John Harvey: Last Rites

“Hmm?”

“All members. Condition of your license, bound to be, drinks served to members only, outside the normal hours.”

Peters smiled. “Members and their guests.”

“Duly signed in.”

“Not Ellis.”

“A minor slip-up. Small irregularity. Heat of the moment, it can happen. Well, you’ll understand.” Peters wafted smoke away from his face. “I’ve had words with the people concerned; it’ll not happen again.”

Fowles had had words with the door staff himself-a walking ad for Wonderbra in a black peek-a-boo dress and silver wedge sandals and a shaven-headed bouncer with an apparent steroid habit from Gold Standard Security. Neither had been exactly forthcoming. As opposed to those who’d faced up to one another when the fracas had started: they were all reading from the same script and well-rehearsed. Too much drink. Heat of the moment. No hard feelings. Handshakes all round.

Well, not exactly that. Not with one of the home team taking up coveted space in a high-tech hospital bed, a few thousand pounds of equipment monitoring his every cough.

“This bloke who was stabbed …”

“Wayne.”

“Yes, Wayne. He’s a regular, a member, right?”

Peters nodded.

“No reason, far as you know, why anybody might have it in for him?”

Peters pretended to give it some thought. The cleaner had switched stations and was listening to Woman’s Hour, a lively discussion about the benefits of folic acid in the early stages of pregnancy. “No,” Peters finally said. “Nothing that comes to mind.”

“He wouldn’t have got involved in something a bit chancy? Stepped out of line?”

Smoke drifted across Peters’s eyes. “Not his scene. Student, I believe. You know, mature. Clarendon College. Media Studies. Brought his mum in once, some kind of anniversary.”

Fowles had had enough. “If you do think of anything, you or any of the staff …” Out on the street, he breathed in deeply before setting off back to the station. There were dark patches close against the curb, where the blood had dried and not been washed away.

“He’ll live,” Millington announced, back from the hospital and pushing his head round the door to Resnick’s office. “Not look so pretty, mind. Seen better stitching on them cardigans the wife’s mother knocks out of a Christmas.”

“What’s he got to say about it?”

“Wayne? Not a great deal. Same yarn as everyone else, give or take. No idea who it was used the blade on him.”

“And you still don’t believe it?”

“How it happened, yes. Just something else won’t sit right, giving me indigestion. I mean, why him? Wayne. If it’s just a free-for-all, nothing more, how come he bears the brunt of it? Oh, and here …” Despite being wrapped inside two paper bags, the egg and sausage sandwich was copiously leaking grease as he passed it into Resnick’s hand, “… you’ll be wanting this. I’ll mash if you like? Mug of tea to wash it down.”

“Right, Graham.”

But when Resnick wandered out into the squad room some minutes later, he found Millington bending over his VDU screen rather than the kettle.

“Here, take a look at this by way of a CV.”

Resnick focused on the lines of slightly broken text. Wayne Feraday had graduated from unlawfully and maliciously throwing half-bricks at a moving train with intent to endanger the safety of its passengers, through the more normal taking of vehicles without consent, on to two charges relating to the illegal possession and sale of a controlled drug.

“Both charges dropped,” Millington said. “Insufficient evidence. Now why does that ring a bell?”

“But you think that accounts for what happened? Something drug-related?”

“Maybe Wayne’s short-changed someone on his supply. Got behind on his payments. Crossed over on to someone else’s turf. It’d not be the first time.”

Resnick’s face turned sour. “I just hope you’re not right. ’Cause if you are, it’ll not be the last.”

Not so much more than an hour later, Mark Ellis was standing on line with two of his mates in Burger King, wearing his new leather jacket and fresh plasters down one side of his face and across the knuckles of his right hand. Stupid fucking coppers! What did they know? He was feeling spruce enough to laugh at one of Billy Scalthorpe’s jokes, even though he’d heard it twice before.

At the counter, he joked with the ginger-haired lass who was serving, ordered a Whopper with cheese and a double portion of fries, onion rings, apple pie, and a large Coke. He was halfway back to the doors, Scalthorpe still haggling over his order, when the two black youths fell into step either side of him.

“Hungry,” said the one to his left, Redskins baseball cap reversed.

“Huh?”

“Hungry, yeh?”

“What the fuck’s it to you?”

“Here,” said the youth to the other side, reaching inside his silver zip-up jacket. “Eat this.”

And he pushed the barrel end of an automatic pistol hard against Ellis’s cheek and squeezed the trigger.

Lorraine stood on the paved area between the rose garden and the entrance to the crematorium chapel, while around her, small clusters of men and women, somberly dressed, engaged in desultory conversation. She didn’t even know who they all were.

She took a tissue from her bag and blew her nose softly, pulled at an imaginary thread by the seam of Sandra’s sweatshirt, and shook her head at Sean to stop him kicking at the pale gravel of the forecourt. Then there was Derek’s sister Maureen approaching, a broad smile more suited to a wedding than a funeral.

“How you doing, then? All right?” She left a smudge of coral lipstick on Lorraine’s cheek as she gave her a hug. “Nice outfit, understated, just right for the occasion. I like that. Though you could have come to me, of course. I’d’ve found something for you, special. And a good price, too.” She hugged her again. “Family.” Maureen herself was wearing a black dress with a scoop neck, mid-length, with a deep split in the skirt, front and back.

Derek and Maureen went off into a little huddle and several people came up to Lorraine to tell her what a grand lady her mother had been and shake her hand. A man with purple veins etched across his face and a runny eye bent to kiss her on the cheek and squeeze her arm. “She did well, Deirdre,” he said, his voice low, as if this was something between the pair of them, special and caring. “Hanging on the way she did. Coping. After what that bastard-s’cuse my language-did to your father. He was a wonderful man, your dad, God rest his soul. A gentleman-but I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Here’s the vicar,” Derek said, as a slight figure, prematurely balding, bounced brightly toward them, hand outstretched, smiling.

But Lorraine’s eyes were fixed solemnly now on the middle distance, the pair of iron gates, open, through which the vehicle bringing her brother would enter.

Evan was never sure how he’d come to take a wrong turning. But somewhere between Wesley’s map reading and his own instincts, they had ended up on the wrong side of the Trent and heading east. He could feel Michael Preston’s unexpressed anger burning into the back of his head as he swung the car into a U-turn. Stay calm, that’s what his father would have said, stay calm and do your best. “It’s okay,” he said over his shoulder, “ten minutes now, fifteen at most.”

In the mirror, Preston’s eyes were flat and staring. Sweat gathered at the base of Evan’s neck.

“We’ll get you there, don’t fret.”

“Come on, love …” Derek’s voice patient and understanding.

“No, wait …” Lorraine shrugged his hand from her shoulder, a quick shake of her head. “Tell them they’ll have to wait until he’s here.”