John Harvey - Wasted Years

He sighed and straightened the family photographs on his desk and Resnick, sensing his own stomach about to rumble, managed to keep it under control until he was on the other side of the door.

The CID room was in chaos. Four days before, the station’s heating system had gone on the blink and, despite having the central boiler overhauled, there were still parts of the building to which no heat had returned. This was one of them. Cold enough, in Mark Divine’s words, to freeze a witch’s tit.

Some of the desks had been hauled out into the corridor, others piled on top of one another while the source of the trouble was tracked down. Several lengths of floorboard had been prized up and now rested precariously against a well-marked street map of the city. Pieces of piping lay on most available surfaces and a workman in gray overalls lay on his stomach, hammering cheerfully while his mate sipped cold tea and labored over the previous day’s quick crossword.

“Is it always like this?” Lorna asked, the tempo of the hammering increasing.

Kevin Naylor, interviewing her about the robbery, shook his head and smiled. “Not always.”

“You are busy, though? Plenty to do.”

“Oh, yes. Pretty busy.”

Lorna crossed her legs: soft, between hammer blows, the faintest swoosh of nylon over nylon. “You’re lucky,” she said.

Naylor looked at her: how come?

“What happened today, first bit of excitement in weeks. Months. Since before Christmas.” She leaned forward just a little. “What it was, this chap come in, red nose and top hat, tinsel all over it, collecting for charity. Children in Need, one of them. Anyway, there he was shaking his bucket under Marjorie’s nose and he keeled right over. Started kicking his legs, nineteen to the dozen against the floor, having some kind of a fit. Marjorie put her Bic in his mouth, stop him swallowing his tongue, and he bit right through it.”

Naylor was still looking at her, questioning now, and she stared right back at him, eyes unwavering behind her glasses. “The pen, not his tongue.”

“Our Kev,” Divine said quietly, leaning over Lynn Kellogg as she sat questioning Marjorie Carmichael, “on to a good thing there. Dip his wick before the night’s out.”

Lynn scowled and refused to turn her head to as much as look at him, while close beside her Marjorie pretended that she hadn’t heard.

“All right, Marjorie,” Lynn said, as Divine walked off, chuckling, “why don’t we try and concentrate on the hair?”

They had been sitting for close to half an hour, turning the sections of a spiral-bound book back and forth. Facial types: heads divided into three. A game, the object of which was to match up the most likely combination. She had had one similar as a girl, Lynn remembered, but that had been the whole body, top to bottom, a picture-book blonde for whom you chose from different sets of clothes.

“Oh, Lynnie,” her mother had exclaimed, “just look at you. You can’t put them colors together, pink and green.”

“Why not?” Lynn had asked.

“Because they just don’t go. Anyone tell you that.” And she had stopped briefly to brush Lynn’s straight dark hair with her fingers and stroke her cheek with the palm of an oven-warm hand.

“There,” Marjorie said, pointing. “I’m sure that’s right.” Lynn looked at the high forehead, generous mass of curly hair.

“Isn’t that the one I picked before?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“Oh, dear. I am sorry.” Marjorie turned towards Lynn, disappointed, wanting so much to please.

“Don’t worry,” Lynn said, smiling faintly. “It’s not easy.” Shifting a little in her seat, more cramped than usual, telling herself that women Marjorie’s size were prone to problems with perspiration, it wasn’t really her fault.

“You weren’t frightened, then?” Kevin Naylor was saying.

“Not at first,” Lorna said. “It didn’t seem real. You know, the way he come over to the counter, taking his time. Posing, almost. I didn’t think he was serious …”

“No.”

“Then, later …” She was trying not to make it too obvious, the way she was angling her head, trying to look at Naylor’s left hand, tucked under his notebook, not certain whether she’d seen a wedding ring or not. “Later, when he started going a bit wild, I suppose I was frightened then. Well, anyone would be.”

“Of course.”

“Anyone in their right mind.”

Kevin Naylor nodded.

“I mean, look at what happened to poor Mr Foreman.”

“He was trying to stop them, was he, from getting away?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. Tell the truth, I didn’t really see. I was still behind the counter, ducked down out of the way.” She smiled and he moved his hand and there it was-damn! — thick and gold and looking as if it could do with a bit of a shine. Third finger, left hand.

“You didn’t actually see, then, what happened? Which one of them hit him?”

“Had to be him, didn’t it? The one who did all the talking. I mean, he was the one with the hammer. The other one, the little bloke, he just stood there like a spare part, never done a thing.”

“Do you think either of the others would have seen-the manageress, for instance-do you think they would have seen the blow being struck?”

“I don’t know, I doubt it. I mean, Marjorie might, ask her. But Becca …”

“That’s the manageress?”

Lorna sucked in her cheeks and put on an accent. “Rebecca Astley. Little Miss Hoity-Toity. Real mardy, she was. Scraightin’ and carrying-on.”

“Lots of people panic, situations like that.”

“Even so.”

“You were the one sounded the alarm, though.”

“That’s right’

“Not easy, thinking what to do.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it.”

For a second, Lorna touched her hand to the frame of her glasses. “So noisy in here, isn’t it? Hardly hear yourself think.”

Naylor glanced over his shoulder and saw Divine grinning right back at him. “Been like this for a couple of days,” he said.

“There isn’t anywhere else …” She waited until he was looking at her again. “There’s nowhere quieter we could go? You know. Somewhere else?”

“Yes,” Naylor said, standing, feeling himself starting to go red. “We could try.”

Lorna was on her feet already, noticing the way he was blushing and not caring, thinking it sweet. So what if he did wear a ring, that didn’t have to mean so much, did it? Not these days?

“What’d I tell you?” Divine called above the sound of hammering. “Over the side and no messing.”

“Your trouble,” Lynn Kellogg sang back. “Judge everyone by your own standards. Least, you would if you had any.”

Divine was still laughing when Resnick came into the room. “Busy, I see, Mark?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Best take a rest, then. Tea break.”

“No, you’re all right …”

“Get yourself over to the deli, fetch me a couple of sandwiches. Ham and cheese and a chicken mayonnaise and salad. Mustard on both. Right?”

Divine took the proffered five-pound note and headed for the door.

“How’s it going?” Resnick asked, pausing alongside Lynn and Marjorie.

“Slowly,” Lynn replied. And feeling Marjorie’s sagging disappointment, added, “But I think we’re getting there.”

“Good.”

Resnick opened the door to the partitioned section that formed his own office and willed the phone not to ring until Divine had come back with his sandwiches, at least until he had got as far as sitting down. He had his second wish by as much as five seconds. Graham Millington was calling in from somewhere between Staple-ford and Sandiacre where what might have been the getaway car had been found abandoned.