John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

His relationship with Kate, a freelance journalist whom he had met when working security at an Iranian Film Festival on the South Bank and who, after some eighteen months, had cast him aside in favour of an earnest video installation artist, had left him, a sore heart and a taste for wine beyond his income aside, with a thing for reading. Some of the stuff that Kate had offloaded on him he couldn’t handle — Philip Roth, Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan while others — Graham Greene, the Chandlers she’d given him as a half-assed joke about his profession, Annie Proulx he’d taken to easily. Jim Harrison, he’d found on his own. The charity shop below his office, where he’d also discovered Hemingway — a dog-eared Penguin paperback of To Have and Have Not with the cover half torn away. Thomas McGuane.

What he was reading now was The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes, which, when he’d been scanning the shelves in Kentish Town Oxfam, he’d first taken for yet another celebrity cookery book, but which had turned out to be an odd kind of crime novel about Mario Balzic, an ageing cop trying to hold things together in a dying industrial town in Pennsylvania. So far, more than half the book was in dialogue, a lot of which Kiley didn’t fully understand, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter.

For a few moments, he set the book aside and gazed out of the window. They were just north of Bedford, he guessed, the train gathering speed, and most of the low mist that had earlier been clinging to the hedgerows and rolling out across the sloping fields had disappeared. Off to the east, beyond a bank of threadbare trees, the sun was slowly breaking through. Turning down the Walkman a touch more, Mose Allison’s trumpet quietly essaying ‘Trouble in Mind’, he reopened his book and began chapter thirteen.

Nottingham station, when they arrived, was moderately busy, anonymous and slightly scruffy. The young Asian taxi driver seemed to know where Kiley wanted to go.

Travelling along London Road, he saw the floodlights of the County ground where he had once played. Had it been just the once? He thought it was. Then they were crossing the River Trent with the Forest pitch away to their left — the Brian Clough stand facing towards him — and, almost immediately, passing the high rows of white seats at one end of Trent Bridge, where, in a rare moment of recent glory, the English cricket team had sent the Australians packing.

It was a short street of smallish houses off the Melton Road, the number he was looking for at the far end on the left, a flat-fronted two-storey terraced house with only flaking paintwork to distinguish it from those on either side.

The bell didn’t seem to be working and after a couple of tries he knocked instead. A flyer for the local pizza parlour was half-in half-out of the letter-box and, pulling it clear, he bent down and peered through. Nothing moved. When he called, ‘Hello!’ his voice echoed tinnily back. Crouching there, eyes growing accustomed to the lack of light inside, he could just make out a toy dog, left stranded, splay-legged, in the middle of the narrow hall.

‘I think they’re away,’ a woman’s voice said.

She was standing at the open doorway of the house alongside. Sixties, possibly older, spectacles, yellow duster in hand. The floral apron, Kiley thought, must be making a comeback.

‘Most often I can hear the kiddies of a morning.’ She shook her head. ‘Not today. Quiet as the grave.’

‘You don’t know where they might have gone?’

‘No idea, duck. You here for the meter or what?’

Kiley shook his head. ‘Friend of a friend. Just called round on the off chance, really.’

The woman nodded.

‘She didn’t say anything to you?’ Kiley asked. ‘About going away?’

‘Not to me. Keeps herself to herself, mostly. Not unfriendly, but you know…’

‘You didn’t see her leaving? Her and the children?’

‘Can’t say as I did.’

‘And there hasn’t been anybody else hanging round? A man?’

‘Look, what is this? Are you the police or what?’

Kiley tried for a reassuring smile. ‘Nothing like that. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Well, you could try next door the other side, they might know something. Or the fruit and veg shop back on Melton Road, I’ve seen her in there a time or two, chatting like.’

Kiley thanked her and rang the next-door bell but there was no one home. Between serving customers, the fruit and veg man was happy enough to pass the time of day, but could provide nothing in the way of useful information.

There was a narrow alley running down behind the houses, mostly taken up with green wheelie bins; a low gate gave access to a small, square yard. The rear curtains were pulled partway across. Through the glass Kiley could see the remains of a sliced loaf, left unwrapped beside the sink; a tub of Flora with no lid; a pot of jam; a wedge of cheese, unwrapped. A child’s coat lay bunched on the floor; a chair on its side by the far wall. Signs of unseemly haste.

The back door seemed not to be sitting snug in its frame. When Kiley applied pressure with the flat of his hand it gave a few millimetres, loose on its hinges, rattled, then stuck. No key, Kiley guessed, turned in the lock, but bolted at the top. A swift kick would have it open.

He hesitated, uncertain what to do.

Derek Prentiss’ number was in his mobile; Prentiss, whom he’d worked with as a young DC when he’d first made it into plain clothes, and now in line for Commander.

‘Derek? Hi! It’s Jack. Jack Kiley No, fine, thanks. Yes, grand… Listen, Derek, you don’t happen to know anyone up in Nottingham, do you? Someone you’ve worked with, maybe? Might be willing to give me the time of day.’

Resnick had been up since before five, Lynn heading up some high-power surveillance and needing to be in place to supervise the changeover, a major drugs supplier their target and kudos all round if they could pull it off. Resnick had made them both coffee, toast for himself, a rye loaf he’d picked up on the way home the day before, Lynn crunching her way through Dorset muesli with skimmed milk and a sliced banana.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’ she’d said. ‘Get another couple of hours.’

She’d kissed him at the door, the morning air cold against her cheek.

‘You take care,’ he’d said.

‘You too.’

One of the cats wandered in from outside, sampled an early breakfast and, despite the presence of a cat flap, miaowed to be let out again.

Instead of taking Lynn’s advice, Resnick readied the smaller stovetop pot and made himself fresh coffee. Easing back the curtains in the living room, the outside still dark, he sat thumbing through the previous night’s Evening Post, listening to Lester Young. Would he rather have been out there where Lynn was, the heart of the action, so-called? Until recently, yes. Now, with possible retirement tapping him on the shoulder, he was less sure.

He was at his desk by eight, nevertheless, breaking the back of the paperwork before it broke him. Derek Prentiss rang a little after eleven and they passed a pleasant enough ten minutes, mostly mulling over old times. There was a lot of that these days, Resnick thought.

At a quarter to twelve, an officer called up from reception to say a Jack Kiley was there to see him. He got to his feet as Kiley entered, extending his hand.

‘Jack.’

‘Detective Inspector.’

‘Charlie.’

‘Okay, then. Charlie.’

The two men looked at one another. They were of similar height, but with Resnick a good stone and a half heavier, the buttons on his blue shirt straining above his belt. Both still had a fullish head of hair, Resnick’s darker and, if anything, a little thicker. Kiley, thinner-faced and a good half a dozen years younger, had a leaner, more athletic build. Resnick, in contrast, had the slightly weary air of a man who has spent too long sitting in the same comfortable chair. Balzic, Kiley thought for a moment, harking back to the book he’d been reading, Mario Balzic.