“Not in so many words,” said Resnick, wondering how he might put it better.
“Inform on my previous associates, if such they were.”
“Assist. Assist, Alfie. Your duty as a citizen.”
“A reformed citizen.”
“Exactly.”
Alf Levin tipped back his head and shook what was left in the packet down into his mouth; trouble with crisps was, all the buggers did was make you hungry. And thirsty. No matter what the flavor.
“Another, Mr. Resnick?”
“I’d rather have an answer.”
When he pulled back his upper lip, Leven revealed two remarkably long front teeth; strong, as if they could break a weasel’s back with a single bite.
“It’s not as if I mix in those sort of circles.”
“But you could.”
“I could do a lot of things.”
“For the right reasons.”
“How many of them?”
“Righteousness breeds its own rewards.”
Alf Levin screwed up the spent crisp packet and got to his feet. Across the bar, the extras were starting to move, noisily, towards the exit.
“Come on, Mr. Resnick,” Alf Levin said, “before I have to drive that lot back I want a couple of those sausage cobs.” He winked down at Resnick. “Hot snack on wrap.”
Harold Roy stood off on his own, not eating, turning his back with an automatic gesture when he unscrewed the top of his small silver flask and tipped it over into his polystyrene cup of coffee. Resnick, watching, found it easy to sympathize. The director looked like a man with anxieties aplenty; besides which, the coffee was dreadful.
Harold bunched up the empty cup in his hand and dropped it into the refuse sack as he walked past, heading for the lounge. Fair enough, thought Resnick, taking a seat at the bar, three stools along.
Resnick heard Harold order a large vodka and tonic and smiled. That should be me, he thought: every night for supper his grandfather had sat down to a plate of pickled herrings, raw red onion thinly sliced across the top, thick yellow mayonnaise at the side. Black bread. Vodka. Every night.
“Yes, duck?” asked the woman behind the bar.
“Guinness,” said Resnick.
“Pint?”
“Half.”
He took the first sip, the flavor rich and the temperature pleasingly cool beneath the creaminess of the head. From outside came the sound of engines starting up, but not everyone was leaving. Clusters of people came in, their voices shriller than usual, the occasional “fuck” for emphasis beautifully articulated. Close to Resnick’s right shoulder a young man with a gold stud in his ear and a leather jacket artistically dabbled with paint asked for a St. Clements and got a hard look.
“Cheer up, Harold!” Someone clapped him on the shoulder. “Could be a lot worse.”
Evidently Harold didn’t think so; he didn’t acknowledge the remark at all. Coins had found the jukebox and for the first eight bars a few voices sang along with Tom Jones. For some little time Resnick had been aware that he wasn’t the only one with an interest in Harold Roy. Leaning back against the wall, between the cigarette machine and a large plastic yucca, a prematurely balding man wearing a loose-fitting leather jacket was talking to a pretty, dark-haired girl in moon boots, every now and then sneaking a look over the top of her head towards the bar. If he doesn’t want a word with me, thought Resnick, it must be Harold. Advice or condolences, either way he was being polite, waiting for the perfect moment, biding his time.
Some people were not so restrained.
The producer of Dividends was in a hurry to get to his director, but he still managed to shake a few hands, squeeze a few shoulders, smile a few smiles between the entrance and where Harold was sitting, slump-shouldered, on his stool.
“What went wrong?” he asked, slipping on to the seat alongside Harold. “This time.”
“Don’t start, Mac,” Harold replied, not looking up from his glass.
“No one’s starting, Harold.”
“Good.”
“No one’s starting anything.”
Harold nodded wearily, pushed his glass along the counter towards the barmaid, gesturing that he wanted another.
“Nobody seems to be getting close to finishing, either.”
“I thought you weren’t …”
“I’m doing my job, Harold. It’s a pity you don’t seem capable any longer of even pretending to do the same.”
Those of the crew and cast who had come into the bar were very quiet now; from the other bar there was the persistent, irregular click of balls from three pool tables. Tom Jones had become Elvis Presley: he wished.
Harold Roy’s eyes were heavy and red, an amalgam of alcohol and anger, a strong leavening of shame. There was a moment when Resnick thought Harold might have shouted, thrown a punch, the fresh contents of his glass. It passed. As he looked away, twenty people seemed to take a breath.
“How many scenes were we down, Harold?”
Harold shook his head. “Can’t we talk about this in the morning? In the office?”
“How many?”
Mackenzie’s voice was relentless; Resnick couldn’t see his face, didn’t need to know bow much he was enjoying the act of humiliation.
“One? Only two this time? What was it?”
“Four.”
“What was that?”
“Four.”
“How many?”
“Four!”
Harold caught his heel against the stool as he tried to jump to his feet; it swayed for a moment and fell heavily. He stumbled awkwardly, glass in hand, vodka splashed across his clothes.
“It’s a wonder,” said Mackenzie, “the booze and all the other junk you use to pickle what once might have been a brain, it’s a wonder you can stand at all.” Mackenzie moved until he was close to Harold, close enough for Harold to have taken a swing at him, taunting him, maybe, to do exactly that. “In case it’s slipped your memory, we have a program we’re supposed to be getting ready for transmission. You let any more fall off the back end of the schedule and we’ll be down to fifteen-minute episodes. Instead of an hour.” The look he gave Harold was all contempt, no pity. “In the office,” he said. “Eight-thirty. We’ll get it sorted.”
Mackenzie left with the same speed as he’d come in and this time there were no handshakes, no good words. Just a direct stride and a hand that came out fast as he stiff-armed one side of the door. A lot of people began to talk at once. Resnick finished his Guinness and denied himself the scotch he really wanted. Harold was back at the bar, back at his stool, waiting for another large vodka. I wonder what are the chances, thought Resnick, of him leaving his car here and calling a cab?
In the excitement, he hadn’t noticed the man who’d been rolling his cigarette slipping away. Whatever he had wanted to say to Harold, he’d made up his mind it could wait until a better time. Resnick checked his watch and agreed: apart from anything else there were four cats at home anxiously waiting to be fed. Anxious save for Dizzy, who, by now, would have scavenged off and found his own.
“’Night,” he said, turning away.
“’Night, duck.”
Harold Roy’s head moved sideways, his eyes passed over Resnick but they didn’t really see him. The booze and all the other junk, Mackenzie had said. Resnick thought about that as he unlocked his car and slid behind the wheel. He also thought about Mackenzie and what it was that made men like that relish wielding the power they enjoyed so publicly. He had come across officers like that in the force, enough to have realized they were more than an odd phenomenon. For three years, back when he’d been in uniform, he had served under one; never happier than finding an excuse to give you a bollocking in front of the other officers, wipe his feet all over you and then expect you to smile and hold the door. Christ! thought Resnick. If I ever found myself getting that way I’d jack it in. No question.
He changed up into second and turned on to the main road. In less than ten minutes he would be back in the center of the city.