John Harvey: Last Rites

“Great!” Preston yelled. “Fuckin’ great, man. You did fuckin’ great.”

“Didn’t I, though,” Cassady said. “Though I say so myself and shouldn’t, didn’t I just?”

At a fork in the road beyond Oxton, he took the turn too fast, went through a hedge and crashed, head on, into the trunk of an English oak.

For several moments, Preston couldn’t breathe. He felt as if he’d been slammed against something invisible but strong. There was pain across his chest and down his spine, his neck. One of the headlights was still shining, a spool of light spilling across a field of yellow rape. He released the seat belt and got, unsteadily, out of the car.

Cassady had been hurled through the windscreen and now lay wedged between the front of the BMW and the tree, his neck at an impossible angle, his face shredded by glass.

Preston could hear another vehicle, one at least, approaching from a distance. The Uzi he pushed under the driver’s seat and seizing the keys, opened the trunk and lifted out the shotgun and as many shells as his pockets would carry. The Glock was still in his belt. Limping slightly, he ran off into the dark.

Resnick was awake when the phone rang: downstairs at the front of the house, listening in the near dark to Thelonious Monk warily threading his way through “Ghost of a Chance”; fingers testing the keys as if afraid what each cluster of notes might hide. It was close to three-thirty. Resnick had given up trying to sleep and was drinking coffee, strong and black. If he thought of Lynn, that thought led him, as often as not, to Hannah’s sardonic, knowing face. When he began by thinking of Hannah, he finished up imagining himself in Lynn’s arms. It was a relief to pick up the ringing telephone.

Helen Siddons’s voice was loud and jagged. “More shit on the fan, Charlie. Big time. Planer, you know the …”

“Yes, I know who he is.”

“Seems as if he was woken by intruders in the house. Rang us. Then instead of staying low, waiting for the cavalry to arrive, he went downstairs to investigate. Either that, or they dragged him out of his bed.”

“They?”

“Two men, we think only two. Liam Cassady and one other.”

“Jesus.”

“Trying to break into Planer’s safe and didn’t succeed. I think we got there too soon.”

“This second person, Planer couldn’t identify him, didn’t know who he was?”

Resnick heard Siddons lighting a cigarette at the other end of the line. “Planer’s not identifying anyone. Half a dozen bullets in him, more. And from close range. My guess the same weapon used on Raymond Cooke; same team probably, same shooter.”

“Clean away?”

“Not exactly clean. Cassady wrapped himself round a tree. DOA on the way to hospital. Totaled the car. Looks as though whoever was with him got away on foot.”

“No sign?”

“Not so far. There’s a helicopter out waking all the sleeping farmers. Tracker dogs, the works. If he was injured in the crash, he’ll be lying low. If not, my guess is he’s hijacked another car somewhere.”

“There’s road blocks?”

“Where we can. Main roads, motorways. He’ll be wanting to put as much distance between himself and the incident as he can.”

“No.”

“Sorry?”

“I said, no. He won’t. Listen, where are you speaking from?”

“Headquarters. There didn’t seem …”

“Meet me at the corner of Woodborough Road and Mansfield Road. Four, five minutes. I think I know who he is and where he’s going.”

Preston had already arrived.

The owner of a Ford Mondeo, heading back late after the annual pharmacists’ dinner-dance, had been left at the roadside in evening dress, lucky to be unharmed. Preston’s neck hurt him as he drove, and as he crested the hill that would take him down to Lorraine’s house he ground his teeth, sensing the relief. Since being back in the city, the only sounds of police activity he’d heard had been distant and sporadic, moving away.

He hurried, still limping slightly, across the front lawn and pressed his finger hard against the bell, hammered with the stock of the shotgun against the door. Come on, come on, come fucking on! Then it was Derek, calling from inside, wanting to know what was wrong. The kitchen blinds moving, Lorraine’s face. Her voice raised in fear, anger. Both voices, arguing. Preston yelling, striking the door again. Harder. Back across the street, one bedroom light went on and then another. Someone, inside, unbolting the door, freeing the chain.

As soon as the door began to open, Preston pushed it wide.

Lorraine had pulled a cardigan over the shoulders of her nightdress; her face was ashen as she moved back against the wall. Farther along the hall, Derek, wearing pajamas, was standing by the telephone, receiver in his hand.

Preston slammed the front door shut behind him; three strides and he’d wrenched the phone from Derek’s fingers, smashed the set from the wall with the gun, torn the wires free with his hand.

The children, Sandra and Sean, were clinging to one another on the stairs.

“Lock it,” Preston said to Lorraine, pointing toward the front door. “And then get them back upstairs. And you …” He rounded on Derek, the end of the shotgun barrels hard against his neck, under his chin, forcing back his head. “Get in my way, anything, you’re dead. Understand?”

Eyes wide, Derek nodded.

“Don’t hurt him,” Lorraine said. “There’s no need to hurt him.”

“I thought,” Preston said, “I told you to get those kids out of the way.” Sean was crying, Sandra trying to comfort him. “While you’re there, get some clothes on, chuck a few things in a bag. Passport. We’re leaving.”

Lorraine’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, Michael. Michael, Michael.” She sighed and slowly shook her head, eyes closed.

“Do it,” he said. “There isn’t the time.”

She looked at him, looked at her children. “The gun,” she said. “You won’t need it.”

Preston nodded. “We’ll see.”

Sitting alongside Resnick in the back of the car, Helen Siddons was busily punching numbers into her mobile phone. “If you’re wrong about this,” she said.

Resnick shook his head. “I’m not wrong.” The pieces were in place now: he knew. “Maybe I wish I was.”

“What happened to your head,” Lorraine asked. They were in the middle room, the dining room, partition doors closed across. She had sent Derek upstairs to be with the children. “It’s swollen, there above the eyebrow. There’s blood. A cut.”

Preston touched it absentmindedly. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Lorraine had pulled on a T-shirt and cotton sweater, sneakers, jeans. There was a black travel bag near her feet. “Michael,” she said, “you know this is stupid. Crazy.”

“Get me an aspirin,” he said. “Something. Then we’re going.”

Hearing her in the hallway, Derek called down in a loud whisper, asking if she were all right. She didn’t answer. Back in the dining room she gave her brother two Neurofen and a glass of water.

“Michael, please …” She touched the back of his hand, sliding her fingers between his. “Listen to me.”

“Come on,” he said, pulling away. “We’re leaving.”

They were almost at the front door when an amplified voice broke through from outside: “This is the police. We have the house surrounded. I repeat, this is the police …”

There were four of them inside the command van: Siddons and Resnick, Bill Claydon, in charge of the Tactical Response Unit, and Myra James, a sergeant with special training in hostage negotiation. With the telephone in the house out of commission and Preston showing no disposition to engage in dialogue, negotiation was difficult.