluent in a language they don’t understand.”

The eyes flickered again, but aside from that the man didn’t move.

“Time was,” Resnick said, “you’d have blown him off the stand.”

“Aye, I daresay.”

“How about the cleaver?” Resnick asked, one cautious step closer.

The gray-haired man looked at the blunted blade, then at his foot. “Charlie, I think I’ll fucking do it this time. I think I will.”

“She’s a lovely woman, that.”

“Jane?”

“Lovely.”

They were in a cab skirting the Lace Market, passing Ritzy’s on their right. The purple sign still shone above the door, although by now it was all locked up and the last dancers had made their way home. My place or yours? Resnick had been there on a few early, bachelor Saturday nights when it had been, simply, the Palais, and there were still couples quickstepping their way between the jivers. He remembered the women standing alone and sad-eyed at the end of the evening; men who prowled with something close to desperation, anxious to pull someone on to the floor before the last number faded.

“How old d’you think she is, Charlie? Tell me that.”

“Around thirty.”

“Too young for me, then, d’you think?”

Resnick looked at Ed Silver, leaning half against the window, half against the cab’s worn upholstery. His gray hair straggled thinly across his scalp and bunched in snagged folds around his ears, like the wool of an old sheep; one lens of his glasses was cracked and the frames bent where they had been trodden on and twisted not quite straight. His eyes were hooded and watery and refused to focus.

“No,” Resnick said. “Not a bit of it.”

Ed Silver eased himself further back and smiled.

When Resnick had talked Silver into handing him the butcher’s cleaver and walking peacefully downstairs, Jane Wesley had been grateful and surprised.

“You know him, don’t you?” she asked, spooning instant coffee into chipped mugs.

Resnick nodded.

“But before you went in there? There’s no way you could have known who he was.”

Resnick shook his head, gestured no to milk.

“I don’t know if I can let him stay. I mean, here, tonight.”

“He can come home with me.”

Her eyes widened; they were pale blue and seemed the wrong color for her face. “Are you sure?”

Resnick sighed. “Just for a bit. While he sorts himself out.” It wasn’t as if he didn’t see the dangers.

Jane Wesley sipped at her coffee thoughtfully. “That might take longer than you think.”

“Well,” said Resnick, “maybe he’s worth a little time.” He glanced over to where Silver was sitting in the near dark, fingering the air as if he could turn it into music. “Runner up in the Melody Maker poll three years running. Alto sax.”

Resnick put down his mug of coffee, almost untouched, and turned away.

“When was that?” said Jane Wesley to his back.

The cab pulled over by a stone wall, a black gate that was in need of fresh paint. Lights showed from one of the upstairs rooms and through the stained glass above the front door, an exercise to deter burglars. Resnick leaned down to the cab window and gave the young Asian driver a five-pound note, waiting for the change. The radio was turned low, an almost endless stream of what the Radio Trent DJ would probably call smooth late-night listening for night-owls.

Ed Silver was steadying himself against the wall, while a large black cat arched its back and fixed him with slanted, yellow eyes.

“This yours?” Silver asked.

“The house or the cat?”

“Either.”

“Both.”

“Huh.” Silver stood away from the wall and offered a hand towards the cat, who hissed and spat.

“Dizzy!” said Resnick reproachfully, opening the gate.

“There’s one thing I can’t stomach,” Ed Silver mumbled, following him along the twist of slabbed path, “it’s cats.”

Great! said Resnick to himself, turning the key in the lock.

Dizzy slid between his legs and raced for the kitchen. Miles came down the stairs from where he had doubtless been sleeping on Resnick’s bed and purred hopefully. Bud, skinny and timid, backed away at the sight of a stranger, until only the white smudge beside his nose could be seen in the furthest corner of the hall.