Rough Treatment (36 page)
They were sitting in Mackenzie’s office on the upper floor of Midlands Television. The company retained to service the rubber plants had gone into liquidation and the specimen behind the producer’s desk was drooping dangerously and beginning to brown around the edges. Mackenzie was at his most businesslike, tenting his fingers together over a sheaf of faxes and the current copy of
Broadcast.
Seated discreetly to one side, Freeman Davis sipped Perrier from a plastic cup and looked cool.
“What you have to realize, Harold,” Mackenzie said, “we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it was right. For the series. That’s what we’re all concerned about, after all. The series.
Dividends.
”
Harold Roy didn’t say a thing. After what had been happening he was numb; in his mind, numb. The police had intimated that he might not be charged, at least not with anything major, but they still weren’t making promises. Not until he had given them everything they needed: on the dotted line. “Keep your nose clean,” the drugs-squad detective had said, tapping one nostril. “We’ll be in touch.” Maria had packed and unpacked her suitcases a half-dozen times, whether for a holiday or a divorce was uncertain.
“Harold,” Mackenzie said.
“Um?”
“You heard what I said?”
“Um.”
“You know I’ve talked with your agent.”
Harold nodded.
“Your name stays on as long as you want it that way. Beneath Freeman’s.”
“Be …” Harold swallowed it back. Freeman Davis looked smugger than usual, if that were possible. When you were in the catbird seat, the only things were to get fat and smile.
“… so there’ll be no problems with residuals,” Mackenzie was saying. He may have said more, but if so Harold had missed it. There had been a letter that morning from the insurance company: since they understood the updating of security measures they had advocated had not been carried out, the level of cover was in doubt. Harold tugged at his trousers, just above the knees. Mackenzie was staring at him; Freeman Davis at the rubber plant. Had he missed something else?
Executive-like, Mackenzie strode around the desk and lifted Harold’s coat from the black ash-and-chrome stand. He held it out and waited for Harold to get up and step into it.
“’Bye, Harold,” Mackenzie said, pushing the door to behind him. “You can find your own way out.”
Grinning, Freeman Davis made his two first fingers and thumb into a gun, set it against his temple and pulled the trigger.
Resnick knocked on Skelton’s door and waited. The superintendent called him in, seeming sprucer than at any time in the past few days. When he’d walked into the station that morning, much of the snap had been back in his stride.
“How’re the bruises, Charlie?”
“Deep purple, sir.”
“Picture in the
Post
makes it look as if you’ve gone three rounds with Mike Tyson.”
POLICE BREAK CITY DRUG RING the headline had read.
Inspector makes dramatic arrest in shadow of Robin Hood.
There had been a paragraph about a police informer, suitably vague; Grabianski had not been named. In a column on page two, Norman Mann of the Drugs Squad was quoted as saying the arrest had come about as the result of months of undercover work and coordinated investigation.
“Sooner me than you, sir,” Resnick said. There had been no mention anywhere in the press, local radio or television about the arrest of Skelton’s daughter. The DCI had agreed that in view of her lack of any previous record, no charges would be brought. Restitution and apologies had been made to the firms concerned, along with a promise that extra policing would be maintained.
“Tom Parker was on the phone earlier,” Skelton said, “the Chief Constable’s received Jeff Harrison’s resignation. Apparently he’s off to head up a new security agency in south London; specialize in anti-burglary work, uniformed neighborhood patrols, ex-forces personnel.”
Skelton offered Resnick a chair. “Grice’s been charged?”
“Thirty-seven counts of burglary. Grabianski gave us a list half a yard long. Photographic memory.”
“Fossey?”
Resnick made a face. “He’ll go into court screaming not guilty.”
“You do think he’ll go to trial?”
“I’d like to be certain.”
The superintendent prodded papers on his desk. “We’ll have to get something stronger than this.”
“We’ll keep trying.”
Skelton nodded. “I know what I’ve been meaning to ask you, Charlie? How’s the house sale going?”
“Sounds as if someone’s made an offer. Matter of fact, I’m off to look at a new place this evening, just in case.”
“Another house?”
Resnick shook his head. “Flat.”
“Better, Charlie. More sensible. What d’you need a whole house for?”
The cats? Resnick thought. He didn’t say it.
