Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

‘It’s not like that,’ he said, his voice a forced whisper in case the neighbours heard them.

‘It is like that,’ she said firmly. ‘And how much longer do you want me to put up with it? Something’s got to give, Mark. Things just can’t carry on like this.’

He felt a pain in the pit of his stomach, a grim realization that she no longer loved him. And the thing was, he’d never even spotted it.

‘What are you saying, love?’

‘I’m saying, either buck up your ideas and accept your responsibilities or move out. Understand?’

What could he say? Half of him felt like telling her to ‘fuck it, he’d walk,’ but there was another part — one that had been dormant for a while but which had showed itself briefly the previous day when they’d been at Odds Farm — that thought that maybe having a wife and kid wasn’t such a bad way to live after all. And it was that part that was beginning to make its presence felt again now.

‘I understand,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll be better, I promise. I know things have been difficult, and that I haven’t been at my best, but there’s been a lot of pressure on, especially with what happened with Vokes.’

‘I know, but that ought to make you think whether it’s all worth it. Because, to be honest with you, Mark, I don’t think it is.’

He finished his cigarette, stubbed it underfoot, then put the butt on the table. It was their rule. The butts went on the table, and were then cleared away at the end of the night, and the table wiped. The missus finished hers and repeated the operation. Then she yawned.

‘I’m off to bed. I’m shattered. Are you going to sleep in the spare room tonight?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘Well, if you’re late you can. I don’t want to be woken up. At least not by you.’

‘OK,’ he said, conscious that he sounded sheepish. As if he’d been put in his place.

She said goodnight and disappeared inside. Stegs waited until the light came on upstairs, then he went into the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge and went back out to the table with it, lighting another cigarette. He was going to have to do something about his drinking, he knew that. He also knew the missus was right. The job was destroying him.

He wondered at that point whether he still loved her, and concluded that he wasn’t sure. Then he wondered whether he hated himself and what he’d become. He took a swig from the beer and wished he had some more speed, even though a good night’s sleep would do him the world of good.

No, he thought, I don’t hate myself.

It’s just all the other bastards.

It was ten to six by the time we got back to the incident room. Tina had already received the list from Harrow and was going through it. Malik and I got coffees and sat down and helped her. It was a long, boring job, but by seven o’clock when we’d checked and double-checked a dozen times, we were all forced to conclude that none of the registered owners of Meganes appeared on the list of those who’d bought the suits.

Tina was disappointed. ‘All that work. For nothing.’

‘Life would be too easy without setbacks,’ Malik told her, with a reassuring smile.

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink. We’ve all earned one, and it’s Rich Jacobs’ leaving do over at the Roving Wolf.’

Rich Jacobs was a DC who’d been at the station for four years and was now emigrating to Australia, where his wife came from. He’d got a job with the police in Perth, and was young enough to make a good go of it. A lot of people at the station were saying that they’d like to have done the same thing, and on my bad days I was inclined to agree with them. Having had a car wheel almost park itself on my head only a few hours earlier, I was counting today as one of the bad ones.

The do had already started by the time Tina and I got over there, Malik having declined our offer to join us (‘I can’t go to the leaving party of a guy I wouldn’t even be able to pick out in an ID parade’ being his fairly reasonable excuse), and there were a good twenty CID in the place, including DCI Knox. As I bought us both drinks, and put one in for Rich, I managed to persuade Tina that there was no point getting down about what had happened, and she took me at my word, sinking five G and Ts in the first hour, and sinking her blues with them. For a while I watched her as she immersed herself in various conversations, more often than not the centre of attention within them, then decided that maybe I was being too obvious about gawking at her, and got involved in my own conversations with colleagues I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk with in a while.

In the end, it turned out to be a good night, made all the better by the relief I felt at having avoided serious injury during the Panner chase. By half-nine I was drunk and had my arm slung round Rich Jacobs’ shoulders as I told him how much I was going to miss him. As I recall, he gave me a look that suggested the feeling might not have been entirely mutual.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hammered, guv,’ I vaguely remember him saying.

‘Make the most of it,’ I told him. ‘It’s the only time I ever buy the drinks.’

Then, in a moment of madness, I bought him a double Remy.

At quarter to ten, I ate a bowl of chilli at the bar in a vain effort to soak up some of the excess alcohol, but it was way too late for that, and at twenty past I decided to call it a night. Tina and I had hardly spoken all evening, keen as always not to let on that we were lovers, and we’d agreed on our way over that we’d go our separate ways and at different times. I went first, wobbling out the door, leaving her chatting to two young DCs who both looked like they fancied their chances. I felt a pang of jealousy, which was quickly replaced by a need to get home.

In the taxi on the way back to my flat, I remember thinking that, even with all the leads we were picking up, the solution to the case still seemed a long way away.

It never occurred to me that we were already moving rapidly and inexorably towards the endgame.

Luke woke up at three a.m., and cried for twenty minutes until Stegs shut him up with a bottle of milk. He then slept all the way through until 7.15, which was late for him and, on that day at least, late for Stegs. As soon as he heard the characteristic hungry cries that always ushered in a new morning, Stegs took a look at the spare room’s alarm clock, caught the time, and cursed. He needed to speak to Tino and get the next stage of the plan moving.

In the fog of his newly wakened state, he had a sudden rush of doubt that he was doing the right thing. He could pull out now. It wasn’t too late. Pull out and forget the whole thing. But as the conscious world and all its problems invaded his brain, he knew that that was bullshit. It was far too late. The events about to unfold had a sense of inevitability about them, themselves the result of things that had happened and had been said a long time ago. There was no way round that.

He pulled on some smartish clothes, knowing that he had an appointment with the PCA later that morning where he’d be grilled about his part in Wednesday’s debacle, and hunted round for his mobile, finding it on the shelf above the bed. The missus was calling him. Telling him to go and get some milk on for Luke. ‘I’m on my way,’ he called back, switching on the phone and asking if she wanted a cup of tea. She said she did, and he hurried down the stairs while she went in to coo over her favourite member of the household.

While he prepared the milk, Stegs dialled Tino’s number.