Rough Treatment

Twenty-four

Mark Divine tore the edge from the free holiday offer that had been folded inside his morning paper and eased it between his teeth, high on the right side. Trouble with sodding muesli was you spent till lunch time getting the bits out of your mouth and spitting them through the window. He turned up the car radio a notch as the Four Tops came on-still making it after all those years. Doing the same dances, too. He’d seen them on Top of the Pops: four portly, middle-aged men finger-clicking and spinning in circles. What would he be doing when he was the far side of forty? Living out somewhere like this, perhaps. Christ, no! All that gentility, all those lawn sprinklers and dogs with German brand names. Better another city altogether. Simon Mayo, now, he’d been a DJ on local radio and there he was, doing the breakfast show from London. Radio One, chatting away with whoever was reading the news and that girl, real sexy voice, the one who did the weather. What was her name? Roscoe? No, that was the Emperor, back when he’d been at primary school. Not Roscoe. Ruscoe. That was it. Sybil. Some mornings Divine wished it was television, so that he could see exactly what was going on in the studio; what it was that made her giggle like that.

A car started up and he turned down the volume again, but it wasn’t anything to get concerned about.

Maybe in five years, Divine thought, still poking soggy paper at his mouth, I’ll have my stripes and be down in the smoke. The Met. flying Squad. That’d be the thing. Him and Simon Mayo, both. High flyers.

Another car and this time it was the Citroën. Divine’s fingers flicked the key in the ignition and he moved off from the curb with a speed that left burn marks on the asphalt.

Harold Roy hadn’t cleared his drive before the unmarked police vehicle swung across in front of him and braked sharply, blocking his exit. If Harold hadn’t broken the habit of a lifetime and slotted the end of his seat-belt into place before turning on to the road, no way his head wouldn’t have smacked through the windscreen.

Divine was out of his seat and round by the Citroën before Harold Roy had stopped shaking. Standing there in his light gray suit, pale blue shirt, imitation-silk tie, making the sign with his fingers-wind down your window.

“What the hell …?”

Divine let his wallet fall open before the director’s eyes, someone doing a card trick. “DC Divine, sir. Just a few questions.”

“Questions? Is that any …?”

“Would you mind stepping out of the car, sir?”

“I don’t see …”

“Out of the car, sir.”

“I’ll get out when you’ve told me …”

Divine reached in and flipped up the lock, swung the door back fast. “Out!”

Come down a little hard, the boss had said; not often he encouraged Divine with that sort of leeway. Better make the most of it. Look at this one now, doesn’t know whether to be angry or humble. Puffy eyes, not enough sleep; wouldn’t take much to leave him in tears, shouldn’t wonder.

“Yes, Officer,” said Harold, pressed back against the side of his car, guts turning somersaults like a set without vertical hold.

That’s it, sunshine, smiled Divine to himself, grovel a little. “You’re aware a complaint’s been laid against you, sir? Assault.”

Maria had gone running to the window as soon as she’d heard the double wrench of brakes. Now there was Harold flapping his hands and talking nineteen to the dozen to some identikit policeman. She didn’t know why they bothered with plain clothes. At least the last one they’d sent out to her had been different, Asian, manners like bone china. Nice skin, she remembered that. Surprisingly slim fingers. Almost too shy to hold her stare. Little more than a boy, really.

Not like Grabianski.

The way he’d been when Harold had burst in on them, as if they had been talking about fitting double glazing instead of sharing a bath together in the middle of the afternoon.

We’ve got a lot to talk about.

He hadn’t meant himself and Maria, adultery, the temperature of the bathwater: he had meant business. Maria hoped that whatever was going on at the head of the drive, right then, had nothing to do with it. She tightened the belt of her robe and padded back to the kitchen; one glance at the clock and she was wondering when Grabianski, as he had promised, would call.

What was the attraction, Lynn Kellogg was thinking, and not for the first, not even the first dozen times, of buying a sweatshirt that featured an advertisement for something, somewhere you’d neither use nor see? Dorfmann’s Steel Tubing, the Best in the Midwest. University of Michigan. Ma Baker’s Peach Pies-baked with her own hungry hands. A little logo that read Levis, Pepe, Wrangler, that was enough. That was okay. Personally, though, she drew the line at Hard Core. The remarks that had followed her up the escalator in C amp; A, it wasn’t worth the hassle.

