John Harvey - Cutting Edge

“What’s that?” Sarah asked, pointing at the glass.

“Bitter lemon.”

“And?”

“Ice.”

“And?”

“Gin.”

She picked it up and carried it over to the bar. “There was a misunderstanding,” she said. “I didn’t want this.”

“I’m sorry,” said the girl behind the counter. “You can’t have your money back.”

“Fine.”

Sarah gave Carew a quick look, see how he was taking that, and headed for the door. A picture in denim, that was how he saw himself. Mr. Irresistible. She wondered when a woman had last turned him down and what had happened to her when she had. She had thought he might jump up and come after her, flash another of those practiced-in-the-bathroom-mirror smiles, but Carew continued to sit where he was, drinking his malt whisky, looking cool.

A quarter of a mile on, she was less angry about it already, just another bloke trying it on, this one, maybe, a touch more persistent than the rest. Approaching the road that led down towards the old Raleigh factory, Sarah’s face opened to a smile. Had he really imagined she was going to go off with him, dancing, dressed like that? The badge on her uniform that spelled out her name and rank. Ridiculous.

And suddenly there he was in front of her, posing at the corner of the side street, having to struggle to control his breathing and pretend he hadn’t had to sprint fast to double around that block and get ahead of her in time.

“Now what?” Sarah said, angry again.

“Easy. I walk with you to your door, say good night, turn right around, and go home. End of evening. Okay?”

“No.”

Ian Carew didn’t say anything; he didn’t even smile. He just looked.

Sarah began to walk and he danced into step alongside her, not attempting to talk, simply walking. All right, Sarah thought, five minutes, another five streets and it will be over.

“When I got home from the hospital I could still feel the pain. I didn’t go to bed at night, I wouldn’t lie down, as soon as I did I’d be waiting for it again, waiting for it to start. The cutting. The wire. I slept sitting up, wherever I was and even then, though I wasn’t lying down, I would scream.”

“At first my wife, she would come to me and try to calm me down but if she went to touch me I screamed all the more. I couldn’t ever bear to have anyone touch me.”

“My Marjorie … she was little then, she says to her mother, why does daddy shout at me like that, why won’t he let me near him, why does he hate me?”

“In the end they couldn’t take it any more and they left me and Calvin he stayed. No matter what that boy does, I’ll always love him for that. He stayed by me when nobody else would.”

Sarah’s house was in a short terrace that backed on to a playing field. She had bought it when prices in the city had been lower than almost anywhere aside from Belfast, which was just as well because on her salary it had been all she could afford. She stood with her back to her front door, hands in her coat pockets, fingers of one tight about some loose change, the others round her keys.

“Right,” Sarah said.

“What?”

“Good night.”

The smile was back. “Good night.”

Sarah didn’t budge. “Let me see you walk away.”

“Just one thing …”

“No.”

“Just …”

“No!”

“Tim Fletcher, I wanted to ask …”

“What about him?”

“You were getting pretty friendly with him, running errands and all that …”

“Errands?”

“You were buying books for him, remember?”

“The condition he was in at the time, he wasn’t exactly in a position to do that for himself.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. How is he? His mobility? I mean, is he ever going to regain that?”

“He’s made a lot of progress, yes.”

“I’m sure he has,” said Carew, “but no matter how hard he tries, however much you do for him, he’s never going to get it back fully. Is he?”

Sarah Leonard watching him, Carew was off down the street, not exactly hurrying but gradually lengthening his stride, stepping out, showing his paces.

“Where’s Calvin?”

Resnick looked up from changing the tape. “He’s being questioned by detectives.”

“About me?”

“Not directly, no.”

“I want to see him.”

“Afterwards.”

“After what?”

Resnick pressed record and pause simultaneously. “I think what you were about to tell us was to do with the legal action, why you didn’t proceed.”

Sarah Leonard’s blue uniform hung down from the handle of the bathroom door, ballpoint pens poking from the breast pockets, one side weighed down by a stethoscope, a notebook, her watch still pinned to the front, beneath her badge.

Sarah knelt in the bath, running the water from the mixer shower over her face and hair. She was thinking about Tim Fletcher, how easy he was to talk to, how she might have found him attractive if only he were a little taller. God! Sarah laughed up into the spray of water. If only for Ian Carew’s body, Tim Fletcher’s personality, his mind. She closed her eyes tight and brought the shower rose closer to her face.

“You can’t tell me that man did what he did through anything other than guilt. It had already happened when he was in charge of those machines one time before. And he’d been proved guilty for it. Why else pay all that money out of court? He knew, Imrie, he knew that was his responsibility, same as what happened to me, and he couldn’t live with it no better than I could. Except he didn’t actually know the pain, he didn’t feel the pain, he just knew he caused it and that’s why he swallowed all them pills and then took a razor to his wrists on account he didn’t want to take any more chances. Risk something going wrong, not when it was his own life he was dealing with. No.”

Ridgemount dampened his bottom lip with his tongue; Resnick signaled to Patel, who poured some more water and left it within reach of Ridgemount’s right hand.

“I thought that was some kind of sign. I thought that meant that man had accepted all the blame to himself and now it was going to be over. Except the dreams never left me and I could never get back to sleeping normal like anyone else and all that did leave me was my wife and my little girl. So I knew …” looking at Resnick, searching his face, “I knew that wasn’t the end of it. I knew there had to be something more.

“See, it would have been better if they had killed me, there on that operating table, if they had killed me dead, ’cause what I was, what I had become, that was worse than being dead. But God had left me alive and I had to find a way of dealing with that and I knew I couldn’t turn round and do what that man had done and take my own life, not after God had sent me through that fire and brought me out on the other side.”

“I thought, they are all at fault. What they got to do is accept their blame.”

“And I waited and meantime the pains in my head got worse and still they done nothing, so little by little I took it on myself to find out where they were, what they were doing, and they were all, most of them, carrying right on like before as if nothing had ever took place. And I kept watching them, them who’d been in there with me during my operation, I watched them and I waited for something to tell me what I could do that might finally ease my pain.”

“Me and Calvin, we lived our life best we could and all the while I was waiting for some kind of sign.”

Sarah watched the pan, waiting until the boiling milk had bubbled almost to the rim before whisking it off the gas and pouring it into the mug, spooning in three heaped teaspoonfuls of hot chocolate and stirring hard. On the way over to the sink she licked the pieces of dark chocolate away from the spoon before dropping it into the bowl. She collected her book and carried book and chocolate up towards the bedroom. She was just settling into bed, wondering if she might get to the end of her chapter before falling asleep when she heard the glass break.