Cutting Edge

Eighteen

“Borrowed one of your shirts, Charlie. Hope you don’t mind.”

Ed Silver had dragged a stool close to the stove and was spreading peanut butter on the nub end of a rye loaf. Several tea bags oozed orangey-brown from where they had been dumped on a corner of the chopping board. Silver had also found a pair of Resnick’s older gray trousers while rummaging through his wardrobe and wore those now, held at the waist by a red-and-gray striped tie. Resnick wasn’t sure whether the socks were his or not. Without doubt the cat was. Dizzy, stalker of the night and the least susceptible to human advances, had found in Ed Silver a fellow spirit.

All these years, Resnick thought, and he’d misjudged him. Poor, blackhearted Dizzy. Not a football fan at all, a lager lout-in his soul Dizzy was something more serious, more tragic, an artist, an alcoholic manque.

“Nearly out of this,” Silver said, tapping the peanut-butter jar with the blade of the knife.

Resnick was more worried about his vodka.

“You had a phone call,” Silver said, chewing earnestly.

“Message?”

“Said she’d ring back.”

“She?”

“Don’t know how you do it, Charlie,” Ed Silver cackled. “Pulling birds at your age.”

Resnick glanced at his watch. There wasn’t time, but he wanted to shower. The smell of stale urine still clung to him, the memory of the wavering chalk line that had marked Dougherty’s body. The expression on Pauline Dougherty’s face, smiling: You see, there’s been a mistake. Parents like that, those situations, the ones whose children had been buried high on cold ground or laid waste between the brick ginnels of blackened cities, what did they ever understand? What beyond the numbness and after the pain?

He dropped his clothing on the bathroom floor and switched the shower to full. Eyes closed, needle jets of water washed his body. Resnick turned up the temperature, turned his face towards the stream.

Patel sat outside intensive care, staring at his shoes. Better, at least, than surveillance outside another anonymous warehouse or factory, cold on the trail of 36 gross pairs of wide-fitting mislabeled jeans. Here one of the domestics would push a cup of tea into his hands, a biscuit; from time to time a nurse would slip him a sidelong smile.

Through a double set of glass-paneled doors he could see the apparatus around Dougherty’s bed, observe, as if through water, the ritual observations of blood pressure, temperature, vital signs. The watchers watched.

Two doctors passed quickly through, white coats flapping around well-cut dark trousers, talking in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Consultants, registrars, housemen-Patel knew the names, didn’t know the difference. His father had wanted him to become a doctor, had preached long nights about it, the honor, the prestige. Eighteen hours in a corner shop his father worked, seven days a week, every day except Christmas, all to make things easier for his children, easier than they had been for him, arriving in England with little more than names written on the back of an envelope. Welcome to Bradford. See, Diptak, you will receive an education, your brothers also. You will be a professional man. I will be proud of you.

After his degree, Patel had applied to join the police and at first his father had been less than proud. His friends, some of them, had ostracized him, cut him dead. Traitor! The word had dogged his footsteps along the streets where he had grown up, assaulted him from the walls; one evening, serving in the family shop, his best friend had spat in his face. The vehemence of it had been unsuspected and the hurt clung to him still, worse by far than the racist jokes his fellow officers would repeat to his face without a second thought, the calls of “Paki bastard!” he had to ignore most days of his life, most nights in the city.

“Excuse me.” Patel got to his feet as the two doctors walked back through the doors. “Excuse me, but Mr. Dougherty, is there any change?”

They looked at him as if he could only be there in error.

“Is there any change in his condition?” Patel asked.

“No,” one of the doctors said, walking away.

“What do you think?” said the other. “A jar before squash or after?”

No hats or trainers read the notice taped to the door. Sorry no jeans. No hats, thought Resnick, pushing his way through, must be some kind of code.

A short staircase wound down to the center, a curve of seats and small tables off to the left, the DJ’s decks to the right, more steps led down to the main floor and the facing bar. Knees resting on a rubber pad, a blonde-haired woman was polishing away at the wooden dance floor.

A pair of lights shone dully from beneath the glass shelves at the back of the bar. Alongside the Labatt’s and Grolsch in the cold cabinet, Resnick spotted some bottles of Czech Budweiser and his admiration rose several notches.

“Anyone around?” he asked.

“Too early,” said the woman on the dance floor, not bothering to turn around. “Come back in an hour.”

“You’re the only one here, then?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” she said, with a touch of put-on weariness. “Are you thick or what?”

Hands to her hips, she arched her back and swiveled her head. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“Hello, Rosie,” Resnick said.

The last time she had heard his voice had been in court, Resnick giving evidence against two of her sons, the pair of them arrested and charged with offenses under Sections 47 and 38, causing aggravated bodily harm and using force to resist arrest. They’d be back out any time now, but probably not for long.

“How’s the girl?” Resnick asked. Rosie’s daughter had been born with a severe disability to the spine that had kept her shuffling in and out of hospital for years.

“What the hell do you care?” Rosie said.

A door to the side of the bar opened and she picked up her polishing cloth and went back to her work. “We’re not open yet,” said a man in a loose white shirt and a maroon bow tie, hair gelled upwards in short, fashionable spikes. “Come back in …”

“I know,” Resnick said, “an hour.” He pushed his warrant card along the bar.

“What can I do for you, Inspector?” the man asked.

“Are you the owner?” Resnick asked. “Manager?”

“Derek Griffin. I’m the manager.”

