Free Cutting Edge by John Harvey

down. He had to believe that, cling to it, knowing that if it were not true, there was somebody still out there, somewhere in the city, who had wreaked terrible havoc on Tim Fletcher’s body for reasons that only a psychologist might ever understand. And who might do the same again.
    City Life , read the poster facing Resnick as he went through the double doors. A bicycle had been left chained to the railings on the broad platform, two-thirds of the way down the steps. The air that touched Resnick’s hands and face was surprisingly cold, driving up from the flyover. Something caught his attention, low by the wall of the first building and he brought up the torch.
    It was only boxes, crammed with computer printouts: metallurgy, something close. Resnick switched off the torch and stood them, feeling the adrenalin in his body. Seek and you shall find. He crossed back over the ring road, stepping easily over the metal safety barriers at the center.
    Sitting in the car, he dribbled the last of the coffee into the plastic cup. There had been no mistaking his ex-wife’s voice on the phone, nor, in those few not-quite-coherent sentences, the mixture of resentment and pleading he had thought forgotten.

Eleven
    He had the kind of profile that could have been selling aftershave; thick hair, naturally curly and dark, a hunk wearing a black vest and loose-fitting sweatpants with a draw-string waist. He was wearing a pair of running shoes that had cost him close to eighty pounds, but that didn’t mean he was running. He had walked down the street and now he stood outside Number 27 and rang the bell. When nothing seemed to happen, he hit the door with the flat of his hand, enough to make it shake. Pushing back the letter flap, Ian Carew called Karen’s name.
    A couple of minutes and he saw her through the couple of inches of door: salmon socks, double-knit and large and folding loosely back down her calves; hem of a white T-shirt bouncing as she came down the stairs, enough to give him a glimpse of expensive underwear, beige lace and broderie anglaise. There was a large Snoopy in relief on the front of the shirt. Carew let the flap snap into place and stood back.
    Not far.
    “What …?”
    He stepped in without speaking, anger in his face, forcing her back along the threadbare carpet at the other side of the mat.
    She looked at him and shook her head and for a moment he thought she was going to bite down into her lower lip, like a child. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and there was sleep in the corner of her eyes.
    A woman walked past on the opposite side of the street, Asian, wearing a purple and gold sari and pushing a pram, twins. Karen didn’t think she’d ever noticed Asian twins before.
    Carew moved forward, blocking her view.
    “Good at it, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Natural. Comes natural. Something Mummy fed you along with the milk.”
    “Now you’re being stupid.”
    “And don’t do that!” His hand was on her face before she could move, fingers squeezing against the sides of her jaw, forcing her mouth slightly open so that she could no longer bite the soft flesh inside her lip.
    “Lying,” he said. “That’s what you’re good at. Lying. ‘No, Ian, there isn’t anything wrong. I’m not seeing anybody else, of course I’m not seeing anybody else.’ Weeks until I found out.”
    Karen turned her head aside, laughed dismissively. “Is that what this is all about?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Tim.”
    “Gets himself mugged and you send the police round after me.”
    “Oh, Ian.”
    “Oh, Ian, what?”
    She didn’t want this conversation, didn’t want this to be happening. She might have guessed that cow of a policewoman would put two and two together and come up with the wrong answer. Probably she should have warned him, but she hadn’t. Now he was there in the house, angry, and she didn’t think she could make him leave against his will, not by herself. She didn’t