Last Rites cr-10

by John Harvey

  “Here.” She retrieved the sweater, gray marl, safe in its plastic wrapper. “Nice,” she said. “For you?”

  Maureen shook her head. “A friend.” She slid the package down into its bag.

  “Not always easy, is it?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Buying for other people.” The officer laughed. “Men, especially. Know what they want, at least they like to think they do; only problem, they can never get it into words.”

  “Most of them, yes, I know what you mean.”

  “Well, if you’ve got one as can, hang on to him, that’s my advice. And watch out when you’re stepping out on to the pavement.”

  How easy, Maureen thought, to say it now, tell her about Michael waiting up there in Fletcher Gate car park, hunched down in the back seat of her car. An escaped prisoner; a convicted murderer. I’ll kill you. “Thanks,” she said, moving toward the curb.

  “Right,” the officer smiled, turning to walk away. “Take care.”

  Ahead of Maureen, the corner bookstore, the fly-posted wall of Bottle Lane, splintered in a jagged blur.

  “I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” Michael said, minutes later, when she got into the front seat of the car. “Thought you’d run off to the police instead.”

  And he laughed.

  I’ll kill you. She believed him utterly.

  Twenty-five

  Saturdays, for Resnick, especially once the soccer season had ground to a close, tended toward limbo. Though, truth to tell, even the prospect of watching his once-beloved County, perched for ninety minutes on a plastic seat designed for lesser backsides than his own, no longer filled him with the anticipations of pleasure it once had. Indeed, it was the seats, he thought, that were the problem, more so than the decline of the team. To watch those toilers in black and white plying their decidedly average skills among the trappings of a newly renovated all-seater stadium simply wasn’t right. This was neither Old Trafford nor the San Siro, not even nearby Derby’s optimistically named Pride Park. This was the wrong side of the Trent, nestling close against the old cattle market, the abattoir, and Incinerator Road.

  What he wanted was the jostle and caustic wit of the terraces; Bovril on sale at the kiosks, Wagon Wheels and sausage rolls; urinals where you stood elbow to elbow in the wash of everyone else’s piss.

  Romanticizing, Resnick knew, and as dangerous as the efforts to dress up the past and sell it sanitized that drew tourists to the Lace Museum and Tales of Robin Hood and even the Galleries of Justice, where for a few pounds you could inspect the old police cells and the tunnel along which deported prisoners were shepherded into canal boats on the first part of their plague-ridden journey to the colonies.

  From where he was leaning on the railing overlooking the Emmett clock, he spotted Hannah, with a bag from the new Tesco Metro in each hand, and called her name.

  For a while, they wandered around the upstairs market, Hannah, having deposited her first batch of shopping in her car, buying fillets of trout, scallops, and squid, Resnick half a pound of pale herring roe tinged with pink and two thick slabs of cod, which he would share, inevitably, with the cats. Hannah bought green vegetables, fruit; Resnick, Polish sausage, bacon, smoked ham, gherkins pickled in spiced vinegar and dill. They both bought cheese.

  “Coffee?” Hannah said.

  Her own choice, Resnick knew, would have meant a brief walk to the Dome or Café Rouge, one of those other places where, within moments of entering, he felt too fat, too old, too entirely in the wrong clothes. But today Hannah led him back to the Italian coffee stall, where, she guessed correctly, he had been less than an hour before.

  “This band young Ben Fowles plays in,” Resnick said, “they’re playing in one of the pubs this Sunday lunchtime. He’s been doling out free tickets. If you’re interested.”

  “You and me?”

  “Why not?”

  Hannah smiled with her eyes. “Thought your Sundays were spent listening to jazz at the Bell.”

  “Maybe a change’d do me good.”

  “That’s my line,” Hannah said. “Used to be. Anyway, I’ve plans for Sunday, I’m sorry.”

  Resnick nodded, unsure if he were disappointed or not.

  “You go. You might enjoy it.”

  Resnick nodded; they both knew he wouldn’t venture within a mile. He spotted a couple leaving around the other side of the stall and hurried to claim the seats.