The CID room was like Gatwick in the middle of a security alert. Above the movement of bodies and the spiral of voices, Resnick heard Patel’s shout and saw him pointing towards one of the phones. He pushed his way across and picked the receiver from the pile of pink forms where it had been laid.
“Resnick.”
“Inspector Resnick?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Diane Woolf.”
“Diane …”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already?”
“No.” He could hear the smile in her voice and see the shades of red as she moved her head. “I was just surprised.”
“You’re a star now, you know.”
“I see,” said Resnick, and then, when she didn’t respond, “Five-minute wonder.”
“Well, I’m impressed.”
“Thanks, but you shouldn’t be.”
“Modest with it.”
What was she phoning for, Resnick wanted to know. What was this all about? The sound was still swilling about him and he had to keep the earpiece pressed hard against his head to hear her clearly.
“Anyway, congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
For Christ’s sake, thought Resnick, ask her to meet you for a drink. What’s wrong with dinner?
“Maybe we’ll bump into one another again,” Diane Woolf said. “’Bye.”
Resnick stared at the phone for a few moments before setting it back down.
“It’ll look a lot better when there’s furniture,” Claire Millinder was saying.
The walls were the not-quite-white of toilet tissue. Passing through the kitchen she switched on the extractor fan to prove that it worked; dropped paper into the sink and ran the tap to test the waste disposal.
“Twin power-points in every room,” she said.
If Resnick stood up on his toes he could leave finger marks on the ceiling.
“So what do you think?” Claire asked.
They were standing by the double-glazed window, rustproof aluminum frame. Resnick couldn’t be certain if what he was seeing was a reflection of this flat in the glass or another one opposite, different but exactly the same.
“I think I’d go mad inside a month,” he said.
“Let’s go and have a drink,” Clare Millinder said. “Spend some of my commission.”
“Spend what you’re getting from me, we’ll be lucky to drink water.”
“What I get from you,” Claire grinning her broken-toothed grin, “I might as well be in the desert.”
“Thanks.”
“For nothing, Charlie. Come on, we’ll find some good New Zealand wine and first thing in the morning I’ll phone those people and tell them we’re sorry, but the deal’s off.” She locked the flat door behind them and slipped her arm through Resnick’s on the way to her car. “The vendor’s changed his mind.”
“You know I’m not going to stay in for ever, don’t you?”
Kate looked at her parents across the breadth of the living room. Wendy Craig was doing something in a conservatory but nobody was watching.
“We know that, Kate,” Skelton said.
His wife got up and left the room.
“I can’t sit around here like a vegetable.”
“Nobody’s suggesting you should.”
“She is,” said Kate, nodding towards the sound of crockery from the kitchen.
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Kate, when you do go out, we’ll want to know where.”
“I’d have told you before if you’d asked.”
“Told us the truth?”
She gazed for a moment at the television set where happy families were being created to the sound of studio laughter. “Probably not.”
“And now?”
“Yes. All right, I’ll try.”
“More than that.”
“All right. I’ll tell you where I’m going. The complete itinerary. Satisfied?”
Skelton looked at her carefully. “And the rest?”
She swung her legs from beneath her and headed for the stairs, back up to her own room. “You’re going to have to trust me, aren’t you?”
Claire stopped the car outside Resnick’s house but kept the engine running. “That was nice, thanks.”
“Yes, it was,” Resnick agreed.
“See what a good time you can have when you relax?”
He set a hand to the catch and opened the door. Dizzy was already running along the wall to greet him, his tail with that old familiar crook.
“Here,” Claire said, fishing in her bag. “You’d better have these.” She dropped the keys in his hand, the agency tag still attached. “I’ll get someone round tomorrow, take the board down.”
“Thanks.”
He stood a shade anxiously on the pavement, looking down.
“’Night,” Claire said, raising her hand. She leaned across the front seat and watched him walk towards the door, the cat fishtailing in and out between his legs.
“I’ll give you a ring some time,” Claire called.
“Do that.” Resnick waved back, unlocked the door and let Dizzy into the house. Just before she drove off, Claire saw him stoop towards the mat and pick something up, an envelope. The way he looked at it, she hoped it wasn’t unwelcome news. She turned the car around and headed back towards the main road, towards the city, and by then Resnick’s door was closed and he was back inside his house.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1990 by John Harvey
This edition published in 2012 by
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