She picked up a striped collarless shirt and wondered what there was about it that made it worth £29.99. Caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, cheeks almost always redder than she’d have liked. The girl with the built-in blusher. If that young assistant didn’t take the smirk off his face, she might wander over and give him something to think about. A kid! Nineteen if he was a day. Gel on his hair, Paco Rabanne, the last of last summer’s duty-free, clinging to his neck and armpits, and dandruff on his shoulders.

Hey!

There was that girl again, moving fast, left to right close to the railing on the far side of the balcony, heading past Miss Selfridge and into Boots.

The assistant moved between two display stands, partly blocking her way. “Anything I can do?” he said sarcastically.

“Yes,” said Lynn, brushing past.

“Go on, then.”

“Grow up.”

Patel had become bored with counting the Porsches and Ferraris parked along the two roads that right-angled away from where he was standing. He had paced a couple of hundred yards in either direction, turning smartly to return, never letting the main door to the building out of his sight for long enough for anyone to walk out unnoticed. Keep well back, the inspector had said, don’t get yourself seen. For now, enough to establish that they’re on the premises; a good description of one, sketchy of the other.

He wasn’t certain how to play it if they came out together, even separately. If they’ve got bags, cases, if they look as if they’re pulling out altogether, Resnick had told him, call for back-up and don’t lose them. Otherwise … play it by ear, use that initiative of yours.

If there’d been more natural cover, it might have been easier. When he wasn’t on the move, Patel kept behind a bank of tall green dustbins, close to the wall dividing a block of modern flats from yet another rambling old house with turrets and deep bay windows.

A lot of joggers round here, Patel thought, as yet another went painfully past him, sweatpants sagging round his hips, spectacles held in place with a broad white band of elastic. True to the stereotype, he himself played squash and was good at it. Divine had seen him with his gear one time and challenged him; after twenty minutes of losing 9–0, 9–2, 9–1, Divine had faked a pulled calf muscle and limped off to the changing room. “What d’you expect?” he’d heard Divine expounding in the CID room the next day. “Game for bloody poofs!”

There it goes, bottle of perfume hidden for a moment beneath the over-long sleeve of her coat, and then lost in that capacious pocket. Keep out of sight, well back. That’s it, show an interest in some eyebrow pencil, fifteen shades of purple. Now move, move it!

The girl drifted around the end of the counter and at first Lynn didn’t think she had taken anything but when she looked again Lynn was ready to take bets there had been more silk scarves than that on display.

Where to now? Out beyond the store and the danger was she’d do a runner and that was the last Lynn would see of her, until the next time. But if her suspicions were correct, the girl wouldn’t be satisfied with so small a haul. Lynn doubled back on herself, feigning a sudden enthusiasm for a cherry red beret. Put that on her head and walk out into the street, people would mistake her for beetroot soup on legs.

Without hesitation, the girl walked up the shallow steps and back into the center, only this time Lynn was keeping with her.

“Mrs. Roy?”

“What is it now?”

“I was just talking to your husband …”

“Congratulations.”

“You may know, a complaint’s been filed against him …”

“For punching that Mackenzie in the mouth. Not before time. I can’t imagine what got into him, but it’s the best thing Harold’s done for years.”

“What I wanted to talk to you about, though, was something different.”

“I have an appointment. I have to get ready.”

“You don’t think I could step inside?”

“No.”

“It might be easier.”

“I told you, I’ve things to do.”

“The neighbors …”

“D’you think I care about the neighbors?”

Divine didn’t suppose she did. He was wondering what it must be like, married to an overweight woman with a voice like a handsaw and a temper to match.

Maria Roy glanced down at the opening at the top of her robe, but did nothing about it. “Well,” she said, “are you going to stand there gawping at my tits all morning, or can we get this over with?”

Divine could take that kind of language from the girls who scurried and giggled their way from pub to pub, bar to bar every Friday evening, but when the woman was old enough to be his mother, he had problems.

