Cutting Edge (35 page)

The tape in the stereo came to an end and Calvin swore and then realized he had his Walkman next to the bed. All he needed now was another tape from his bag and a light and hey! What was that Robert Plant thing? “Stairway to Heaven.”

Pretty soon, eyes closed, singing along at the top of his voice to Twisted Sister, himself and Dee Snider duetting, except that Calvin kept forgetting the words, getting them wrong, especially in the verses, getting it right for the chorus. Eyes shut tight. Take another hit, that’s it, hold it there and suck it down. Arms spread wide. Sing, you crazy bastard, sing! Calvin didn’t hear the first tentative taps at the window, only when Divine’s fist banged against the frame did Calvin sit up with a jolt and see the man’s cock-eyed face grinning in.

Whatever condition he was in, Calvin knew enough to understand this wasn’t the window cleaner, come knocking for payment.

Panicked, he jerked the headphones clear and threw them across the room, pinched out the joint with his fingers and pushed it from sight. Perhaps no one would notice, figure he was resting there enjoying Bensons King Size? Another of them rattling at the back door now, that fool with a plaster the size of a fist stuck to his face, still grinning like he’d woke up and suddenly it was Christmas.

Calvin wafted the air on his way down the room. Quicker to respond, he could have bolted up the stairs and out into the street, made off on foot, but what the hell, what did he have to run for anyhow? Englishman’s home was his castle, right?

The underside of a boot struck the door, low by the jamb, and it shook.

“Hey!” Calvin yelled. “Hey!”

He unlocked and they came in, forcing him back out of the way, not exactly pushing him, never using their hands, the one with the plaster making straight for the bed, easing the last inch and a half of his joint out into the light.

“Home grown?”

“Old Holborn,” Calvin said. “Cheaper to roll your own.”

“Sure. And I’m Mike Tyson.”

Shit! thought Calvin. You’re not even the right color.

The other one was flashing his card. “Detective Constable Naylor. This is Detective Constable Divine.”

Divine grinned some more. He was having a good time. The inside of the kid’s room smelled like some of the parties he used to go to when he was nineteen, twenty. Wherever he was getting his stuff, it was bloody good.

Naylor had spotted the sports bag on the floor and was making a beeline for it.

“Man,” Calvin said, “you got a warrant to come busting in here?”

“We didn’t bust in,” Divine said. “You let us in.”

“That or stand there and watch the door kicked in.”

“You didn’t invite us on to the property?” said Naylor.

“Damn right!”

“That’s okay, because we’ve got a warrant.”

“Like fuck you do!” said Calvin and wished he hadn’t because the bigger of the two looked as if he might be about to belt him one.

Kevin Naylor took the warrant from his pocket and held it in front of Calvin’s face.

“What you expect to find anyway?” Calvin asked. Naylor and Divine were exchanging glances over the bag, lying on the floor between them.

“That’s my stuff,” Calvin said. He could hear the whine sneaking into his voice and hated it but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “That’s my personal stuff.”

“Show us,” Divine said.

“Huh?”

“All you have to do,” said Naylor, “unzip the top, pick it up, and turn it out on the bed.”

Calvin didn’t see where he had a lot of choice.

He held the bag over the bed and they all watched the contents tumble out. Old rolled-up copies of
Kerrang!
, maybe ten spare sets of batteries for his Walkman, EverReady Gold Seal LR6, must have been twenty to thirty cassettes, most of them pristine, Cellophane-wrapped, stickers still in place, HMV, Virgin, Our Price.

“Kid’s a collector,” Divine said.

“Yes,” said Naylor, “bet he’s got the receipts too.” Two of the T-shirts that now lay on the bed were also in their original wrapping, several others that he’d pulled and worn for a few hours and then rejected. A red-backed exercise book in which Calvin had copied the lyrics of his favorite songs, one day, he’d figured he’d start to write his own. All he wanted was the inspiration. A little more time.

“Shake it,” Divine said.

“Hmm?” Calvin looked back at him blankly.

“The bag. Shake it some more.”

This time it came rolling out of the corner where Calvin had desperately been trying to hold on to it with his thumb. Naylor lifted up the plastic bag, the kind Debbie used to buy in Tesco to keep his sandwiches fresh. He sniffed at the contents and passed it across to Divine, whose attention had been drawn to the bundle of tapes.

