Cutting Edge

Thirty-one

“Shit!” Calvin exclaimed, stepping barefooted into the splashes that his father had left around the toilet bowl. “Grown man, might have thought he’d’ve learned to piss straight!” He finished his own business, dabbed at the soles of his feet with a towel, tore off some sheets of paper and wiped up the floor. Might as well do the rest while I’m at it. Calvin used more paper around the rim and just a little way down into the bowl, dumped it inside and flushed. Now rinse your hands under the tap. Last thing he wanted to do, catch some kind of disease, end up in hospital: last place he wanted to be. Let those doctors get their hands on you and you never knew where it was going to end.

His father was in the kitchen, drinking black tea with lemon-his Sunday favorite-and reading his way through the News of the World. What was the matter with Sunday Sport, that’s what Calvin wanted to know? Women with 62-inch chests and three-headed babies, something truly gross to get the day on its way.

“You ready to eat?” his father asked, scarcely looking up.

“Just about.”

“Pancakes?”

“Why not?”

Every week the same little ritual. The batter was already mixed, buckwheat flour and plain, a nub of lard that his father would wipe round the inside of the pan, barely greasing it over before cooking each one. Sugar. Lemons. Strawberry jam. Calvin checked to see if there was any juice in the fridge, but was out of luck. He flicked on the kettle and reached for the huge caterer’s tin of Nescafe his father had found on one of his foraging trips. Special offers, past-the-sale-date bargains, he would cycle halfway across the city to save fifty pence.

“You got in late last night,” his father said, refolding the paper.

“So?”

“Nothing. Simply a remark.”

“Yeh, well,” Calvin said, stirring hard to prevent the powder from collecting on the top of his mug, “keep them to yourself, right?”

His father hummed a few bars of some old song Calvin vaguely recognized and lit the gas beneath the pan. “How was your mother?”

Calvin shrugged, hunched over his drink, thin-backed in black. “Same.”

“Sister?”

“Same.”

“Damn it, boy!”

“What?”

A rare anger flared briefly in Ridgemount’s eyes and then it was gone. Shaking his head, he turned back to the stove, tilting the pan this way and that before pouring in the first of the batter. Calvin read the soccer reports. His father shook the pan to make sure the pancake wasn’t sticking, tossed it through a lazy somersault, and set it back down on the gas for a final minute.

“Your mother and me, we were together a long time. I just want to know how she is.” He slid the pancake, speckled brown, on to Calvin’s plate. “That so difficult to understand?”

“Yes.”

His father shook his head slowly and looked away.

“She left you. Walked out. Now she’s living with some other bloke, won’t hear your name mentioned in the house. Minute I walk into it, he sods off down the garden into his shed or takes their pathetic dog for a walk. No, I don’t understand.”

“She had her reasons.”

“Yeh, didn’t she just!”

“Calvin …”

“Yeh?”

But his father was back at the stove, the next pancake soon on its way. “Marjorie,” he said, eyes on what he was doing, “she asked about me, didn’t she? Asked about her daddy?”

“Yes,” Calvin said, through a mouthful of breakfast, “course she did. I told her you were fine.”

“You say I was missing her?”

“That, too.”

“Good, good. Now here,” lifting the pan, “you get ready for this one. I’ll make mine next.”

Marjorie had asked about him, Calvin was thinking, just found time to stick her head round the door and squeeze the words out. Looking like she’d just spent more getting her hair done than Calvin had to spend in a week. Two weeks. “How’s school?” Calvin had said, but she was already lost to sight. “She has such a lot of friends now,” his mother had said. “Nice young people.” Calvin had watched a film with his father once, about a girl whose skin had been light enough for her to pass as white. Nice young black people, he wanted to ask his mother, or now you’re stuck out here in Burton Joyce isn’t there any such thing?

He squeezed some lemon juice, sprinkled sugar. “How is your dad?” she had asked. “Still having his attacks?”

“What attacks?”

“Oh, you know, nightmares. Whatever you want to call them?”

