Wasted Years

by John Harvey

  “Okay,” Lynn said, “just do as he says. Get back to me as soon as he’s contacted you. That way we’ll have plenty of time to get into position.”

  Keith stopped alongside a small rockery with pink and purple flowers. “What’ll happen?” he asked.

  “Happen? We’ll disarm him, take him away fast. Lock him up out of harm’s way. Your way, too. It’s all right, Keith, you’re doing the right thing. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Now I know how it feels, Lynn thought as they walked towards the embankment, lying through my hind teeth.

  Skelton had decided it was time to go public. It seemed as though, after nearly nine months, Operation Kingfisher was showing signs of coming home to roost. Most of the officers involved in the inquiry were present: aside from Resnick’s team, Malcolm Grafton, Helen Siddons, and Reg Cossall were looking over the newly circulated reports, waiting for the superintendent to spell out the next stages.

  What Skelton did was to signal twice with nods of the head, once towards the lights, once the projector. A slide showing a man standing inside a walled garden, snowcapped mountains behind him, flicked into view, to be followed by a medium shot, head and shoulders, finally a close-up, slightly blurred by the necessary use of the zoom lens.

  “Ramsey,” Reg Cossall breathed. “As I live and breathe.”

  “Former DC Rains,” Skelton confirmed, “taken in the grounds of the villa where he’s been living these past six years. About seventy miles north of the town of Leon in the Cantabrian Mountains.” Skelton looked around the darkened room. “Since these pictures were taken, Rains has disappeared. If he’s flown, especially using a British passport, it must have been under an assumed name.”

  “What about other modes of transport, superintendent?” asked Helen Siddons.

  “The car registered to him is still garaged at the villa, but, of course, that means nothing. The Spanish police had promised a thorough check of car hire firms in the area, but so far nothing’s materialized.”

  “Too busy enjoying their siesta,” suggested Cossall in a stage whisper.

  “It’s not so far to the French border,” Malcolm Grafton pointed out. “Pick up one of those TGVs, you’re talking getting on two hundred miles an hour. Ferry across the Channel, here in no time.”

  “If here is where’s he’s heading, Malcolm,” Reg Cossall pointed out.

  “If we’re not working on that possibility, Reg,” said Helen Siddons, “I don’t know what we’re doing here at all.”

  Cossall sat back glowering. Reg! What did that jumped-up tart think she was at, having the bollocking temerity to call him Reg?

  Skelton signaled and the slide disappeared, the lights came back on. “There are still a lot of ifs. If Rains has been traveling to and from this country with any frequency, we’ve yet to establish proof of this. If he’s been in this area, you might think it strange there doesn’t appear to have been one sighting of him, not one solitary rumor that he was here—until the one floated by Graham’s informant. Having noted all of that, what interests me most is the supposed Churchill-Rains connection. It’s Charlie’s opinion they could have been close; the informant’s busy telling us they’ve become closer. And one thing we know for certain, though we’ve been short of a great deal that’s provable in court, Churchill is a long-term villain, a professional robber with likely half a dozen scores to his name since he came out of Parkhust in eighty-five.”

  “Time the bastard was back,” someone said to murmurs of agreement.

  “We’re keeping him under surveillance,” Skelton said. “Round the clock. Either Rains contacts him or vice versa, we should know.”

  “Have we got a tap on his phone?” Helen Siddons asked.

  “What we have is an outstanding application to monitor all calls.”

  A low moan ran round the room.

  “One thing,” asked Malcolm Grafton, “how does this affect the status of the French inquiries?”

  “Continuing, Malcolm. Possibly a little closer to the back burner, that’s all.”

  “What that bugger wants to know for,” Cossall said to Resnick, who was sitting close to one side, “reckons he’s on to a Parisian bloody holiday, doesn’t he? All expenses paid. Taxpayers’ money to spend his nights down in the Folies Bergère. Waste, eh, Charlie? Going to send anyone, down to you and me.”

