Last Rites

Twelve

Resnick nodded thanks as Aldo slid the small cup of espresso along the counter toward him. The early edition of the Post lay folded against the till and Resnick pulled it toward him. It was strangely quiet in the market that morning, only a couple of middle-aged women sitting at the far side of the coffee stall with tea and cigarettes, chatting about prices and last night’s TV.

The article on Preston’s escape filled the whole page, raking up details of his father’s murder and the subsequent trial. Underneath an old file photograph of Preston himself, grim-faced, being led into court, were the words of the judge: It is almost beyond comprehension in a civilized society that any man would turn against his own flesh and blood with such violence and without apparent provocation.

Provocation: an argument over money, Skelton had suggested, the siphoning off of Preston’s ill-gotten gains. Well, maybe.

Realizing that, almost without noticing, he had finished his first espresso, Resnick ordered another.

For the first half-hour, Lorraine wandered slowly from room to room, enjoying the silence, willing herself not to look at the clock, the telephone. Without exactly daring to admit it to herself, she knew that what she wanted was for Michael to call, though she was unsure what she might say if he did.

Unable to settle to the Mail, she went into the living room and hoovered and dusted, tidying their few records and CDs, making neat piles of magazines. Upstairs in Sean’s room, she collected up stray socks and fetid sportswear, filched a fold-out pin-up of Pamela Anderson from underneath the bed and Blu-tacked it neatly to the wall alongside Sean’s team picture of Manchester United and above the one of Ryan Giggs. Along the landing, Sandra’s room was pristine in comparison, everything folded, hanging, shelved; pony books stood alongside Mills and Boon romances and Pride and Prejudice; they’d watched that together on the television, agreeing, despite Sean’s sneers, how gorgeous Colin Firth was as Darcy. A Greenpeace wall chart showing endangered species shared space with the Spice Girls and Gary Barlow from his days with Take That.

Lorraine sat on her daughter’s bed and closed her eyes. “You don’t love him, do you? Even if you ever did, you don’t love him any more. I can tell.”

When the phone rang, she gasped and it was as if, for a moment, her heart stopped. The receiver was cold as she fumbled it to her face. “Hello?”

“It’s me. I was just wondering how you were.”

Eyes closed, she rested her head against the wall. “Derek, I’m fine.”

“You’re sure? ’Cause like I said, I can always …”

“No, I’m … Derek, it’s sweet of you, but really, I’m okay. I just need a little time, that’s all.”

Silence at the other end of the line.

“Derek?”

“Yes?”

“You do understand?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Only …”

“Only what?”

Another silence. Then, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Derek …”

“No, really. As long as you’re okay. I’ll see you this evening, yes? Take care.” And the connection was broken.

Slowly, Lorraine replaced the receiver and turned away.

Cutting through toward the Jacobs’ house, Resnick glanced at the well-tended shrubs and borders, and wondered what had been there before. Other houses, smaller, a spread of terraced back-to-backs perhaps, workers’ homes so-called? Or had it all been open ground, sprawling north from printing works and bakery, allotments possibly? Prize marrows, dahlias, runner beans.

For a couple of years, maybe more, his father had shared an allotment with another family from the Polish community. Resnick remembered watching him settle his cap on his head before setting out early on a weekend morning, trundling his wheelbarrow through half-deserted streets, fork and spade rattling against the rim. On lucky days, inside a sack, his father would be carrying manure, claimed swiftly from outside their house whenever the rag-and-bone cart had passed by; yellow-brown loaves of shit that lay steaming on the road’s smooth surface and crumbled open at the spade’s first touch.

Sometimes Resnick had gone with him, helped to dig shallow trenches, forked over brittle earth, watched as his father bent and prodded and poked. After an hour, he would become bored and wander off, constructing elaborate daydreams detailing how he would run away and where: the adventures that would be his if and when he left, wiped the dust of the city from his feet. Thirty or so years later, it still clogged his pores, veiled his eyes, clung to his skin.

And he regretted, looking back, all those times he had scorned his father’s company, shunned his presence-times that could never now be recovered or replaced.

As Resnick pushed open the gate of number twenty-four, he glanced up and saw, framed for an instant in one of the upstairs windows, a woman with dark hair pulled back from the pale oval of her face, staring down.

