Last Rites

Thirty

Lorraine had been going through the motions at work, going through the motions at home. She would catch Sandra looking at her curiously every once in a while, but that aside, the children seemed to have settled back into their argumentative selves. And Derek was taken up in a flurry of paperwork as the firm’s owners prepared to launch a new range of colored papers in the coming autumn. Fifty classic and contemporary shades, each one available in a range of finishes, including several stunning new embossings.

In the kitchen, she scraped away the remains of the evening’s ready-to-eat lasagna and slotted the last of the plates into the dishwasher. The kids were upstairs pretending to do homework. Derek had taken his coffee back into the dining-room with his charts, closing the partition door behind him. Lorraine’s coffee remained near the sink, barely touched. She tipped it away and reached inside the fridge for the opened bottle of wine. Maybe later there’d be something she could watch on TV. Wind down. Something that would make her laugh.

She glanced up suddenly and saw him. Standing at the end of the drive, just beyond the far edge of the lawn, staring in. The glass fell through her fingers and she screamed.

Derek came running from the other room. “What? Whatever is it? What’s the matter?”

Her skin had frozen and now her eyes were closed.

“Lorraine? What …?”

When she opened her eyes again, there was no one there.

Somehow the glass had broken against the sink and blood was spooling from the fingers of Lorraine’s right hand.

“Lorraine …”

“It’s nothing. I saw … I thought I saw …” Sandra stood in the kitchen doorway, Sean pressed close against her side.

“Saw what?”

“There was somebody … someone …”

There was only her own face, reflected in the glass. Derek seized a hammer from the drawer beside the sink and went outside.

“Mum, what is it? What’s happening?” Sandra asked, frightened.

“It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s just your mum being silly.”

“You’re bleeding,” Sean said.

“Am I? Yes.”

Derek was on the pavement, looking first toward the field, then back along the street.

“What’s Dad doing?” Sean asked.

Despite herself, Lorraine smiled. “Being brave.”

After he’d come back in, she let Sandra pull the tiny slivers of glass from her hand with the tweezers and stood, patient, while Derek dabbed on Savlon with a ball of cotton wool, then smoothed three small plasters across the breaks in the skin.

It wasn’t until later, upstairs in bed, that Derek said: “It was Michael, wasn’t it? That’s who you thought you saw?”

“Don’t be daft, how could I? He’s miles away.”

“I know, but that’s who you thought it was, right?”

She rested her head against the fleshy warmth of his upper arm. “No, Derek, no. I swear.”

He didn’t believe her, of course. Lorraine’s imagination working overtime. With a small sigh, he leaned over and kissed her head. And Lorraine, she was certain whom she had seen and Michael it was not: it had been that prison officer, Evan, hands in the pockets of his blue zip-up jacket, anxiously staring in.

Raymond had been sniffing his way, rodent-like, from one dark corner to another. He finally tracked Tommy DiReggio to the drinking club on Bottle Lane. Tommy was sitting at a corner table behind a three-card straight, king high, and he wasn’t about to shift for anyone, so Raymond ordered a lager and black, and perched on a stool as patiently as he could.

When Tommy had pocketed his winnings and promised in twenty minutes he’d give them all a chance to get even, he went with Raymond into the back room and listened to his proposition. A Beretta, was that what Raymond had said? Well, Raymond nodded, just, say, for instance. Yeh, of course, Tommy laughed, for instance. Understood. And sure it was possible, a couple of hundred for a clean shooter, no history; without that guarantee the price dipped a lot, but still not below three figures. When Raymond pushed him a little, Tommy agreed he could maybe find a buyer himself for only a twenty per cent commission.

So Raymond downed his lager and scuttled out into the darkness, other agendas pressing on his mind, and Tommy DiReggio filed away the information, something to be passed on for a price, a promise of advancement, a debt needing to be squared.

On the corner of Thurland Street and Pelham Street, Raymond paused outside the entrance to a small cellar club he knew was frequented by Anthony Drew Valentine. And word was that Valentine was back on the street.

Raymond shuffled into the doorway of a shop selling discount jeans and suddenly he was remembering when he had stood outside that club before. A night-what? — a little over three years ago.

Four of them there’d been, coming for him out of the dark: white shirts, loud voices, threats and curses. At first, it had been punches thrown, the toe of a shiny shoe driving in. Then the glint and flash of a blade. The pain that jarred along Raymond’s arm, sharp, when he drove his Stanley knife hard into one youth’s face and met bone. And then this other guy, older, well-dressed, some Paki poking his nose where it wasn’t wanted, out to impress his girl. “All right, put a stop to this.” Unbelievable, the feller trying to grab hold of them, pull them apart. The whole gang had turned on him then, Raymond included, beating him to the ground and then the boots flying, going in hard. To this day, Raymond could never be certain whether he’d heard the man shout out he was a police officer before he’d slashed the Stanley knife at his head and caught his throat, severing the carotid artery with a single swing.

Bastard! Once in a while, still, Raymond woke in a muck sweat remembering. Wasn’t as if the copper’d even been on duty. Why couldn’t he mind his own business like everybody else? Stupid Paki bastard, no more than he deserved.

He tugged at his collar and crossed the street toward the club entrance, joining a small line slowly shuffling forward, waiting for admission. On the door, two bouncers, one black, one white, both wearing shiny black blouson jackets bearing the insignia Gold Standard Security, vetting everyone carefully, patting them down before letting them past.

There was no need, he reasoned, to speak to Valentine himself, not now. If one or two of his cohorts were around, maybe Raymond could plant a seed in the right ear. After all, if the weapon Sheena Snape was offering him was indeed the one that had almost terminated Jason Johnson, then Valentine might be willing to pay a lot more than it was worth on the open market. Double, at least. Nothing ventured, Ray-o, nothing gained.