John Harvey - Wasted Years

“If wrapped around a Keep Left sign constitutes being abandoned,” Millington added.

“Hang fire,” Resnick said into the phone. “I’ll be right out.”

“Got myself a packet of crisps,” Divine grinned when Resnick intercepted him on the stairs.

“Your money, not mine,” said Resnick, taking hold of the bag containing his sandwiches, pocketing his change. “Come on, you’re driving. I’ll eat these as we go.”

Graham Millington had been Resnick’s sergeant for a little over five years and was beginning to think that six would be too long. Not that he had anything against his immediate superior, far from it. When some of the others started grumbling into their pints and calling Resnick for being too soft by half, too airy-fairy in his ideas, Millington always squashed them with a firm word. Any reflections he might have about Resnick’s appearance-surely someone of his rank and salary could afford at least one decent suit that seemed to fit, one white shirt with all of its buttons intact? — or his eating habits-if Millington saw him fumbling his way through one more overstuffed sandwich, he might just go out and buy his boss a voucher for the nearest Berni Inn, prawn cocktail, nice bit of steak, and Black Forest gateau to finish, that was what you called a meal-like the loyal sergeant he strove to be, Millington kept them to himself.

No, it wasn’t six years in Resnick’s shadow that weighed heavily upon him, it was the prospect of six years beneath anybody.

Especially when a vacancy had come up and before Millington had been able to dust off his CV or fill in his application form, they’d whisked that woman in without her feet touching the ground this side of landing.

“Tough luck,” Resnick had commiserated. “She’s on her way to a Top Apco post and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.”

“Another time,” Skelton had said, scarcely stopping to speak, “you’re still a young man.”

Not, Millington had replied soundlessly to the super’s back, for much bloody longer.

“Assert yourself more, Graham,” his wife had said. “Let them know if you don’t get promotion next time, you’ll put in for a transfer.”

In his more paranoid moments, Millington imagined Jolly Jack Skelton writing him a glowing reference and offering to pack his bags, shipping him east to Cleethorpes with an engraved tankard and a digital watch that would stop the second he crossed the Lincolnshire border.

“Not inspector by the time you’re forty,” Reg Cossall had said, “might as well curl up your toes and crawl into the body bag.”

“You know what they say about water,” Malcolm Grafton had smirked, “finding its own level.”

Maybe his wife was right, the thing to do was march into Skelton’s office with an ultimatum and if the result was moving somewhere else, well, why not? Except, for all her talk, he knew the last thing his wife wanted to do was move from where they’d settled. The local WEA group had just voted her on to the steering committee, the amateur dramatic and choral society had promised her something big in next season’s lolanthe, and she was just getting to grips with the new border they’d put in alongside the Caryopteris. And that was without Level Two Russian.

He re-angled the interior mirror and checked his moustache. Annoying the way those little hairs at the top kept poking themselves into his nostrils. He was using his fingernails to tweak one or two away when Divine brought the unmarked Ford to a halt behind him and Resnick climbed out of the passenger seat, brushing the last of his sandwich down the front of his raincoat.

“Right across there,” said Millington, pointing towards the intersection. “Tow truck’s on its way.”

Directions had scarcely been necessary. The stolen car had three wheels on the pavement, one several inches above the surface of the road. The street sign seemed to have bent to meet it, scoring a deep groove through the roof and buckling the near-side rear door, shattering the window.

“What makes you think it’s the one we’re looking for?” Resnick asked.

Millington gestured towards the motor supplies shop along the street. “Bloke in there, heard the crash and saw two white youths haring up that side road, round the back of that building. One tall, he thinks maybe curly hair, the other either a runt or just a kid.”

“Any other description?”

“Taller of the two had this loose coat on, apparently. Brown, possibly gray, anorak-type of thing. Jeans, the pair of them. Couldn’t give us a lot else.”

Resnick shrugged. “Other witnesses?”

“Not so far.”

“Cut along and knock on a few shop doors,” Resnick said to Divine. “Before they all lock up for the night. Someone else must have heard what happened. Take a statement from the bloke Graham spoke to; might come up with a little more this time.”

Divine nodded and hurried away.

“Checked the registration,” Millington said. “Reported stolen from that car-park out at Bulwell, sometime between twelve and two.”

“Doesn’t sound as if they bothered with gloves at the robbery,” Resnick said. “If this is down to them, likely be prints on the car as well.”

“I’ll make sure they go careful shifting it, see it gets checked thoroughly soon as it gets back.”

Resnick had stepped away and was staring down the narrowing street. “Ought to be a reason they came this way.”

“Throw us off the scent?”

Resnick shook his head. “Everything we know about them this far, that kind of thinking seems a bit out of their league.”

“Heading for home, then?”

“Could be.”

“Run it through the computer. Likely got a bit of form anyway. Live round here, shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

Resnick pushed his hands down into his pockets. Evenings like this, the temperature dropped as soon as the light began to fade. “Hope you’re right, Graham. Quick result here’d be a good thing. Concentrate our energies where they’re more needed.”

“Back among the big boys.”

Resnick nodded. “It needs sorting, Graham. Before somebody gets killed.”

The way Keith felt about his old man, one of those old jossers get on the bus in the morning and suddenly you’re staring out the window, hoping against hope they won’t lurch over, sit down next to you. Clothes that reek of cider and cheap port wine. Open their mouths to speak and the next you know, they’re dribbling uncontrollably.

An exaggeration, of course, but not much of one. The way his dad had gone since the divorce, starting his drinking earlier and earlier in the day, not finishing till the money or the energy to lift the bottle failed him. Last time Keith had called at the house, two in the morning, unannounced, his father was curled asleep on the kitchen floor, arms cradled around the legs of an upright chair.

It hadn’t always been like that. As a young kid, Keith remembered his dad getting smartened up of an evening, loading his gear into the van, swinging Keith round by his arms till he screamed with excitement. Early hours of the morning, Keith would wake to the sound of car doors slamming in the street outside, called farewells, his dad’s footsteps, less than steady, on the stairs, his mother’s warning voice, “Don’t wake the boy.”

His father would sleep till two or three, wander down for a sausage-and-egg sandwich and pots of tea. Wash, shave, do it all again.

He had been drinking, Keith realized, even then; more, probably, than had been clear at the time. Clear to Keith, at least, though he could still hear his mother’s shrill sermons echoing up and down the narrow house. And as the work had dried up, the bottles and the cans had appeared on every surface, lined the chair where his dad would sit, not watching the TV. “One thing,” he would say, over and over, “one thing, Keith, I regret-you never knew me when I was big, really big. Then you might’ve felt different.”