John Harvey - Last Rites

“Under suspension at the time, wasn’t he?” Resnick asked.

“Allegations of taking backhanders, asking another officer to tamper with evidence. Nothing was proved.”

“It rarely is.”

Khan coughed discreetly into the back of his hand.

“Finney and Jack Dainty, this suggests they’re pals.”

“I’m not sure, sir. Not yet.”

Resnick got to his feet. “Keep digging. If Finney’s still spending time hanging around dog tracks and the like, chances are he fancies a flutter, and if he’s into gambling, I’d not be surprised to find he’s into debt.”

“Right, sir.”

Khan was almost out of the door when Resnick called him back. “You’ve thought of this yourself, I don’t doubt, but the officer Dainty was involved with, those allegations of fixing evidence-shouldn’t be difficult to find out who it was.”

What Lorraine liked to do, some days, was take her lunch hour early and drive into the city; leave the car in that new car park outside the Victoria Centre, the one where the bus station used to be, and wander round inside window shopping. Occasionally, she’d make an impulse buy, often not. But it pleased her to think she could do so if she wished.

Today, she thought hard about a pair of shoes in Dolcis, plain black with a low heel, quite stylish in their way, useful certainly; just inside the entrance to the new House of Fraser, there on the ground floor, she toyed with the idea of some nicely packaged soaps, all scented with fruits and herbs, something to brighten up the bathroom.

She was turning away, empty-handed, when she saw him, Evan, no disputing it, watching her from less than a dozen meters away. Evan, wearing a short leather jacket, blue jeans, hands in his pockets beside a display of men’s cologne. Watching her and smiling uncertainly.

Lorraine didn’t know what to do.

She turned away and began to walk, not hurrying, not wanting to run, out into the broad aisle that led to the rest of the center. And by the time she needed to make a decision, left or right, he was there at her elbow, something of a smile still on his face, uncertain.

“Mrs. Jacobs, it’s Evan. From the …”

“I know who you are.”

They stood there, not quite facing, while people spilled around them.

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“What about?”

“Your brother Michael.” But she knew the answer, had read it in his eyes before he spoke.

They went back inside the department store and up several short escalators to a shiny cafeteria where they sat among ladies with hats, Lorraine with hot chocolate, Evan with a pot of Yorkshire tea and a slice of lemon cake that stuck to the ends of his fingers.

“What it is,” Evan stumbled, “all this stuff about him, you know, going off to some Greek island, somewhere in Portugal, Spain, something like that. Well, I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think that’s right. Don’t, you know, believe it. Not really. No. I don’t think that’s what he’s done.”

Lorraine sitting there, staring at him until Evan had to look away. “Why?” she said, surprised at the steadiness of her voice. “Why should you think that? What did Michael say?”

“Nothing.”

“It must’ve been something, or else …”

“No, really. It’s just-I don’t know-a feeling.”

Lorraine laughed. “What are you? Psychic?”

“No. No. I … I can’t explain. I’m sorry, I know it must sound pretty stupid. I …” He stirred sugar into his tea and lifted the cup to his mouth with both hands.

Lorraine eased her head a little closer. “If you’re right-just suppose-what concern is it of yours?”

Evan looked at her as if she had said something absurd. “It’s my responsibility, that’s why. You can see that, plain as me. He was in my charge. What happened, it was down to me.”

Lorraine was wide-eyed, slowly shaking her head. “And now-what? — you’ve come to look for him, I suppose? Take him back.”

“Yes.”

“And how the hell d’you propose to do that?”

“I don’t know. I thought, you know, talk to some people first, people Michael would have spoken to at the funeral, yourself and so on …”

“What about the police? Don’t you think they’ve done all that?”

“Yes, but they didn’t find him, did they?”

“And you will?”

“I have to.”

There was a certainty in his voice that was absurd and chilling.

Lorraine spooned away the skin that had formed over the top of her chocolate and watched as Evan ate a section of his cake and washed it down with tea before licking his fingers clean.

Lorraine looked at her watch. “Look, Evan, I’m only on my break from work.” She pushed back her chair. “I’ve got to be getting back.”

“I thought…” he said quickly, half out of his seat. “I thought you might help.”

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing to help you with.”

He pulled a sheet of lined paper from his pocket and thrust it toward her. When she glanced at it, she recognized the name of a small hotel on the Mansfield Road.

“That’s where I’m staying,” Evan said.

Lorraine tore the paper in half and half again and let it fall through her hands.

“Please,” Evan said.

She turned and walked away.

Sharon Garnett was drinking instant coffee at her desk, a half-eaten Mars bar resting on a pile of blank incident report forms. “This time of the afternoon,” she said, “I always need some kind of sugar rush, you know.”

Resnick pulled over a chair. “Jack Dainty. Was he still in Vice when you were there?”

Sharon gave it a moment’s thought. “Only just. I think we overlapped by-oh, I don’t know-a couple of months. Three at the most.”

“You remember anything about him? This charge of interfering with evidence?”

“He was overweight, I remember that. Bit of a fat bastard.” She laughed. “Too many Mars bars.” Her face grew serious. “Other things, too. Only rumors, mind, but word was he turned a blind eye to some of the girls if they, you know, let him have a free ride. This evidence thing, I’m less sure. Something to do with pornographic videos. One minute, they were showing them in the back room for the lads, standing room only; the next, they’d disappeared. Dainty’d been the arresting officer.”

Sharon went thoughtful for a moment, drank some more of her coffee. “There was something else, only a whisper. Something involving drugs.” She thought a while longer, then shook her head. “No. It’s gone. If I ever knew the details at all.”

“You could find out, ask around? You’ve got friends still in Vice.”

She made a face. “Get the idea I’m turning against one of their own, even someone like Dainty, they’ll not be friends much longer.”

Resnick held her gaze for a long moment before rising slowly to his feet. “If you think it’s too difficult, of course, I’ll understand.”

Sharon laughed; snorted rather than laughed. “No, you’re all right. I’ll do what I can.”

Derek had called her on his car phone, stuck behind a brace of lorries delivering fuel to the power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. Sandra was doing her homework at the kitchen table, writing up an experiment she had performed on a frog, and Sean was round at a friend’s, getting up to God knows what. Lorraine’s afternoon had been highlighted by two queries over missing deliveries and another concerning an invoice that seemed to have been paid twice; so many faxes and aggravated phone calls, she scarcely had time to think about Evan-poor, dumb Evan, sitting opposite her, open-faced, truly believing that he could find Michael where all others had failed. Find him and-what was it? — take him back. For a moment, Lorraine felt pity. Michael would tear him in two without breaking sweat or shedding a tear.