That had been three weeks ago. Since then there had been broken windows and worse. The fire officer seemed in no doubt that when the son’s new premises had flared up it had been arson. A large container of cooking oil had been maneuvered into the cellar and set alight; the result had been charred girders and melted chopsticks. Only because the place had been closed and the residents of the upstairs flat on their way back from a party had there been no fatalities.
Resnick hoped the young man had had time to obtain sufficient insurance.
Insurance.
He screwed paper and crumbs into a ball and bounced them off the rim of the waste bin on to the floor.
“Patel,” he called from the door.
“Sir?”
“Here a minute.”
There was Naylor, glancing across at him from above his typewriter, adding to the guilt.
“Patel,” Resnick said, “get yourself down to Jeff Harrison’s nick. Have a word with a young PC, Featherstone. He went out to investigate a burglary, Harold and Maria Roy. In through the back, out the front. Professional job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I had a word with the woman; what she told me and what she told Featherstone don’t seem to tie up. Shake the inconsistencies around a little, talk to her. See if you think she’s just confused or if she’s lying.”
“This will be all right, sir? With Inspector Harrison?”
“Help ourselves, he said. Well, in as many words. It’s been okayed from on high, so we’re covered. Which brings me to the other thing-find out some more about her insurance. Who’s the policy with? Were they recommended? She suggested they took over the insurance from the house owners, but that may not be accurate. If she wants to show you papers, let her. And perhaps you can encourage her to remember who it was came around and gave them a quotation to get their security updated.”
“That’s all, sir?”
With some of the others, Resnick might have pegged it as facetiousness. “For the present,” he said and then, because there was no way of avoiding it, he invited Naylor into his office.
The two men looked at one another with less than ease, Resnick having a strong sense of Naylor wanting to talk to someone, needing to, but sensed that it wasn’t himself.
“How’s Debbie?” Resnick asked.
“Oh,” Naylor shifted his feet awkwardly, “fine. She’s fine. She …”
“Lot of broken nights.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Strain on both of you.”
Naylor stood and shuffled his feet; the collar of his shirt was suddenly too tight. One hundred and one places you would rather be than here.
“You’re getting some help?”
Naylor’s eyes panicked.
“There must be somebody … I don’t know, district nurse …”
“Health visitor. Yes, sir. She comes round every so often, though Debbie says she doesn’t know what for.” Three times out of four, Debbie kept the door locked and pretended there was nobody home, but he wasn’t telling Resnick that.
“How about the doctor? Any use?”
“Not a lot, sir. Debbie says …”
Resnick switched off. What was that old game he’d played at school? Simon says this, Simon says that, whatever it might be, no matter how daft, that was what you did and fast. No questions asked. He glanced up at Naylor, who seemed to have finished.
“You know, we could arrange some counseling, from this end. If it’s interfering with your work.” Resnick could see from the look in the young DC’s eyes that he’d as well have suggested something bizarre in the way of sexual practices. “If you wanted to talk things through, the pair of you, with some professional-it’s available, okay?”
“Yes, sir.” Anxious to be away.
“All right, Kevin.”
Out of there like the proverbial clockwork rabbit. Resnick shook his head, gave himself a few moments to ponder whether he should have taken a place on that course in man-management, then picked up the phone and dialed Midlands TV.
“Mr. Roy is out on location,” announced a voice like high-gloss makeup. “I can put you through to the production secretary if you wish.”
Resnick wished.
“Engaged, will you hold?”
Resnick held.
Seven
Harold Roy’s father had named him after a bandleader, who specialized in comic songs and second-rate, searing clarinet. After thirteen years of alternately bullying or buying young Harold into spending his evenings and weekends practicing a number of instruments-piano, violin, clarinet (of course), even, for a particularly uncomfortable three months, the tuba-he had given in. His son would never emulate his namesake: he would not be a musician. Even Harold’s one attempt at a comic song-wearing a gingham tablecloth to entertain a Christmas gathering with “I’m Just a Girl who Can’t Say No”-had ended in failure. There had been muted applause and an aunt saying loudly, “Can’t carry a tune for his life, bless him!”
Aware of disappointing his parents and seeking to make amends, Harold had shown an interest in drama school. Sure enough, they had clapped their hands and given him all the encouragement he had needed. That is to say, money in his bank account and a tilting end-terraced house on the borders of Lewisham and New Cross.
Almost from the first, Harold knew that he had made a mistake. Classes in improvisation reduced him to a stuttering wreck; movement and dance brought back all those afternoons wasted with the metronome, only this time it was his feet and not his fingers that refused to obey the rhythm. A one-line part as an attendant lord in Macbeth made it clear to him that the only person who survived the entire experience without humiliation was the director.
So a career was born.
Harold knew he could ill afford to be proud and he espoused those projects no one else considered. A black comedy involving a legless man trapped in a cellar with twelve radios, each tuned to different stations; an autobiographical piece by a fiery working-class lad whose mother was a drudge, whose father was dying from pneumoconiosis and whose sister was selling herself on the streets of Cardiff; a wordless epic, thirteen hours with intervals, about Vietnamese peasants, for which the props included twenty-seven hoes and a gallon bucket of pigs’ blood nightly.
Well, this was the sixties and Harold Roy knew better than to look back. Before the bubble burst he went into rep. Salisbury, Lancaster, Derby; Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, Charley’s Aunt. For every four Agatha Christies he put on a John Osborne revival.
This was how he met Maria. Hard-bitten, attractive, opinionated, coldly sexy, Maria was perfect as the best friend who encouraged Jimmy Porter’s wife to leave him and then stays on to share his bed and do his ironing. When the curtain rises for the second act, she is in her slip at the ironing board and Harold took to secreting little notes between the folds of the creased shirts. Maria found this charming; she was at a loose end and, in Chester, Harold seemed the acme of sophistication. She hitched her wagon to someone she thought was going to make her a star and all he did was make her pregnant.
All right, Maria thought, coming round from the anesthetic, the least you can do is make money.
Harold’s first work in television was directing live drama for Granada. He waved his arms a lot, called actors of any sex “love”; most importantly, he got on first-name terms with the crew and saw to it that the cameramen were never in need of a drink after the unit had wrapped. He hung an expensive lens from his neck and was forever squinting through it, always looking for angles. He said yes to everything, no to nothing, he was always in work. His agent put him up for the latest Dennis Potter, the new John Mortimer; what he got was another Emmerdale Farm, an Eastenders, a Grange Hill.
Now he was working on a series for Midlands Television about a working-class family who win a fortune on the pools.