Last Rites

Twenty-one

“Are you planning to stay there all morning or what?”

At the sound of his mother’s voice, Evan woke, blearily breaking out of a dream in which he was somehow back home again in his old room, until he realized it wasn’t any dream.

“It’s almost ten o’clock. There’s tea downstairs in the pot. I’m just off out to the shops.” A pause, then: “You make sure you’re out of there by the time I get back.”

Evan lay listening to his mother’s footsteps receding along the narrow passageway and down the stairs, just as he had for so many years, all of the years he had been at school. After the front door had clicked shut, he threw back the sheet he’d been sleeping under and swung his legs round toward the floor. He’d opened the window last night before getting into bed, but not enough; his hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat. The pillow wasn’t merely damp, but wet.

When he’d moved back home, not so many weeks before, he hadn’t told any of the people he worked with, for fear of what they might say. But the place Evan had been renting, a second floor out by Hackney Marshes, had become a liability. The bloke he’d been sharing with, another officer from the prison, had proved congenitally unable to deal with money. Bills had rolled in and either remained unpaid or Evan had stretched what little he had and settled the whole thing from his own account. Having the phone cut off hadn’t been too bad, he could have lived with that, but then the landlord took to pushing all those notes through the door, threatening to take them both to the small claims court for nonpayment of rent, and the crux had come when Evan had stumbled down into the communal hall one morning to find a gas board official searching for the mains so he could cut off their supply.

“You know you can always come back here for a bit,” his mother had said, “that old room of yours isn’t doing anything but collecting dust. Just till you get sorted, mind. You cluttering up the place all hours, getting under my feet, that’s the last thing I want.”

So Evan had agreed, a couple of weeks while he looked around for something else. He wouldn’t expect his mum to do it for nothing, of course, he’d see her right; a few extra quid in her purse would more than likely not go amiss and besides, most probably she’d welcome having somebody else about the place, living on her own there since his dad had died. “There” being a flat-fronted two-story terraced house with a raised ground floor in east London, Clapton; Evan’s folks had moved in not so far short of thirty years back and now theirs were the only white faces on the street.

Evan padded downstairs in his boxer shorts and into the kitchen, where the cat, a ginger-and-black tom with a nasty temper and one badly chewed ear, was busily scratching round in its tray, spraying gray cat litter over the floor in its efforts to cover up what it had just left behind. Jesus! Evan thought. Why is it with a garden out there, at least one open window, to say nothing of a cat flap, you still have to crap in the house? Unlocking the rear door, he shooed the animal down the metal steps leading to the narrow strip of grass, the flower beds his mum was clearly letting go, a stumpy fruit tree that bore no fruit.

He poured himself a mug of tea, strong enough by now for the spoon to stand up in, tipped some cornflakes into a bowl with sugar and milk, and sat down with his mum’s Express. Thumbing through twice, he could see nothing about Michael Preston’s escape. Yesterday’s news, and even then, down there in the smoke, it had rated no more than a couple of paragraphs, Murderer Escapes After Mother’s Funeral, convicted killer still on the loose.

He had tried ringing to find out how Wesley was getting along, now that he’d been released from the hospital, and someone with a voice like ready-mixed concrete, one of Wesley’s brothers he supposed, had told him in no uncertain terms to keep his face out of Wesley’s business unless he fancied getting it rearranged. As if it were his fault Wes had lost a liter or so of blood and was sporting a neat line in stitches. All right, he’d been the one who’d actually patted Preston down, but he hadn’t exactly been acting on his own. Wesley had been there all along. And who’d let his attention wander sufficiently in the back seat of the car that his prisoner was able to transfer the razor blade from wherever he’d been hiding it out into his hand?

“You stand up for yourself, Evan,” his mother had said, when he told her there was going to be an internal inquiry. “Don’t always be so keen to take the blame. Soft, you are, that’s your trouble, like your dad. And see where it got him, God bless him. No, you want to look out for yourself for once in your life. Don’t let them push you around.”

Suspended from duty on full pay. “All you can expect,” his union delegate had said. “Sod off down the coast for a couple of days, why don’t you? No family hanging round you. Me, I’d get in a bit of fishing.”

Evan looked across at the clock on the cooker, quarter to twelve. He’d go up and throw some water on his face, clean his teeth, pull on some clothes, and go for a walk to clear his head, maybe along by the filter beds.

When he stepped on to the pavement twenty minutes later, the black guy who lived to the right was outside again, tinkering with his motor, doors flung wide open, radio blaring-the man himself not doing a thing but leaning back against his front railings, stripped to the waist save for the gold chain round his neck, so heavy you’d have to wonder he could hold his head straight. “Morning,” Evan said, walking past him. “Nice again.” No harm in being friendly. The man silent behind his shades, as if Evan had never opened his mouth.

Maybe a bit later I’ll give Wesley a bell, Evan was thinking, see if he hasn’t calmed down a little.

