Last Rites

Nineteen

The ice-cream van just inside the Castle grounds was doing a brisk trade and the teachers steering a ragged crocodile of primary school kids through the turnstile were going to have trouble containing them until after their visit to the museum. Thirty or so nine-year-olds, some of the boys wearing baseball caps, some turbans, the girls-half of them at least-kitted out in their junior Spice Girls gear, all carrying cans of pop, packed lunches, and patchily copied worksheets.

Resnick was sitting on one of the benches lining the avenue of trees that stretched toward the bandstand. Now that the sun had broken through the cloud cover, it was warm enough for him to have removed his jacket and draped it across the bench, tugged his tie toward half-mast. Half turned toward the entrance, he shielded his eyes from the sun and watched Lynn Kellogg walk toward him; Lynn with her dark hair cut short and shaped to her head, wearing a deep-red cotton top tucked down into black denims, boots with a low heel. A soft leather bag hung from one shoulder.

“Sorry I’m so late.”

“Not to worry.”

“So much going on, it was difficult to get away.”

Resnick nodded to show he understood and shifted back along the bench. “Chance to soak up some sun. Bit of a change from earlier.”

Lynn dropped her bag between them and sat down. Close to, she looked tired; dark, purplish shadows around her eyes. She seemed to have lost weight also; her face was less full, cheekbones hard against the skin.

“Are you okay?” Resnick asked.

“Fine.”

“You look a bit … well …”

“It’s that woman. Siddons. Slave-driver isn’t in it.”

“Not like me, then?” Resnick grinned.

“Expects everybody to work a thirteen-hour day and keep pace with her afterward in the bar. Glad it’s her liver and not mine.”

“As long as it gets results.”

Lynn sighed. “I suppose.”

“You’re not regretting it?”

“Transferring to Major Crimes?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

The gates at the far end of the drive swung open and a single-decker bus chartered by one of the local day centers nosed slowly in. On the bench opposite where Resnick and Lynn were sitting, a couple in his-and-hers pin-stripe suits were opening Tupperware containers and settling into an early lunch.

“I talked to Norman Mann earlier,” Resnick said, “about your boss’s involvement in this firearms business out on the Forest. He’s a sight less fussed about it than I thought he’d be.”

Lynn didn’t answer for some little time. “Maybe that’s not too wise. From his point of view, at least.”

Resnick looked at her questioningly.

“There’s rumors going round someone in his squad’s dirty …”

“Norman … that’s daft. Whatever he is, he’s not crooked.” He looked at Lynn and she looked away. Behind her, a phalanx of half a dozen wheelchairs were being pushed in slow formation past the ornate flower municipal beds, up toward the Castle.

Lynn drew a deep breath. “All the reports we’ve seen-Open Doors, people on the Crack Awareness team, the APA-they all say drug use in the city is up. Eighteen months to a year. Heroin. Crack cocaine. During the same period, even though arrests for possession have risen in roughly the same proportion, arrests for dealing have stayed pretty much the same. And convictions have actually fallen.”

“Maybe the dealers are getting better organized?”

Lynn pushed her fingers up through her hair, then brushed it down flat. “Siddons has got Anil going back through cases where there’s been an acquittal, or where the bench has just thrown it out of court, no case to answer. Seems there’s a handful of instances where blame could be laid at the door of the officers concerned-poor preparation, evidence mislaid, you can imagine the kind of thing.”

“But a pattern?”

“Not so far. If it was just one or two, the same names cropping up again and again, that would be easy.” Lynn shifted position, leaning back against the bench. “What’s interesting is who’s getting pulled in, who isn’t. You go through the interviews with users, low-level dealers, and the same suppliers get mentioned over and over again. Valentine. Planer. But look for those names on the arrest reports and what do you find? No mention of them. Hardly at all.”

“That couldn’t be because they’re keeping it all at arm’s length, not getting themselves involved?”

Lynn nodded. “They all use runners, sure. And what the runners do, in turn, is dilute it down, get the stuff rebagged, send it out on the street with runners of their own. Kids, for the most part. Same as it’s always been. But that doesn’t mean nobody knows who’s back of it all, bringing the stuff in; they’re just not touching them, that’s all.”

“And your boss thinks it’s her business to know why?”

“Somebody must. There’s people under thirty-five, no visible means of support, driving round the clubs in brand-new scarlet Porsches, Mercedes convertibles. They’re wearing Versace gear and more gold than you’d see in Samuels’s shop window. They didn’t all win the Lottery. And if they’re dealing, getting away scot-free, they’ve got to be buying protection. What else can it be?”

“That’s what Siddons thinks, too?”

Lynn looked back at him, serious-faced. “Probably.”

“And you think Norman Mann knows all about this? You can’t think he’s actually involved?”

“Involved, I don’t know. It’s too early to say. But if he doesn’t know, then he’s lost all track of what’s going on in his team.”

“And if he does, he’s got to be turning a blind eye.”

“At least.”

“If any of this is true, then there ought to be an inquiry. Official. Someone from an outside force. Whatever evidence Major Crimes gets should be handed over to them.”

