Rough Treatment (23 page)

Resnick eased the end of his forefinger through the short fur behind Dizzy’s ear and waited.

“It’s not that I’ve changed my mind, grassing. Not that I know anything you’d want, break-ins. Anyone who might be on a bit of work, I know less about it than you lot.”

“What is it then, Alfie?”

“That feller you was interested in, the one hanging around.”

“Thin on top. You didn’t care for his footwear.”

“Name’s Stafford. Drugs, that’s his mark. And not just the funny cigarettes.”

“You’re sure?”

“God is my witness.”

“You wouldn’t like to …”

“No, Mr. Resnick. I never said nothing, never saw you. Haul me up in court and I’ll play stum. But that sort of thing, the thought of him, the Lord knows what it leads to, needles, all this HIV business. Locking away, that’s what he wants.”

Dizzy jumped down impatiently and headed for the front door.

“I owe you, Alfie.”

Levin shook his head.

“Cup of tea, at least.”

Alf Levin looked towards the house. “Some other time, Mr. Resnick. Studio canteen. Not here.” He edged away, shoulders hunched. “Don’t mind me asking, you married?”

“Not any more.”

“Just you, eh.” He glanced again at the house. “Must rattle around in there like a pea in a drum.”

“Thanks, Alfie.”

“Nothing of it.”

Resnick was already thinking about Norman Mann, the sergeant he knew with the local drug squad: wondering if he had Mann’s number, if it was unlisted or whether it would be in the book?

Don’t mind me asking …

For some moments, no longer than it took him to lay three slices of smoked ham across toasted bread, mustard, slivers of Jarlsberg cheese, Resnick regretted that he had torn up his wife’s letter, his ex-wife’s letter, he still assumed it to have been hers, before reading it.

… you married?

If he moved from here, where would he go? Somewhere her letters wouldn’t find him. Not that they were many. The first, this, in several years. Before that there had been three, close together. One threatening to take him to court for more money; another apologizing, claiming a bout of nerves, despondency, a job that had been pulled out from under her—sorry, Charlie, I won’t bother you again. A gap of three months before she sent an oddly distant description of the house she shared with her estate-agent husband, views of Snowdon through the upstairs bedroom window. As if she were writing to a second cousin once removed. Resnick had no sense of why she had sent that, what she had been thinking. That they might, perhaps, be absent friends, nods and glances across a hundred and more miles by courtesy of the postal services. Whatever her reasons, they had not been followed through. Years was a long time between letters, even for absent friends.

Not any more.

There were two signs Resnick had grown to recognize, markérs of his mood: one when he couldn’t drink coffee, the other, when his fingers ran back and forth along the spines of his record collection without pulling anything out.

A man who is sick of jazz is sick of life. Has somebody said that? And if they had, would that make it any more or less true? Charlie, he said to himself, I don’t like you so much when you’re like this.

He found Norman Mann’s number and left a message asking that the detective call him back. Ground some coffee anyway, Colombian dark, and sat while it dripped through the machine, Miles and Bud curled on his lap, eating the last half of his sandwich. When the doorbell rang he had almost forgotten about Claire Millinder, her self-invitation to call.

“I took a chance on the red.” She was standing just a little way back from the door, a smile brightening her face and a long wool coat, dark blue, open over a short black skirt, broad striped tights. The top was beige, loose around the softness of her shoulders; except that she didn’t seem the type, she could have knitted it herself. “I tried to find some New Zealand”—walking past him into the broad hallway—“but I had to settle for this. Murray Valley. Aussie Shiraz.” She swiveled to face him. “It’s not plonk. Good stuff.” Now she was holding the bottle out towards him. “I’ve been keeping it warm on the journey.”

Resnick accepted it from her; at the door through into the kitchen, he stood aside to let her by. There was a high flush to her cheeks, a definite shine to her eyes; her shoulder brushed him as she passed.

“Good day?” Claire squatted close to the floor, stroking the diminutive Bud. It was difficult for Resnick not to look up her skirt.

“So-so.”

“Tired, I’ll bet?”

Resnick didn’t answer. He uncorked the bottle and set it down; there was some etiquette about waiting for it to breathe, but he had never been certain for how long or why.

“You’re not a wine drinker, are you?”

“I’ve got a corkscrew.”

“I’ve got a tennis racket, but I’m not going to make Wimbledon.” Bud scampered away from her feet as she moved. “What I meant was,” glancing at his waistline, “I see you as more of a beer drinker.”

“D’you want to leave this for a while?”

Claire smiled, her mouth broadening with amusement, “Now would be just about fine.”

He sat and cradled the glass between his fingers, watching her as she toured slowly around the room. The records, his books; haphazard, a pile of local newspapers waiting to be thrown out; the absence of anything hanging from his walls.

“You’ve no pictures of her, have you?”

“Who?”

“Whoever you bought this house with. Your wife.”

“You said something about a proposition.”

“That could mean,” she went on, choosing to ignore his interruption, “remembering still hurts. Either that or you’ve wiped her from your mind. Altogether.” She looked at him, sitting there, uneasy in the easy chair, doubting now why she’d come, the wisdom of an hour spent in a wine bar first, knowing that brashness was never what would attract him, turn him on. But when the recklessness was there, what did you do to calm it down?

