Rough Treatment

Thirty-two

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“Only if something’s wrong …”

“Jerry, I’m telling you.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just you seem a little …” He let his finger ends glide along the dimpled flesh inside her upper arm. “It doesn’t matter.”

“A little what?”

“Tense, I suppose.”

“Because I didn’t come?”

“No, not that.”

“No?” Maria laughed.

“Well,” Grabianski elbowed his way lower and kissed between her breasts, below. “That might have had something to do with it.”

“Listen,” she said, plucking at the thick hair at the back of his head, she liked the feel of it, strong, like wire almost, “if you knew how long it had been … since I came with a man, anyone but myself, then you, you wouldn’t be so worried.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Or so quick to notice.”

“Maria …”

“Hm?”

“Nothing tense down there.” His face was pressed against her belly, tasting the residue of sweat down there, saltiness of the skin in amongst where those fine dark hairs rose up like a half-opened fan.

Maria couldn’t see, but she guessed that his eyes were closed and thought that now he might take a nap. Harold had gone out of the house this morning like a man who’d dreamed himself in the dock watching the judge reach for the black cap-then woke up and discovered he hadn’t been dreaming at all. Whereas she had taken her second cup of coffee up to the bathroom and enjoyed a good soak while Simon Bates worked his way towards “Our Tune.” Getting ready for Jerry Grabianski: lying there, pampered by bubbles and perfume and warm water; there, she could imagine it continuing forever. Even allowing herself to, encouraged it. Fantasies, too, not the kind with handcuffs and leather, but real Mills and Boon doctors-and-nurses stuff; the penniless artist who turns out to be the son of a rich laird and has a castle in the Western Isles. At her age. Her fantasy, and she didn’t want to lose it too soon: you’re not going to get your hands on a lot worth having at your age, Maria, so when you do …

Grabianski stirred and settled.

Maria smiled and glanced at the clock. If he dozed for another half an hour, she would get up and go downstairs, make them both hot chocolate, some of those nice biscuits she’d bought from Marks, maybe she could talk him into sharing yet another bath. Two or three a day she’d had since this had begun; Maria started to giggle but didn’t want to wake him-what a psychiatrist would have to say about all that sudden desire for cleansing, her and Lady Macbeth both.

Grabianski wasn’t sleeping. He kept seeing the face of that poor, overweight guy expiring in front of him. Near enough. Before getting a cab out here he had bluffed his way up to the ward and although they hadn’t allowed him through the door, he had talked with the staff nurse. His condition was stable, all that could be expected, he’d had a lucky escape-change his lifestyle, he might live till he was an old man. Well, an older one.

“What in God’s name did you do that for?” Grice had sniped at him, back in their rented flat.

How did you answer that kind of a question?

“You could have had us in all kinds of trouble. You could have had us nicked, five to ten, inside, that what you want?”

“He was dying,” Grabianski had said.

“I know he was fucking dying. Whose fault was that? He should never have been there in the first place.”

In the end it hadn’t been worth arguing, Grabianski had left Grice to drink, his eyes closed, watching some middle-of-the-night TV movie with Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas, and had leafed through some back issues of the RSPB magazine he’d come across in a second-hand shop on the Mansfield Road. Grice was right about one thing though, he’d thought, the man should never have been there, his property or no. Something about their luck, the quality of the information they were buying, something was changing.

Then-stirring, grazing the inside of his lips against Maria’s pliant skin-all the luck he’d had hadn’t been bad.

Neither of them heard the car, but there was no avoiding the peremptory knocking at the front door, the finger hard down on the bell. Maria’s first thought was Harold again, but, as they knew, Harold was likely to use his own key. Grabianski’s assumptions were of a different nature.

“We’d better get some clothes on,” he said, rising from the bed.

“Wait here,” Maria said, “whoever it is, they’ll go away.”

Grabianski, reaching for his trousers, bent down and kissed her softly on the mouth. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Resnick was standing alone on the doorstep. No other officers in attendance; even the car had been left out of sight on the street, rather than deliberately blocking the drive. Maria Roy stood back to let him in, causing Resnick to wonder whatever she would have worn if housecoats had not been invented.

Grabianski was in the kitchen, standing between sink and table, jacket already on and ready to go, if that was the way it was going to be.

“Inspector.”

Resnick nodded, fought back an impulse to shake the man’s hand.

“Aren’t we at least entitled to some kind of explanation for this?” Maria began, walking around the table to Grabianski’s side.

“It’s okay, Maria,” Grabianski said, patting his hand back against her arm.

“Like hell it is. This is my house. I …”

“Maria, hush.”

“You wouldn’t like to make us some coffee,” Resnick said.

Grabianski caught himself wanting to smile-so that was the way it was going to be. “D’you mind?” he said to Maria, who glared at the pair of them but moved towards the coffee-maker all the same.

“Have a seat?” Grabianski said, for all the world as though it were his own house.

