John Harvey: Cold in Hand

"He's claiming," Karen said, "any involvement was justified in terms of the information it allowed him to obtain. And the information he passed on was pretty damn useful-there's no getting around that."

"You think he's going to walk away?"

"Who knows? Right now, he's suspended on full pay, while SOCA's Professional Standards Department carry out an investigation. I reckon he'll be lucky if they don't turn it over to an outside force."

Whatever was decided, Resnick thought, it looked as if Lynn's instincts had been right all along.

"How about you?" Karen asked.

"How about me?"

"You know what I mean."

One of the other messages on his answering machine had been from the police surgeon, wanting to know when Resnick, who had cancelled two appointments in the past month, felt able to come in and see him for a checkup and an all clear to go back to work. The truth was, he was unsure if he wanted to go back at all.

"I've got my thirty years in," Resnick said. "I could retire."

"And do what?" Karen said incredulously. "Take an allotment, grow your own fruit and veg?"

"Why not?"

Karen laughed. "You'd go crazy."

Resnick shrugged. Maybe she was right, maybe he would. But he wasn't sure if he had the taste for it anymore. Not after all that had happened. And besides, maybe an allotment wasn't all that ridiculous an idea. Plus, he could read all those books he had never found time for, visit those places he had never been. And how many jazz festivals were there? Wigan, Brecon, Appleby, North Sea. And those were just for starters. He could even go and see his pal, Ben Riley, who'd moved out to the States more years ago that either of them cared to remember, and who had almost tired of inviting him to come and stay.

He shook his head; he didn't know.

"You'll sort something out," Karen said. "Maybe you just need a little more time."

Reaching down into her bag, she took out the box set of CDs she'd borrowed, back when it had all started.

"Thanks," she said. "Now I'll have to get my own."

He walked with her to the door.

"Watch out for that Catherine Njoroge," Karen said with a wink. "She'll have her eye on you now you're single."

"You're joking?"

"Probably." She tapped a fist against his shoulder. "Though you never know."

When Karen had gone, he went into the kitchen and stood for a moment staring into an almost-empty cupboard. Time to restock. The smallest cat nudged against him, and he picked it up and felt the soft fur of its head against his neck, the quick beat of its heart against his hand.

What would Lynn say, he wondered. Jack it in or carry on?

He thought about poor bloody Ovid, mired now in bird shit, stranded and alone.

Later that evening, curtains partly drawn, glass of good Scotch at his side, he put the first of the Bessie Smith CDs on to play, Bessie's voice full and raw and strengthened, it seemed, by adversity. "After You've Gone," "Empty Bed Blues," and Resnick's especial favourite, "Cold in Hand," the young Louis Armstrong's muted cornet shadowing her phrase for phrase and note for note.

Cold in hand.

How had Ovid put it? Freezing his balls off in Constanta. Something about the snow?

One drift succeeds another here.

The north wind hardens it, making it eternal;

It spreads in drifts through all the bitter year.

Bitter. That wasn't going to be him. Old and bitter. He smiled. Lynn would never forgive him for that.