Cutting Edge

Twelve

They made a disparate couple, sitting there, mid-morning, in the front of Resnick’s car, not looking at each other, looking out. Resnick’s jacket had become hunched up at the collar when he sat, the knot of his tie had gradually twisted as the day had worn on and the top button of his once-white shirt was either missing or undone. Alongside him, Ian Carew was showing good posture, smooth shoulders highlighted against the broad black straps of his vest. For minutes at a time, his expression wouldn’t change. It was only his fingers that fidgeted slightly, smoothing the gray material of his sweatpants, toying with the slack string bow at the waist, nails pushing hard at the soft skin inside the first digits of each hand.

Resnick made himself wait, the watch on his left wrist just visible below his frayed cuff. Just because Carew had chosen not to go running, didn’t mean he shouldn’t sweat.

It was Lynn Kellogg who made the tea, straight in the mug, lifting the bag clear with a spoon before setting the mug into Karen’s hands. Karen was sitting on the very edge of the bed, dangerously close to overbalancing. Lynn made tea for herself and sat carefully alongside her.

“If you want to talk about it,” Lynn said.

Karen brought the mug to her mouth but didn’t drink.

“What happened,” Lynn continued.

The numbness in Karen’s bottom lip caused her to misjudge and hot tea splashed on her bare leg, the white and black rug. Lynn reached over and steadied the girl’s hands with her own.

“Tell me,” she said, before letting go.

Instead Karen began to cry and Lynn took the tea away from her, resting it on the floor, holding her then, Karen’s face warm on Lynn’s white blouse, sleek black hair caught across the corners of Lynn’s mouth.

“It’s all right,” Lynn whispered. “It’s all right,” down into her hair, Karen’s sobs growing and part of Lynn thinking how strange, to be sitting there on that strange bed, holding that hurt and beautiful girl.

“It’s all right.”

Karen stopped crying almost as abruptly as she had begun. She wiped the hair from her face, careful round her cheekbone where the bruising was beginning to deepen, change color.

“He didn’t do it,” Karen said. “He couldn’t.”

“Didn’t do what?”

“Tim. The other night. He wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s not what I’m concerned about,” Lynn said. “Not now.”

Karen reached towards the mug of tea but changed her mind. Head up again, close to Lynn, less than a foot away, she bit down gently into her swollen lip.

“You’ve got to tell me what happened,” Lynn said.

Karen shook her head.

“Your face-how did that happen?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. He hit you. Carew, he hit you, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t mean it.”

Lynn looked at where the flawless skin was hardening yellow, shading into purple: the cut mouth. “Are you saying all that was an accident?”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“No?” said Lynn. “What did he mean to do?”

A few occasions, when Resnick had been young enough to think there were things you did because you should, because they would do you good, he had been to orchestral concerts, the Philharmonia, the Halle. The Albert Hall it had been then, dodgy acoustics and a balcony that ran round three sides, red seats in fading plush that played havoc with your knees, a listed organ only heard by the Methodists on Sundays. It had taken him four or five visits and a little more self-confidence to admit that once the overture was over and the second movement of the concerto was underway, he was bored. Shitless. The ones who thought they understood jazz were the worst: Gershwin, Milhaud, Dvorak-that dreadful From the New World, its ponderous rhythms and emasculation of black gospel.

He had been reminded, on those rare, early visits, of Friday evenings when he was a kid, Sunday afternoons. TV off-Had they had a television then? He wasn’t sure-radio on. “For God’s sake,” his father would say, “sit still and stop the endless fidgeting.” George Melachrino, Semprini: old ones, new ones, loved ones, neglected ones. His mother, who sang around the house each and every day, old songs from her own country, hers and his father’s, songs she had herself learned as a child, needed no warnings. In this, it seemed now to Resnick, as in all other things, she sensed what his father required of her and obeyed. She never sang in his presence. Listening to the radio or gramophone, she would darn socks and stockings, rarely speak. It was his father who switched on the set, controlled the volume, lowered the needle into place. Black shellacked 78s. The Warsaw Concerto, Cornish Rhapsody, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1, only the first movement. His father would tilt his head towards the ceiling, close his eyes. During The Warsaw Concerto his mother would cry, stifling the tears with her embroidered handkerchief, lest she be dismissed from the room.