“Whatever,” he asked, perplexed, holding up a copy of John Denver’s Greatest Hits, “are you doing with this?”

“That shit,” said Calvin. “I don’t play that shit. I just sell it again.”

“Right,” said Divine, now holding the bag of marijuana, “to buy shit like this.”

“Hey,” said Kevin Naylor, moving towards the door, looking upwards. “Does anybody else smell burning?”

Ridgemount had smelt it too, even before he’d eased himself off the saddle and wheeled his bike over the pavement, trailer behind it full with potatoes, onions, ten pounds of bruised Bramleys that he was going to simmer down into apple sauce. Honest to God, Ridgemount thought, I knew it. I just knew it. One thing I asked that boy to do, one thing and he can’t even do that. He was sliding the key into the front door lock when Patel came up behind him and spoke his name.

“I don’t want to buy anything from you,” Ridgemount said, “I don’t want anything on credit and right now I can’t stop to discuss the Bible, because my nose tells me there’s a small emergency going on in my house. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

But Patel showed him his warrant card instead.

“I’m sorry,” Ridgemount said, “I have to deal with this first.”

He pushed the door open and left it wide. A man he didn’t recognize was standing half-way up the stairs, Calvin two steps from the bottom with another man right behind him, a hand on Calvin’s arm. Ridgemount stepped across the hall and into the kitchen; the windows were thick with steam and clouds of it had collected over the ceiling and were beginning slowly to descend the walls. He took a tea towel from its hook and bunched it in his hand, turned out the gas and lifted the pan from the stove. What had been a pound and a half of split peas was now a blackened mass crusted across the pan. Between the stove and the sink, the bottom of the saucepan fell out but the peas clung on, welded to the sides.

“Mr. Ridgemount,” said Resnick, who had walked over from his car and followed Patel into the house, “Detective Inspector Resnick. I’d appreciate it if you’d come with these officers to the police station. There are some questions we’d like to ask you.”

“Dad?” said Calvin from the hallway.

“These questions,” Ridgemount said. “What are they about?”

“Oh,” Resnick said, “I think you know.”

Ridgemount looked past Resnick to where Calvin was standing, Divine and Naylor at either side of him, Naylor still holding his arm.

“Let my son go,” Ridgemount said.

Resnick looked questioningly towards Naylor. “Possession of an illegal substance, sir. Namely, marijuana. Possession of stolen goods.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Ridgemount breathed.

Resnick nodded towards Patel, who went forward and reached his hand towards Ridgemount’s shoulder.

“
Nooo!
” Ridgemount screamed and backed clumsily against the stove, cleaving the space between Patel and himself with his fist. “No! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”

Patel moved in again but now there was a knife in Ridgemount’s hand, a kitchen knife, tears and fear glistening in his eyes.

“Steady!” called Resnick

Behind him, Calvin struggled to be free. “He won’t … You can’t … He won’t let you touch him. Not at all. He can’t.”

Resnick nodded, understanding.

“Let the boy go,” he said and Naylor, querying the order with his eyes, did exactly that. “Now, Mr. Ridgemount,” said Resnick, moving round Patel, slowly extending one hand, fingers spread. “Please let me have the knife. You have my word, we won’t touch you. Give me the knife and all you have to do is walk to the car and wait with one of the officers. We do have a warrant to search these premises and we’ll see that’s finished as speedily and with as little disturbance as possible. After we’ve searched the house, you’ll be driven to the station.”

“And Calvin?”

“He’ll come with us also. He can ride in the same vehicle as you if you wish.”

Ridgemount reversed the paring knife and placed the handle, carefully, in Resnick’s hand.

Forty-three

The postcard was from the island of Mykonos and off beyond the low, white buildings what Lynn presumed to be the Aegean was a dark stain like an ink blot in the monochrome copy on her desk. She imagined how blue it would be and Karen Archer stepping down to it through sand, even this far on in the year, to swim. We thought you would like to see this, Karen’s parents had said in their covering letter, we hope it sets your mind to rest.