  “I think they will have soon to arm you,” Aldo said, serving them their coffee. “These shootings.”

  “Do you think they will?” Hannah asked, moments later.

  “What?”

  “Arm you, the police?”

  He shook his head. “No. No more than we are now.”

  “Something’s going to happen, surely?”

  He looked at her questioningly.

  “Almost every time you open the paper …”

  Resnick’s laugh stopped her in her stride.

  “What?”

  “Not the kind of thing I expect a Guardian reader to come out with.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Charlie, the Guardian’s full of it, too. Shootings in London, a whole spate of them, drug-related. Some kind of gang war.” She looked at him steadily. “Is that what’s happening here?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But it might?”

  Resnick tried his espresso, slightly sharp. “I was listening to someone on the Force the other day suggesting we should stand back and let them kill one another off.”

  “Them?”

  “The dealers.”

  “Because they’re black.”

  “Because they’re criminals. Because they make vast amounts of money from keeping people who can least afford it hooked on drugs.”

  Hannah shot him a wry smile. “You almost sound as if you think it’s a good idea.”

  “That’s not what I said.” He brought his cup down on to its saucer so hard it was a wonder one of them didn’t crack.

  “Charlie, come on.” Hannah touched his arm and he shook her away. “I’m interested. It concerns me. Kids I’m teaching; fourteen, fifteen, younger …”

  “Like Sheena Snape.”

  “Yes, like Sheena. They’re the ones likely to end up in the middle of all this. And suffer because of it.”

  “If their parents kept a proper eye on them, who they were with, made sure they were home at a reasonable time …”

  It was Hannah’s turn to laugh. “For God’s sake, Charlie, just listen to yourself. How old d’you think you sound?”

  “As old as I am.”

  “Older. Those things you’re saying, for huge numbers of the families round here, they’re not relevant. They don’t mean a thing any more.”

  “Well, they should.”

  “And you think your sitting there saying so will make it happen?” There was no humor in her laugh. “Sometimes I think you are living in the past, Charlie, I really do. Or else you wish you were.”

  Espresso unfinished, Resnick was down from his stool. “I’d best be off.”

  “Not like you to run away.”

  “Maybe there’s things I’d sooner fight about.”

  “People you’d rather talk to.”

  “You said that, Hannah, I didn’t.” But all the same, he didn’t once turn back as he walked away.

  At the police’s request, Jason Johnson had been moved into a quiet side room which closed off from the rest of the ward and there was a uniformed officer, bored, leafing through the pages of the Sun, on duty outside. As a precaution it made simple sense, but though there were no reports of anyone aside from authorized personnel entering or leaving, someone had got to Johnson somehow.

  Lying there among the usual panoply of charts and pillows, head shaved and half-covered with bandages, Johnson looked young, younger than his years, and the eyes that flickered toward Resnick and away again, were pale and scared.

  No, he hadn’t been on the Forest to meet anybody; no special reason at all, just
him and his girlfriend, looking to chill out, okay, maybe smoke a little dope, perhaps fool around. His sister? She was just there with them, in the car, that was all. Maybe he’d seen another vehicle, he wasn’t sure. Suddenly there was this crazy bastard hammering on the window, aiming a gun at him, right at his head. No, he didn’t know who it was. Or why. Couldn’t say. Too dark, too fast, too much in his face. Pow! You know what I’m sayin’? He sticks the gun in the car and pow! No time to see a thing. And the knife? Yeh, maybe there was a knife. Self-defense, man. No, what? Valentine? Later, maybe later. It was hazy, man. He wasn’t sure. Drew Valentine? He couldn’t say it was or wasn’t Valentine who shot him ’Cause he didn’t know. Okay, okay, he’d cop for the knife. But, hey, he’d just been shot, he was bleeding, could hardly think, never mind see. Self-defense, what I’m saying. What else was he supposed to do?

  Resnick leaned forward across the bed. “Okay, Jason, I don’t know who you’ve been listening to, though I could guess, but now listen to me. You’re just off the critical list. Lucky to be alive. There’s still a fragment of that bullet left near your brain. What that’s going to mean in time to come, I don’t know. But what seems clear is someone tried to kill you. Right?”