Resnick shrugged off his topcoat and folded it across the back of one chair before sitting on another. “Your partner,” he said to Grabianski, making a point of checking his watch, “Grice, he’s been in police custody for the best part of an hour.”

Very little else was said before the coffee was brewed and in front of them. It wasn’t strong enough for Resnick’s palate but better than he might have expected.

“I don’t know,” Grabianski said. “The answers you want, I don’t know them. Names or faces, connections. It was part of the deal. The less we were both involved the better.” He half-grinned at Resnick over his cup. “In case of eventualities like this.”

But Resnick was already shaking his head. “That’s not what we want from you. Not what we need to know.” He drank some of the coffee. “Most of it we have already, just a matter of corroboration.” He glanced across at Maria, who scowled and looked away. “Asking a few people to reconsider statements they may have made a touch, er, rashly.”

Grabianski leaned back in his chair, one foot resting against a leg of the table; his cup was cradled in both hands. The inspector could have been stringing him along, though somehow he didn’t think so. Which left him precisely where?

“It’s the drugs then, isn’t it?”

“What drugs?” exclaimed Maria, staring across at Grabianski; knowing, almost before the words had left her lips, knowing all too well which drugs they were talking about.

“On the button,” Resnick said.

“That’s the name you’re after. The bloke who’s dealing.”

Resnick’s turn to smile. “Too late, Jerry. We know that, too.”

Grabianski’s face showed that he was impressed. “I can’t see, then,” easing his chair back down, “just what I can do to help.”

Still smiling, enjoying himself, Resnick took his time. “Think about it some more. While we’re enjoying the coffee-think about it.”

The room seemed airless, neither windows nor ventilation. Not wishing to take the chance of bumping into Grice, they had taken Grabianski to the central police station. Resnick and Norman Mann sat on the usual anonymous chairs, Grabianski with his elbows resting on the usual scarred table. As the day had progressed, his enjoyment of it had grown less.

“He’s put you in for it, Grice.” Norman Mann tipped ash from the end of his cigarette on to the carpetless floor. “Really putting you in for it. Time he’s finished with you, all it’d need is an airmail stamp and you could send it straight to some studio. Sort of thing they love-stud who was a criminal mastermind. Climbing into his best suit to screw a few safes; out of ’em again to screw a few women. Stallone. What’s his name? Schwarzenegger. Be fighting over it.”

Grabianski wasn’t so keen on the idea of Schwarzenegger. That film where he played a Russian cop-he could picture him trying for some kind of Polish accent and missing by a mile. No, as he’d always thought, it was a shame Cary Grant grew old too soon.

“You hear what I’m saying to you?” Norman Mann asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t react.”

“Tell me how.”

“I don’t know. A little anger, what do you think, Charlie? If it was me getting stiffed by my partner, I’d show a little anger, eh?”

Resnick was thinking about Jeff Harrison, not that they’d ever been partners or anything like, but all the same he couldn’t help wondering how much Harrison had heard on the grapevine, whether or not he was showing a little heartfelt anger.

“You hungry, Jerry?” Norman Mann asked. “Want something to eat?”

Grabianski shrugged. Anything that would break the relentless-ness of the questioning would suit him fine. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

“Later.”

Funny, Grabianski thought. Very funny.

“First I want to know if you’re pissed off that your friend’s stitching you up for as much of this as he can. Any more and he’ll have it that all he did was drive the getaway car, keep watch. And that’s not true, right?”

“You know it’s not true.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do?”

“Maybe you don’t believe us? What Grice is saying about you?”

Grabianski believed it: Grice would have had his grandmother boiled down for soup if he thought the time-profit ratio was favorable.

“What you can do,” Mann said, “is make sure we put him inside for a long time. Tit for tat, right?”

“Yes,” Grabianski said. “Sure. Right. Tit for tat.”

“Okay!” Norman Mann scraped back his chair, clapped his hands. “You’re not saying this to get your choppers into the meat pie and mash? Three courses and then change your mind?”

Grabianski shook his head.

Anything ever goes wrong, Grice had said, really fucking wrong, it’s every fucking man for himself, you remember that. Grabianski was remembering.

“Whatever you need,” Grabianski said. “If I know the answers … if I can help, fine.”

“That’s good. That’s great. Eh, Charlie? Cause now we can go feed our faces knowing we’ve got that far along the line.” He rested a hand on Grabianski’s shoulder, close to the neck, and squeezed. “Then we can talk about the rest.” He squeezed harder. “I’ve got to be honest, when I first heard this one, when Charlie tried it out on me, I never thought you’d go for it. Honest. Not that it isn’t a good deal; for you, I mean. It is. What it was, I didn’t think you’d have the bottle. Someone who gets his kicks turning places oven like he’s dressed for a Masonic dinner. But, no-” He leaned his face close to Grabianski’s “-you’ve got the bottle, all right.” He straightened and stepped away. “Bollocks like a bleedin’ rhinoceros.”