Last Rites (2 page)

Derek had driven them to his sister’s yesterday, to help take their mind off things. Which meant, of course, that Maureen would spoil them as usual.

Maureen was nice enough, Lorraine thought, if a little over fond of herself; a little, well, overflashy. She was several years older than Lorraine and with no kids of her own; she earned a good living, managing her own place selling second-hand designer clothing, enough to afford a cleaning lady three times a week, wax and manicure once a month, and, of course, a mobile phone. Sometimes, Lorraine caught herself wondering if she were jealous of Maureen’s money, her apparent freedom, before deciding that no, she was not.

When Lorraine appeared in the kitchen some thirty minutes later, she was wearing the black suit she’d bought at Richards for the opening of Maureen’s shop, black tights, shoes with a low heel. She went straight to the stove and lifted the kettle, tested the weight of it for water, and carried it over to the sink.

“I’ll do that,” Derek said, half out of his seat.

“No need.”

“Toast?”

“No, thanks.” She caught herself, the angry snap in her tone, and smiled, relenting. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Yes, I’d love some toast, that’d be great.”

Sean came running in from the other room, Sandra chasing him, the pair of them skidding to an untidy halt just this side of the kitchen table.

“Now then, you two,” Derek said, “behave.”

“It’s Sandra, she was punching me.”

“I was not.”

“Just because I wouldn’t let her …”

“Hey!” Derek said. “Hey! Settle down now. I don’t want to hear it. That’s enough.”

“Is that for us, Dad?” Sean said, looking at where Derek was starting to butter the toast.

“Mum,” Sandra said. “Will Uncle Michael be there? At the funeral?”

A glance, quick and awkward, passed between Derek and Lorraine.

“I’m not sure, lovey,” Lorraine said. “I expect so. I hope so. Now why don’t you both run along?”

“Yes, go on, the pair of you.” Derek waved the knife in the direction of the door. “Get yourselves back in the other room and let us have a bit of peace.”

“Oh, Dad …”

“And see you’re careful with those clothes. You don’t want to be getting in a mess now, we’ll be leaving soon.”

“Mum …” Sandra said, eyes widening. “This top, is it okay?”

Lorraine had been looking at her daughter, not so far off twelve now and springing up, starting to fill out. Sandra had put on her bottle-green skirt, wearing it for a change with the waistband not rolled up, her almost new shiny blue sandals, the light-gray CK sweatshirt she’d bought in the market with her own pocket money. Sean was wearing black jeans, trainers, a clean white Umbro T-shirt with a blue band around the collar and along the sleeves. He looked as though he’d borrowed some of his sister’s gel before combing his hair.

“Perfect,” Lorraine said. “You look really perfect. I’m proud of you.”

Sean tried to pinch his sister’s arm as they squeezed back through the door and Sandra settled him with a quick kick to the shins.

“Remember what I said now,” Derek called after them and turned toward Lorraine with the plate of buttered toast, Lorraine standing there with tears rolling down her face.

Derek touched her arm lightly on his way to the sink. “I’m still not sure, you know. How good an idea it is. Michael.” Lorraine dabbed at her eyes. “She was his mother.” “Yes,” Derek said. “Like your dad was his father, I suppose?”

The motorway traffic was slow, slower than usual Evan thought, even allowing for the fact they were scarcely out of London. In truth, they were barely a mile from the North Circular Road. “Will you look at that?” he said, angling his head round toward Wesley, who was sitting, indifferent, cuffed to their prisoner in the back seat.

Wesley grunted something, not really paying attention. He was busy working out his money, how much he could realistically say was left after seeing to his bills each month, making calculations in his head. Just the other night in the pub, Jane had been getting on to him again, how paying out two different lots of rent for two separate flats, each the size of a postage stamp, didn’t make sense. Not any more. What with him sleeping over at her place three or four nights a week and Jane staying with him weekends when he wasn’t pulling duty at the prison. But even pooling all their income, Wesley worried, getting the kind of place Jane was talking about wasn’t going to be easy; a maisonette, maybe, something in one of those old houses that had been divided up round Camberwell, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton Hill.

“See what I mean?” Evan said again.

“What?”

