Wasted Years by John Harvey & Harvey

Author:John Harvey & Harvey [Harvey, John & Harvey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780099421559
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1993-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Seven

Resnick spent forty minutes with a sixty-eight-year-old man who was convinced he had come about his stolen bike. “Locked the bugger up in the entry an’ everything. Right t’the bloody fence. Side entry along of the house. Safe enough you’d say, aye, so did I. But it weren’t, you see. Some clever sod’s snuck round there with bolt clippers, right through bloody lock, less time than it takes to crack an egg. Wouldn’t mind so much, but I’ve had that bike—Raleigh, good ’un, made good ’uns in those days—had that bike, must be—what?—well, dozen year at least. Maybe more. Who’d want to steal a bike like that? Spite, that’s what I put it down to. Spite or cussed-ness, ’cause they’ll not get much for it. All them fancy colored jobs with half-assed handlebars and great thick frames, that’s what they want nowadays. Not solid and dependable, like mine.”

He looked across his back kitchen at Resnick, a wiry man with a shiny bullet head and a neat graying moustache, braces hanging down either side of his trousers.

“Got so,” he said, “you can’t leave anything out your sight more’n a minute or it’s gone. Thieving bastards’d have the shirt off your back if they thought as they’d get away with it.” He shook his head. “That bike, my lifeline were that. Now it’s bloody gone.”

Resnick phoned through and checked the crime number, established that no progress had been made. Truth was, though they might catch the thief, the bike would already have been sold intact or stripped down for parts.

He accepted several cups of tea, each stronger than the last, sipping from a thick china cup, the inside of which was stained with overlapping rings of orangey brown. Trying hard not to look at his watch, he listened while the man talked about his son in Australia, the grandchildren he had never seen, the stroke that had taken his wife—God rest her—early from the world. Agreed that Tommy Lawton was the best center forward this country had ever had—bits of kids nowadays with these flash cars, won’t as much as kick a ball without there’s someone there fanning ’em with a check.

Resnick had seen players in the County side the past few seasons, would have found it difficult to kick anything without the aid of an on-the-pitch injection.

“I don’t want you to think,” the man said, showing Resnick to the door, “as I’m one of those who can’t keep up with the times, forever rattling on about how much better everything was when they were young, ’cause I’m not. Not by a long chalk. But I’ll say one thing and I know you’ll bear me out, folk were a lot more honest in them days, folk round here, ordinary folk I’m talking of now, like you and me. Why, twenty year back, I’d gone off down the shops, I’d not so much’ve bothered to’ve locked this front door, never mind bike. Now—well, you know about now well as I do.”

Resnick thanked him

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