  Johnson’s eyes flickered and closed; he didn’t want to hear any more.

  Resnick touched him on the shoulder, only lightly; waited a count of three. “I can only guess the reason. Maybe it was something you did or didn’t do. Teach you a lesson. Something that would serve as an example to others. But what you’ve got to think about, whoever did this, maybe now they’ve got more call for wanting you out of the way than ever. So if you have been talking to someone, striking some kind of deal, who’s to say the minute you’re out of here all bets are off and they’re not going to try and kill you again?”

  Resnick leaned even closer, his voice lower, more insistent. “Of course, if you know who it was that put that gun to your head, and I think you do, all you have to do is tell us and we can take him off the street right now. You identify him, agree to testify, and we’ll forget any charges against you. More than that, we’ll look after you, protect you, put you into a witness protection program if need be. Whatever it is, you need to feel safe. Understood? Jason, understood?”

  Johnson didn’t respond. Resnick stretched out a hand and rested the tip of his extended finger against the youth’s bandaged head. “Think about what I said. Only not for too long. There’s an officer outside, tell him you want to speak to me. And, Jason … do it while you still can.”

  Resnick ignored the lift in favor of the stairs. Whatever threats or promises he’d made, stack them up against what he knew Valentine to be capable of, he had little doubt whom Johnson found the more persuasive.

  Anthony Drew Valentine had visitors. A young woman wearing an electric-blue catsuit was lounging across the bed, while another, twin rings shining from her navel as she stretched back in a hospital chair, legs splayed, was tearing away the gold paper from a bottle of champagne. A bullet-headed black man with muscles to spare was leaning against the bedside cabinet on which he had placed his packet of Rizla papers, meticulously skinning up.

  “What the fuck …?” Valentine began and then stopped.

  “All right,” Resnick announced, “party’s over. Out. Now.”

  “Who’s he think he is?” asked the woman in blue.

  “Yeh, this is a private room,” her friend said. “Didn’t anybody teach you to knock?”

  “Easy now,” Valentine said. “He the one I told you ’bouta. Mean an’ nasty.” He laughed and the others laughed with him.

  “Well,” the bullet-headed man said, pausing to give his spliff a final lick before sliding it between his forefinger and thumb, “if he’s so mean, he can suck my dick.”

  The girls were still giggling when Resnick swung his fist and hit the man hard to the side of the head. It was a lucky punch with weight behind it and it caught him off guard as well as off balance and, rocked sideways, his other cheek went smack against the cabinet’s edge.

  With a faint groan, he sank to his knees.

  “Man,” Valentine said, impressed despite himself, “you know who that is? He’s a sparring partner for some of the best light-heavies in the business.”

  “Sure,” Resnick said, picking up the joint from where it had rolled across the floor. “And quaint and old-fashioned as it is for me to say so, possession of this is still a criminal offense. So tell your friends I want them off the premises now, and this one, if I see him again, ever, I’m likely to put him under arrest and press charges. Understood?”

  In less than two minutes, Resnick and Drew Valentine were alone.

  “So,” Resnick said, sitting down, “why the celebration?”

  “Day after tomorrow. Monday. Out of here first thing. Released to enjoy me a long convalescence.”

  “Just as long as you’re not thinking of taking it outside the city.”

  “My travel agent, he’s recommending Bali.”

  “Save your money. There’s still a little matter of attempted murder to attend to.”

  “I guess you i’n’t talked to Jason yet? Smart kid. Knows which side his bread buttered.”

  The smile still on his face, Resnick brought his hand down onto the covers and squeezed Valentine’s leg. Valentine gasped with pain.

  “Jesus, man! That’s my bad leg.”

  “Mean and nasty, remember,” Resnick said and squeezed harder. Valentine screamed.

  A nurse appeared in the doorway, looking concerned. “Nothing to worry about,” Resnick said pleasantly. “It seems I rested my hand on the wrong part of the bed. No cause for alarm.”

  The nurse looked over at Valentine and remembered what he had called her earlier. “Very well,” she said and let the door swing closed behind her.