“All those cars, nose to tail. See how many just got one person in. Not a single passenger. One car, one driver. You imagine doing that, in and out every day, morning and evening. Crazy. A nightmare.”

“Yes,” said Wesley. “Right.” Hoping that was enough to shut Evan up; not a bad bloke, he supposed, but Jesus, wasn’t he one to rattle on? Even if they could find somewhere to rent, Wesley thought, that wasn’t really what Jane was after. In reality, her reality, he knew that she was thinking five per cent down payment, she was thinking mortgage, she was thinking the whole ninety minutes plus penalties after extra time.

“How about you, Preston?” Evan asked, nodding his head backward in the direction of the prisoner. “Traffic—you got any thoughts on that?”

From the way Preston continued to sit, staring blankly through the car window, one arm folded across his lap, the other, the one that was attached to Wesley, resting by his side, Evan supposed he had not.

Twelve years into the man’s sentence, Wesley was thinking, at least another twelve to go, he didn’t see the overall transport situation as being high on the list of the man’s concerns.

Evan Donaghy, at twenty-seven, three years in the Prison Service only, and Wesley Wilson, two years his senior, but with one year’s less experience, the pair of them detailed to escort Michael Preston, convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of his father, Matthew, in 1986 and currently serving a life sentence, to the funeral of his mother, Deirdre, there and back in the day, the prison governor grudgingly agreeing to the visit on compassionate grounds.

Four

Ben Fowles was the most recent recruit to Resnick’s squad. A local lad-made-good from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Fowles had been brought in when Mark Divine, victim of a life-shattering assault, had been forced to take early retirement on grounds of ill health.

Fowles was twenty-six and just inside the height requirement for the force at five foot eight. An open-faced young man with an outlook to match, ambitious, the hobbies section on his application form had read rock climbing, music, and soccer. When he wasn’t inching his way at weekends, handhold by handhold, up some slab of sheer granite in the Peak District, Fowles’s energies were divided evenly between playing in a band called Splitzoid, and harrying his opponents’ ankles in the busy and aggressive midfield mode pioneered by Nobby Stiles and kept to the fore more recently by the likes of David Batty and Paul Ince. After the heady days of trials for Chesterfield, Mansfield, and Notts County, Ben now practiced this particular brand of artistry for Heanor Town reserves.

“Splitzoid,” Graham Millington had asked, “whatever kind of a band is that?”

“Ah, well,” Fowles explained, “we used to be thrash metal with a trace of dub, right, but now we’re getting more into trip-hop and garage with a touch of techno on the side. Maybe we ought to change the name to match the new image, Serge, what d’you think?”

Millington’s reply went unrecorded.

Fowles gave him free passes to an upcoming gig in a pub on the Derby ring road and Millington promised to check with the wife, see what Madeleine had on her calendar. He had an idea it might be rehearsals for
Carousel
; if it wasn’t her University open access night—currently engaged in a survey of Magic Realism and the Mid-Century Novel, if Millington wasn’t very much mistaken.

Jimmy Peters was an entrepreneur of the old school, a failed rock-’n’roller with angina and a face like crumpled paper. He’d gone into management when a touring American singer—a minor celebrity with two top-fifty hits—had seized Peters’s guitar during a late-night session at the Boat Club and hurled it into the Trent. Jimmy Peters could take a hint. Within six months, he was managing more bands than he had fingers to count and poised to take over the license of his first premises. Take away the ballooning and the beard, and a low-rent Richard Branson was born.

“So, Jimmy,” Ben Fowles said, not for the first time, “from where you were standing, you couldn’t see exactly how the fight started?”

Peters scowled and rolled his eyes.

“But it was this lot as come in late …” From force of habit, Fowles checked his notebook. “… Ellis and his mates, they were the ones that started it?”

“If I’ve told you once …”

“And you knew them? They were what? Regulars?”

Peters lit a fresh Silk Cut from the nub of the old. Ash shone like glitter from the velvet lapels of his jacket. “They might’ve been here once or twice, it’s difficult to keep track.” He glanced round at the interior, shabby and stained in the daylight. Over by the entrance to the toilets, a cleaning woman was swabbing away listlessly with a mop and listening to local radio on a small receiver propped against the bucket. “Most nights it’s busy,” he said hopefully, “folk come and go.”

