John Harvey - Last Rites

“I did.”

“We’ll always be together, that’s what you said.”

“We were kids.”

“No. Your two, they’re kids. We were older, knew what we were doing.”

“Did we?”

Standing, he touched her arms, the nape of her neck, kissed her hair.

“Don’t.” She pushed away but he caught hold of her wrist and pulled her back; held her tight, tighter.

“You know I want you.”

“No.”

“All I’ve thought about …”

“Michael, no.” She wrenched herself away and moved again till the corner of the table was between them, the shotgun still lying there, blunt and inviting. “It’s not the same; I’m not the same. I know it’s been different for you and I’m sorry, but you’ve got to see …”

“See what?”

“This … this person you’ve been, you’ve been dreaming about, fantasizing about, whatever-it isn’t me. I’ve got all this, a home. Kids. Michael, I’m married now, don’t you understand?”

He laughed, harsh and ugly. “That’s not a fucking marriage, it’s a sham.”

Lorraine pushed a hand up through her hair, swallowed down some gin. “It’s not a sham, Michael. It’s what marriages are.”

His fingers brushed the shiny stock of the gun. She was beautiful, beautiful to his eyes. “That night …”

“No.”

“That night it happened …”

“Michael, please …”

“Listen, you got to listen.”

“Michael …”

He lifted the shotgun and slammed it down, gouging the table. “Listen to me.”

“All right,” she breathed, “all right.” So many years she had gone without exactly knowing; anxious to keep it that way. The evidence Michael had refused to give in the dock, the plea in mitigation; the expression in his eyes when they took him down, the last thing she saw.

“He caught me,” Preston said. “Sneaking out of your room. Laughed. Slapped my face. Snatched hold of my hand. Pressed my fingers up against his nose, sniffing. “Lovely, isn’t she? Choice. Ripe. I was wonderin’ when you’d start getting yours.” And he laughed again and winked. “Keeping it in the family.”

Tears were running down Lorraine’s face, unstopped.

“I hit him,” Preston said. “Kept hitting him. Dragged him downstairs and into the shop. Kept hitting him till he was dead. Our fucking father!”

She held him then and kissed him and, not looking him in the eye, she said: “He’d come into my room, after I’d gone to bed; the way most dads, I suppose, do. Tuck me in, tell me a story. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy … It was just tickling at first and then he started, you know, down there, his fingers, down between my legs. Still tickling. Later on, when I was older, it would be when he came back from the pub, then it was more, he … When I got my first period, he stopped. Never came near me, not again. Not after that.”

Michael’s voice was far off, strange. “You didn’t tell anyone?”

“Not till today, now.”

He looked at her. “How could you? I mean, let him. Without saying?”

“Oh, Michael, I was a child.”

“But later …”

“Later it was you came, oh so softly, to my room. I could hardly confess one without the other now, could I?”

He flinched. “That was different.”

“A matter of degree.”

“You loved me.”

“I loved him.”

“Even after …”

“He was my father.”

“He fucking abused you.”

“I know, I know. But it’s not that simple, nothing is.” She stepped away and said, “We have to finish this. We must.”

After a long moment, he nodded and told her to dial the number taped to the phone. “I’m coming out,” he said, when they had the connection. “We’re both coming out.”

“Throw the shotgun out first.” Siddons’s voice.

“Right.” Preston looked at Lorraine and handed her back the phone.

“What d’ you think?” Siddons asked, turning away from the screen toward Resnick.

“I think he’s going to do as he says.”

“We’ll soon see,” said Claydon, pointing.

Derek was sitting at the rear of the van, the children had been driven off by one of the officers to be with Maureen. He leaned forward as the front door slowly opened, there was a quick glimpse of a face, an arm and then the shotgun spiraled through a curve and landed with a dent near the middle of the lawn.

“Good boy,” Claydon breathed.

They stepped, Lorraine and Michael, through the front door together and the spotlight from the helicopter lit them up like stars. He took her hand and they began to walk along the path, Lorraine lifting an arm to shield her eyes from the light.

“Keep going,” Preston said to her, several yards along.

“What?”

“Keep walking.”

She hesitated, uncertain, took three more steps forward, stopped again. Preston took one pace, then another, back toward the door.

“What the hell’s happening now?” Siddons asked.

Preston reached beneath his shirt.

“He’s got another gun,” Derek cried out. “A handgun.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you say?” Siddons yelled.

“Watch up, watch up,” Claydon said into the harnessed mike. “He may still be armed.”

The pistol in Michael’s hand was aimed at everything, at nothing.

“No!” Lorraine screamed and began to run toward him.

“Take him,” Claydon said into the mike, and three high-powered rifles opened fire.

For what seemed to Lorraine an eternity, but was only seconds, Michael seemed to be dancing from unseen strings: then the strings were cut and he folded at the center, fell to earth, blood pumping from his neck, one side of his face, the side where his face had been.

She crawled across the ground toward him, men running past her, shouting, reaching down. She had just touched his arm when they lifted him away to where the paramedics with the stretcher were waiting.

Resnick started to walk across the grass toward her, till Derek stumbled past him and sank down on his knees beside her, holding her against him, sobbing, both of them sobbing, Derek repeating her name over and over, “Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorraine …”

The media rubbed its hands. Special news bulletins, network specials, analysis, speculation. The Jacobs’ house was besieged: Lorraine and Derek took the children out of school and went to stay with an aunt in Rochdale. Maureen sold her story to the Sun. Helen Siddons bought a new Donna Karan suit for her appearance on Newsnight, a round-table discussion with the Home Secretary and a former Chief Constable of Manchester. Jacky and Jean made the arrangements together for Liam Cassady’s funeral.

In the middle of a slow afternoon, Resnick picked up the phone and it was Eileen Cooke. “Sheena,” she said, “she was in the pub last night with her mates, pissed. I talked to her. About Ray-o. She’d given him this gun, to sell. Been used in a shooting, she reckoned. Out on the Forest. She thinks maybe that’s why Ray-o had gone to see this Valentine.” Eileen hung up.

Resnick talked it over with Millington and the rest of the team. Variously, they would interview Sheena Snape and her friends, Diane and Lesley; they would speak again to Drew Valentine and Leo Warner. They would do what they could. All the other information suggested that Planer’s death had left a vacuum in the region’s drug trade and Valentine was one of those working hard to fill it; if there was a perfect time to bring him down, this was it.

The Major Crime Unit, meantime, continued its investigation into the activities, personal and otherwise, of Paul Finney. Other officers from the Drug Squad, including Norman Mann himself, were called in.