Last Rites

Sixteen

Resnick knocked on the door of Skelton’s office and went in.

Helen Siddons was standing, stony-faced, in front of the superintendent’s desk. She was wearing a blue-black suit with deep lapels, a black shot-silk shirt, and shoes with a definite heel. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back from her face and held with a large clip.

“Busy couple of days for you, Charlie, by all accounts.”

“Busy enough.”

Siddons’s mouth, Resnick realized, was the startling red of his damson jam.

“Helen’s been explaining her anxieties …” Skelton began.

“I’ve been telling Jack what’s going on’s a bloody farce. A bunch of cowboys using one another for target practice and where’s the fucking posse?”

“Helen’s proposing …”

“I’m sending a memo, with Jack’s support, to the Chief Constable, suggesting in the strongest terms he sets up a special Task Force to deal with drug-related shootings.”

“If that’s what …” Resnick began.

“Oh, come on, Charlie, what the hell else are they? And if we don’t do something now, we’re going to fetch up like Manchester or Bristol and worse.”

Resnick exchanged a glance with Skelton and neither man said anything. Siddons took a cigarette from her bag and lit it with a silver lighter. “What I want to see, pro-tem, while we’re waiting for the terms of reference of this Task Force to get sorted, is some sort of informal arrangement. Major Crimes, Drug Squad, yourselves-pool knowledge, act in conjunction where possible.” She blew smoke down her nose. “Nip these bastards in the bud.” Slowly, she looked from one man to the other.

“Helen would …”

“My squad could act as liaison …”

“You want the investigation run through you?” Resnick said.

Siddons angled her head backward. “Someone has to coordinate, else we’re all pissing in the wind.” She almost smiled. “We have the technology.”

“You’ve talked to Norman Mann about this?” Resnick asked.

“Not yet.”

“You think he’ll fall in?”

Siddons glanced toward Skelton’s desk and Skelton took an ashtray from a drawer and slid it toward her. “The kind of success rate his squad’s had recently, he should be taking help from the Brownies and grateful for it.” She stubbed out the long end of cigarette and hitched the strap of her bag higher on to her shoulder. “Thanks, Jack. Charlie. I’ll be in touch.”

Siddons outside the room, Skelton leaned his chair back till it was resting on its hind legs and, for a moment, pressed both hands hard against his cheeks.

“You don’t reckon maybe she’s biting off more than she can chew?” Resnick said.

Skelton rocked forward. “Her specialty, Charlie. Spit ’em out later.”

Resnick pulled up a chair and filled the superintendent in on developments. Despite a seemingly thorough search, no gun had been found on the Forest. Diane Johnson and Sheena Snape were still refusing to say anything.

“That sodding family, Charlie. Women like that-what’s her name?”

“Norma,” Resnick said quietly.

“Norma. Walking argument for bloody sterilization.”

Resnick tensed himself to argue back, but knew there was little point: a lecture from the super about the evils of single-parent families, about the last thing he needed.

Skelton got to his feet and turned to the window, looking out through the tops of the trees toward the tennis courts in the upper valley of the Park. Resnick wondered if the session was over, but no. “How about Preston, then?” Skelton said, turning. “This car at the airport, Birmingham. You think he’s off sunning himself somewhere, some beach in Spain?”

“Points that way.”

“You want to know what I think, Charlie? And I’ve seen him, remember, Preston. Spent time with him, too much.” Skelton had settled on one corner of his desk and was leaning forward, his face close enough for Resnick to catch the mixture of peppermint and tobacco on his breath. “He’s the kind who looks after himself, confident; thinks you can’t ever get to him, not here.” Skelton tapping his fingers briskly against his chest. “Not inside. The money from those robberies, I doubt he would’ve passed it all through his old man. I think he’d have kept something stashed away somewhere, invested even. When he went down, he’d have had somebody on the outside keeping it safe, keeping an eye. Passport, tickets, travel money-that’s what he’d have used for those.”

“I was thinking maybe the sister,” Resnick said.

“You’ve talked to her recently, I’m not in the best position to judge. After what happened to the father, though, she’d not be the most likely. Not to my way of thinking. More likely someone he used to run with.”

“Cassady’s the only possibility there, far as we know. And then there’s nothing to connect them, not recent.”

Skelton stood away from the desk. “Fly bastard, by all accounts. But as for Preston himself, I were a betting man I’d say he’s long gone, laughing at us from afar.”

It made, Resnick thought, heading back toward his own office, absolute sense. Why then, deep in his gut, didn’t it feel right?

Norma Snape’s kitchen looked out on to a square of garden which had once been grassed, but was overrun now with weeds and littered with empty burger boxes and cans, tossed across the back fence by whoever was using the rear alley as a cut-through. When Shane had still been there, he would occasionally bestir himself from watching the afternoon racing on TV and set it to rights. Now it was simply another of Norma’s good intentions, somewhere between persuading that bloke she’d been chatting with in the pub to bring round his tools and fix the boiler and getting something done about the leak in the front roof, something more permanent than the bucket she’d put out to catch the drips.

