Last Rites

Thirty-two

Sean was playing some kind of private game with his cereal, carefully pushing as many pieces toward the sides of the bowl as he could, then placing his spoon in the center and twirling it fast to send the cereal spinning. Milk, not surprisingly, covered his end of the table in a fine spray. Sandra, doing her best to ignore him, was tucking into toast and peanut butter while concentrating on the problem page in Smash Hits. Derek, standing, white shirt, tie as yet unfastened, second-best suit trousers, cup of tea in hand, was listening to the traffic reports on local radio; one of the new reps was making his first call on a major customer in West Bromwich and Derek was going along to smooth the way.

“That was weird,” Lorraine said, coming in from the hall.

“What’s that?”

“Your sister, Maureen. That was her on the phone.”

“This hour of the morning?”

“I was just about to shout you, but she said she wanted to speak to me.”

Derek gave the tea a swirl round inside the pot and freshened his cup. “What about?”

“Some stuff she’s got, clothes, you know, for the shop. A dress and … oh, I don’t know, things she’s taken on part-exchange, she reckons they’d be great for me, just my size …”

“Sean,” Derek said sharply, “just stop doing that.”

“Anyway, she wants me to go round there, this evening. Try them on. Says she could let me have them really cheap.”

“So go. What’s the problem? I’ll be back round six-thirty, seven. I can look after the … Sean, I thought I just told you …”

“Yes, I will. I said I would. Just strikes me as a bit funny, that’s all.”

“How come?”

“Well, in all the time she’s had that shop …”

Sean overdid his exploration of centrifugal force. The bowl skidded away from under his spoon, careening across the table and splashing milk and soggy cereal over Sandra’s magazine and down the front of her school blouse. Sandra jumped back and yelled, and her last piece of toast landed face down on the floor. Derek clipped Sean round the back of the head and then, once again, harder, for good measure.

“Derek, don’t …”

“I warned him.”

Sean was cowering behind his chair, wondering whether or not to cry. When she thought no one was looking, Sandra gave him a quick kick in the back of his calf and went up to her room to change.

“Mum, she …”

“Shut it!” Derek said, thrusting a warning finger toward his face. “Just shut it, once and for all.”

Sean stood there, rubbing his leg and staring at the floor.

“Derek, you’d better be going,” Lorraine said, glancing at the clock. “You know what the traffic’s like on the ring road.”

Derek fumbled with his tie. “If it looks like I’m going to be late, I’ll give you a call.”

Lorraine nodded, collecting up the breakfast things and carrying them toward the sink.

Derek’s jacket and briefcase were out in the hall. “I’m off, then.”

“Hope it goes well.”

“Thanks.” She half turned her face toward him and he kissed her on the cheek.

Lorraine refilled the kettle and switched it on. Just time for ten minutes by herself with the paper before taking the kids.

Standing there at the window, waiting for the water to boil, she watched the milkman bustling from his float to houses right and left, the man on the opposite corner wave to his wife before driving off, a pale trail of smoke rising from his exhaust. Two teenage boys clambered over the fence into the field, rucksacks slung over their shoulders, taking a short cut to school. Had she really seen what she’d thought she’d seen, or had it been her imagination playing tricks?

She spooned instant coffee into her mug and tried not to notice the racket Sandra and Sean were making in the other room.

Anil Khan had walked the short distance from Major Crimes to Canning Circus and now sat in the detective inspector’s office, watching Resnick demolish the last of a Leicester ham and Jarlsberg sandwich on rye.

Khan was in his late twenties and had been in the Force for close to seven years; after a somewhat hesitant start on the beat, he had developed into a good community policeman, applying for a transfer to CID when he judged, correctly, the time was right. Eighteen months working as a detective in Central Division had proved his mettle; he had served diligently, studied hard, kept his head down when discretion was what he thought was needed. Remember, lad, you don’t have to fight every battle, every time.

He had first worked with Resnick closely on the investigation into Nicky Snape’s apparent suicide while in Local Authority care and they had complemented one another well: Resnick’s instincts, hewn from experience, Khan’s meticulous preparation, his logical eye. It had been no surprise when Helen Siddons had snapped him up for her Major Crime Squad, nor that Khan had been pleased to go.

“Right,” Resnick said, screwing up the paper the sandwich had been wrapped in and tossing it in the bin. “Paul Finney-what’s new?”

Though Khan was sitting upright already, he made a move as if to straighten his back before speaking. He was wearing a four-button suit, nicely cut, a pale-blue shirt and muted tie. His hair was perfectly in place. “What I’ve been checking into, sir, concentrating on, is the greyhound racing. At one point, Finney owned three. Co-owned with a man named Newlands. Perry Newlands. He’s in catering-hot dogs, pies, that kind of thing. He’s got a number of vans, they seem to go from place to place. Race meetings, in the main. Colwick, of course. Lincoln. Farther afield. Fakenham. York.”