Sorry to have been out of touch for so long but felt I just had to get away. Thank God for Thomas Cook and Access!! Think of me in the sun, pigging out on ouzo and olives!!! I’ll phone the minute I’m back in England. Take care and try not to worry. I’m fine!

Heaps of love, Karen XXXXXXXXXXXX

Well, good for you, Lynn thought. Be nice, wouldn’t it, if everyone in your position could go swanning off to Greece and pretend it had all been a bad dream. She sat for a moment, resting her head down into her hands. What’s the matter with you? Did you really want her to be a body somewhere, just so that you could have another victim, something to trace back to Ian Carew’s hand?

“Everything that’s said in this room,” Resnick explained, “everything you say, will be recorded on this machine, afterwards the tapes will be sealed and signed to show that they’re a true record.”

Ridgemount nodded to show that he understood.

“What I’d like you to do is say what happened in your own words, exactly as you want. If there’s anything that doesn’t seem clear, I might interrupt to ask a question, but other than that all I want to do is listen. All right?”

Ridgemount nodded: all right.

Carew hadn’t been certain whether to go up to her when she was with other people or wait again until she was alone. He hadn’t known whether to wear something not exactly formal but a little less sporty. Suggest that this was serious, not play. Touch and then go. Finally he settled on a faded denim shirt, white slacks, moccasins. Wallet buttoned down in his back pocket in case she said, “Terrific! Let’s go for a drink, celebrate!” Later they could get something to eat, that new place up from the Council House, all white tablecloths and single-stem flowers, Sonny’s, he’d been wanting to go there.

In the event, she didn’t say a thing. Stood there, staring at him as if not really able to believe it was him. The others that were with her, three of them, nurses, uncertain what to do, whether to walk on or stay, staring from Sarah to Carew and back again. Beneath her long, open coat she was still in her uniform, belted tight at the waist, dark sheen of her hair: perfect.

“Surprise, surprise!” Carew said.

“See you tomorrow, Sarah,” called one of the others, continuing on her way.

“Fine,” Sarah said. “Bye.”

Then they were alone in the middle of the broad corridor, doors off. Paintings by local primary children on the walls. “I thought you were in jail,” Sarah said.

Carew smiled. “I was. It was a mistake.”

“There must have been something. They must have arrested you for something.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Well, yes.”

A doctor, stethoscope around his neck, came into the corridor and walked towards them. He had a squash ball in his hand and he was squeezing it rhythmically, pressing it hard into his palm.

“Well, there was something,” Carew said. “They seemed to think I’d murdered someone. A woman.”

Scarcely missing a beat, the doctor turned through one of the doors and disappeared from sight.

Sarah Leonard was staring at him, unable to work him out. “And now they’ve changed their mind,” she said.

Carew smiled. “The wrong Ian. You see, they found her diary, the woman’s, and there was a name there, Ian. They thought it was me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. But it was a mistake. The real Ian turned up, the one from the diary and, well, here I am.”

“What for?”

“Um?”

“What for? Why are you here? I don’t understand.”

The smile shifted from the mouth to the eyes. “I thought, you know, we had some unfinished business.”

Sarah waited.

“When we were talking, before, if I remember rightly, we’d just got to the point.”

“Of what?”

“Finalizing the arrangements. Where we were going to go, where we were going to meet. Italian or Chinese. You know the kind of thing.”

“I may do. But what makes you think I’d ever agree to going out with you? Especially now.”

“Exactly my point.”

“What?”

“Especially now. It’s not every day the police decide you didn’t murder somebody after all. We have to go and celebrate.”

Sarah shook her head. An elderly woman was maneuvering the length of the corridor on a Zimmer frame, pausing every fifteen feet or so to draw breath.

“We’ve got to,” Carew said.

“You’re the one. It’s nothing to do with me. You celebrate.” She began to walk towards him, veering left to go past. As she drew level he caught hold of her hand.

“It’s no fun on your own.”

“Tough!”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

One of the side doors opened and she pulled herself clear. A porter backed out a trolley bearing a sheet and blankets, nothing else. He was chewing gum and whistling “When You’re Smiling”; recognizing Sarah, he winked and grinned and switched the gum from one side of his mouth to the other, all without quite losing the tune.