John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘You didn’t fancy the job or you didn’t like the look of him?’

‘Both.’

‘Because if you’re only going to take jobs from decent, upstanding citizens with good credit references and all their vowels in the right place…’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What then?’

‘It’s what he wanted me to do.’

‘Go round and talk to her, persuade her to ease off, reach some kind of accommodation.’

‘That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted me to warn her, frighten her.’

‘And now you’re not going to do it?’

Kiley looked at her. Pins out of her hair, it fell across her shoulders, down almost to the middle of her back. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Now you’ve turned him down, what will happen?’

‘He’ll get somebody else.’

‘With fewer scruples.’

Kiley shrugged.

‘Maybe it would’ve been better for her,’ Kate said, ‘if you’d said yes.’ The way she was looking at him suggested that pretty soon he’d be climbing back into his clothes and setting out on the long walk home.

Some housing department official lacking a sense of irony had named the roads after areas of New Orleans. Anything further from the Crescent City would have been hard to find. Kiley walked past a triangle of flattened mud masquerading as a lawn and headed for the first of several concrete walkways. ‘Do Not Let Your Dogs Foul the Estate’, read one sign. ‘No Ball Games’, read another. A group of teenagers lounged around the first stairwell, listening to hard-core hip-hop at deafening volume and occasionally spitting at the ground. They gave no sign of moving aside to let Kiley pass, but then, at the last moment, they did. Laughter trailed him up towards the fifth floor.

Two of the glass panels in the front door had been broken and replaced by hardboard. Kiley rang the bell and waited.

‘Who is it?’

He could see a shape, outlined through the remaining glass.

‘Jennie Calder?’

‘Who’s this?’ The voice was muffled yet audible.

‘Kiley. Jack Kiley.’

‘Who?’

He took a card from his wallet and pushed it through the letter-box. The shape came closer.

‘Who sent you? Did he send you?’

‘You mean Marshall?’

‘Who else?’

‘Not exactly.’

She unbolted the door but kept it on the chain. Through a four-inch gap Kiley could see reddish hair, unfashionably curly, grey-green eyes, a full mouth. She tapped Kiley’s card with the tip of a fingernail.

‘Private investigator? What is this, some kind of joke?’

Kiley grinned. ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’

Out of sight, a child started crying.

‘You here to do his dirty work for him?’

‘No.’

As the crying grew in intensity, the woman looked hard at Kiley, making up her mind. Then, abruptly, she pushed the door to, unfastened the chain and opened it wide enough for him to step inside.

‘Wait there,’ she said, leaving him in a square hallway the size of a telephone booth. When she reappeared, it was with a tow-haired child astride her hip. Eighteen months? Two years? Kiley wasn’t sure.

‘This is Alice.’

‘Hello, Alice.’

Alice hid her face against her mother’s arm.

‘Why don’t we go through,’ Jennie said, ‘and sit down?’

There were pieces of Lego and wooden bricks here and there across the floor, a small menagerie of lions and bears; on one of the chairs, a doll, fully dressed, sat staring blankly out. Toys apart, the room was neat, tidy: three-piece suite, TV, stereo, dining table pushed into a corner near the window.

Without putting her daughter down, Jennie made tea and brought it through, with biscuits and sugar, on a tray.

Only when she sat opposite him, Alice clambering from one side of her chair to the other, did Kiley see the tiredness in her face, the strain behind her eyes. Jennie wearing blue jeans and a soft blue top, no-name trainers without socks; late twenties, Kiley thought, though she could have passed for older.

‘So?’ she said.

Kiley held his mug of tea in both hands. ‘These posters…’

‘Got to him, have they?’ A smile now.

‘You could say.’

‘And you were meant to warn me off?’

‘Something like that. Only I’m not.’

‘You said.’

The tea was strong. Kiley spooned in sugar and stirred it round.

‘Biscuit,’ Alice said, the word just this side of recognition. Jennie reached down and broke a digestive in half. ‘So what are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘If it’s not me it’ll likely be somebody else. I thought you should know.’

‘I didn’t think he was going to be leading the applause.’

‘Isn’t there somewhere you could go?’ Kiley asked. ‘Until it blows over.’

‘No.’

‘Friends, a relative?’

‘No.’ The child’s piece of biscuit broke and pieces crumbled across her mother’s top. Automatically, Jennie brushed them away and reached for the other half. ‘Besides, who says it’s going to blow over? The day he puts his hand in his pocket, faces up to his responsibilities, that’s when it’ll blow over. Not before.’

For the time being, Kiley was working out of his flat: he had a fax, an answerphone, directories, numbers on a Rolodex. What he didn’t have, the faithful secretary secretly lusting for him in the outer office, the bottle of Scotch in the desk drawer alongside the. 38. When he’d jacked in his job with the security firm — no hard feelings, Jack, keep in touch — he’d contacted those officers he still knew inside the Met and let them know what he was doing. Adrian Costain, a sports agent he knew, had thrown a couple of things his way, but since then nothing. A local firm of solicitors likewise.

Recently, he’d spent a lot of time watching movies in the afternoons, starting paperbacks he never finished, staring at the same four walls. He would have sat diligently doing his accounts if there were any accounts to do. Instead he took out ads in the local press and waited for the phone to ring.

When he got back from Jennie Calder’s flat, two red zeros stared back at him from the answerphone. The people in the flat upstairs were playing ‘Green Green Grass of Home’ again. He had a bacon sandwich at the nearest greasy spoon and skimmed the paper twice. Each time he reached the sports page, Charlton Athletic had lost away.

Still it kept nagging at him. A brisk walk through the back doubles and he was back at the estate, keeping watch on Jennie Calder’s place from below.

He didn’t have too long to wait. There were two of them, approaching from the opposite direction and moving fast. The one at the front, bulkily built, shoulders hunched, wool hat tight on his head; the other, younger, taller, tagging along behind.

By the time Kiley arrived, the front door was half off its hinges, furniture overturned, the front of the television kicked in. Alice was clinging tight to her mother and screaming, Jennie shouting over the noise and close to tears.

‘Company,’ the youth said.

On his way over, Kiley had picked up a piece of two-by-four from a building site, solid wood.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ the big man said.

Just time for Kiley to think he recognised him before swinging the length of wood hard against the side of his head. Twice, and the man was down on his knees.

The lanky kid standing there, not knowing what to do.

‘Get him out of here,’ Kiley said. ‘And don’t come back.’

Blood ran between the man’s fingers; one eye was swelling fast and all but closed. The pair of them stumbled to the door, mouthing threats, Kiley watching them go.

Alice was whimpering now, tears wet against her mother’s neck.

‘Thanks,’ Jennie said. She was shaking.