John Harvey - Last Rites

“You saw him go inside?” Resnick asked.

“No, sir,” Khan answered carefully. “Not actually saw him. But there was no sign of him anywhere else, nowhere else he could go, so I assumed he’d gone in. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I could hang around. Too risky. I drove back down to the main road and waited. A little under an hour later, Finney reappeared and this time he did drive home to Sherwood.”

“This place,” Resnick said, “can you show me on the map?”

“Definitely, sir. You think it’s important?”

Small lines crinkled up the corners of Resnick’s eyes. “I think it might be, yes.”

Resnick drove north on the A60, the same road Anil Khan had followed the day before. The edges of the city soon left behind, he passed between gently sloping arable fields divided by low hedgerows, here and there a cluster of trees, a tractor standing deserted by an open gate. Lapwings. Crows.

The cottage was as Khan had described it, picture perfect. Resnick left the car a little way down, where the lane slightly broadened, and walked back, not hurrying. The warmth from the sun was such that he had no need of a coat.

As he passed through the gate, a small child, a toddler, came running through the open door and stopped, uncertain, at the sight of him. Resnick smiled and the child, a boy, turned and ran inside. Moments later, his mother appeared, holding his hand.

“Hello.” Just slightly anxious. Wary. “Can I help?”

She was in her thirties, Resnick guessed, brown hair, an open face, quite tanned; wearing a loose floral-print dress, tennis shoes, unfastened, on her feet. Her pregnancy was far enough along for it to show.

“I was looking for Paul,” he said. “Paul Finney.”

“Oh,” relaxing, “you’ve missed him by a good hour or so. Work, is it?”

Resnick nodded and she smiled.

“It’s a wonder anyone can keep up with all his comings and goings,” she said, the child pulling at her hand, anxious to be away. “Sometimes I’m blessed if I can myself. But like Paul says, it’s all part of the job. Adam, don’t wriggle so. Be still.” The boy succeeded in breaking free and stood a little way off, staring up at Resnick, thumb in mouth.

She smiled again. “Who’d marry a policeman, eh?”

Resnick smiled back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I never introduced myself. Laura. Laura Finney.”

Resnick shook the proffered hand without offering a name in exchange.

“And that there is Adam.” Adam frowned and turned his face away. “We don’t get many visitors, living out here. You get out of the habit of being sociable, I’m afraid. It is lovely, though. Days like this, especially. Paul says he wouldn’t change it for anything.”

Resnick followed her gaze, down across the garden and the lane to the broad field opposite, a line of poplar trees breaking the low horizon.

“You work together, do you, you and Paul? I’ve not met so many of his colleagues. Likes to keep them separate where he can, you see, work and family.”

Resnick assured her that he understood.

Laura pointed back toward the house. “I could make a cup of tea. It wouldn’t take long to get the kettle boiling.”

“No, it’s okay. Thanks, but better not. Just passing, you know how it is.”

She brushed at a strand of falling hair. “Maybe some other time.”

“Maybe.”

The boy was close against her now, thumb still in his mouth, hanging on to her skirt, and for a moment she smiled down at him indulgently. “Lord knows what he’ll be like when this one comes along.” Patting her belly. “Jealousy won’t be in it.

“I’ll tell Paul you called,” she said when Resnick was at the gate.

“Yes, please. You do that.”

For several minutes, Resnick sat in the car, windows wound down, thinking. Once or twice, he heard the boy’s voice, shrill and sweet on the air.

Finney’s house was on the edge of Sherwood, not far from the City Hospital. A two-story semi in need of some paint, net curtains at the lower windows. A cat, orange and brown, lay asleep on top of a green wheelie-bin. Resnick rang the bell and, when it didn’t seem to work, used the knocker. A woman’s voice and then a child’s. The woman opened the door just enough to show her face and little more.

“Mrs. Finney?”

“Yes. Who wants to know?” She pulled the door all the way back and came out on to the step. A small woman, maybe an inch or two over five foot, blue eyes, brittle hair. Forty, Resnick wondered? She was wearing a baggy top and jeans. “I thought you were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oxfam. One of those.” She looked at him keenly. “You’re on the Job, though, aren’t you? You can always tell.”

“Paul. I don’t suppose he’s here?”

“Is he ever?” She shook her head. “If we didn’t need the overtime, I’d tell him to chuck it in tomorrow. Get something normal, nine to five. None of this working nights, weekends.” She glanced up at him. “How does your wife cope?”

Resnick hesitated too long.

“Left you, did she? Had enough.” From inside the house, there was a clatter and a fall, followed by a child’s cry, boy or girl Resnick couldn’t tell. “I’ll be glad,” the woman said, “when she goes off to school with the others. You have any kids?”

Resnick shook his head.

“Wise. Nobody thanks you for it.” The cries got louder and she shouted back into the house, “All right, all right, I’m coming.”

“Sorry to trouble you,” Resnick said, backing away.

“No problem.”

The door closed heavily behind him and, slowing his steps, Resnick stroked the cat as he passed.

When Finney walked out of the building and across the car park that afternoon, Helen Siddons and Anil Khan were waiting for him, two other Serious Crimes officers parked nearby in case of trouble.

“Paul Finney?”

“Yes?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Siddons.”

“I know who you are.”

“Then you won’t have any objection to coming with us, answer a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“See if we can’t clear a few things up.”

“Does this mean I’m under arrest?”

“Not at this stage, no.”

“Good.” He moved between her and Khan, heading toward his car. “Because I’m off duty and I was just making my way home.”

“Really?” Siddons said. “And which home is that? Which of the two?”

Finney stopped in his tracks.

Finney was handsome in an indeterminate way, the sort of face you acknowledged and then forgot, perfect for his chosen line of work. He had quite a strong nose, brown eyes, dark hair which he wore without a parting and which hung down toward his collar a little more than was fashionable. Warm, in the room, he had removed his jacket and hung it across the back of his chair, unbuttoned the cuffs of his white shirt. Which wife, Helen Siddons wondered, had ironed that?

From time to time, Finney glanced, pointedly, at the watch on his wrist. “How much longer is this going to take?”

“That depends,” Siddons said. She was sitting across the table from Finney, a buff-colored manila file in front of her; Anil Khan sat alongside, his notebook open, the pages so far blank. There was a tape-recorder with twin decks attached to the wall, so far not switched on.

“This is informal,” Siddons had said at the beginning. “At this stage, at least. I assume you’d prefer it that way. Of course, it’s up to you. How long it takes to get certain things established.”

“Such as?”

Siddons smiled. “Drew Valentine, for starters.”

Finney didn’t miss a beat. “What about him?”

“You know him, what he does? How he-I hesitate to use the word ‘earns’-how he makes a living?”