John Harvey - Wasted Years

“Miss Solomon,” came Becca’s toffee-nosed voice from behind. “Is something the matter?”

“This gentleman has a query, Miss Astley,” Lorna said, turning her head. “Perhaps you should deal with it yourself.”

“What the fuck’re you playing at?” said Darren, face thrust close against the screen.

“What’s going on?” said Keith, stepping away from the door.

Trim legs on the short flight of steps, Becca saw the plastic bag in Lorna’s hand, read, uncertainly, the expression on her face, saw the movement of the young man behind.

Becca threw poise and elocution to the winds and screamed.

Darren pulled the hammer clear of his coat and smashed it against the center of the screen.

Fumbling with his pass book, trying to free it from its plastic cover, Harry Foreman came through the door, whistling through his half-dozen remaining teeth the theme from “Limelight.” Always one of his favorites. That Mantovani, couldn’t be beat.

“Keith, where the hell did he come from?”

Keith wasn’t certain: about anything.

“Here …” said Harry.

The third time Darren hit the screen, it splintered, top to bottom.

Lorna crouched beneath the counter, shielding her eyes. Becca ran back up the steps, turned, and ran back down.

“Here …” said Harry Foreman, as Keith grabbed hold of his bony arms and pushed him back against the wall.

Marjorie eased her way across the rear of the office towards the telephone.

“Stuff the money in that bag,” yelled Darren, “and quick.”

But Lorna didn’t seem to be listening. Inch by inch, she was sliding her hand towards the alarm.

“Take your hands off of me,” Harry said, ducking his balding head towards Keith’s face. “Don’t think I’m going to be pushed around by the likes of you.”

Darren knocked away a section of screen and vaulted onto the counter. Becca stopped screaming and cried instead. “Hello,” said Marjorie quietly into the receiver she was shielding behind her size-sixteen dress, “I want to talk to the police.”

Lorna squinted up at Darren’s black jeans, the worn soles of his Nike trainers, fear and fury on his face, and pressed her thumb against the button hard.

“Darren!” called Keith. “The alarm!”

“Fucking genius!” Darren said. “That’s you.” He aimed a kick at Lorna’s head and missed, swung wildly with the hammer and liberated several inches of varnished chipboard from the counter top.

Harry Foreman stuck out a leg and Keith half-tripped, staggered wildly before breaking open the skin above his left eye on the corner of the wall beside the door.

“What’s this?” Darren said, jumping down. “Home fucking Guard?”

“Don’t think I’m frightened of you,” Harry said.

Darren swung the hammer two-handed and cracked it against the side of his head, just in front of the ear. Before the old man had finished falling, Darren was out of the door.

In front of him, Keith was skating across several yards of mud like they were glass. An Asian face peered around the newsagent’s door, then pulled back from sight. Farther up the street, a mother pushed two children under two in a pram. As Darren cursed him, Keith’s fingers fumbled with the keys. His head felt like it had been split open and blood was trickling into the corner of his eye.

Darren snatched the keys from him and pulled open the car door. “What the hell d’you lock it for?” he asked, pushing Keith inside.

“Leave it unlocked outside here,” said Keith, “some clever bastard’ll have it away.”

He turned the key in the ignition and the engine fired first time; scraping the gears, he revved hard and swung the wheel. The first police siren could be heard no more than half a mile away.

“Watch the pram!” Darren called as Keith hit the curb and skidded up over the pavement, evading the pram but striking the mother, rear bumper swiping her legs and knocking her off her feet. Swerving wildly, Keith rounded a lamppost, squealed back on to the road, and accelerated away.

“Next time,” Darren said, as Keith threw the car into a right-hand turn and headed the wrong way up a one-way street, “make sure you’re not fucking late!”

“Bloody mess, Charlie, that’s what it was. Beginning to end.” Skelton hung his overcoat behind the door, automatically smoothing the shoulders along with his hands. He and Malcolm Grafton had been comparing notes over a couple of glasses of a nice Valdepenas when his bleeper had sounded the alert. “Bunch of professionals is one thing, but this-couple of cowboys without a brain between them …”

Distaste showed clearly on the superintendent’s face as he settled behind his desk, careful first to unbutton the jacket of his double-breasted suit, a soft gray wool-mix smelling faintly of the dry cleaner’s.

“Walk in off the street and ten minutes later there’s an old boy fighting for his life in intensive care, one woman with a suspected broken leg, and another under sedation for shock.”

Sitting across from Skelton, Resnick nodded. He had spoken to the doctor at the hospital himself. Harry Foreman’s condition was touch and go. The injured mother’s two children were being looked after by the Social Services Emergency Duty Team until contact could be made with either the estranged father or the grandmother, living out at Heanor.

“Week before last,” Skelton was saying, “went to this seminar at Loughborough, Department of Criminology. Pair today would have given them a field day. Deprived area. Disadvantaged youth. Striking at a building society because it symbolizes the property-owning class that is still presented as the desirable norm.”

Resnick looked past Skelton’s head towards the window, the red brick of factory buildings that had either been left to crumble or were slowly being turned into architect-designed flats with central saunas and swimming pools that no one had the money to rent or buy. Out there, the norm was mornings at the Job Centre, signing on, filling in forms for housing benefit; afternoons among the bright lights and plastic plants of the shopping centers, trying to keep warm. Whatever language the professor might have couched it in, Resnick thought, as far as he was concerned the economic theories about the causes of crime held more water than most.

More so than those of the Secretary of State for Education, who had recently blamed the increasing crime rate on the church’s failure to preach the perils of hellfire and damnation. Over half the churches in Resnick’s patch had been pulled down or deconsecrated and turned into sports centers; of the rest, at least two had themselves been set on fire.

“Banks and building societies,” Skelton said, “hundred per cent increase in robberies in the last two years. Mostly armed.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between index finger and thumb. “As we know all too well. At least those two today only went in with a hammer.”

“I don’t suppose Harry Foreman’ll be thankful for that,” Resnick said.

“If it had been a gun,” Skelton said, “he might not have been so keen to get involved.”

“And if he had?” Resnick asked.

Skelton shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Members of the public, situations like that, best keeping their heads down, eyes open. No place for heroes.”

Do that, Resnick thought, not going to be a great help as witnesses, aside from remembering the color of their own shoes.

“Interviews proceeding, Charlie? Your team.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep me up to date. Anything that looks like a positive ID. Should be in a better position when we get prints in tomorrow.”

Resnick was on his feet.

Skelton lifted a memo from his desk. “Two calls already from the local union rep, Banking, Insurance, and Finance. Requests an urgent appointment. Why aren’t we doing more to protect his members?”