Maura was collecting glasses from the tables, her hair like orange whip. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “What’re you doing here?”
“It’s okay,” Resnick said, “I’m not wearing a cap.”
“How about cheesecake?”
“I’m not wearing that either.”
Maura picked up another couple of glasses with her left hand and transferred them to the column she was balancing from the palm of her other hand all the way up to her shoulder. “That bloke,” she said, nodding behind where Resnick was standing, “he’s over there.”
“Good,” said Resnick. “Thanks.”
Paul Groves was sitting with a young Asian who was wearing a light-green polo shirt, bottle-green trousers, and ankle-high trainers with the tongue out and the laces mostly undone. Groves was wearing the same suit, tie slacked down to half-mast.
Resnick pulled over a stool and sat opposite them and Groves introduced him to his friend, who had an accent that was Hands-worth via Hyson Green.
“I was in to see Karl,” Resnick said.
Maura leaned between them and placed a bottle of Czech Budweiser and a frosted glass on the table.
“Thanks,” Resnick said.
“I’ll put it on the manager’s tab.” Winking, moving away.
“How was he?” Groves asked. “Karl?”
“Seemed a lot better. Amazing, when you consider.”
Groves glanced at his friend, flicked ash towards the ashtray and missed. “Did you see him?” he asked. “When he was in there, after it had happened? Before they took him off in the ambulance.”
“No.”
Groves blinked away the smoke that was drifting up past his eyes. Two girls, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, pushed past the back of his stool on their way to the ladies. “Bleedin’ cheek!” one said. “All right, though, isn’t he?” said the other. “Well, wouldn’t kick him out.” Giggling, they pushed into the crowd standing around in front of the DJ.
“I keep thinking about it,” Groves said. “Trying to picture it. What he must have looked like.”
“Don’t.”
“Lying there in all that …”
“Don’t.”
“No. No, suppose it’s stupid. Daft.”
“Want another?” his friend said, making the nail of his index finger ring against the rim of Groves’s glass.
“Yeh, thanks.”
“You?” he asked, standing, looking over at Resnick. Resnick laid a hand flat across the top of his glass. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
There was an instrumental coming through the speakers, organ and sax, a churning, rolling blues and a few couples had started moving around the small dance floor.
“Firm I work for,” Groves said, looking not at Resnick but at his almost empty glass, “got a vacancy. Northampton. I was thinking, you know, time I had a bit of a change. Might, like, take it.”
Resnick nodded.
“What d’you think? I mean …” Groves shrugged.
“New place,” Resnick said. “Fresh start. Sometimes it’s a good idea.”
“But as far as you’re concerned?”
“Personally?”
“The police.”
“Oh. No. Let us know where you are if you like, but no, far as we’re concerned, feel free.”
Groves relaxed on his stool, unfastened another button of his shirt. His friend was on his way back from the bar, carrying the drinks. “Pursuing a new line of inquiries, then?” Groves half-smiled.
Resnick said he supposed that was true.
“I know.” Groves pulled out the newspaper from beneath his stool and folded it back at the front page. “I was reading it in here.”
UNDER THE KNIFE
Hospital staff in the city are now working in fear of their lives after police confirmed today they are investigating a connection between the murder of attractive student Amanda Hooson and the earlier violent attacks on two young men employed at the hospital. Security precautions have been stepped up and there is a strong possibility that visitors will be routinely questioned and searched.
Detective Chief Inspector Tom Parker said that connections between the three victims were being pursued as a matter of urgency. “The one thing we don’t want the general public to do,” the Chief Inspector told our reporter, “is panic.” He would neither confirm nor deny that until the present danger has passed, both plain-clothes and uniformed officers would be on duty in and around the hospital buildings and grounds.
Resnick passed back the paper and stood up to go. “What if he wants to go to Madisons?” asked one of the girls, coming back. “Yeh, well,” said her friend, “what if he doesn’t?”
Resnick offered Groves his hand. “If you go through with it, the move, I hope it works out for you.”
“Thanks.”
Resnick looked for Maura on his way out, wanting to wave goodbye, but she was intently talking at the bar, uncorking a bottle of Bulgarian red without taking her eyes off a man in a blue mohair blazer, short fair hair and a stud in one ear, more muscle across his shoulders than Resnick had in the whole of his body and roughly half Resnick’s age.
There was nothing for it but to head home.
The smell of charred meat was strong, as though someone had decided to hold a barbecue there in the middle of the house. Smoke lingered close to the coving in the hallway and Ed Silver stood in front of Resnick’s stove like the man who’s discovered the wheel but can’t immediately think what to do with it. “Bastard thing!” Silver said, grudging admiration in his voice. He was wearing one of Resnick’s light-blue shirts as an apron, sleeves knotted behind his back. Small darts of flame were sparking out from beneath the grill. “Not be long, Charlie. Have it on the table in two shakes of a monkey’s tit.” If the kitchen didn’t burn down first.
Pepper’s head lolled from the tin hat of the colander, half-asphyxiated, a cat in need of a gas mask.
Resnick went to take hold of the grill pan, but Silver stuck a bony elbow into his side. “Relax, Charlie. S’under control.” Catching Resnick’s breath, he turned to him disapprovingly. “Bit early in the day to have been at the bottle?”
Whatever was simmering away in the various pans Silver had going on top of the stove was going to give new meaning to the words, well done. “Right,” Resnick said through gritted teeth, “I’ll leave you to it. Everything you want’s over there-salt, tomato sauce, fire extinguisher.”
He went upstairs to sluice his face, change his socks, work whatever had got lodged there out from his upper back teeth.
“What you’ve been missing, Charlie, someone to do this sort of thing for you. Make sure you’ve got a proper meal waiting for you when you get home. Never mind this sandwich, sandwich, sandwich. You must have a digestion like the M26 at rush hour.” It was always rush hour on the M26. Perhaps that was his point. “Grazing, that’s what it’s called. Eating like that. Heard it on the wireless.” He gave Resnick a sharp, pecking look over his forkful of mashed potato. “When I was with Jane.”
Let that one sink in.
“Jane?”
“You know. Wesley.”
“Wesley.”
“Yeh, that’s her. I was helping her out.”
“At Aloysius House?”
“Yeh. Nothing, like-how would you say? — too specialized. Bit of cleaning, few things she wanted humping out the way …”
“No cooking?” Resnick had given up trying to cut what, in a former life, had been a lamb chop and was holding it between his fingers.
“Not yet, eh?” Silver winked. “Got to ease into these things. Never does to go at it too hard. Full frontal, know how I mean?”