“How about some music?” She sat opposite him, perching herself on the arm of the settee, tasting the wine.

“What do you fancy?”

“You choose.”

When last he had been in this situation, with Rachel, it had been easy; he had known what it seemed important for her to hear, wanted to impress her with songs that would send their own little messages like trip hammers along the vein.

Claire watched him stooping forward, hesitant; imagined, for a moment, getting up and standing close behind him, hands pressing hard against those shoulders, faint scrape of the day’s stubble as his face glanced against hers.

The stylus settled on to Ellington, “Jack the Bear,” 1940. Clipped phrases from the muted brass with their high reed responses. Jimmy Blanton’s bass carrying the melody into the first rocking notes from the piano.

“Charlie,” Claire said. “Is that what they call you?”

“Some of them.”

“It’s an old-fashioned sort of name, don’t you think?”

“Maybe it is.”

“I like it. Sort of makes you approachable.”

Resnick drank some wine, trying not to swallow it down as if it were Czech Budweiser, Guinness in the pub. It seemed hours since he had eaten that sandwich, probably was. There she was, this attractive young woman, right across from him, bored with what she was doing day-to-day, the people, the men that ordinarily she met. Your British policemen, they’re wonderful. No: you didn’t hear that any more, only in the reruns of old movies, between the snooker and the racing on slow afternoons. Still, there was something about what he did; the way, maybe, it merged with the illicit, illegal, somewhere one step over the line.

She was pretty, Claire Millinder, attractive and knowing it didn’t spoil her. You got the sense she dressed to please herself and if that didn’t suit, too bad. She was confident, a brashness about her that, almost reluctantly, Resnick admired. Why couldn’t all that be enough?

She was saying something now about growing up on a farm back on North Island, the beaches, playing possum. The wine was going down the glass too fast, going to Resnick’s head. But when she approached him with the bottle he let her pour more.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to find a buyer for your house.”

“That’s all right.” She was sitting on the side of his chair, the wine bottle at her feet. “I’m sure you’ve tried your best.”

“I have.”

Her fingers laid along the ridge of his upper arm, close against his neck. As he angled his face towards hers, the ends of her nails touched his cheek.

“D’you know why you’re such an attractive man, Charlie? Because I don’t.”

“Then maybe I’m not.”

She grinned. “I think that’s it. You’re not.”

Her tongue slithered either way along his teeth before exploring his mouth, warm and never still. The insides of her lips were soft and, of course, she tasted of the wine. What was it? Blackcurrant? His hand found her breast by accident and jumped away as if shocked.

“Charlie, I can’t kiss you and laugh at the same time.”

“Which would you rather do?”

Johnny Hodges was insinuating his way through Ellington’s “Warm Valley.” As they slid to the floor, Claire managed to kick clear her shoes and catch the over-balancing remains of the Shiraz at about the same time. Whatever was gently tickling her toes was probably one of the cats. Resnick rocked on to his side, not wishing to pinion her with his weight. “Ko-Ko” and the brass and saxes were back into their exchanges, call and response, come and then go. Claire’s fingers unbuttoned his shirt. “As your estate agent,” she said, “I think a viewing of the master bedroom is pretty essential.”

Resnick rolled away.

“Don’t,” Claire said.

“What?”

“Sigh. You were about to give out with that great, heavy sigh, and then close your eyes, shake your head a bit. You know? It isn’t necessary. It’s OK.” She was on her feet, smoothing down her skirt, straightening the stripes of her tights. “It’s happened before.” She grinned. “Just not that often.”

Resnick felt stupid sitting on the floor of his own living room, cross-legged.

She reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. “What does it have to be with you, Charlie? True love?”

Embarrassed, he looked away, “Probably.”

“Oh, Charlie!” She squeezed his arm, prodded his stomach, quickly kissed the side of his neck. “Come on,” she said, dragging him back towards the kitchen. “I’m feeling famished and you’re going to have to come up with something, if it’s only Rice Krispies. Besides, if we finish that bottle on an empty stomach, we’re going to be falling asleep in one another’s company and that would never do.”

“Is this all you ever eat?” Claire said, looking at her plate. “Sandwiches?”

“Most often.”

“But you’re not having one now?”

“I’ve already eaten.”

“One of these?”

“Something like.”

“Then I can understand why you’re not up for another.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Oh, it’s great. I just won’t want to eat for another week, that’s all.”

“We still didn’t get around to your proposition,” said Resnick. “At least, I don’t think we did.”

Claire laughed and waited until she had chewed her way to speech. “What we’ve been doing, properties that have got badly stuck—not that I’m saying that’s the position here, not yet, far from it—but what we’ve been discussing with owners is the possibility of a short let. Three months, six at most. It means there’s some income coming in, part of the deal is that we can still show clients round. If people have already found somewhere else to move on to, sometimes they have to on account of their job, whatever, it suits all round.”

“I think I can hang on here.”

“Like I said, I’m not talking right now. Just thinking, if nobody’s nibbled by spring …”

“And if I happen to find the bachelor flat of my dreams …”

“Precisely.”

“I don’t know.”

“There’d be safeguards.”

“I don’t know if I’d be happy about strangers …”

“Charlie, who did you think you were going to sell the place to? Friends?”

“Selling and letting, they’re not the same. Suppose it just didn’t sell …”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”