Lynn smiled and shook her head. “Maybe it will. In the end. But only after Siddons has got what I think she wants. The dealers in one hand, whoever they’re buying off in the other. Twice the arrests, twice the glory. She wants it all.”

Resnick was thinking about Norman Mann, cases they’d worked on together, bars that in their younger days they’d closed down. All those marriages, three kids, a new house apparently; something going on with one of his younger DCs, or so Resnick had heard. Not without his prejudices, Norman, not above doling out the odd backhander if he thought it might speed up inquiries and there wouldn’t be any bruising, but, all that aside, as honest, Resnick would have thought, as the proverbial day was long.

“Come on,” Lynn said, getting to her feet. “Let’s walk.”

They were leaning on the parapet, gazing out over the slow waters of the canal and across the Meadows toward the Trent when she told him what else was preoccupying her mind, stopping her from sleeping. “It’s my dad,” she said. And suddenly, from nowhere, there were tears at the corners of her eyes. “The cancer. It’s come back. I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

Resnick reached for her hand to give it a consoling squeeze, but fumbled and missed; finally, embarrassed, he flung an arm around her shoulder and settled for a clumsy hug. “Lynn, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

“It’s okay. No, no. It’s okay. I’m … I’m fine.”

In the brief moment he had held her close against him, her tears had left dark patches on his shirt.

“Lynn, look …”

She cried now, without attempting to stop herself or hide what she was doing; Resnick looking on, helpless, hands in his pockets, stranded in his own awkward uncertainty.

It was twenty minutes later and they were in the cafeteria, drinking coffee at a corner table shy of visitors. Lynn had ordered a sandwich and, after two small bites, it lay unwanted on its plate. The hum of conversation rose and fell around them.

“Your dad,” Resnick said, “when did you hear?”

She didn’t answer straightaway, but took another sip at her coffee, already growing cold. “Last weekend. I was meant to be driving over, you know, going home. Then pretty much at the last minute I canceled. Phoned Mum and said something had come up at work, overtime. It wasn’t even true. And the peculiar thing is, I don’t even know why. It wasn’t as if there was anything going on here, anything special. Oh, Sharon was planning to go out on the Saturday, girls’ night out sort of thing, asked me to come along. But it wasn’t that, I just didn’t … I just didn’t want to go. So I lied.

“Mum said all right and that she understood; she sounded a bit down, but I thought that was because she’d been, you know, looking forward to me being there. Then she rang me back on the Sunday morning when Dad was out with the hens and told me. He’d been having a lot of pain again, down in his gut where it all happened before. Bleeding when he went to the toilet. His doctor made an appointment for him to see the specialist at the Norfolk and Norwich.”

There was a catch in her voice and for a moment Resnick thought she might be about to cry again. But she carried on. “Colorectal cancer, that’s what it’s called. Cancer of the bowel. Last time, two years ago now, more, they cut away part of the intestine. That was supposed to have dealt with it, once and for all. ‘Clean bill of health,’ that’s what the doctor said. ‘You don’t have to worry about your father, young lady, he’ll live till he’s a hundred.’ Patronizing bastard. Liar, too.”

“It’s returned,” Resnick said.

“Worse than before. He’s had X-rays, another endoscopy. Given the spread and the state of Dad’s health, they’re not keen on operating again.”

“There must be something they can do?”

“Chemotherapy. Large doses. The only thing they can promise for certain is it’ll make him feel like shit: it might not do any good.”

“But if they don’t do that?” Resnick asked.

Lynn shook her head and made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Treat the pain and let nature take its course. Mum says they started talking to him about going into a hospice and he told them all to bugger off. Said he’d rather die at home with his hens.”

Resnick had a vision of the poultry farm he had never seen; row after row of wooden huts, chicken wire, and husks of grain. “You’ve been over?” he asked.

She shook her head. “This weekend. Sunday.”

Resnick covered her hands in his. “I am sorry.”

She nodded, not raising her head. Not wanting to look at him, not then.

“If there’s anything I can do …”

“No, I don’t think so.” A quick smile. “But thanks.” What she wanted him to do was fold her in his arms and hold her tight. The illusion that if he did, somehow, it would be all right.

Back outside the castle grounds, a party of Japanese tourists all but blocked the cobbled forecourt, photographing everything in sight. Robin Hood, Resnick thought, had a lot to answer for.

He and Lynn steered a path between them, crossing toward the corner of Hounds Gate and up the hill past the entrance to the Rutland Hotel, heading in the direction of the Ropewalk and Canning Circus. Across the street from the old hospital, Resnick paused. “Thanks.”

“What for?”

“Telling me what you did.”

“You won’t …”

He shook his head and smiled. “Not a word.”

Lynn took a pace away and Resnick reached out and touched her arm. “Your dad. Sunday. I hope it goes well. You never know, it might not be as bad as you fear.”

“Yes. Maybe. Thanks, anyway.”

“You’ll let me know.”

“Yes, of course.”

Before she had reached the main doors, Resnick was well on his way toward his own building, hands in pockets, head down, stride lengthening.