Lorraine was wearing black trousers and a blue shirt, faded, which hung loose over her hips; pale tan moccasins on her feet. No trace of makeup on her face. The skin around her eyes was puffed and dark, the tiny lines at their corners etched deep. She offered Resnick coffee and he followed her past the foot of the stairs into the first of two reception rooms, the dining-room, he supposed; connecting doors partly opened into the living room beyond-a leather sofa, deep armchairs, cut flowers in a tall glass vase. Everything smelled of polish, wax, spray-on shine.

“Why don’t you go on through?” she said. “I won’t be long.”

Where he had anticipated hostility, without knowing exactly why, the way she had greeted him had been pleasant enough, cordial, almost as though she had been expecting him. Well, Resnick thought, she had been expecting someone.

There was a photograph album on the coffee table, a pattern of red and gray diamonds across its padded front and a decorative tassel hanging from its side. Bending forward, Resnick looked inside: babies in prams, babes in arms, toddlers at the seaside, the park, the swings. Birthdays and Christmases, Sunday treats. A pair of dark-haired kids in T-shirts and shorts, check shirts and jeans. Michael-or was it Lorraine? — holding up a fish, a bat, a silver cup. Five, six, seven, eight. Inseparable, or so it seemed.

“That was Mum’s,” Lorraine said from the doorway. “Photo mad.” She was carrying a tray with cups, a jug of milk, sugar, coffee in a cafetiére. “Shunt it out of the way, will you? Then I can put this lot down.”

She set down the tray on the table, gestured for Resnick to sit on the sofa, and took a seat opposite him in one of the armchairs.

“Funny, isn’t it? All those snaps of me and Michael as kids-I suppose you don’t think about it at the time, too busy having fun-but they must have been forever sticking that camera in our faces. Mum and Dad. Smile. Say cheese. But then, Derek and I, I expect we’re the same with our two. Except for Derek, it’s his video camera.” She favored Resnick with a quick, uncertain smile. “You should see the number of tapes he’s got stashed away.”

Resnick nodded; made no reply.

“You’ve got kids of your own, I dare say.”

He shook his head. “No.”

She looked at him. “Not married, then?”

“Not any more.”

It hung there, like motes of dust, still in the afternoon light.

“At the door,” Lorraine said, “you said there wasn’t any news about Michael.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve still no idea …”

“Not really, no.”

It was quiet: the ticking of a clock from the dining room, the faint whirr of someone’s mower away up the street, the dull residue of traffic.

“I expect this is ready by now,” Lorraine said, pointing at the cafetiére. Reaching forward, she eased the plunger slowly down toward the bottom of the jar.

Used to being offered coffee which bore little resemblance to the real thing, pale watery cups of bland brown liquid made from instant coffee granules, worse still, powder, Resnick was pleasantly surprised that this looked dark and strong.

“Milk?”

“No, thanks. This is fine.”

“When the other officer was here yesterday, I got the impression-he didn’t say anything, mind-but I got this sense that he-you-knew where Michael might be. Hiding, or whatever.”

Resnick shook his head. “I only wish we did.”

Lorraine sipped at her coffee, put in sugar, half a teaspoon, enough to take off the edge. “I expect you’re watching this place, aren’t you?” she said.

The slightest of hesitations before Resnick said, “Yes.”

“He’d be a fool to come here, then, wouldn’t he? I mean, he’d know. He’s not stupid.”

“He might consider it worth taking the risk.”

Lorraine staring at him now, trying to figure out how much he was guessing, how much, if anything, he really knew. “That’s not too strong for you?”

“Just right. How I like it.”

“Good. Good.”

Out in the hallway, where Resnick had noted it attached by a bracket to the wall, a small table close by, pad and pen for noting down calls, the telephone began to ring. Eyes fixed on Resnick, Lorraine made no attempt to move. After six rings, it stopped.

“The officer yesterday … Carl, I think you said … he asked me about Michael at Mum’s funeral … if, when we were talking, he’d said anything, you know, about escaping.”

Resnick looked at her encouragingly.

“I told him, no. Nothing. He didn’t even mention it. Nothing at all.”

“And that was the truth?”

“Of course. What do you think? I was as surprised as anyone.” She leaned back a fraction on the settee. “If he had asked me, I’d have said, no, don’t be so stupid. You’ll only make things worse for yourself, that’s all.”

“But you didn’t …”

“What?”

“Say that. Tell him …”

“No, of course not. How could I?”

“You didn’t know.”

“No.”

Her eyes held Resnick’s for a moment longer before she lowered her cup and saucer back on to the tray.

“And the blade? The razor blade?”

“What about it?”

He smiled at her with his eyes. “It came from your bathroom, I imagine.”

It was difficult not to smile back. “I imagine it did.”