Sitting on the end of one of the desks in the CID room, Resnick and Millington, Naylor and Sharon Garnett as audience, Ben Fowles flipped open his notebook and cleared his throat. Millington had put Kevin and himself on to checking out Gary Prince.

“Past form’s pretty much what you’d expect,” Fowles began. “Small-time thieving as a kid, truanting, suspended from school for what they called persistent anti-social behavior; one care order, too many last warnings. Young offenders’ center by when he was sixteen. Celebrated his eighteenth with a six-month stay at Lincoln. Various bits and pieces of probation. Longest sentence so far, eighteen months for handling stolen goods, of which he served just about half. That was almost two years ago. As far as records go, he’s been clean since.”

“And no suggestion,” Resnick asked, “of him being involved with guns?”

Fowles shook his head. “Credit cards, watches, jewelry, that’s more his mark.”

“Kevin,” Millington said, “you’ve got some more?”

Naylor took a quick swallow from his mug of lukewarm tea. “Our Gary’s twenty-eight. Finally moved out from his mum’s, February of this year. Bought himself a place near Corporation Oaks. Three bedrooms, garage, newish, nothing fancy. Paid close to sixty thousand, all the same. Round about the same time, he started seeing this Vanessa Parlour. Some kind of model. Promotions, the odd commercials, nothing too high-powered.” He grinned. “Pulled a couple of photos of her from the Post’s files. Pretty classy stuff.”

“I wonder what she sees in Prince?” Millington asked.

Sharon smiled. “Perhaps our Gary’s got hidden charms.”

“Like the guy in The Full Monty,” Ben Fowles suggested. “Whips off his Y-fronts and there’s this thud as the end of his dick hits the ground.”

“The woman,” Resnick said, “maybe she’s the one responsible for Prince finding a little more ambition? Moving himself up in the world?”

“Guns,” Sharon said. “It’s possible. For some women there’s something very sexy about guns.”

Fowles laughed. “Tell us about it, Sharon.”

“In your dreams.”

“One other thing,” Naylor said. “He’s got this lock-up garage, near his mum’s place in Sneinton. Still uses it, as far as I can tell.”

“Be nice to get a look around inside,” Millington said wistfully.

Resnick scraped back his chair as he rose to his feet. “Bit more patience, Graham, maybe we will. I’ll have a word with the boss, see if he can’t stir up a warrant.”

Coming up out of the underground into Brixton, Evan thought, was like stepping out into another country. Not simply the preponderance of black faces, he was used enough to that where his mother lived, after all; here, the air, the whole atmosphere, were different. In Dalston, no matter how many there were, black or Asian, it was as if they were living, cuckoo-like, on sufferance in a white world. But here, these people with their dreadlocks and multicolored woolen hats and that lazy, strutting way they walked, no, they owned this place, these streets. And Evan, blinking to readjust his eyes after traveling below ground, he was the stranger in a foreign land.

“Hey, man!” And there was Wesley pushing through the crowd, grinning, holding out his hand.

First time in his life Evan had known Wesley pleased to see him. Half a dozen calls it had taken before the man would agree to meet him at all.

“How you doin’? Okay? No problem gettin’ here?”

Evan nodded, fine, fine.

“Di’n’t forget your passport, right?” Wesley laughing at Evan’s discomfort. “Come on.” Nodding his head up toward the Ritzy cinema at the foot of Brixton Hill. “Let’s get something to eat. Famished, yeah?”

Evan followed Wesley along the broad pavement and into one of the entrances to the covered market.

“Where we going, anyway?”

“Franco’s. Best pizza in town. Best pizza anywhere.” And he laughed again. “What? You think all we eat is jerk chicken and sweet potato? Curried goat? Anyway, look around, you’ll feel at home.”

There was a line of tables clustered close together out front, all occupied. Most of the customers were white, youngish, casually dressed, sitting there with acres of newsprint spread out before them.

“Yuppie types,” Wesley said. “Think it’s cool, hang outside Franco’s, watch the world go by. We’ll go inside, quieter there.”

They took a table near the back and Wesley ordered a Coke, Evan a beer. The menu was long and seemed to include every pizza topping Evan had heard of and several he hadn’t thought possible.

“So,” Wesley said, “what’s up?”

Evan shrugged, temporarily lost for words.

“Something’s bugging you, the way you was on the phone.”

“No, it’s just …”

“Just this Michael Preston shit, right?”

“I suppose so, I …”

“Listen, man, if it’s what happened to me, getting cut an’ all, okay, I was plenty mad at you at the time, but I’m through that now. It’s cool. Nothing to reproach yourself for, okay? Evan, okay?”

Evan nodded uncertainly. “Yeh, okay.”

“Good. Now let’s order us some food, I’m starvin’.”

Evan played safe with the basic pizza, ham, mozzarella cheese, and tomato; Wesley tucking into aubergine, anchovy, and pepperoni sausage.

“How is it, anyway?” Evan asked between mouthfuls. “Where he cut you? Still giving you any pain or what?”

