Last Rites

Twenty-three

Gary Prince was awake early, as it happened, needing the lavatory shy of five and then deciding to stay up for a while, fancying a cup of tea and a smoke; something distinctly savory about sitting up to the breakfast bar he’d had installed in his own kitchen, while the gorgeous woman he’d been shagging less than half a dozen hours before lay upstairs sleeping in his bed. Though in truth, technically speaking, it had been Vanessa who’d been shagging him. Now he was a little older, Gary found he liked it that way. Preferred it even. One of those welcome signs of maturity, he reckoned, along with his first gray hair and moving out from his mum’s.

Yes-Gary stubbed out his cigarette and, without thinking, lit another-about the best thing he’d ever done, buying this place. Nothing fancy, not one of those fake Tudor places out at Edwalton some he knew aspired to as soon as they’d got a quid or two in their pocket, a few TESSAs in the bank. This place was nothing flash, discreet even, unlikely to draw the unwelcome attentions of Resnick and the like, well within his means.

Though if things progressed with Vanessa the way he thought they might, there’d have to be improvements made, money spent.

Vanessa was currently sharing a flat in the Park with two pals in the same line as herself, corporate videos, a little photographic modeling, sales promotion. Gary had first met her, in fact, when she was using her leopard skin bikini to show off the lines of the new Sierra in the forecourt of the Broad Marsh Centre. Gary himself there on security duty thanks to his pal, Cassady; stop any bastard scratching the paintwork, kids running off with scads of brochures, only to toss them over the balcony like overweight confetti. They’d struck up a conversation over something Gary couldn’t remember and before you could say prawn cocktail, steak and chips, he’d been asking her out to dinner.

He’d dropped one or two hints about her chucking up her flat, moving in full time, but so far she hadn’t bitten. What he ought to do, Gary reckoned, get her more involved in his plans for the house, that way she’d come to see it more as something they shared. And besides, a girl like Vanessa, she’d have ideas about style, color. All manner of things. Adding a conservatory, maybe. Patio doors.

The tea was stewed, but he squeezed out another cup anyway. Someone like Vanessa moving in, that would really say something about him, add a definite tone. A dog, too, Gary thought, he might get one of those. A pair of them. Alsatians. Rottweilers. Living where he was, St. Ann’s, you couldn’t be too careful.

Gary thought he’d go back up and see if Vanessa was anything like awake, but when he stripped down to his boxer shorts and slid back under the covers she was stretched out at an angle across the bed, mouth slightly open, snoring gently. He wriggled himself close against her and, not thinking he would actually go back to sleep, closed his eyes. When the noise woke him, almost an hour later, his first thought was that it was burglars, but not his second.

Bastards! He knew if he didn’t get down there double quick they’d have the front door off with a pair of sledgehammers.

“Gary Prince?”

“What about it?”

“CID.”

There were three of them; two fast in his face the second he opened up, sports gear, trainers, so pumped up he could smell the adrenaline. The third one, older, a little mustache, sports jacket and slacks as if he were taking a morning stroll. Standing there in his boxers, Gary was feeling decidedly underdressed.

“How about the thieving bastard formerly known as Prince?” Ben Fowles said. “More your fancy?”

“Fuck off!”

“Not bloody likely.”

They went past him, the first two, like they’d just heard the pistol at the start of the hundred meters.

“You’ve got a warrant?” Gary asked.

Millington grinned a particularly malicious grin. “More warrants than you could fit up your arse between now and Sunday.”

“You’ll not find anything, you know.”

“Oh, well, least it gives the lads a chance to chuck things about for a spell. All good practice.”

A muffled shriek from above told him all the racket had hauled Vanessa out of bed.

Gary was on his way when Millington detained him with a hand tight on his upper arm. “Gary, Gary, no sense going off at half cock.”

“If they lay a hand …”

“Don’t worry. House-trained the pair of them.”

A succession of sharp thumps seemed to give the lie to that, drawers being pulled free, their contents tumbled to the floor.

“Gary,” Vanessa called, “whatever’s going on?”

