Last Rites

Twenty-eight

The pub was smoky and full, and reverberating with noise. Ben Fowles was bobbing and weaving in front of the microphone, more like a man five rounds into a middleweight bout than Resnick’s idea of a singer. He was wearing white gym shoes, combat trousers, and a white T-shirt torn at one shoulder. His voice was pitched somewhere between a yelp and a scream, and his delivery had all the subtlety of a fast-approaching train. There were lyrics, Resnick was sure, but he couldn’t distinguish what they were.

In contrast to Ben Fowles’s exertions, the rest of the band looked vaguely bored. A tall man with thick-rimmed glasses stood stage left, staring down at the floor, playing bass guitar, while opposite, also standing, a young woman in a black silk shirt, her hair in a ponytail, played a small electronic keyboard. Behind them, a drummer wearing Forest colors and a baseball cap swatted around a minimal kit, while a squat figure wearing headphones, eyes closed, released a weird array of noises from some computer-driven gizmo, at the same time as manipulating records on a twin-turntable to make rhythmic scratching sounds.

“So what d’you reckon?” Carl Vincent asked, leaning close.

Resnick didn’t know.

The next number was altogether different: an instrumental, a sort of soul sound, but with a different beat; Ben Fowles alternating between rudimentary electric guitar and a toy saxophone, the kind found in the children’s section at Woolworths around Christmas time.

Resnick bought a round of drinks and exchanged a few words with Vincent’s friend, Peter, a computer engineer from Loughborough. The band were thrusting their way toward an interval, Ben Fowles running on the spot and repeating over and over a line from which he could only decipher the word “murder.” The bass player walked off the stage; a snare drum went crashing to the floor; a continuous, keening note came from the deserted keyboard; of the band, only one remained, hands a blur of movement over the turntables as the scratching intensified. Suddenly, Fowles threw up his hand and everything stopped. There was a moment’s silence, a few shouts, applause, and a scramble for the bar.

Resnick waited long enough to say well done and shake Fowles’s hand, then he was back out on the street and on his way to the center of town.

In the back room of the Bell, the usual musicians were into their final set. “King Porter Stomp,” “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans.” Resnick nodded to a few familiar faces, bought a pint of Guinness, and leaned against the corner of the bar.

When the band launched into “Dippermouth Blues,” and the trumpeter played, note for note, the same three muted choruses that Joe “King” Oliver had first played in 1923, Resnick knew, if he wasn’t exactly in heaven, at least, for those moments, all was right with the world.

“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Norma Snape asked, back from her normal Sunday lunchtime session at the pub.

Her daughter Sheena was stretched out on the sofa, watching the EastEnders omnibus on TV. “I live here, don’t I?” she replied, not lifting her eyes from the set.

“Not so’s I’ve noticed,” Norma said, glancing at the screen a moment before heading for the kitchen.

“Mum …”

“What?”

“Make us a cup of tea.”

Out in the back garden, the dog was digging a large hole, with the apparent intent of burying the axle and rear wheel of an old pram someone had tossed over the back wall. Norma fished two mugs from the cold, scummy water in the sink and wiped them with a tea towel. She wished she’d splashed out on the half-ounce of Skunk she’d been offered an hour before, Teddy Eyles making it all too plain he was prepared to take payment in kind. And now the scuttering dog had realized she was back and was barking at the door. Jesus H. Christ! A nice fat joint was what she needed to get her through the rest of the afternoon.

Grudgingly, Sheena swung her legs round to let her mum sit down.

“I’ve had the police round again,” Norma said.

“So?”

“So they were asking about you.”

“What about me?”

“You and that mate of yours …”

“Diane?”

“I don’t know what she’s called. Both of you mixed up in some business out on the Forest, some bloke getting shot.”

“That weren’t nothin’ to do with us.”

“You were there, weren’t you? You telling me they’re lying? Telling me you weren’t?”

Sheena tossed her head.

“You want to be careful, my girl, hanging out with people like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know.”

“Christ,” Sheena exclaimed, “you wonder I never come home? Nag, nag, nag. You’re on to me the minute I walk in the fuckin’ door.”

“And mind your language.”

“Yeh, fuckin’ right.” Sheena reached for her tea and cursed again as she spilt some of it down her leg. If only her mother’d stop moaning on and let her watch telly. Not that she knew much about what was going on. Same old faces saying the same old things. What was exercising Sheena’s mind was what was wrapped in a couple of soiled towels underneath Diane’s sink, the souvenir the pair of them had smuggled back from that night on the Forest, the gun with which Drew Valentine had shot Diane’s brother in the head.

Resnick had pottered his way through the afternoon: mowed what he half jokingly referred to as the lawn; chatted to his friend Marian Witczak on the phone; made tea; taken a nap; glanced through the glossy booklet advertising jazz CDs. He knew that Hannah had driven over to her mother’s for lunch, dreading a meal that would inevitably be soured by the news of her father’s imminent remarriage.

So when the doorbell rang in the early evening he assumed it would be Hannah, back from performing her unwanted duty and in need of a little rest and relaxation.

But it was Lynn Kellogg smiling at him weakly from the doorstep, hoping that she wasn’t disturbing him, but if there was any chance of a cup of coffee.

Lynn picked up Bud and cradled the small cat in her arms, stroking him while he purred and pushed his head against her neck, the underside of her chin. Resnick ground coffee beans and made an offer of a sandwich that was gratefully accepted.

They sat in easy chairs that had been old and in need of replacement when Resnick and his ex-wife Elaine had sat in them sixteen years before.

“No music?” Lynn said with a smile.

Resnick pulled something calming from the shelves, Bud Shank and Laurindo Almeida playing bossa novas, used and worn and comforting. Midway through the first side, Lynn set her plate aside and began to talk about the hospital, her father’s illness, her mother’s state of mind. When she broke off to sniff back tears, Resnick waited, silent, for her to regain control; and when the tears came again, unstoppable this time, he crossed the room and held her, Lynn’s face tight against his shoulder.

Neither of them heard Hannah’s VW approach as far as the curve in the road, Lynn’s car clearly visible beneath the street light. Hannah switched off her headlights, opened the car door, but didn’t get out. Minutes later, she reversed back toward the main road, turned, and headed for home.