‘I don’t know that name?’
‘How about Jason? Jason Fontaine?’
The truth was there on her face, a small nerve twitching at the corner of her eye.
‘She did go out with Jason Fontaine?’
‘She saw him once or twice. The end of last year. He came round here in his car, calling for her. I told him, he wasn’t suitable, not for her. Not for Shana. He didn’t bother her again.’
‘And Shana…?’
‘Shana understood.’ Clarice stepped back and began to close the door. ‘If you’ll excuse me now?’
‘How about Michael?’ Resnick said.
‘I don’t know no Michael.’
And the door closed quietly in his face.
He waited until Jade was on her way home from school, white shirt hanging out, coat open, skirt rolled high over dark tights, clumpy shoes. Her and three friends, loud across the pavement, one of them smoking a cigarette.
None of the others as much as noticed Resnick, gave him any heed.
‘I won’t keep you a minute,’ Resnick said as Jade stopped, the others walking on, pace slowed, heads turned.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘You and Shana, you shared a room.’
‘So.’
‘Secrets.’
‘What secrets?’
‘Jason Fontaine, was she seeing him any more?’
Jade tilted back her head, looked him in the eye. ‘He was just a flash bastard, weren’t he? Didn’t care nothin’ for her.’
‘And Michael?’
‘What about him?’
‘You tell me.’
‘He loved her, didn’t he?’
Michael Draper was upstairs in his room: computer, stereo, books and folders from the course he was taking at City College, photographs of Shana on the wall, Shana and himself somewhere that might have been the Arboretum, on a bench in front of some trees, an old wall, Michael’s skin alongside hers so white it seemed to bleed into the photo’s edge.
‘She was going to tell them, her mum and that, after her birthday. We were going to get engaged.’
‘I’m sorry.’
The boy’s eyes empty and raw from tears.
Maureen Prior was out of the office, her mobile switched off. Khan wasn’t sure where she was.
‘Ask her to call me when she gets a chance,’ Resnick said. ‘She can get me at home.’
At home he made sure the chicken pieces had finished defrosting in the fridge, chopped parsley, squashed garlic cloves flat, opened a bottle of wine, saw to the cats, flicked through the pages of the Post, Shana’s murder now page four. Art Pepper again, turned up loud. Lynn was late, no later than usual, rushed, smiling, weary, a brush of lips against his cheek.
‘I need a shower, Charlie, before anything else.’
‘I’ll get this started.’ Knifing butter into the pan.
It cost Jahmall a hundred and fifteen, talked down from one twenty-five. A Brocock ME38 Magnum air pistol converted to fire live ammunition, 22 shells. Standing there at the edge of the car park, shadowed, he smiled: an eye for an eye. Fontaine’s motor, his new one, another Beamer, was no more than thirty metres away, close to the light. He rubbed his hands and moved his feet against the cold, the rain that rattled against the hood of his parka, misted his eyes. Another fifteen minutes, no more, he’d be back out again, Fontaine, on with his rounds.
Less than fifteen, it was closer to ten.
Fontaine appeared at the side door of the pub, calling out to someone inside before raising a hand and turning away.
Jahmall tensed, smelling his own stink, his own fear; waited until Fontaine had reached towards the handle of the car door, back turned.
‘Wait,’ Jahmall said, stepping out of the dark.
Seeing him, seeing the pistol, Fontaine smiled. ‘Jahmall, my man.’
‘Bastard,’ Jahmall said, moving closer. ‘You killed my sister.’
‘That slag!’ Fontaine laughed. ‘Down on her knees in front of any white meat she could find.’
Hands suddenly sticky, slick with sweat despite the cold, Jahmall raised the gun and fired. The first shot missed, the second shattered the side window of the car, the third took Fontaine in the face splintering his jaw. Standing over him, Jahmall fired twice more into his body as it slumped towards the ground, then ran.
After watching the news headlines, they decided on an early night. Lynn washed the dishes left over from dinner, while Resnick stacked away. He was locking the door when the phone went and Lynn picked it up. Ten twenty-three.
‘Charlie,’ she said, holding out the receiver. ‘It’s for you.’
DRUMMER UNKNOWN
There’s a photograph taken on stage at Club Eleven, early 1950 or perhaps late ’49, the bare bulbs above the stage picking out the musicians’ faces like a still from a movie. Ronnie Scott on tenor sax, sharp in white shirt and knotted tie; Dennis Rose, skinny, suited, a hurt sardonic look in his eyes; to the left of the picture, Spike Robinson, on shore leave from the US Navy, a kid of nineteen or twenty, plays a tarnished silver alto. Behind them, Tommy Pollard’s white shirt shines out from the piano and Lennie Bush, staring into space, stands with his double bass. At the extreme right, the drummer has turned his head just as the photo has been taken, one half of his polka-dot bow tie in focus but the face lost in a blur of movement. The caption underneath reads ‘drummer unknown’.
That’s me: drummer unknown.
Or was, back then.
In ten years a lot of things have changed. In the wake of a well-publicised drug raid, Club Eleven closed down; the only charges were for possession of cannabis, but already there were heroin, cocaine.
Ronnie Scott opened his own club in a basement in Chinatown, Spike Robinson sailed back across the ocean to a life as an engineer, and Dennis Rose sank deeper into the sidelines, an almost voluntary recluse. Then, of course, there was rock ’n’ roll. Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ at number one for Christmas 1955 and the following year Tony Crombie, whose drum stool I’d been keeping warm that evening at Club Eleven, had kick- started the British bandwagon with his Rockets: grown men who certainly knew better, cavorting on stage in blazers while shouting about how they were going to teach you to rock, to the accompaniment of a honking sax. Well, it paid the rent.
And me?
I forget now, did I mention heroin?
I’m not usually one to cast blame, but after the influx of Americans during the last years of the war, hard drugs were always part of the scene. Especially once trips to New York to see the greats on 52nd Street had confirmed their widespread use.
Rumour had it that Bird and Diz and Monk changed the language of jazz the way they did — the complex chords, the flattened fifths, the extreme speeds — to make it impossible for the average white musician to play. If that was true, well, after an apprenticeship in strict tempo palais bands and pick-up groups that tinkered with Dixieland, where I was concerned they came close to succeeding. And it was true, the drugs — some drugs — helped: helped you to keep awake, alert. Helped you to play an array of shifting counter rhythms, left hand and both feet working independently, while the right hand drove the pulse along the top cymbal for all it was worth. Except