“But members, Jimmy?”

“Hmm?”

“All members. Condition of your license, bound to be, drinks served to members only, outside the normal hours.”

Peters smiled. “Members and their guests.”

“Duly signed in.”

“Not Ellis.”

“A minor slip-up. Small irregularity. Heat of the moment, it can happen. Well, you’ll understand.” Peters wafted smoke away from his face. “I’ve had words with the people concerned; it’ll not happen again.”

Fowles had had words with the door staff himself—a walking ad for Wonderbra in a black peek-a-boo dress and silver wedge sandals and a shaven-headed bouncer with an apparent steroid habit from Gold Standard Security. Neither had been exactly forthcoming. As opposed to those who’d faced up to one another when the fracas had started: they were all reading from the same script and well-rehearsed. Too much drink. Heat of the moment. No hard feelings. Handshakes all round.

Well, not exactly that. Not with one of the home team taking up coveted space in a high-tech hospital bed, a few thousand pounds of equipment monitoring his every cough.

“This bloke who was stabbed …”

“Wayne.”

“Yes, Wayne. He’s a regular, a member, right?”

Peters nodded.

“No reason, far as you know, why anybody might have it in for him?”

Peters pretended to give it some thought. The cleaner had switched stations and was listening to
Woman’s Hour,
a lively discussion about the benefits of folic acid in the early stages of pregnancy. “No,” Peters finally said. “Nothing that comes to mind.”

“He wouldn’t have got involved in something a bit chancy? Stepped out of line?”

Smoke drifted across Peters’s eyes. “Not his scene. Student, I believe. You know, mature. Clarendon College. Media Studies. Brought his mum in once, some kind of anniversary.”

Fowles had had enough. “If you do think of anything, you or any of the staff …” Out on the street, he breathed in deeply before setting off back to the station. There were dark patches close against the curb, where the blood had dried and not been washed away.

“He’ll live,” Millington announced, back from the hospital and pushing his head round the door to Resnick’s office. “Not look so pretty, mind. Seen better stitching on them cardigans the wife’s mother knocks out of a Christmas.”

“What’s he got to say about it?”

“Wayne? Not a great deal. Same yarn as everyone else, give or take. No idea who it was used the blade on him.”

“And you still don’t believe it?”

“How it happened, yes. Just something else won’t sit right, giving me indigestion. I mean, why him? Wayne. If it’s just a free-for-all, nothing more, how come he bears the brunt of it? Oh, and here …” Despite being wrapped inside two paper bags, the egg and sausage sandwich was copiously leaking grease as he passed it into Resnick’s hand, “… you’ll be wanting this. I’ll mash if you like? Mug of tea to wash it down.”

“Right, Graham.”

But when Resnick wandered out into the squad room some minutes later, he found Millington bending over his VDU screen rather than the kettle.

“Here, take a look at this by way of a CV.”

Resnick focused on the lines of slightly broken text. Wayne Feraday had graduated from unlawfully and maliciously throwing half-bricks at a moving train with intent to endanger the safety of its passengers, through the more normal taking of vehicles without consent, on to two charges relating to the illegal possession and sale of a controlled drug.

“Both charges dropped,” Millington said. “Insufficient evidence. Now why does that ring a bell?”

“But you think that accounts for what happened? Something drug-related?”

“Maybe Wayne’s short-changed someone on his supply. Got behind on his payments. Crossed over on to someone else’s turf. It’d not be the first time.”

Resnick’s face turned sour. “I just hope you’re not right. ’Cause if you are, it’ll not be the last.”

Not so much more than an hour later, Mark Ellis was standing on line with two of his mates in Burger King, wearing his new leather jacket and fresh plasters down one side of his face and across the knuckles of his right hand. Stupid fucking coppers! What did they know? He was feeling spruce enough to laugh at one of Billy Scalthorpe’s jokes, even though he’d heard it twice before.

At the counter, he joked with the ginger-haired lass who was serving, ordered a Whopper with cheese and a double portion of fries, onion rings, apple pie, and a large Coke. He was halfway back to the doors, Scalthorpe still haggling over his order, when the two black youths fell into step either side of him.

“Hungry,” said the one to his left, Redskins baseball cap reversed.

“Huh?”