He pointed the can at Grabianski. “I knew you’d be chuffed. Knew you wanted to get clear of that poxy hotel.”
Grice unhooked his heels and stood up.
“For tonight, there’s an old z-bed you can make up in here and I’ll have the bedroom. Tomorrow we’ll go into the city and buy you a proper bed.”
Before then, Grabianski hoped, they would figure out what they were going to do with the kilo of cocaine they had taken from the back of Maria Roy’s bedroom safe.
Four
He couldn’t see the clock face from where he was sitting, but he guessed it was somewhere between half-two and three. Low, from the stereo, the song of Johnny Hodges’ saxophone, the note held, rising, while the rhythm pulsed beneath it. On the label he was using an alias, but his was the perfect print, the impossibility of disguise. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” Resnick shifted in the chair and, implanted half-way up his chest, Bud complained, somewhere between a hiss and a whimper. Why, for instance, do you want to move from this house? “Come on, sweetheart,” said Resnick, “time to go.” He cupped both hands beneath the cat’s body and lifted him to the floor; felt against his thumbs, the ends of his fingers, the animal’s bones were like the spars of a model mast, matchwood and hope. Why?
His feet were bare against the fiber of the carpet. Mr. Albertson had surveyed it with a slow shake of the head: you could try for a couple of hundred, curtains as well, but in the end … Now Albertson had got him to a nunnery or wherever and Resnick’s affairs were in fresh hands. You’re good at that I’ll bet. Being patient. He measured dark coffee into the percolator, tamping it down. At first, when he had ceased being able to sleep through, he had made himself cut back on caffeine, less throughout the day, none after the fall of light. All that happened, his team had suffered. Half a sentence out of their mouths before he had shot them down. On and on until Lynn Kellogg had cornered him in his office and asked, direct, soft burr of her Norfolk voice at odds with the anxiety of her eyes, sir, what’s wrong?
He had restored his usual ten cups a day or more, tried tempering them before bed with Horlicks and the like, warm milk and whisky. If he managed three to four hours, unbroken, he counted his blessings. Better than sheep. Bud purred encouragingly and Resnick opened the fridge for the tin of cat food: one gain from these sleepless middle nights he and the runt of his litter had shared together-free to eat alone and unpestered, Bud was at last beginning to put on a little weight.
Whereas himself … he pressed the flesh where it swelled beneath his shirt and thought of Claire Millinder looking at him from the doorway of his house. In the other room the record had come to an end and all he could hear was the thin scrape of the cat’s collar against the edge of its bowl and the slow drip of the coffee falling through.
It was not the way Rachel had looked at him: neither the first time she set eyes on him, nor when she said goodbye. Charlie, I’ll be in touch, I promise. I just need time on my own, to think things through All right? Her mouth had been warm for a moment against the cold of his winter cheek and they had both known, although she was not lying, that she would never speak to him again. Nor write. He saw her then, clearly, not that last time but the one before, standing in the garden at the front of this house, so still, and Bud cradled in her arms. When her eyes closed on his, they had been opaque with fear.
That poky little room, Mrs. Lurie had said, what else could you get in there?
As both Resnick and Rachel knew, if you hacked at it enough, you could squeeze in, just, the body of a man, full-grown.
And just as his brush had never succeeded in covering from sight the nursery animals that once had danced across the wallpaper, so his memory-and hers-could not remove the sight, the smell of so much blood.
Why do you want to move from this house?
Resnick poured coffee and padded back into the other room, cat at his feet.
After the burglary, Maria Roy had been standing by the reconnected telephone, willing it to ring. She had changed out of her robe into a plain black dress, rust-colored tights and low-heeled black shoes. There was almost no makeup on her face, no polish on her nails. Although she was waiting for the phone to ring, she jumped when it did.
“Harold?”
“I know where I am, which is at Jerry and Stella’s. I’m halfway through my second vodka martini; Stella says there’s a good chance of the veal spoiling, you never rang them to ask for a lift, where the hell are you?”
“Come home, Harold.”
“What?”
“Home. Come. Now.”
“You crazy? You know how good Stella’s veal is. The way she does it with the capers and the chopped green olives …”
“Harold, come home. I promise you’ll lose every shred of appetite.”
“You know what that canteen’s like at the studio. All I had all day was salad and a little smoked mackerel.”
“I thought we should talk before I called the police.”
“The police? What are you … Someone’s stolen your lingerie from the garden again; you want them to force open the garage door? What?”
Maria gave a short-tempered sigh. “Before I can contact the insurance company about making a claim, I have to notify the police of the burglary.”
“Which burglary?” Harold Roy asked without thinking. Six seconds later, without waiting for an answer, he thought he knew.
While waiting for her husband to arrive, Maria had carefully washed out the glasses her two visitors had used and restored them to their usual place. She had wiped Grabianski’s prints from the trolley and the scotch bottle. It was going to be difficult enough, without needing to explain the how and why of sitting round, all three of them, old acquaintances having an early-evening drink.
Unbelievable!
She hadn’t believed it had happened. Even after she had made herself sit down, calm as she was able, and take the events through, step by step, in her mind. Three times she had returned to the bedroom to check, but each time the jewelry, the money-all of it-was missing. Gone. He had really sat there, that man, tall and broad and looking at her as if she’d stepped out of an advertisement for French perfume. Wanting her but afraid to do more than look. Which was why, she supposed, after that first rush of cold fear, she had not been afraid. If anything, he had been in awe of her.
She heard Harold’s car turn too fast into the drive and moved to the living room so that she would be standing there when he came in, the central light dimmed just enough, her hands loose at her sides, perfectly still.
God! thought Harold, stopped in his haste. She looks awful!
“Maria?”
Unnervingly, she stared right back at him, not answering.
“Maria?”
So pale.
Her eyes, dark and large, widened.
“The cocaine-did they find it?”
She bit her teeth down into the flesh of her lower lip and nodded.
“Shit!”
He brushed past her and banged his leg against the side of the drinks trolley, hands steadying himself and the shaking bottles.
“I suppose they stole the vodka, too?”
“We’re out of vodka.”
Harold grabbed a bottle of gin and locked himself in the bathroom, refusing to open the door until almost an hour later. By then the bottle was a third empty and he was sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the bath, one foot resting on the bidet. Talcum powder dusted the grooves of his cream cords.
Maria hitched her skirt up by some inches and sat on the bath, one arm around his shoulders. She was in danger of feeling genuinely sorry for him, but it passed.