To Resnick, all three pieces sounded alike; his mind would dovetail between football and sex, Notts County and Denise Crampton’s knickers. “What is the matter with you?” his father would demand. “All that stupid wriggling.” His fellow patrons had shot him similar looks on those evenings when he had tried in vain to find a more comfortable position for his legs and struggled to be more sympathetic to composers who thought that jazz was something you could play from written scores with banks of musicians, the whole enterprise weighed down by such seriousness of purpose that it suffered from elephantiasis of the spirit.

Older, a man, though younger than now, his thoughts had skittered and soared and settled, finally, on those perennial mysteries, soccer and sex: when County got around to scoring would the earth move?

Sitting there in that side road beside Ian Carew, he thought about Ed Silver, slumped somewhere over an empty bottle of cider or wine, about where Carew had been between one forty-five and two-fifteen two nights ago; he wondered what his wife might have said into the telephone had he allowed her the time.

“Are you charging me?” Carew asked.

Resnick turned to face him. “What with?”

“He had sex with you, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“Did he have sex with you? Ian? Carew?”

“So what if he did?”

“Intercourse?”

“Yes.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“Did you want him to?”

“Look, what difference …?”

“Did you want him to have sex, make love to you?”

“What?”

“Did you want it to happen?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“That I didn’t want him?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He laughed.”

“That was all?”

“He said he didn’t believe me.”

“And?”

“Said I was dying for it.”

“And?”

“And he hit me.”

“He forced you?”

“He grabbed me on the stairs …”

“On the stairs?”

“I was trying to run away, I don’t know, into the street. He caught hold of me and dragged me back here and dumped me on the bed.”

“You were still struggling?”

“I was screaming. I kicked him. As hard as I could, I kicked him.”

“What did he do?”

“Hit me again.”

“And then?”

“He had sex with me.”

“He forced you.”

“Yes.”

“He raped you.”

She started to cry again, soundlessly this time, her body still and not shaking; Lynn leaned over to comfort her but Karen shook her away. After several moments, Lynn stood up and went to the window. A large cat, pale ginger, sat perched on a fence post, catching the autumn sun where it fell between the houses.

She knelt in front of Karen and held her hand, both her hands. She said, “You’ll have to come to the station, see a doctor.”

Karen’s eyelids, violet-veined, trembled. “Have to?”

“Please,” Lynn said. “Please.”

“You’ve got an alibi,” Resnick was saying, “like a string vest.”

“I don’t need an alibi,” said Carew. What the hell did he think he was doing, bastard, breathing garlic all over him!

“That’s good to hear, if a little inaccurate.”

“And if you intend to keep me here any longer, I insist on seeing a solicitor.” Pompous now, Resnick thought. Practicing his bedside manner. Breeding coming out of him under stress. Likely he was Hampshire or Surrey; looks like those, he didn’t come from Bolsover.

“D’you know any solicitors?”

“My family does.”

“I’ll bet they do.”

Carew sneered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Probably not a lot.”

The sneer grew into a snort and Resnick’s irrational impulse to punch Carew in the mouth was frustrated by Lynn Kellogg’s tap at the car window. Resnick wound it down, responding to Lynn’s expression by getting out on to the pavement. Behind her, the door to the house was open. Here and there, up and down the street, neighbors were beginning to take an interest.

Resnick listened and when he glanced round at the car, Carew had shifted over in his seat and was checking his hair in the rearview mirror. Resnick radioed for Naylor to collect Lynn and the girl, take them to the station. “I’ll go on ahead,” he said. “With him. Make sure they’re ready for you.”

Lynn was staring at Ian Carew, who had resumed his former position and was staring straight ahead. A woman came out of one of the houses opposite, dyed hair, man’s overcoat open over shirt and jeans. Carew’s eyes followed her automatically, mouth ready to smile.

“How’s the girl?” Resnick asked.

Lynn shook her head. “As good as can be expected. Better, probably.”

Resnick nodded and climbed back into the car. “What now?” said Carew, midway between bored and angry.

Without answering, Resnick fired the engine, slipped the car into gear, executed a three-point turn and headed back towards the center of the city.