Twenty-six The pub was flat against the main road, a thin line of pavement all that separated its windows from the heavy lorries shuddering down towards the A5, the M69, the M6. Inside four men, worn down by middle- age, sat at four separate tables, nursing pint glasses through until lunchtime. All four looking up when Resnick entered, but none looked up for long. The landlord, restocking shelves behind the bar, paused to glance at Resnick's warrant card, listened to his question and pointed towards the stairs.
'First floor, back.' If the radio had been switched on and if it had been playing David Whitfield or Perry Como, Resnick would not have been surprised.
There were three boards, bare along the landing, and each one of them creaked.
'Gerry McKimber?'
A tall man, spindly with a nose like a wedge that had been driven hard, and not quite straight^ into the centre of his face, McKimber stared at Resnick's identification, then stepped back, shaking his head.
'Christ! It's not taken her so bloody long!'
'Her?'
'I told her I'd pay, Jesus, she's knows I'll pay just as soon as I can. She knows I've lost my fucking job, for Christ's sake, what does she expect?'
'Mr McKimber?'
'I've told you…'
Mr McKimber. '
What? '
'You're talking about maintenance, child support?'
'No, I'm talking about winning the fucking pools!'
'That's not why I'm here.'
'Not? Not the pools, then?' He laughed, more a bark than a laugh.
'Not here to tell me that? Half a million quid? Am I going to let it change my life?'
Resnick shook his head.
'Well, thank Christ for that.
'Cause I forgot to post the sodding coupon.'
'Mr McKimber, can I come inside?'
There were two beds pushed back against the far wall, narrow divans low to the floor, only one of them recently used. On the other, McKimber had piled, not neatly, some of his possessions, cardboard boxes, motoring magazines, clothes. A wardrobe, a table, what might euphemistically have been called an easy chair. The single window, with a view over beer crates and barrels and an outside urinal, was open a crack.
McKimber stubbed out the cigarette that had been smouldering in the ashtray and lit another. He held the packet towards Resnick, who shook his head.
'If it's not that cow, then what is it?' But then he saw Resnick's face and thought he knew.
'You've caught her, that cunt as stabbed me? You've got her, right?'
'Afraid not.'
'Then what the fuck…?'
'There's been another incident…'
'Like that? Like what happened to me?'
'Similar. Enough to make us think there might be a connection. I need to talk to you again.'
McKimber walked towards the window and looked down, pushing fingers back through his unkempt hair. 'You know, at first she never believed me, the wife, I don't know why. It was a fight, she said, you were in a fight. Some pub or other. Same as before. Why bother making up an excuse? Why bother lying?'
^IcKimber turned back into the room, cigarette cupped in his hand.
'As if what I'd said, you know, what really opened, the hotel and that, as if somehow she'd never dave minded so much.'
He went over to the bed, sat down.
'I used to get into these scrapes.
Once in a while. You know what it's like, on the road Travelling.
Well, you can imagine. Chatting Up people all day, trying to. Half the time getting doors closed in your face. Abuse. You wouldn't believe the gbuse. Come evening, had a bit of a meal, too far to go home, too tired, what do you do? Well, me, like a lot of men, I like a drink. Trouble is, when I drink I suppose I get careless 'bout what I say. Don't care who hears me, either. Gets me into trouble, I admit it The firm, they'd warned me, Gerry, this has got to stop. So many last warnings, I never believed them and then they gave me the push for something else altogether, but that's another story. '
He drew on the cigarette, releasing the smoke, slow, down his nose.
'The wife, see, she'd been on at me, an' all. Forever on at me. Just once more, Gerry McKimber, you come home looking like you've been in a brawl and you're out of my house. My house!' McKimber repeated his barking laugh.
'Not now. Not when she's crying out for me to pay something towards the sodding bills. Oh, no. Now it's our house again. Our house!'
He looked across towards Resnick, who waited, listening, prepared to listen, saying nothing.
'This business with the woman, the one as cut me, the wife, she thought I'd made it up. Of course, I never told her, what I never told her, that I was, like, paying for it, you know. Christ, I wasn't about to tell her that now, was I? Paying for it. Give her that satisfaction. No, what I said was, what I told her, this woman and I, we get talking in the bar, one thing rolls into another, I've had a few too many to know properly what I'm doing, next thing she's with me, up in the room. Would she believe that? Not for weeks would she fucking believe that, blue in the sodding face from telling her. Well, it was the truth, more or less the truth, I didn't want her mingeing on at me for something I'd never done. Jesus! When I finally get it through her thick head I'm not lying, what does the stupid cow do? Fucking slings me out!
'All my stuff, clothes, everything, out the window, out the door. Out the house. Receipts, samples. God knows what, all over the front garden, next door's, up and down half the bloody street. Some of it I never even bloody found.
'You believe me now, don't you?' I said.
'You're filth,' she says.
'You're scum. You're never setting foot in this house again.' The kids upstairs, hanging out of the upstairs, taking it all in. '
He ground the nub end of his cigarette into the threadbare carpet with his heel.
'What was it you wanted to know?'
Sharon Gamett had been on court for the best part of an hour and a half; two games down in the fourth set and any rhythm in her service had gone. A couple of double faults, an attempted lob off her backhand which had landed closer to the next court than the one on which they were playing, and it had been over.
'Thanks, Sharon. Good game.'
'Sure,' Sharon grinned.
'I was crap.'
Her opponent laughed. He was a nice enough bloke, sergeant in Surveillance, wife and two-point-four kids, semi-detached south of the city at Ruddington.
'Time for a drink after?'
After? '
'Shower, change, whatever?'
'Thanks, no. Maybe some other time. I'm going to shower at home.'
She was almost at her car before Divine spotted her, Divine and Naylor, leaning up against their own vehicle, taking in what there was of the sun. The rhododendron bushes thick along the perimeter of University Park behind them.
'Will you look at that?' Divine said.
'Legs that go all the way up to her arse!'
'Right,' Naylor said.
'New design. Don't know if it'll catch on.'