“Well?” Maria repeated, making a show of shutting the door in the DC’s face.

“This statement you made about the burglary,” Divine said. “We have reason to believe you identified the wrong men.”

Sometimes when he was bored, Patel worked his way through the counties of England, with their county towns, the states of the American union, the capitals of the Eastern bloc countries, the winners of the world squash championship since 1965, the year in which he had been born. At others, he struggled to clear his mind of all such ephemera, facts and figures, empty it of everything save the rhythm of his own breathing and the sounds around him. Here, close to the heart of the city, it was amazing how many different natural sounds there were. Bird calls, for instance.

“Young man.”

Patel jumped, despite himself. Turning, he was face to face with a shrunken woman with tightly curled white hair. She was wearing a thick coat that might once have fitted her, but was now several sizes too large, heavy brown wool with an astrakhan collar. On her feet were gym shoes, murky white.

“Are you the police?”

She spoke like a schoolmistress of the old-fashioned kind; Patel had read of them in books, smelling of camphor and with pear-drop breath; when they asked for silence you could, of course, hear the imperial pin drop. For himself, back in Bradford, most of his teachers had worn jeans and ill-fitting sweaters held together with badges for Anti-Apartheid, Ban the Bomb.

“Because you’re either from the police or the public health department. You haven’t come about that rat I reported, have you?”

Patel smiled and shook his head; showed her his warrant card.

“Good,” she said emphatically. “Then you’ve come about that awful man.”

“Which man is this?”

“That man. The one who lives up there.” She was looking past Patel towards the house he had been detailed to watch. “That pervert. That dreadful peeping Tom!”

“Excuse me,” said Lynn, fingers on the girl’s sleeve, “I’ve reason to believe …”

The girl twisted fast, kicking her heel hard against Lynn’s shin and then jabbing a knee towards her groin. She flailed her arms and screamed in Lynn’s startled face.

“Lemmego! Lemmego! Lemmego!”

Lynn clung on as nails clawed at her face.

“Just look,” said a passer-by to her friend, both carrying boxes of cream cakes from Bird’s, neatly tied around with a bow at the top.

“All right,” said Lynn, fending off the blows. “This isn’t getting you anywhere.”

The girl ducked low and swiveled hard and the next thing Lynn was standing there with the coat in her hands and the girl was legging it away as fast as she could along the upper aisle.

Lynn hooked her left hand firmly inside the collar of the coat and gave chase. Suddenly the passage between the railings and the shop fronts seemed to be full of elderly shoppers, moving slowly, dragging carriers or pushing wicker trolleys before them.

“Excuse me, police!” Lynn called out. “Keep back, police!”

The girl was thirty yards ahead of her, weaving in and out, tossing stolen goods this way and that; the surprised shoppers must have thought they were in the middle of a TV commercial, another episode of Hard Cases.

“Stop that girl!” shouted Lynn. “Stop her!”

The girl pushed herself off one of the pillars, swinging sharp left as if to go down the stairs, breaking right again, sprinting along a clear patch of the opposite aisle, the direction that would take her to the bus station, out on to the street.

Lynn, the coat streaming out behind her like a gray flag, dug into her reserves and gained ground. A bunch of youths, lounging against a music shop window, clapped and cheered sarcastically. Ahead the girl changed direction again, making for the escalators. She was barging her way past people standing on the moving stairs as Lynn jumped past an astonished woman and baby and leaped down the up escalator. Plunging on, shouts ringing around her, close enough to reach across and grab at the girl’s jumper, but the jumper tore at the neck and they were both running still, almost at the bottom.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

Lynn ducked under a man’s angry arm and dived for the back of the girl’s legs. They struck the hard polished floor and started to slide. A foot kicked Lynn alongside the head, numbing her ear. She tugged at the waistband of the girl’s skirt, ignoring the blows to her own head, the clamor all round.

“Lemmego, you bitch, you fucking cow!”

Lynn took hold of the girl’s hair and yanked it back, dragging her to her knees. A gold bracelet tumbled away from somewhere inside the girl’s clothing and rolled in a slow curve before wobbling to a halt.

“You’re under arrest,” Lynn said.

The girl spat in her face.