[Charlie Resnick 03] Cutting Edge by John Harvey

Author:John Harvey [Harvey, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781932859461
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1991-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-six

The only sign of Ed Silver was the broken glass shining dully in the light from the top of the front door. Bottle glass. The cats, anxious and eager and, as usual, late being fed, brushed around him and he shooed them away. When he went inside they scurried to the kitchen, where Resnick forked food into their bowls before going back out with an old newspaper. He wrapped the larger pieces of glass thickly inside its pages and dropped them in the green council dustbin. Then he used a dustpan and brush to sweep up as much of the rest as he could, finally down on his hands and knees to find any fragments that might end up in the cats’ paws.

The envelopes he carried in from the hall floor were dull and brown and he left them beside the kettle while he ground coffee and gave the cats their milk. Pepper was losing hair in clumps along his back again and he would have to make time to take him to the vet: forty-five minutes of staring out the owners of schnauzers and Alsatians, pretending not to be embarrassed by his cat’s whimpering.

One of the letters was from the Polish Club, reminding him that his subscription was overdue and inviting him to the eightieth birthday celebrations of one of its stalwart members. Second-class mail, it had taken five days to reach him, as the crow flies no more than a mile. A note had been penned at angles to the page: Please come, Charles. We would all love to see you. Marian. Marian Witczak, who kept the Polish flag in her window and an atlas open at Eastern Europe as if it were the A–Z. Step outside on to the street and the taxi that draws up will take you to the heart of Warsaw, fifteen minutes.

Resnick poured coffee, wondering about people who so strenuously denied the present, constructed a fantasy from the past. How many nights did Marian fall asleep dreaming of mazurkas and ball gowns? How much alcohol did it take before Ed Silver saw himself stepping up again on to the stand at Ronnie Scott’s, slipping the shield from the mouthpiece, hooking his sax on to its sling, beating in time with his heel and launching into “Dexterity” without even a glance back at the band?

He sliced the sausage he found in the back of the fridge and planned to fry it with pieces of cooked potato, a bulb of garlic, dust in a little dill and thyme. Before that he wanted something with his coffee and mourned for his lost cherry cheesecake. What he did have was honey, black bread it wouldn’t take more than a minute to toast. Take it through and get the weight off his feet, a little rest and then the cooking. He was listening to Miles Davis, the trumpeter’s namesake stretched purring between crotch and knee, a mouthful of coffee still in the cup, feeling better than at any time that day.

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