  In the event it was to be none of them. Skelton passed the news to Resnick at the end of the meeting and it was his duty to impart the decision to Divine, who was entertaining the CID room with his impersonation of Maurice Chevalier performing a particularly lewd version of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”

  “Mark, my office a minute.”

  Divine stood inside the closed door, hands clasped at his back.

  “The, er, French connection you’ve been working on …”

  Divine’s eyes began to shine.

  “I’m afraid it’s been decided there’s a need to send a more senior officer. Someone fluent in the language and of a rank which would enable them to …” The rest didn’t need saying. The change in Divine’s expression made it clear how well he understood. “DI Siddons will be the liaison officer traveling over; seems she’s more or less bilingual.”

  There was a day when Divine would have tried to make a joke out of that, but this wasn’t it.

  “Sorry, Mark,” Resnick said, surprising himself by actually meaning it.

  “Thanks, boss,” Divine said gloomily.

  Instead of going back to his desk, he walked through the CID room and out at the far end without saying another word. In either language.

  Forty-Seven

  Ruth padded across the tiled floor in bare feet. Why hadn’t she been surprised when Resnick had walked into the pub? Recognizing him instantly from the trial and earlier—standing in the side door of the house, Rains behind her, watching Resnick and her husband face to face. Watching her husband’s face, the gun; knowing that he was playing the percentages inside his head. How much do they know? How much can they prove? How much time am I going to get? She remembered how close Rains had stood to her, warmth of his breath against the side of her neck; even then, his hand reaching out for her, touching her back.

  She poured nearly boiling water into the pot and swished it round as she took it to the sink and poured it down. One tea bag and one for luck. Digestive biscuits in the tin on the shelf. She poured on the water and replaced the lid, left the tea to brew.

  The dog watching her all the while, clear eyes following her every move. A ritual like many others. One which Resnick’s visit had left undisturbed. A couple of halves in the pub, few chapters of whichever book, back to the cottage for a cup of tea and while that was standing, she would feed the dog. Afterwards, walk him on the beach. Well, she would walk, the dog would run. Then home for a little telly, maybe the radio, another early night, the dog curled on the rug at the bed’s foot.

  Ruth stood with both hands to her face, pressing deep. Resnick had walked into the pub and told her what she had always known, sooner or later, would be the case: he’s coming out. I’ll get you, Ruthie. Get even with you. Pay you back, you double-crossing bastard. Cunt. You bitch. There had been a photograph of her, front page in most of the papers, little black dress, descending the steps outside the court. Pale face. There behind her, smart in his suit, that handsome smiling face, hands raised and spread to ward photographers and press away. Mrs Prior will be making a statement later through her solicitor.

  Pleased, course I’m pleased. We got a good result.

  Prior’s release, so long coming, she had ceased to fear it long since. What would come would come and who was she to say she didn’t deserve it? Grassing up your old man, you slag, you don’t deserve to live. Rumor was his mum had hired some tearaway to teach her a lesson, throw acid in her face. Ruth hid herself away, down London, abroad, a spell in Glasgow, back for a while to the city, then here.

  You can walk but you can’t run.

  She liked it here. T
he quiet. All those early years in front of speakers jacked up so high she was lucky not to have permanent damage to her ears. In Glasgow once this journalist had recognized her, a stringer for the NME. Begged her to let him do her story. Not talking a magazine piece here, I mean the real thing. A book. Built around you. The history of British Rhythm and Blues.

  She hadn’t told that story or any other. Not even after the trial when they’d all been round her like flies round the honeypot. The Sun. The News of the World. Money she’d been offered. My Life with a Villain. My Life with a Face. Some tart who reckoned she’d screwed him silly in her scabby little bedsit had sold this yarn about champagne and foursomes and how Prior hadn’t been able to get enough. Well, after all the years of virtual abstinence he’d practiced with her, maybe that was the only part Ruth had believed.

  It was late. The dog had finished its food and was waiting, bemused, by the door. The tea was cold and stewed. Ruth changed her shoes, buttoned up her coat.

