Rough Treatment

Four

He couldn’t see the clock face from where he was sitting, but he guessed it was somewhere between half-two and three. Low, from the stereo, the song of Johnny Hodges’ saxophone, the note held, rising, while the rhythm pulsed beneath it. On the label he was using an alias, but his was the perfect print, the impossibility of disguise. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” Resnick shifted in the chair and, implanted half-way up his chest, Bud complained, somewhere between a hiss and a whimper. Why, for instance, do you want to move from this house? “Come on, sweetheart,” said Resnick, “time to go.” He cupped both hands beneath the cat’s body and lifted him to the floor; felt against his thumbs, the ends of his fingers, the animal’s bones were like the spars of a model mast, matchwood and hope. Why?

His feet were bare against the fiber of the carpet. Mr. Albertson had surveyed it with a slow shake of the head: you could try for a couple of hundred, curtains as well, but in the end … Now Albertson had got him to a nunnery or wherever and Resnick’s affairs were in fresh hands. You’re good at that I’ll bet. Being patient. He measured dark coffee into the percolator, tamping it down. At first, when he had ceased being able to sleep through, he had made himself cut back on caffeine, less throughout the day, none after the fall of light. All that happened, his team had suffered. Half a sentence out of their mouths before he had shot them down. On and on until Lynn Kellogg had cornered him in his office and asked, direct, soft burr of her Norfolk voice at odds with the anxiety of her eyes, sir, what’s wrong?

He had restored his usual ten cups a day or more, tried tempering them before bed with Horlicks and the like, warm milk and whisky. If he managed three to four hours, unbroken, he counted his blessings. Better than sheep. Bud purred encouragingly and Resnick opened the fridge for the tin of cat food: one gain from these sleepless middle nights he and the runt of his litter had shared together-free to eat alone and unpestered, Bud was at last beginning to put on a little weight.

Whereas himself … he pressed the flesh where it swelled beneath his shirt and thought of Claire Millinder looking at him from the doorway of his house. In the other room the record had come to an end and all he could hear was the thin scrape of the cat’s collar against the edge of its bowl and the slow drip of the coffee falling through.

It was not the way Rachel had looked at him: neither the first time she set eyes on him, nor when she said goodbye. Charlie, I’ll be in touch, I promise. I just need time on my own, to think things through All right? Her mouth had been warm for a moment against the cold of his winter cheek and they had both known, although she was not lying, that she would never speak to him again. Nor write. He saw her then, clearly, not that last time but the one before, standing in the garden at the front of this house, so still, and Bud cradled in her arms. When her eyes closed on his, they had been opaque with fear.

That poky little room, Mrs. Lurie had said, what else could you get in there?

As both Resnick and Rachel knew, if you hacked at it enough, you could squeeze in, just, the body of a man, full-grown.

And just as his brush had never succeeded in covering from sight the nursery animals that once had danced across the wallpaper, so his memory-and hers-could not remove the sight, the smell of so much blood.

Why do you want to move from this house?

Resnick poured coffee and padded back into the other room, cat at his feet.

After the burglary, Maria Roy had been standing by the reconnected telephone, willing it to ring. She had changed out of her robe into a plain black dress, rust-colored tights and low-heeled black shoes. There was almost no makeup on her face, no polish on her nails. Although she was waiting for the phone to ring, she jumped when it did.

“Harold?”

“I know where I am, which is at Jerry and Stella’s. I’m halfway through my second vodka martini; Stella says there’s a good chance of the veal spoiling, you never rang them to ask for a lift, where the hell are you?”

“Come home, Harold.”

“What?”

“Home. Come. Now.”

“You crazy? You know how good Stella’s veal is. The way she does it with the capers and the chopped green olives …”

“Harold, come home. I promise you’ll lose every shred of appetite.”

“You know what that canteen’s like at the studio. All I had all day was salad and a little smoked mackerel.”

“I thought we should talk before I called the police.”

“The police? What are you … Someone’s stolen your lingerie from the garden again; you want them to force open the garage door? What?”

Maria gave a short-tempered sigh. “Before I can contact the insurance company about making a claim, I have to notify the police of the burglary.”

“Which burglary?” Harold Roy asked without thinking. Six seconds later, without waiting for an answer, he thought he knew.

While waiting for her husband to arrive, Maria had carefully washed out the glasses her two visitors had used and restored them to their usual place. She had wiped Grabianski’s prints from the trolley and the scotch bottle. It was going to be difficult enough, without needing to explain the how and why of sitting round, all three of them, old acquaintances having an early-evening drink.

Unbelievable!

She hadn’t believed it had happened. Even after she had made herself sit down, calm as she was able, and take the events through, step by step, in her mind. Three times she had returned to the bedroom to check, but each time the jewelry, the money-all of it-was missing. Gone. He had really sat there, that man, tall and broad and looking at her as if she’d stepped out of an advertisement for French perfume. Wanting her but afraid to do more than look. Which was why, she supposed, after that first rush of cold fear, she had not been afraid. If anything, he had been in awe of her.

She heard Harold’s car turn too fast into the drive and moved to the living room so that she would be standing there when he came in, the central light dimmed just enough, her hands loose at her sides, perfectly still.

God! thought Harold, stopped in his haste. She looks awful!

“Maria?”

Unnervingly, she stared right back at him, not answering.

“Maria?”

So pale.

Her eyes, dark and large, widened.

“The cocaine-did they find it?”

