John Harvey - Living Proof

Norman Mann paused at the foot of the stairs and drew 216 in a deep, long breath.

"What d'you reckon, Charlie? Worth inhaling, eh?"

Smelled a sight better than a lot of things illegal, Resnick thought, and likely did a lot less harm, but that was as far as he was prepared to go.

The treads on the stairs were cracked in places and bare. As they climbed higher the bass from recorded reggae made the walls vibrate.

Norman Mann motioned for Resnick and Sharon to stay at the end of the landing, went to the door and knocked. There followed a long and fairly tortuous conversation Resnick couldn't hear.

"We'll wait down there," Mann said, when the head he'd been talking to withdrew and the door was sharply closed.

In what had once been the Probation office, a forty-watt bulb hung from a length of fraying flex. Miraculously, it still worked. What it cast light on were an old desk, empty boxes, balls of dust, a stack of forms waiting forever to be filled in and signed those that hadn't been shredded by the mice for their nests. A hungry cat would have thought it had died and gone to heaven. Next time Dizzy nips my trouserieg because he thinks I've put him on short rations, Resnick thought, I'll bring him down here and lock him in.

Richie made them wait. When he finally appeared in the doorway, he was wearing a skinny-ribbed V-neck jumper in bright colours and tight trousers which, even in that dim light, shone when he moved. He was slightly built and about as pale as a black man can be without becoming Michael Jackson. He stood lounging against the door frame with a can of lager in his hand, "Who's these?" he said, indicating Resnick and Sharon with a nod of the head.

Norman Mann made the introductions.

"Marlene Kinoulton," Resnick said.

"We'd like to find her."

"Slag! I'd like to find she first." The syntax was right, but at root the accent was no more Caribbean than if he'd gone down the pit at sixteen which conceivably he might have done, except that by then they were already closing them down.

"She owe you?" Norman Mann asked.

"She owe everybody."

"That why she's keeping her head down? Maybe skipped town?"

"She not even got the sense to do that. I saw her fat white ass only this afternoon."

"You sure?" Resnick asked.

"I not blind."

"Then you would have had a word with her," Norman Mann said.

"Her owing you, and all."

"She getting into this car, in't she?"

"Which car?"

"I don't know. Big white car. She's working, in't she? Doing business. Drive off before I can say a thing."

"No way you could have been mistaken? You're positive it was her?"

"Yeah."

Where? "

"Round near her place."

"You got an address for her then?" Resnick said.

"What's it worth?"

Both men stared at him and Richie stared back for long enough to show no way were they going to intimidate him. Then he gave his can a little chug.

"How about peace of mind?" Norman Mann said. "Goodwill."

"What you want she for?" Richie asked. He was looking at Resnick.

"Something serious," Resnick said.

"Nothing that would affect you, I can promise you that."

"Promise?" Richie drained the can and tossed it into the nearest corner.

"What's that?"

Over their heads, someone had turned up the volume and the ceiling had started to shake.

"That gives way," Norman Mann said, glancing up, 'going to be a lot of people hurt bad. Crying shame. "

"Forest Fields," Richie said.

"She have a room, Harcourt Road."

Number? "

"Top end, corner house."

"Which side?"

Richie grinned.

"Depend which way you looking, don't it?" And then, addressing Sharon directly for the first time, 'stead of hangin' out with these guys, get your black ass down here some night, show it a good time. "

Thirty-nine Frank Carlucci couldn't be certain how long he had lain there before he realised the woman wasn't coming back. However much sexual anticipation he was experiencing, the effect of innumerable whisky sours had meant that the meeting between his head and a pair of the hotel's comfortable pillows had so far resulted in one thing only.

The woman was. he seemed to remember thinking, taking one hell of a long time in the bathroom, but aside from that, he didn't recall very much at all. A sound that, he now realised, might have been that of the room door opening or closing, and that was all.

Sitting up first quickly, and then, as his head informed him speed was ill-advised, cautiously he looked at his watch. Too dark too see. Reaching across, he snapped on the bedside lamp. Blinking, then squinting, he tried again. A quarter past one. He had scarcely been asleep any time at all.

Easing himself off the bed, he checked the bathroom, the door to which was wide open and, of course, it was empty. Only then, with sinking desperation, did he scrabble on the floor for his jacket and fumble his wallet out into the light. He knew what remained of his English cash and all his credit cards would be gone, but, contradicting him, they were there, the money, as far as he could tell, intact.

Back in the bathroom, he splashed cold water in his face and then wondered why he was bothering. Cathy was bound to be asleep in their own room by now, another 220 hotel across the city, and what was to be gained from waking her, he didn't know. Better to face her the next day with a fresh face and a good story.

Frank hung the Do Not Disturb sign outside the door, climbed back into bed and inside five minutes he was snoring, first lightly, then loudly.

They had been parked across the street some ten minutes, Norman Mann smoking two Bensons while he and Resnick listened to one of Sharon's anecdotes about policing deepest Lincolnshire.

"Go into some of those places," Sharon said, 'and I'd know how my relatives felt, getting off the boat at Tilbury in the 1950s. " Or mine, Resnick, thought, in 1938. Except, of course, that they'd been white.

"Well, what d'you think, Charlie? Shall we give it a pull?"

Resnick pushed open the car door and stepped out on to uneven paving stones. Apart from a stereo playing too loud a half-dozen doors down, the street was quiet. The end terrace to the right, facing north, had stone cladding on the front and side walls, window frames and ledges which had been newly painted, yellow, and a small sign attached to the front door to show that the householders were members of the local Neighbourhood Watch. The house opposite had a derelict washing machine upside down outside in the scrubby front garden, one of its upper windows covered in heavy-duty plastic where the glass had been broken and not replaced, and at least a dozen milk bottles beside the front door, each containing a varying amount of mould and algae.

"So, Charlie no call to be much of a detective here, eh?"

"Give me a minute," Sharon said at the space where the front gate should have been.

"I'll get round the back."

Once she had disappeared from sight, the two men slowly walked towards the door. When Resnick rang the bell it failed to work; he knocked and no one answered, but from the sound of the television they knew somebody was at home. Norman Mann leaned past him, turned the handle and pushed and the door swung grudgingly inwards.

"Thanks very much," he said with a wink, 'we'd love to come in. "

They followed the sound of amplified voices into the front room.

Three youths, status unemployed, were watching a video of Naked Gun 2'/^ amongst a plethora of beer cans and empty pizza boxes and the faint scent of dope.

What the fuck? "

Resnick showed them his identification, while Norman Mann walked past them towards the television set and switched it off.

Hey! You can't. "

"You live here?" Mann asked.

Yeah. "