  The roll of the sea as it folds back against the sand. If Prior walked up to me now, out of this long dark, Ruth thought, what would I say or do?

  Returning, as she neared the sea wall, she heard the quick scratch of a match and, moments later, saw the soft glow of a cigarette. Just kids, she thought, doing some cold courting.

  Resnick’s card was still in the pocket of her skirt and she dropped it onto the kitchen table as she walked through. For fifteen, twenty minutes she sat with her feet up, listening to Radio Two: Brian Matthew more relaxing than another bout of Gradgrind.

  “Come on,” she said, and with its usual enthusiasm the dog trailed her up the stairs to bed.

  On the outer edge of the city, nights before, traveling back, Resnick had pulled across to the side of the road and cut the engine. Lights splayed out before him like a net. A feeling, not quite pain, had caught low in his throat. His instinct had been to slip a fresh cassette into place but inside his head Lester was already playing “Ghost of a Chance.”

  unseen, not quite unbidden,

  someone has just slipped in.

  Ruth was vaguely aware of the dog paddling off downstairs but it was such a familiar sound she never really woke: what did wake her was the sharp, sudden sound of tearing close to her head.

  “What’s that?” Jumping up with a start, blinking into the near dark.

  “That,” the familiar voice said, “was the sound of your dog’s throat being cut.”

  “Bastard!” she sobbed, reaching sideways for the light.

  Beside the bed, Rains smiled down. “Don’t worry, Ruthie. It was only this.” One of her shirts which she’d left hanging over a chair was dangling from his hand, ripped from tail to neck.

  “The dog! Where’s …?”

  “Downstairs sleeping, not to fret.”

  “He wouldn’t …”

  “Hungry. Gave him a little something to eat.”

  “If you’ve …”

  “Just a few hours. He’ll be right as rain.” Rains smiled. “Funny that, isn’t it? Always makes me smile. What’s so right about rain.” Never taking his eyes from her, he sat on the side of the bed. “Always when you least expect it. Forgot the umbrella, raincoat in the car.” He laughed, smiling with his eyes. “Good to see you, Ruthie. You look like shit.”

  He scarcely looked older; what age there was, if anything, had made him even better-looking. Too handsome for other people’s good.

  “No sense pretending we parted on the best of terms, is there? Even so—I thought some things were all agreed. No true confessions, no stories. No talking out of turn.”

  “How did you get here? How did you find me?”

  “Ruthie! Used to be a detective, remember?”

  “I know what you used to be.”

  Rains leaned one hand against the covers, close to her leg. “Followed him. Charlie. Heard he’d had the feelers out, asking questions, and I followed him.”

  Ruth glanced away and when she looked back his expression had changed.

  “You thought shutting yourself out here would stop people finding you; thought getting that dog would protect you if they did. Well, now you know better. And I know you won’t forget.” His hand moved fast and he had hold of her jaw, fingers pressing hard against the bone. “One thing, when he comes to see you, Prior; if he wants to know what went on between us, if I used you to fit him up, you don’t tell him a thing. Don’t as much as mention my name.” Leaning quickly forward he kissed her on the mouth. “Life’s good, Ruthie. Too much so to have it fucked up by some jealous bastard, fresh out of prison, harboring a grudge.”

  She stayed there for a long time after Rains had gone, allowing the warmth gradually to seep back into her skin. Only then did she put on her dressing gown and go downstairs and kneel beside the dog, unconscious on the kitchen floor; sit, with its head resting in her lap, until it stirred with the first light glinted off the sea.

  Forty-Eight

  Resnick woke at two to the sound of breathing: lay there for second after second, aware of the heart pumping against his ribs, that the fevered breathing that had woken him had been his own. He was layered with sweat. The fear was not his own.

  a tideswell like moving bone

  Like Monk fingering “These Foolish Things”

  from broken glass

  He got up and didn’t switch on the light. The cat, knowing it was too early, recircled itself at the foot of the bed and closed its eyes. Because the fear was not for himself, it was no less real. He stood beneath the shower and the sound that he heard was water dragging back across the shore. He knew that Ruth had no phone: knew that he could phone the pub and rouse the landlord, call the constabulary in the nearest town. Knew, without knowing why, without questioning, that whatever had happened, that part of it, was through.

