Thirty
“Whatever’s the matter with you, Charlie?” Elaine was leaning against the living-room door, a glass of white wine in her hand.
What’s the matter with you? Resnick felt like asking. Since when did you start drinking at home, this side of seven o’clock especially. Resnick was listening to Charlie Mariano, thumbing through back issues of Jazz Monthly, the omelet he’d made earlier balanced cold on its plate at the edge of his chair, largely untouched.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Is something the matter?”
Elaine held his gaze for several moments, clicking forefinger against thumb as she turned away.
When Resnick appeared in the kitchen fifteen minutes later he was wearing his gray raincoat, unbuttoned and unbelted. “I’m going to the match.”
“What match?”
“Reserves.”
Without humor, she arched back her head and laughed. “Christ! Is staying in the same house with me suddenly that bad?”
He stood on the County Road side, near the halfway line. Rain began to fall in swathes, darkening his coat, seeping through to his shoulders. On the pitch a bunch of youngsters and the odd gnarled professional hoofed the ball out of defense in the hopeful direction of their opponents’ goal. Tackles slid fast across the greasy turf and, with so few people in the ground, you could hear, all too clearly, the crack of bone meeting bone.
“Here! Here! Here!” a player called, arms like semaphore. “Get the bastard thing upfield!”
Gripping the metal rail before him, Resnick failed to notice that his fingers had whitened, his knuckles were purple. So many times since the previous afternoon the words had lain on the back of his tongue, waiting to be spoken and each time he had swallowed them whole and unsaid. Whatever’s the matter with you, Charlie? Is staying in the same house with me suddenly so bad? He could smell something strange and sweet and it was the scent of violets, filling nostrils and mouth, making him retch. Married women, Rains had said, smug and handsome and knowing, a cinch.
When, less than five minutes from the end of the match, County’s reserve striker latched on to a weak back pass and toe-poked the ball past the keeper for the game’s only goal, Resnick could scarcely raise a cheer.
It was a drinking club near the Forest, as unlike the one where he’d been with Resnick and Cossall as it was possible to be. The DJ at the far end of the main room was playing reggae and Rains’s was the only other white face at the bar. “Scotch,” he said, “large. And a large gin.”
He slid a note across the bar and pocketed the change, picked up the glasses and carried them to the far end where Ruth was sitting.
“I told you …” Ruth began.
“It’s a free country.”
Ruth laughed bitterly. “Is it?”
Rains sat himself on the stool beside her, tasting his Scotch. Ruth lit another cigarette and poured the gin into her own glass.
“We can’t talk here.”
“Why not?”
“I’m known. Besides, he might come waltzing in any minute.”
“Okay, my car’s outside. We could go for a drive.” He drained his glass and began to get to his feet. Ruth scowled and looked straight ahead but otherwise she didn’t move. Rains settled back down and gestured to the barman for a refill. He thought if there were any real danger of Prior arriving she would have left the moment she’d recognized him at the door.
Ruth held the glass by the stem, tight, wondering if some kind member was in the entrance hall already, letting Prior know his wife was sitting there, taking drinks from a sodding copper. She could see Rains’s reflection mirrored above the bottles, so fucking good-looking it made you want to throw up.
“Another?”
She didn’t answer and he took her silence for agreement and bought a large gin. Ruth waited for him to start in on Prior’s activities, how did it feel being married to a villain? He surprised her by asking her how it felt, not being able to sing any more.
“Not able? How d’you mean?”
“Don’t suppose he takes to the idea much, does he? Wife up on stage, on show? Bit old-fashioned about things like that, I should imagine.”
Before they were married, Prior had gone everywhere to see her. Step out onto the stage and there he was, somewhere at the back of the room, leaning, smiling. Later, it was, “Jesus, Ruthie! You have to start that caterwauling, every minute of the bloody day?” At first, career going nowhere, bands breaking up around her, record contracts not materializing, she had found it difficult to mind. The joy had gone out and all that was left were torn vocal cords and hard work.
“Don’t you wish,” Rains said, “you could do it again, now and then, just for the hell of it?”
Ruth stubbed out her cigarette, automatically reaching for another. “It’s been too long. Any voice I might’ve once had’s gone.”
He put his hand over the one that was bringing the cigarette to her lips. “Maybe then you shouldn’t smoke so much?”
She shook him free. “My father, that’s what you want to be? My agent? You’re short of an act for the police smoker? What?”
Rains waited until she was looking full into his face. “I like you. Talking to you, it’s good. I like that. Paying you a bit of attention, I reckon it’s too long since anyone’s done that. You deserve better. That’s all.”
Ruth sat there, you cocky young bastard, you’re so full of shit; but listening all the same, knowing he was lying, enjoying every word.
When he arrived back at the house all the lights were out and Resnick assumed that Elaine had grown tired of her own company, caught a cab to someone welcoming. But she had gone to bed early, her face blinking back at him from the pillow when he switched on the light. She covered her eyes and he snapped it back off.
“Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thanks.”
The usual courtesies.
Resnick spread the coffee beans across the palms of both hands, lowering his face towards them. Even so, it lingered: sweet-sour smell of the sheet, oil of violet on the breath. In the living room he thought of playing Parker’s “Lover Man,” one of those bruised ballads Billie Holiday sang with Lester Young. Either, he realized, would reduce him further into self-pity. He fetched a notebook from the desk by the window and wrote up that day’s conversation with Martin Finch. If anything went wrong, he was going to need all the accurate documentation he could muster.
Almost an hour later he called Ben Riley on the phone.
Ben’s voice was quiet and Resnick wondered if there was someone there with him, the woman who had witnessed the incident with the shotgun or someone else. “What’s the matter, Charlie? Can’t sleep?”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Not to fret. What can I do for you?”
“That deal today, with Finch? You think it was all right?”
“Will he follow through, you mean?”
“Yes,” Resnick said.
“Depends who he’s more frightened of, us or Prior.”
They talked some more, Resnick reluctant to put down the phone.
“You know what I was on about the other day,” Ben Riley said eventually. “About getting out.”
“Leaving the force?”
“Quitting the whole bloody lot, lock, stock, and barrel. Well, I’m serious. Maybe didn’t think I was at the time, but I am. I’m getting out, Charlie. Started looking into it, serious. Got an appointment to talk to the union rep later this week.”
Resnick’s stomach was hollow and chilled. “Where the hell’d you go?”
A pause and then, “The States, perhaps.”
“Don’t be daft. Whatever it is you’re running from here, ten times as bad over there. New York. L.A. You’d be …”
“Big country, Charlie. Not all cities, you know.”
“If it’s a quiet life you want, what’s wrong with Devon? Cornwall?”
At the other end of the phone Ben Riley sighed. “It’s not a quiet life I’m after, Charlie. It’s a new one.”