“Pack her off into the kitchen,” Millington advised, “tell her to make us all a nice cup of tea. Unless yours is one of them liberated relationships, of course. Non-gender specific in the domestic-task area-I think that’s what the wife calls it. In which case, Gary, mine’s Yorkshire if you’ve got it, common or garden PG Tips if you’ve not. Oh, and one sugar, easy on the milk.”

“Bollocks,” Gary said, halfway up the stairs.

“Ah, it’ll be the little woman then, after all.”

The little woman, all five feet nine of her, was standing at the entrance to the master bedroom, wearing a pair of high-sided lace briefs and the residue of last night’s Obsession. Ben Fowles, in the hallway directly in front of her, was doing his level best not to stare.

“If you’d like to get dressed,” he said, “put something on, like, we need to get into the bedroom.”

“What for?”

“We have reason to believe a considerable amount of stolen property is on the premises,” Fowles said, eyes flickering nervously in the face of the most perfect set of breasts it had been his good fortune to encounter in the flesh.

“Gary,” Vanessa said, as he arrived at Fowles’s shoulder. “What’s all this about?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s all a mistake.”

“Gary…”

“Look,” Gary said, backing her toward the bedroom, “maybe you should get yourself covered up, yeh? And then … well, you don’t suppose you could slip the kettle on …”

“Fuck off, Gary,” she said and slammed the door in his face.

Ben Fowles snorted with laughter and went off to help Naylor going through the treasures of the spare room. Whistling while he worked, Millington sallied off in search of the kitchen; if they were going to be there a while, he might as well mash the tea himself.

At Gary Prince’s lock-up, Carl Vincent and Sharon Garnett stared into a twenty-four by seventeen meter space liberally filled with boxes, while two uniformed officers made a detailed inventory of sundry cordless telephones, compact disc players, carefully bubble-wrapped and probably imitation Rolex Tudor Chronograph watches, and what looked like several hundred copies of the new Madonna CD. What they had not found, any of them, was a lethal barreled weapon of any description from which any shot, bullet, or other missile might be discharged, nor, Robin Hood territory or not, a single item relevant under the Crossbows Act of 1987.

“You reckon he’s got receipts for this lot?” Sharon asked. Standing a little way off, she took a pack of Marlboro Lights from her bag and offered one to Carl before lighting up herself.

“Bound to,” Vincent said with a wry smile. “VAT invoices, the lot.”

Sharon shook her head. “You imagine the work involved, checking this lot against stolen property?”

Vincent shrugged. “At least we’re not coming away empty-handed.”

“You think that’ll sweeten the boss’s temper?”

“I doubt it.”

Sharon drew on her cigarette, released the smoke slowly and smiled. “You want to give him a call, or shall I?”

Resnick’s stomach was noisily reminding him that, two cups of coffee aside, he’d skipped breakfast. Millington, who’d feasted on two Shredded Wheat with an added sprinkling of wheatgerm and bran, didn’t look any happier.

“We got nothing,” Resnick said. It wasn’t a question.

Millington’s jacket smelled faintly of dry-cleaning, his trousers, pale-gray, had a definite crease down the front. Casual but smart. Resnick was reminded of the men he saw in the Viccy Centre on Saturday mornings, waiting patiently outside Jessops or Boots for their wives. “I wouldn’t say altogether nothing.” For once, he wasn’t looking Resnick squarely in the eye.

“Nothing that links Prince with the gun, any gun.”

A quick shake of the head. “No.”

“So your pal, Forbes …”

“Arthur Forbes is going to be meeting his maker a lot sooner’n he wants when I’ve got shot of him.”

“And we’re no closer to Valentine.”

“No.”

Silent, they were conscious of the constant thrum of traffic on the Derby Road, the shrill sigh of brakes as lorries slowed for the long left turn around Canning Circus.

“There is all that stuff in his lock-up.” Millington said. “Even a good briefs not going to talk him out of that. You never know, pile up the questioning, he might let something slip.”

“Yes,” Resnick said. “Happen he will.”

Neither of them believed it.

Outside, in the CID room, telephones rang and were answered, rang and were not.