Wesley shook his head as he chewed. “Once in a while, maybe. Just, you know, a little niggle. But, hey, like I told you, you got to quit worryin’ ’bout it.”

“I just feel guilty, that’s all.”

“Weren’t none of your fault, man. Well, not exactly none of your fault, but, you know, what’s done’s done. That crazy fucker, Preston, he’s the one to blame, he’s the one cut me, right? An’ he sunnin’ hisself right now on some beach in Spain or Greece, stickin’ his finger up at the world. You think he care about us, spare us a second thought? Okay, so you don’t waste your mind on him. Forget him, right? Get on with your life.”

“This inquiry …”

“Inquiry be fine. Stay cool, chill out. You see.”

Evan cut off another strip of pizza-every bit as good as Wesley’d said it would be, no more contented evenings in Pizza Hut after this-and washed it down with a swig of beer.

“What it is, Wesley,” he said, leaning forward a little, lowering his voice, “all this stuff about him buying false papers, getting on some flight abroad, I don’t believe none of it.”

Wesley laid down his knife and fork and looked at him, curious.

“I reckon that’s all bollocks. A blind.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know how come, just a feeling. But I can’t, you know, shake it. I think he’s still there, where we took him.”

“What?” Laughing. “Camped out in some field alongside the motorway?”

Evan shook his head. “Back in the city.”

“Easiest way to get caught, he’d know that better’n anyone.”

“Maybe,” Evan said, not really meaning it. “Anyhow, I reckon I might take a trip up there, you know. Look around.”

“Look around?” Wesley echoed, amazed. “What the hell for?”

Evan cut away a piece more pizza. “See if I can’t find him.”

Wesley staring at him now, open-mouthed. “Find him, you sayin’? Find him? Evan, man, you crazy or what? You think the police didn’t try to find him? You think you can do somethin’ they can’t?”

“No.” Evan shaking his head. “I don’t think they give a monkey’s about Michael Preston. I don’t think they care.”

“And you do?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with that? My responsibility, right? You said yourself, down to me more than you. So, okay, I’ll find him.”

Wesley laughing except that it wasn’t funny, it was pathetic, that’s what it was. Evan as Batman, the Lone Ranger.

“What? What’s the big joke?”

“You, you’re the joke. You think you are, some kind of vigilante?”

Evan looked back at him and didn’t say anything.

“Suppose you do find him, right, what then?”

“Bring him back.”

“You …” Wesley pointing at him with his knife. “You a little soft in the head, you know that, don’t you?”

“Okay,” Evan said. “Okay.” He was this close to standing up and walking out of there. “I wish I’d never said anything, right? You made your point. Now I don’t want to hear any more about it. Okay? Yeh, Wesley, okay?”

Wesley rattled the last of the ice cubes round in his glass, sucked on the slice of lemon, lifted up a sliver of anchovy between forefinger and thumb, and deposited it on his tongue. “Evan,” he said a few moments later. “You are one crazy fucker, you know that, don’t you?”

What Evan knew was what his father had taught him, if you want to earn respect in this world, you have to be responsible for your own actions; and if you want to be able to respect yourself, you have to acknowledge your mistakes and then do everything in your power to set them right.

Fowles was standing pretty much to attention in front of Resnick’s desk, hands clasped behind him. The list of Gold Standard employees lay between them.

“Tell me again how you got hold of this,” Resnick said.

Fowles told him.

“You realize if we wanted to use this, needed to, in court, Cassady’s brief could most likely get it thrown out?”

Fowles was avoiding Resnick’s eye. “Yes, sir.”

Resnick let him stew a little longer.

“The names, sir. I’ve been running a check on them as and when I could. Cassady, we could have him over a barrel if we wanted. Three men he’s employed, got criminal records as security guards, two with convictions for aggravated assault. And this one …” Fowles jabbed a finger down on to the list. “Bloke been done for house burglary, out patrolling this estate nights, Wilford way.”

“Write it up,” Resnick said. “And next time, think before you pull a stunt like this.”

“Yes, sir.” Fowles didn’t move.

“There’s more?”

“Yes, sir. Three of our lot, moonlighting. Couple of uniforms and a sergeant out the Drug Squad.”

“Name?” Resnick asked sharply. “The sergeant.”

“Finney, sir. Paul Finney.”

Resnick half remembered a thirtyish man with strong, dark hair and an open face. He’d met him a few times in the company of Norman Mann and others; Finney mostly quiet, friendly. Spoke only when he was spoken to.

“Right,” Resnick said. “Leave this with me.”

Fowles closed the door quietly behind him and Resnick eased forward in his chair. Finney, Finney. There was something about him he couldn’t put his finger on and then he could. Greyhounds. Wasn’t Finney part of a syndicate that owned a couple of greyhounds? Raced them. Norman Mann had tried to talk him into going along one evening, Resnick remembered. Colwick. One of those occasions he’d said maybe and then stayed home. He thought about calling Mann and dialed Siddons’s number instead.