She bit her teeth down into the flesh of her lower lip and nodded.

“Shit!”

He brushed past her and banged his leg against the side of the drinks trolley, hands steadying himself and the shaking bottles.

“I suppose they stole the vodka, too?”

“We’re out of vodka.”

Harold grabbed a bottle of gin and locked himself in the bathroom, refusing to open the door until almost an hour later. By then the bottle was a third empty and he was sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the bath, one foot resting on the bidet. Talcum powder dusted the grooves of his cream cords.

Maria hitched her skirt up by some inches and sat on the bath, one arm around his shoulders. She was in danger of feeling genuinely sorry for him, but it passed.

“I suppose it wasn’t such a good idea,” she said after a while, choosing her words with care.

Harold drank some more gin before offering her the bottle.

“It seemed okay at the time,” she said. “All we had to do was keep it locked away safely.” She sighed. “It was a favor.”

“He was taking advantage.”

“He wasn’t expecting us to help him out for nothing.”

“A couple of weeks’ free supply.”

“That’s not to be sneezed at.”

Harold glanced up at her to see if she was making a joke; he ought to have known better.

“What are you going to tell him?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’ll believe the truth?”

“Do you?”

Maria reached down for the bottle. “You think we ought to phone the police?”

“And report a missing kilo of cocaine?”

“Is that how much there was?”

“That’s what the man said.”

Maria wriggled her skirt a little higher and pushed her knees out sideways. “Let me have another drink and then I’ll call them.”

Harold gave her back the bottle and grunted.

“Is it still 999?”

Harold didn’t know: neither did he know how long he could stall the man for whom he was taking temporary care of a sizeable quantity of illicit drugs nor what he would tell him when he could do that no longer.

The police officer who finally came to the house was polite and spoke with a West Country accent; he was wearing a sports coat from British Home Stores and printed his notes quickly in black Biro. “Easier to read back in court,” he had explained. Maria had felt one of her rare flushes of maternal feeling: the constable looked all of seventeen.

He had looked all over the house, paying particular attention to the main bedroom and the rear patio where the burglars had gained entry; the loose wires from the alarm, no longer attached to anything.

“You will be careful not to touch things,” he had said. “We’ll have someone round in the morning to dust for prints. Not that I suppose we’ll find any that will be of much use.”

Wonderful! thought Harold. “Shouldn’t that be done tonight?” he asked.

The constable had shaken his head: scene-of-crime wouldn’t be available until the next day. He asked them to make a complete list of everything they thought was missing, especially anything they thought might be traced. Good night.

For the first time in years, Maria came into the bathroom as her husband was getting out of the bath and toweled his back. She made cups of Milo and brought them to the bedroom. With the light out, she turned on to her side and stroked his shoulder, his chest, the muscle at the side of his neck.

“Maria?”

“Mmm?”

“These two … they didn’t, you know, touch you at all, did they? I mean, if they had, if anything funny had gone on, you’d have told me about it, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would.” Maria’s voice was muffled by the duvet cover.

“Yes,” said Harold, “of course.”

Beneath the bedding, her face pressed against the slack of her husband’s pot belly, Maria was thinking about the tall Grabianski, the way he had looked at her when she’d been wearing her robe. It had been enough to make her feel, well, damp.

“Maria?”

“Mmm?”

Harold’s fingers slid through her hair.

After some moments he closed his eyes. Out of sight, Maria waited for the change in his breathing that would tell her Harold was asleep.

Maria sat with her half-grapefruit and her cup of weak tea and jostled the pages of the Daily Mail. At the opposite side of the table, Harold looked away from Screen International for long enough to shake bran flakes on to his muesli. Since his last birthday he’d been troubled by constipation; since that and starting work on his present series for Midlands TV.

“Would you believe this?” he said, chewing steadfastly.

“What’s that?”

“The forty-fifth version of Jekyll and Hyde.”

One for each year of your life, Maria said to herself.

“Anthony Perkins,” Harold said.

“Which part?” asked Maria, reaching for the teapot.

“Huh?”

“Which one’s he playing?”

Harold set his spoon down in the bowl and pushed it aside.

“You’re not going to leave that?” said Maria, glancing up.

“Why not?”

“You’ll suffer.”

“I’m suffering enough already.”

She watched him lift his camera script from the table and snap open his briefcase.

“It’s not going any better?” she asked.

“Worse.”

“What’s the problem?”

Harold stood between the table and the sink and stared at her. Maria turned a page of her newspaper. “I haven’t got the time,” he said. “And anyway, you’re not interested.”

“Harold, that simply isn’t true.”

He switched the case to his other hand as he walked through to collect his coat. Thirty-six hours since the burglary and still she hadn’t reverted to her old ways. If she wasn’t exactly slavering all over him (thank God!), she wasn’t moaning on at him either. The other night he was sure she was about to go down on him and he’d had to pretend to be asleep to put her off. He tucked a scarf inside the collar of his padded blouson and opened the front door.

“Bye,” he called before pulling the door to behind him.

“Bye!”

What niggled Harold was that he couldn’t work out what she had to be feeling so guilty about-unless she’d faked the break-in and taken all the stuff herself. He smiled at the thought and turned out of the drive so fast that the rear wheels spun on the pebbles and he nearly ran into that nosy old bastard with the track suit and the yappy bloody dog that was always hanging about. Probably him, Harold thought, who was pilfering Maria’s best knickers.

There was no reason for him to have recognized Resnick driving along in the opposite direction.