John Harvey - Last Rites

Before she could finish, Derek was on his feet and heading for the door. A smile on her face, Lorraine lifted her glass high, toasting him on his way. Footsteps faded, then stopped. Vincent was conscious of the clock ticking on the wall, of the glass tilting dangerously in Lorraine’s hand. Somewhere in the house, a door slammed.

Until he had fallen from grace into the arms of Helen Siddons some two years previously, Resnick’s immediate superior, Jack Skelton, had been an evangelist in the cause of cleanliness and Godliness, healthy bodies making healthy minds. “That man,” as Resnick’s colleague Reg Cossall had been heard to say, “doesn’t just think he’s holier than Jesus Christ; he thinks, given a standing start, he could take him over fifteen hundred meters.”

But the affair with Siddons pulled Skelton’s life apart. His daughter already off the rails in the way of teenage kids half the world over, his wife, Alice, had started doing her drinking and hollering in public, instead of in the privacy of their four-bedroom detached. For her part, Siddons tried easing herself out of the relationship and, when Skelton wouldn’t let go easily, she dumped him flat. Fitness regime abandoned, private life the stuff of canteen gossip, Skelton began turning in for work later and later and, on occasion, not at all. Only a sixth sense of survival, allied to some unofficial counseling from his colleagues, pulled him back from the brink.

At his age, not so far short of his statutory thirty years service, Skelton was never going to get back the taut trimness he once had; but the surplus fat that for a while had hung around his gut and pouched out his face had disappeared, his shirts were crisp and white once more, suits clean and pressed, every paper clip and piece of paper on his desk knew its exact place.

When Resnick knocked and walked into the superintendent’s office that evening, it was almost as if nothing had ever happened to throw Skelton’s life off course; except they both knew that it had.

“Jesus, Charlie, why didn’t they tell us?”

“Sir?”

“Prison Service, letting someone with Preston’s record home for the day, you’d have thought somebody would have had the nous to let us know. Pick up the telephone, fax, send a bloody e-mail-this is the communications age, or so we’re told-but no, nothing, not a sodding word. Didn’t even occur to them to request assistance, I suppose.”

Resnick shrugged. “Likely knew what headquarters’d say, low priority, staff shortages, look after your own.”

“They still could have asked.”

“Maybe.”

“Damn it, Charlie, think of all the hours it’s going to cost us now. As if we didn’t have enough on our plate with a bloody range war building up out there. What’s the latest on all that, anyway? This shooting and what went on at the club-linked, is that what we’re thinking?”

“Looks that way.”

“I’ll need a report, Charlie. The Chief’s been hollering down the phone.”

Resnick nodded. There was nothing like a bit of media activity for stirring interest from way on high.

Skelton eased his chair back from his desk and reached into a side drawer. “This other business-I pulled Preston’s file.”

“It was your case.”

“Preston and three mates,” Skelton continued, “they took off a wages van in Kimberley. New supermarket. One of the security guards fancied earning his money for a change. Soft bastard. Got himself whacked half to death with an iron bar.”

“That wasn’t Preston?”

Skelton shook his head. “Frost. Frank Frost. That sort of mindless violence was much more his mark. But Preston had been the fixer; he’d put the team together, laid it out. Organize, he could do that. And what he had besides, his old man’s betting shop-a better place for laundering cash’d be hard to find.”

Plucking at the seam of his gray suit trousers, Skelton recrossed his legs. “Had him in for it. Twice. Three times. Him and his running mates. Nearest we came, talked Gerry O’Connell into saying he’d supplied Preston with the guns direct, which was more or less the truth. Couple of days later, O’Connell’s cut himself shaving, thirty or so stitches till the surgeon stopped counting. Severe case of amnesia, O’Connell, after that.”

“And Preston walked away.”

“Cocky bastard. Came up to Reg Cossall and myself in the side bar of the Borlace Warren, says how he’s heard poor Gerry O’Connell’s had a nasty little accident and would we like to chip something in toward a collection he’s getting up, send O’Connell some flowers maybe. Buy him a week in Skeggy. Convalescence.”

Resnick smiled. “I can see Reg loving that.”

“Came close to head-butting Preston there and then. Told him he was so full of shite, it wasn’t any wonder every time he opened his mouth that was what came pouring out. Preston laughed in his face and slapped a tenner down on the bar, told Reg the next round was on him. Still laughing when he went through the door.” Skelton slipped a pack of Silk Cut from his pocket, took out a cigarette, and rolled it between his fingers before pushing it back again, sliding the packet toward the corner of the desk and farther from temptation. “Next time I saw him, Preston, he was sitting back of the counter of the betting shop, place all closed up, sitting there with a bottle of scotch between his legs, two-thirds empty; his old man was in the garage out back with his head stove in.”

“You must have asked yourself why he didn’t make a run for it, try and get away?”

Skelton squinted up his eyes, remembering. “When we got there, seemed as if Preston had been waiting for us. “Some of your handiwork?” I asked him, and he turned to me and said, “The best day’s work I ever fucking done. Only I should’ve done it a bastard time ago.” And that was that, pretty much. I tapped him on the shoulder and told him he was under arrest and all he did was take another long belt at the scotch, then get to his feet with both hands outstretched. It was about as much as he ever said about it again, at the trial or before. Well, you know, you were around.”

Resnick nodded. “For some of it, yes.”

“Best we could figure out,” Skelton said, “his father had been cheating on him, money he was laundering; holding back, siphoning off the top. Michael fronted him out with it and that was the result. Truth or not, likely we’ll never know. Not that it matters, not to us. He went down for it and that’s enough.”

“Till now,” Resnick said.

“Anything by way of a sighting?” Skelton asked.

“One, unconfirmed. Leicester station, round the beginning of the rush hour. Quarter to five. There’s a London train, leaves Leicester just past the hour.”

“We’ve informed the Met?”

“Photo and description, faxed down.”

Skelton folded his hands, one across the other. “All we can do.”

Resnick nodded. “I’m putting a watch on the sister’s place. Just for tonight. If Preston’s looking for somewhere to hide out, it might be there. Carl Vincent was round there earlier, some sort of aggravation between Preston’s sister and her husband …”

“Lorraine,” Skelton said, remembering. “That her name?”

“Yes. Sounds as if she and her brother were pretty close.”

“After what happened with the old man,” Skelton said, “it’s hard to see her welcoming him back with open arms.”

“Families,” Resnick said ruefully, “who’s to say?”

“Well,” Skelton rose to his feet, signaling the meeting was over, “forty-eight hours, Charlie. You know the drill. If he hasn’t come crawling home by then, it’s doubtful he ever will. No reason to think Preston’ll be any different to the rest.”