  Deliberately, he dressed, made coffee, buttered toast, broke cheese. Some of the coffee he drank, the remainder he poured into a flask. If he drove fast he would beat daybreak. His headlights cut channels across brick and stone. The only fear now was what he would find.

  Ruth had stayed in the kitchen with the dog, cradling it, until, at last, its eyes rolled open and, moments later, it shuffled unsteadily to its feet. Now the animal lay curled on the battered settee in the living room and Ruth sat, trying to read, with her umpteenth cup of tea.

  It snagged at the back of her mind, like a hangnail, that she should slip on her shoes and find her purse, walk the few yards towards the sea shore and dial the number Resnick had left her. She was loath to admit to herself that part of the reason she didn’t do this was she was afraid to take that first step outside the house.

  Yet why?

  If it were Rains that she feared most he had proved to her how easy it was for him to magic himself inside her house. If he had wanted to do her physical harm he could; if he wanted to harm her in the future he could again. She had no doubt of this.

  But maybe Rains was not the one she really feared.

  She would call Resnick and say what? This friend of yours was here threatening me. What did he do? He tore one of my old shirts. Ruth smiled. Resnick and Rains, had they been friends? It seemed unlikely. She thought that to Rains, admitting to a friend would have been a sign of weakness, strictly to be discouraged. Friendship meant give and take and life, for Rains, was all in the taking.

  She was back in the kitchen, refilling the kettle, when she heard the car approaching.

  “Do you always act on your hunches?” Ruth asked. They had walked up away from the beach, on to a green knoll that never seemed to reach its peak. Off to the west woods became fields and fields became lost in hazy mist. Squinting along the shoreline into the early light they could see the silhouettes of castles, bulked against the sky.

  “Not always,” Resnick said. “Usually.”

  “Doesn’t it ever get you into trouble?”

  “Doesn’t everything?”

  They walked on until the land seemed suddenly about to fall before them, tumbling sharply down to a narrow cleft
, a stream of gray-green water that wound snakelike towards the sea.

  Ruth patted her pockets, found and lit a cigarette, smoke from it quickly lost in the air. “So what did you expect?” she asked. “To find me dead?”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “But that was one of the possibilities?”

  “I suppose so.”

  She almost smiled. “You weren’t disappointed.”

  Resnick shook his head.

  “But Rains,” Ruth said, “you didn’t think it would be Rains?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t know. But, no, I don’t think so.”

  “He’s out then?” Ruth said, moments later. They both knew she meant Prior.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re watching him?”

  “No.”

  “Expect me to believe that?”

  Resnick shook his head. “We haven’t the reason, haven’t the resources. He’ll be expected to report to his probation officer once a week.”

  Ruth snorted.

  “D’you want to start walking back?” Resnick said.

  “All right,” Ruth said, but neither of them moved.

  “What you have to understand,” Ruth said several moments later, “no one had looked at me like that in so long I swear I’d forgotten what it meant. No one had touched me, wanted to touch me. It was as if, early, stupidly bloody early, that part of my life had just stopped.

  “And then there was that bastard, hands all over me, like he couldn’t get enough.” She finished her cigarette, nipped the end between finger and thumb and opened the last of the paper, scattering shards of tobacco towards the ground. “I knew he was using me, though, of course, he denied it. Knew and I never cared. I thought, Prior’s going down for a long time and what that means to me he doesn’t care, he doesn’t give a shit. I’m just this thing that he’s lived with and used to cook and clean and wipe between his legs. I felt that low.” She looked at Resnick and made a gesture with her hand as if she were holding something minute. “And what Rains did, he stopped me feeling like that. Oh, Christ alone knows, not for long. But when he did …”