“You told the officer …”

“I said I didn’t use them. Didn’t use a razor. I don’t, not any more. But I used to. My legs, you know.” She did smile then, almost a grin. “I think there were some spare blades. Left over.”

“You think?”

“All right. There were.”

“And Michael took one.”

“Like I said, I suppose so.”

“And like you said, you don’t know for sure?”

Lorraine shook her head.

“And that’s the truth?”

“Yes.”

Resnick nodded. He thought he believed her; about that, at least. He drank some more coffee; it was good. Not bitter. “I was wondering,” he said, “if there was anybody special your brother was seeing before he went to prison? Someone he might have kept in touch with, perhaps?”

“Special? You mean, like a girlfriend?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

She thought for several moments, or pretended to. “I don’t think so.”

“Nobody at all?”

“Nobody who meant anything special, no.”

“He wasn’t a monk.”

Lorraine laughed with her eyes. “Michael?”

“So tell me.”

“Look, Michael had women. Had them trailing round after him from the time he was sixteen, seventeen. He went to bed with them, of course he did, fooled around. But none of them were important, that’s what I’m saying. None of them meant anything. Not really. Not ever.”

“And you’d have known.”

Head down for that moment, she glanced back up at him, sharp. “Of course I would.”

Resnick reached toward the album: one photograph showing the pair of them, Lorraine and Michael, cross-legged on a patch of bleached grass; Michael, hair cut in a pudding-basin fringe and wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt, watching Lorraine as she balances plastic skittles, four of them, unsteady on the palm of one hand; another, perhaps a year or two later, early teens, standing with arms around each other’s shoulders, heads together, staring out, smiling.

“You were close.”

“As kids, yes.”

“Not since?”

“You know what happened.”

“To your father, yes.”

“I haven’t spoken to Michael since before the trial, haven’t seen him. Not once.”

“Until yesterday.”

“Of course.”

“You blame him?”

For a moment, doubt crossed her eyes. “For killing my father? He did it; he was the one. Who else is there to blame?”

Resnick was looking at the photographs again, side by side where he’d placed them. “At first I wasn’t sure, but you’re the older.”

“A year, that’s all.”

“He looked up to you, admired you.”

“Not especially.”

“Wanted to protect you.”

“Against what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Do you want some more of this coffee,” Lorraine said, “before it gets cold?”

Resnick shook his head. “No, thanks.”

She bundled the cups and saucers back on to the tray and took it to the kitchen. When she returned, Resnick was standing at the French windows, gazing out. Near the foot of the garden, where it met the cluster of trees, a robin was hopping around on a patch of recently disturbed earth, hopeful for grubs and perhaps the occasional worm.

He turned his head as Lorraine came to stand beside him. “You’re lucky. Having all that open space. So close.”

“I suppose so. There’s a family up the street, keeps a couple of horses in the field. They let our Sandra ride one sometimes, but, of course, she wants one of her own.”

“You’re not so keen.”

“I don’t know. It’s a lot of trouble and expense.”

They were facing one another now, Lorraine quite tall, her head level with his shoulder. “It’s a nice place,” Resnick said. “You’ve done well. Your mum would have been pleased.”

“You knew her?”

“A little. On account of your dad, mainly. We crossed paths a few times when he was alive. Professional reasons, I suppose you might say. I met Deirdre then. She seemed a nice woman. I liked her. Somehow she’d hung on to her sense of humor.”

Lorraine smiled.

“No picnic, living with your dad, I imagine.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Too used to getting his own way.”

“He’d a mind of his own, yes.”

“Michael, too, I dare say.”

She shook her head and took a step away. “All that’s over now. Dead and buried.” Catching herself, she laughed. “Those things we say, all the time, no thought to what they mean. And then one day they’re not just stupid little sayings any more, they’re true.”

For a moment, he touched her arm at the fold of her cuff and was surprised by the coldness of her skin. “I was sorry to hear about your mum.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

In the hallway he hesitated beside the phone, almost willing it to ring again.

“If Michael gets in touch …” he began.

Lorraine was standing at the front door, holding it open. “I don’t think he will.”

“But if he does, you’ll let us know. Let me know.”

She held his gaze. “He won’t. I’m certain.”

Resnick stepped past her, out on to the paved path. Somewhere, hidden from plain sight, someone was watching them through binoculars, most likely bored, waiting to be relieved.

“Maybe we’ll talk again,” Resnick said.

“Maybe.”

Before he had reached the gate, Lorraine had closed the front door and turned the key in the lock.