Several of the houses close by, Resnick noticed, were boarded up; one had been burned out, another stripped of all the tiles from its roof.

Norma answered the door wearing baggy sweat-pants and a white blouse that had been through the wash too many times, old tennis shoes on her feet. If Resnick hadn’t known she was still under forty, he would have put her at ten years older.

“Sugar’s on the side,” she said, lifting the tea bag out of Resnick’s mug before passing it across. “If you want it, that is.”

Resnick was sitting at the melamine-topped kitchen table, doing his best to ignore the sandy-colored mongrel dog that was alternately nuzzling its head against his groin and biting at his shoes.

“Push him out of it, if he’s a nuisance,” Norma said encouragingly.

“No, it’s okay. He’s fine.”

Norma reached over and took a whack at him anyway, the dog reacting with a snap at her hand and a low whine. “It’s cats you’ve got, i’n’t it? Remember you told me once.”

Resnick nodded.

“Least they’re not slobbering round you all hours, either that or carrying on to be let out, then barking to be let back in again. More of a mind of their own, I suppose you’d say. Independent.” Norma sipped at her tea and made a face. “Gnat’s piss!”

Resnick grinned. “I’ve tasted worse.”

“We had a cat, you know. Nicky’s it was, really. Well, it was him as brought it home. Buggered off after he … you know, after what happened. Thought maybe it’d got run over, something of the sort. No such soddin’ thing. Found itself a better home, couple of streets away. This old girl as feeds it bits of fish and chicken, bought it a fancy cushion to sleep on.” Norma reached for her packet of Silk Cut and shook one loose. “Like bastard men, cats are. Always on the lookout for a better hole.”

Leaning back, she lit her cigarette and, wafting away the first release of smoke, looked Resnick square in the eye. “It’s our Sheena, i’n’t it? Got to be. Only poor sod left.”

Resnick told her the details, as much as she needed to hear, one man getting shot, another wounded, a quantity of drugs found in the car, more maybe than could be for personal use.

“Well,” Norma said, when he’d finished, “least she’ll not be able to say I never warned her. That lot she’s been hanging out with, I knew it’d come to something bad. I told her. Told her she’d end up going the same way as her brothers and all she did was stick two fingers in my face and laugh. Well, now she’ll be laughing on the other side of her own.”

“You’ll be wanting to go and see her.”

“Will I, buggeration! Let her stew for a bit. Come sneakin’ back with her tail between her legs. If she’ll not learn her lesson from this lot, she never will. Next time, it’ll be her they’re draggin’ out of some motor on the Forest with a bullet in her. Too late to say she’s scutterin’ sorry then.”

Resnick swallowed down some more tea. “I don’t know for certain what’ll happen. Looks as if it’ll not be my case. But I doubt they’ll hold her, not more than overnight.”

“They bloody should.”

“Most likely she’ll get police bail in the morning, it depends. At the moment she’s not co-operating …”

“Grassing, you mean.”

“She was witness to a serious incident, a shooting …”

“Oh, right.” Norma pushing herself back from the table, up on her feet. “I’ve got it now. This is what it’s all about, you comin’ round here, butterin’ me up. Mr. Sympathy. Oh, yeah. What you’re after is me going down there, talking her into grassing up her own. Well, I’ll not do it. I’ll not and that’s a fact.” Norma glared at him, arms folded across her chest; the dog over by the back door growling, alerted by the change of tone in Norma’s voice.

“Norma, I’ve told you,” Resnick said, “it’s not my inquiry.”

“It’s you that’s bloody here.”

“You had to be told what had happened. I thought it might be better if you heard it from me.”

“You what? Why the fuck would you think that? Eh? You think I like having you here? Detective Inspector high-and-mighty Resnick. Slipping round here. Supping tea. How d’you think that makes me look up and down this street? Bastard police traipsing in and out. But no, you’re too full of your own bloody puffed-up self to think of that.”

With a slow sigh, Resnick rose to his feet, automatically taking his half-empty mug toward the sink.

“Bastard!” Norma struck the mug from his hand and it shattered on the floor. The dog braced itself on its hind legs and started to bark. “You think I like having you here in this house? Yeah? Do you? You really think I’d rather bad news came from out of your mouth? Norma, that lad of yours, we’ve got him locked up for murder. Norma, that bairn of yours, he’s took his own life, hanged hisself, we just this minute finished cutting him down. Oh, yes, you can bet your days I love it when Mr. Charlie sodding Resnick comes round here, up to his armpits in bad news. I thought you’d rather hear it from me, Norma. Well, what I’d wish,” Norma close to him now, pushing him back with the force of her words, “I’d never set eyes on your fat prick of a face at my door!”

Resnick held his ground for five long seconds before turning on his heels and walking out into the passageway, past the open living-room door, out through the front, and across to where four skinny kids with pinched faces and short cropped hair were loitering round the unmarked Ford he’d borrowed from the pool.

“Give us twenty pee, mister.”

“Give us a fag.”

When Resnick drove off, they raced after him, making signs mimicking masturbation, shouting abuse.