“Wonderful.”
He reached out and caught her by the wrist. “Christ, Ruth! What is it with you lately?”
“Lately?”
“Every time I open my mouth all I get’s this great putdown.”
Ruth pulled away, rubbing at her arm. Sometimes he didn’t know his own strength; sometimes, she thought ruefully, he did, and knew enough to hit her where the bruises didn’t show.
“Jokes,” she said. “The same old jokes. Maybe I’m fed up with them.”
“Yeh? What else you fed up with?”
“Oh, you know. Life. Think I’ll go and stick my head in the oven, end it all.”
“North Sea gas,” Prior smiled. “Don’t work no more. Better off locking yourself in the garage, leave the car engine on.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I know, I know.”
“Stuck round here all the time, I might as well be.”
“Get out then?”
“Oh, yes? And do what?”
“Get a job.”
Ruth laughed. “Only place you’d let me do that’d be a convent.”
“Not likely. Let them nuns get a look at you.”
“Stop it! Just stop it!”
“What? Ruthie, what?”
“Going on. This joke, this fantasy. As if I was some kind of sex queen.”
“You still get blokes turning their heads after you in the pub, in the street.”
“Yes?” She moved close against him, her hip brushing him as she sat on the arm of the chair. “If I’m so sexy, how come I’d need to be on Mastermind to remember the last time we made love?”
From the sudden change of expression on his face, she thought he was going to take a swing at her, but the phone rang and she jumped to her feet. “I’ll get it,” she said.
She recognized his voice straight off and it was like him grabbing her hand again and pulling it against him, although she pretended that she didn’t.
“Come on,” he said. “You know who it is?”
“You want to speak to John?” she asked.
Rains laughed. “I wondered if you fancied meeting for a drink?”
For some time after she had broken the connection, Ruth stood in the still quiet of the hall, staring at the way her fingers curved around the sharp red of the receiver, the tarnished gleam of the ring biting tight below the knuckle. From the living room came the sound of Prior’s mocking laughter, the oompah bass and fractured vocal of the Icelandic entry.
Resnick had watched the discussion, the Police Commissioner’s assertions that he would never countenance No-Go areas in the capital; the search for an appropriate police response which veered between a return to community policing, ordinary coppers on the beat, to the advanced technology of CS gas and the riot shield.
“What do you think?” Elaine asked as the program came to an end.
“I don’t know,” Resnick said, “but Ben reckons we’ll soon get the chance to find out firsthand.”
“Want anything before bed?” Elaine asked. “Tea or anything?”
Resnick shook his head. “Think I’ll sit up for a while. Listen to some music.”
Elaine thought about offering to sit with him, till she saw which record he was pulling from the shelf. That bloke who played piano like a man with no arms.
“Don’t sit too late then.”
“I’ll be all right. You get some sleep.”
Resnick poured a vodka and took it over to his chair; found the track he’d been hearing, off and on all day, inside his head. Ten, eleven single notes, seemingly unconnected, fingers jabbed down against the keys, till suddenly, the steady rhythm of the bass, swish of brushes against the snare, and the vibraphone takes over, finding a line, a melody where none had existed before. July second, nineteen forty-eight, New York. “Evidence.”
Twenty-Nine
The main office of Hilton, Lockett was on Trinity Square, where the fumes from the waiting buses and the cars waiting for spaces in the National Car Park were enough to lessen life expectancy a good five years. Resnick walked into the square past the Post building, pausing to look at the special offers on art paper in the stationer’s window and buy a packet of mints from the newsagent’s. He hoped he wasn’t developing a sweet tooth.
There was no mistaking the man he’d seen leaving the house with Elaine. Leaning now over one of the young women at her desk, smiling as he made some remark. He was several inches shorter than Resnick himself, slim; the suit, dark blue with a narrow stripe, was the same as he’d been wearing then. The same or similar. The young woman laughed and the man moved across the office to his own desk near the rear.
There were several people inside, couples, browsing the property details: houses under?40,000, houses under?65,000, houses under?85,000;?85,000 and above. There was a photograph of the detached house on Richmond Drive in the window; save for the two figures who had been outside, it was exactly as Resnick remembered. And well above the?85,000 mark. Good: he was pleased Elaine wasn’t selling herself cheap.
Resnick pushed open the door and stepped inside. Three faces looked up at him expectantly. Ignoring them, Resnick went to the appropriate section and lifted a sheet detailing the Richmond Drive property from the rack.
“A very fine house, sir.” He was blocking Resnick’s path, professional smile in place, scent of violets faint on his breath. “Excellent value.”
Resnick nodded and took a step to the side.
“Was it that particular property you were interested in, that particular area? We have a number of others …”
Resnick knew if he stayed there another minute he would hit him, full in the face. “No,” he said, pushing past, “this is fine for now.”
Out on the street he screwed the paper down into his jacket pocket and hurried between heavy green buses towards the lower edge of the square. One hand against the railings outside Jessops, he caught his breath: not since he had been in uniform, confronted by a gang of youths shouting abuse and spitting in his face, had he felt such a need to lash out, strike back. Although he hadn’t admitted it at the time, almost certainly hadn’t been aware that it was so, this had been one of the reasons that had nudged him into CID and out of the front line. The urge to strike back-more than that, to hurt, actually hurt. It frightened him.
Inside the Victoria Centre, he skirted round the mothers and toddlers, mothers with prams, climbed the central stairs to the upper floor. Passing between the stalls laden with vegetables and fruit, the rows of hanging plants and cut flowers, he took his stool at the Italian coffee stall. One espresso, full. He had scarcely received his change before ordering a second. And a third. He withdrew the property details from his pocket and smoothed them out upon the counter. This substantial properly provides an excellent opportunity for purchasing a large and established residence in this exclusive and much sought-after area of the city.
“Thinking of moving?” Maria asked, settling his third espresso in front of him.
“Something like that.”
She moved away to serve another customer as Resnick turned over the sheet of paper. Viewing earnestly recommended, it said in thick letters across the bottom of the page.
The police car was parked across the street from the station and Ben Riley slid from the passenger side when Resnick approached, Ben not in uniform, wearing the same sports coat and flannels he stood in on the terraces deploring another County attack gone wrong.
“Where the hell’ve you been?”
“Why?”
“Nobody seemed to know where you were.”