“Here last night?”

“Most of the time, why?”

Resnick looked over towards the nearest table. “Let’s sit down.”

Resnick leaned against the padded backrest; Griffin perched himself uneasily on a stool, reminding Resnick of a cockatoo from the aviary in the Arboretum, likely to fly off at any moment.

“Can I get you something, Inspector?” Griffin asked, glancing towards the bar.

“How many staff here with you?”

“Last night?” Resnick nodded.

“Three behind the bar, bouncer on the door. Four.”

“That all?”

“Unless you count the DJ.”

“Five, then.”

“All right, five.”

“Names and addresses.”

“Look, what’s this about?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. Should I?”

“A man was attacked.”

“In here?”

“Outside. Between eleven and one.”

“Whereabouts outside?”

“He’s in critical condition.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Toilet across the street.”

Griffin relaxed a little on his stool. “Not here then, is it. I mean, it’s nothing to do with us. It didn’t happen in here.”

“We think there’s a good chance he’d been in just before, for a drink.”

“Somebody see him?”

“You tell me.” The photograph of Karl Dougherty had been supplied by his parents and photocopied. It had been taken five years earlier and showed a half-way good-looking young man smiling into a friend’s camera. There were palm trees in the background and Karl was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts that finished just above his knees. It was the most recent picture they had. Griffin lifted it towards his face, stared at it for several seconds and set it back down. “No,” he said.

On the level above them, Rosie was polishing tables.

“No, you didn’t see him last night, or no, you don’t know him at all?”

“Either. Both.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain.”

“Don’t tell him a thing,” Rosie said, “it’ll get twisted arse-uppards and used against you. Though you’re lucky, you got me as a witness.”

“How many d’you reckon were in here yesterday?” Resnick asked. “Give or take.”

“Three hundred, maybe more. Not all at one time, of course.”

“None of them wearing hats.”

“What?”

“Skip it.”

“This bloke,” Griffin said. “What happened to him? I mean, exactly.”

Resnick told him briefly, not quite exactly. It was still enough to make Griffin cross his legs and for sweat marks to dampen his shirt. If his bow-tie could have drooped, probably it would.

“The staff on last night,” Resnick said. “Any of them in today? Lunchtime?”

“Maura. None of the others.”

“Tonight?”

“All except one.”

“Better get me the list,” Resnick said. “Mark on it when they’re here, days and times. Home numbers if you know them. We’ll need to talk to them as soon as we can.”

Griffin nodded and crossed towards the bar. “The customers,” he said, turning back towards Resnick. “You’re not going to be in here, bothering them as well?”

“Oh, yes,” said Resnick. “I should think so. But don’t worry, anyone I send, I’ll make sure they’re properly dressed.”

Once or twice, when he’d been younger, fifteen, sixteen, Kevin Naylor had been beset by panic: once in the middle of a crowded street, another time in the Broad Marsh Center, Saturday afternoon. Everyone hurrying around him, scurrying past, purposeful, busy, knowing exactly what they were looking for, where they were going. Naylor had stood where he was, quite still, scared, unable to move, and they had continued to stream past him, these people, not seeing him, not even knocking into him: as if he weren’t there.

He had experienced much the same sensation at training college, a large role-play exercise, civil unrest, riot shields and batons. Other trainee officers in jeans and jumpers, pretending to be students, strikers, loving it. The chance to scream and yell and charge. So easy to pretend emotion, feign feelings, hate. Call slogans till you were red in the face.

Wearing protective clothing, engaged in strategic retreat, Naylor had become separated, targeted. Stranded amidst all that simulated anger, faces, limbs and bodies flying past. Shatter of glass on the tarmacked ground. Flash of flame. He had stood exactly as he was while the fire sought to claim him. Awake and asleep: immovable till they had dragged him clear.

There had been a session with a counselor after that, talk of nervous failure, unsuitability; only the diligence of his written work had prevented him from being back-classed.

Nothing as dramatic had recurred since then. Out on the job, first in uniform and now plain clothes, in most situations you simply responded, did what it was clear you had to do. Only occasionally did events threaten to overwhelm him and the possibility of panic return; rarely for more than moments at a time. There had been a cup match at Forest with several thousand United supporters locked out; eighty or so youths racing down the Forest towards Hyson Green in the half-light; now.

Two sets of nurses were moving between shifts, handing over; shouts for assistance, trolleys, bells; screens pulled around one, then another; at the nurses’ station the telephone that never seemed to stop ringing and never seemed to be answered. Underpinning all of this, Naylor was aware of the near-mute chatter from a dozen television screens, the same banalities being mouthed, adultery and another slice of cake between the commercial breaks.

He had to check with the sister that it was okay to begin interviewing staff on duty; Lynn Kellogg was waiting to see those going off as they left. Helen Minton took hold of him firmly by the elbow and propelled him towards her office. “I know this is important,” she said, “but I’d appreciate it if this takes as little time as possible. What we’re doing is important too.”

Vainly waiting for the chance to question Dougherty, Patel had found a copy of yesterday’s Mail and was stuck on 13 Across: Vital to sustain life (9). He was still struggling over it when Karl Dougherty’s blood pressure sank to 90/40 and they decided that a further transfusion would not be enough. Chances are he was bleeding internally. Patel sat there and watched as they wheeled Dougherty towards the theatre for more surgery.

Lifeblood.

He filled in the squares and thought about the next clue.