  Resnick relaxed the pressure of his hand, but not too much. “I’m here to tell you something. One way or another, and I don’t know how, not yet, you’ve been able to steer clear of the law and carry on dealing right across the city.”

  “I ain’t…”

  Changing the angle of his arm, Resnick applied pressure steadily downwards. “Car, clothes, jewelry: you walk around this town with more money on your back than most ordinary folk earn in a year. Up to now, you’ve got away with it. Not any more.”

  He gave Valentine’s leg a parting, friendly pat and rose to his feet. “Oh, one other thing,” he said at the door. “That gun you used on Jason, then tossed on to the Forest. We’re going to do better than find your prints on it; we’re going to trace it back to the supplier. Prince, Gary. Ring a bell?”

  It was only there for an instant, but the jolt of alarm in Valentine’s eyes was vivid, unmistakable.

  Back outside, walking away from the hospital toward Old Lenton, Resnick’s step was springier, lighter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d struck a blow outside of self-defense; couldn’t recall when he’d last used force of any kind. And although he knew that later his conscience would be giving him gyp, right now he felt one hundred percent better, as if he’d cleared a lot of dead weight from his soul.

  Twenty-six

  One of the first things Preston had done after they’d arrived at Maureen’s had been to down two large cups of tea laced with brandy; the other was to strip to his skin right there in the kitchen: twelve years of prison slop-outs and prison showers didn’t leave much room for embarrassment. “Burn them,” he said, indicating the pile of soiled clothing.

  Maureen looked at him helplessly. “What?”

  “I said, burn them.”

  “There’s only a gas fire, natural effect.”

  “What about the dustbin?”

  “Plastic.”

  Preston cursed. “Bin bags. You can take them to the dump later.”

  Reluctantly, Maureen bent down to pick up the clothes, her head level with his crotch; Preston watching her, a smile playing round the corners of his mouth.

  “Well?” he said.

  Maureen stood up, b
lushing, unable to look him in the eye.

  Preston laughed and turned away, knowing that she was looking at him as he climbed the stairs, the long curve of his back, his balls just visible between his legs, that tight arse.

  The first thing Maureen had done when she moved into her thirties house in Bramcote Hills was to have several acres of moss-green carpet cleared from the floors and the original boards sanded and varnished, polished till they shone with a deep hue that her cleaning lady worked hard to maintain. Layers of flowery paper were stripped from the walls and the whole of the downstairs painted creamy white. Aside from the kitchen, which resembled the stretched interior of a spaceship capsule, Maureen had been keen to mix old and new, the contemporary with items which brought out that original thirties feel. In the living room, a brown leather settee shared the space with a pair of upright Waring and Gillow armchairs; a trio of hand-thrown prewar vases sat on a molded plastic coffee table from IKEA.

  It was a beautiful-to Maureen-stylish home. And now she was trapped in it with a man who had killed and could kill again.

  While she was waiting for him to be done with his bath, she put food on the table-cold roast chicken, tomatoes, potato salad, cheese, two sticks of French bread. There was ice cream in the freezer, Ben and Jerry’s, three flavors; she kept it there as a lesson in temptation. She thought for the hundredth time about making a run for it; she thought about opening wine. Maureen laughed nervously. Was that what you did when you were kidnapped by your brother-in-law who’d just escaped from prison? Get out the best silver and a bottle of Chilean Cabernet?

  She was thinking about him, up there in that oval tub, feet up on the edge most probably, knees spread wide. How easy it would have been for her to slip her mobile from her bag and dial 999; lock the front door from the outside, jump into the car, and drive away. Anywhere. Surely that’s what she should do?

  Kill you. Since that first warning, he hadn’t wasted words on another.

  Hearing a movement upstairs, she slipped the clear plastic corkscrew over the head of the bottle and began to twist.

  Shaved, a comb pulled through thick, short hair, Michael Preston stood in the doorway, barefoot. The clothes Maureen had chosen, the pre-faded denim shirt, the dark olive chinos, fitted perfectly. As they should. It was her job.