Rough Treatment Read Online Free PDF

a shaved head daubed the same colors as his face. The lad had a Stanley knife in his hand. Likely he’d been drinking since early that morning; he’d pulled the knife from his pocket without thinking and now that he was fast against a uniformed officer with the crowd roaring at his back, the worst possibility was that he would panic.
    Jeff Harrison, blood streaming from the bridge of his nose, blocking out one eye, had stared him down with the other. Half a minute, more or less, and the weapon had been laid on the turf, its blade retracted. There were four youths waiting between the touchline and the barrier when reinforcements arrived.
    The second occasion was later, after Harrison had transferred into CID. He and Resnick had been involved in a raid on a warehouse on the canal that was suspected of housing stolen goods. They picked up a known thief running clear, a villain, real dyed-in-the-wool, regional crime squad had had him targeted for months. Try as they might, nothing would tie him in, nothing that would stand up as evidence.
    “Bend the rules a little, Charlie,” Harrison had said. It was one in the morning, in a drinking club off Bridlesmith Gate. “In a good cause. That confession I heard him make, you heard it too.”
    “No, Jeff,” Resnick had said, “I did not.”
    Two memories, clear as daylight.
    “Good to see you, Charlie.”
    “Jeff.”
    They shook hands and Harrison offered Resnick a seat, a cup of tea, a cigarette. Resnick sat down, shook his head to the rest.
    “Course, you don’t, do you?” Harrison emptied the ashtray into the metal waste bin and lit up again. He was still in CID, like Resnick now an inspector.
    “Tom Parker says you’re interested in this break-in.”
    Resnick sat forward, shrugged. “Might fit, might not.”
    “I’ve had a copy of the report done for you. Young DC went out there, Featherstone. He’s not in as of now, or you could have talked to him yourself.”
    Resnick pushed the manila envelope into his side pocket. “You didn’t go out there?”
    “Couldn’t see any point. Pretty straightforward. Run of the mill.”
    “You’ll not mind if I do?”
    Harrison tapped ash from his cigarette and leaned his chair back on to its hind legs. “Help yourself.”
    Resnick got to his feet. “Thanks, Jeff.”
    “Any time. Charlie,” the chair came down on all fours, “we must have a drink or two. Been a while.”
    “Yes.” Resnick was heading for the door.
    “You do come up with anything,” Harrison said, “you’ll keep me posted.”
    “Depend on it.”
    After Resnick had gone, Jeff Harrison sat where he was until he’d smoked down that cigarette and then another. What was it about Charlie Resnick that made him so special? With his shirt still crumpled from the wash and his tie knotted arse-about-face.
    Grabianski tried to imagine how Grice spent his afternoons. He pictured him sitting in the auditoriums of mostly empty cinemas, eating popcorn and doing his best to ignore the snores and shuffles from the semi-darkness around him. The last film Grabianski had seen had been Catch 22, and he had barely lasted the opening sequence: the promise of blood and bowels spilled across the airplane fuselage had brought back memories of his father’s wartime stories, too keen for Grabianski’s own stomach. He had thrown up, quietly, into a toilet bowl in the gents, fluttered his half-ticket down into the flushing water and left.
    “Jerry!”
    Grice was standing near the hotel entrance beneath a sign that promised TVs and en-suite showers in every room. His fists were stuffed into the pockets of a sheepskin car-coat and his thinning hair had been combed sideways over the broad curve of his head. “Come on. Let’s go.”
    Grabianski climbed into the front of a nearly new cherry-red Vauxhall that was parked at the curb.
    “You changed your car,” he said as Grice pulled out into the slow stream of traffic.
    “Observant today,” Grice said sharply. He jabbed the