“No,” Calvin had said. “No, he doesn’t have them any more. He’s fine.”

“Ready for another?” his father asked.

“In a minute. Do your own.”

How would he know the frequency of his father’s screams, used as he was to falling asleep with the sounds of Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin throbbing in his ears, leaving the headphones in place all night long.

Certain that after his confrontation with Elaine he would never be able to sleep, Resnick had been fast off the moment his head had eventually hit the pillow. When he awoke, it was to the rhythmic clawing of the cats and the rasp of an eager neighbor’s hedge trimmer. His hair had been matted to his scalp by sweat and his sheets were a damp, cold tangle from which it was difficult to move.

He got ready as soon as possible, listening all the while for evidence that the previous night had not been a guilty dream. Now, more than before, when the telephone rang his first fear would be that it was Elaine. A taxi drawing up outside, ringing at the door-he didn’t know when she would come, yet suspected that she would. Where had she gone at the end of that ghastly evening? Where in the city might she be staying? Questions that Resnick needed answering; answers he didn’t want to know. He held his breath as he opened the front door, glanced along the street in both directions before letting himself into the car. Relax, Charlie, she won’t skulk in shadows. Not now. She’s spat all that out of her system, hawked the worst of the anger off her chest. Resnick slipped the engine into gear, indicated and pulled away. Now, he smiled ruefully, that she’s broken the ice. Reaching the main road he turned right. We all know what waits beneath the ice, black, cold, and seemingly unending.

He parked outside Marian’s house and rang the bell.

Upstairs the curtains were forbiddingly drawn across; otherwise there was no sign of life. He could understand if today Marian had no inclination to speak to anyone, himself least of all. Still he tried again and waited. If she weren’t inside, waiting for him to leave, she would be at Mass. Resnick considered, but only for moments, waiting outside the Polish church for her to leave. All too easy to picture the scorn and curiosity on the faces of the congregation when they walked out of the incense and into the daylight, staring at him from their state of grace.

He got back into his car and set off towards the hospital. While there he would be able to buy some flowers, leave them on her doorstep with a note, Dear Marian … Perhaps in another six months he would pick up the phone and she would answer, perhaps not. Now, thank God, there was police business to attend to.

Karl Dougherty was no longer in intensive care, back down on the same ward as Fletcher, though not the same bay. A nurse approached, smiling warily, about to shoo Resnick away until the start of proper visiting, but his warrant card and a returning smile won him access to the bedside and the expected warning. “Don’t stay too long now. He’s still quite weak. Don’t want to tire him out.”

Dougherty looked pale but pleased to have a visitor, sucking up pineapple juice through a bendy straw. “I’ve been talking to a friend of yours,” Resnick said, the conventional queries and formalities over.

“Paul.”

Resnick nodded.

“Yes, he told me. Apparently he’s your prime suspect.”

“I wouldn’t call him that, exactly.”

Dougherty managed a grin. “I’m sure you could do better. At least, I hope so. Wouldn’t want to think that whoever did this was about to do it again.”

“I suggested to Paul you’d been having a row before you left Manhattan’s. He didn’t deny it.”

Dougherty was quiet. A domestic walked past, pushing a heavy, insulated trolley. Late breakfast, Resnick thought, before reasoning that it was early lunch.

“What were you arguing about?”

“The usual.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, you know, Inspector. Who’s the greatest psychologist, Jung or Freud? If you had three people in an air balloon, Mother Teresa, Bob Geldof, and Princess Di, who would you throw out first and why?”

“Seriously,” Resnick said.

“Geldof,” said Dougherty. “He’s the worst singer.”

“No, I mean seriously.”

“Sex,” Dougherty said.

“When, where, or how?”

Dougherty smiled and shook his head. “If.”

“Paul was interested and you weren’t, is that it’?”

Dougherty nodded. “Just about.”

“Why carry on seeing him?”

“Because I liked him, because ordinarily he’s good company. Because he isn’t a nurse. I was prepared to overlook the final five minutes of why won’t you come back to my place, why can’t I come to yours?”

“And that’s what you were arguing about? That evening?”

“It was a routine Paul went through. We both expected it.”

“Then why leave early?”

“What?”

“Why leave early? You left early, left Paul there to finish his drink. If it was no different to the end of any other evening, why did you do that?”

“Paul,” Dougherty said after a moment, “he was getting more and more insistent. Said that it was as if I was ashamed of him, he said I was using him, he said a lot of things. I didn’t want to listen to it any more.”

“You walked out on him?”

“I suppose so. I suppose you could say that, yes.”

“That’s the way he would have seen it?”

“He might.”

“He was angry with you already. Frustrated.”

“He didn’t do this.” Dougherty glanced down and Resnick imagined the wounds beneath the blanket. “He couldn’t.”

“He could have followed you from the club, seen where you were going.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean, psychologically, he couldn’t have done it.”

“Is that according to Freud or Jung?” Resnick asked.

Dougherty almost smiled. “Both of them, probably.”

“Physically,” Resnick said, “could Paul Groves have attacked you?”

“If he was worked up enough, I daresay he could have found the strength, but he could never have got that close to me without my hearing him, I’m certain of that.”

“You want to be certain. The last person in the world you want it to be is him.”

“Of course. But whoever it was, they came from directly behind me. From one of the lavatories, the stalls.”

“You heard them?”

Dougherty didn’t answer straight off. “I don’t think so. Though sometimes when I’m running it all through, only sometimes, there’s this faint half-remembered click, like the bolt of the door being pulled back.”

“And you saw?”

“As I said before, very little. A boot or maybe a shoe, black. Everything was black. Trousers …”

“Trousers, not jeans?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And size? Did you get some idea of that? How big? How tall?”

“Around my height. Strong, obviously. But I don’t think he was, you know, I don’t think he was a body builder or anything like that.”

Already the nurse was hovering at the end of the bed and Resnick could see that he was coming close to outstaying his welcome. “Karl,” he said, getting to his feet, “you rest now. Someone will be in to talk to you again.” He lowered his hand as if to pat the foot of the bed and Dougherty winced. “Take care,” Resnick said. “Get better.” He would walk along and have a word with Tim Fletcher while he was there, find out if any little memories had clicked into place in his brain.

The Yorkshire puddings had sat there in the gravy, staring backup at him like little brown diaphragms, but otherwise Sunday lunch hadn’t been too bad. Now Naylor was sitting in the living room with his feet up, listening to James Hunt and Murray Walker disagreeing about who was in pole position for the World Championship. With a murder investigation about to get underway, he was going to need what little rest he could snatch. Not so often the baby slept through an hour without waking to tears and you didn’t waste it.

Debbie came into the room but Naylor didn’t look up.

“We ought to be going soon,” she said.

No response. Mansell made as if to overtake on the inside, but at the last moment chickened out.

“Kevin.”

God! The whine in that voice!

“Kevin!”

“Yes.”

“I said …”

“I heard you.”

“But you haven’t moved.”

“That’s because I’m not coming.”

“You’re what?”

“You heard.”

“Mum’s expecting us.”

I’ll bet, thought Naylor. I can just see the corned beef sandwiches, turning up their edges in delight. He leaned further towards the screen and didn’t say anything.

“You can’t stay in all day, watching that.”

“Why not? Anyway, I shan’t be staying in. I’m going out.”

“Where? Where if it’s not …?”

“If you must know, I’m going to see how Mark is.”

“That’s right. You do.”

“I will. Don’t you worry.”

“Sooner spend time with the likes of him than with your own family.”

“It’s not my family, Debbie,” turning to face her now, splutter of engines from the set behind him, “it’s yours. She’s your mother, you go and have tea with her. Get yourself bored stupid listening to her prattle on.”

The tears were there, but she was fighting them back. Naylor was looking at her and then he was looking at the flat, painted wood of the door. When he swung back to the screen, Mansell had accelerated into the straight and was going into the final lap in second place.