Resnick nodded. “The dogs. Not his any more?”

“No, sir. Sold his interest to a Jack Dainty …”

“Ex-Vice?”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant in the Vice Squad for six years. Resigned eighteen months ago on grounds of ill health.”

“Under suspension at the time, wasn’t he?” Resnick asked.

“Allegations of taking backhanders, asking another officer to tamper with evidence. Nothing was proved.”

“It rarely is.”

Khan coughed discreetly into the back of his hand.

“Finney and Jack Dainty, this suggests they’re pals.”

“I’m not sure, sir. Not yet.”

Resnick got to his feet. “Keep digging. If Finney’s still spending time hanging around dog tracks and the like, chances are he fancies a flutter, and if he’s into gambling, I’d not be surprised to find he’s into debt.”

“Right, sir.”

Khan was almost out of the door when Resnick called him back. “You’ve thought of this yourself, I don’t doubt, but the officer Dainty was involved with, those allegations of fixing evidence-shouldn’t be difficult to find out who it was.”

What Lorraine liked to do, some days, was take her lunch hour early and drive into the city; leave the car in that new car park outside the Victoria Centre, the one where the bus station used to be, and wander round inside window shopping. Occasionally, she’d make an impulse buy, often not. But it pleased her to think she could do so if she wished.

Today, she thought hard about a pair of shoes in Dolcis, plain black with a low heel, quite stylish in their way, useful certainly; just inside the entrance to the new House of Fraser, there on the ground floor, she toyed with the idea of some nicely packaged soaps, all scented with fruits and herbs, something to brighten up the bathroom.

She was turning away, empty-handed, when she saw him, Evan, no disputing it, watching her from less than a dozen meters away. Evan, wearing a short leather jacket, blue jeans, hands in his pockets beside a display of men’s cologne. Watching her and smiling uncertainly.

Lorraine didn’t know what to do.

She turned away and began to walk, not hurrying, not wanting to run, out into the broad aisle that led to the rest of the center. And by the time she needed to make a decision, left or right, he was there at her elbow, something of a smile still on his face, uncertain.

“Mrs. Jacobs, it’s Evan. From the …”

“I know who you are.”

They stood there, not quite facing, while people spilled around them.

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“What about?”

“Your brother Michael.” But she knew the answer, had read it in his eyes before he spoke.

They went back inside the department store and up several short escalators to a shiny cafeteria where they sat among ladies with hats, Lorraine with hot chocolate, Evan with a pot of Yorkshire tea and a slice of lemon cake that stuck to the ends of his fingers.

“What it is,” Evan stumbled, “all this stuff about him, you know, going off to some Greek island, somewhere in Portugal, Spain, something like that. Well, I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think that’s right. Don’t, you know, believe it. Not really. No. I don’t think that’s what he’s done.”

Lorraine sitting there, staring at him until Evan had to look away. “Why?” she said, surprised at the steadiness of her voice. “Why should you think that? What did Michael say?”

“Nothing.”

“It must’ve been something, or else …”

“No, really. It’s just-I don’t know-a feeling.”

Lorraine laughed. “What are you? Psychic?”

“No. No. I … I can’t explain. I’m sorry, I know it must sound pretty stupid. I …” He stirred sugar into his tea and lifted the cup to his mouth with both hands.

Lorraine eased her head a little closer. “If you’re right-just suppose-what concern is it of yours?”

Evan looked at her as if she had said something absurd. “It’s my responsibility, that’s why. You can see that, plain as me. He was in my charge. What happened, it was down to me.”

Lorraine was wide-eyed, slowly shaking her head. “And now-what? — you’ve come to look for him, I suppose? Take him back.”

“Yes.”

“And how the hell d’you propose to do that?”

“I don’t know. I thought, you know, talk to some people first, people Michael would have spoken to at the funeral, yourself and so on …”

“What about the police? Don’t you think they’ve done all that?”

“Yes, but they didn’t find him, did they?”

“And you will?”

“I have to.”

There was a certainty in his voice that was absurd and chilling.

Lorraine spooned away the skin that had formed over the top of her chocolate and watched as Evan ate a section of his cake and washed it down with tea before licking his fingers clean.

Lorraine looked at her watch. “Look, Evan, I’m only on my break from work.” She pushed back her chair. “I’ve got to be getting back.”

“I thought…” he said quickly, half out of his seat. “I thought you might help.”

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing to help you with.”

He pulled a sheet of lined paper from his pocket and thrust it toward her. When she glanced at it, she recognized the name of a small hotel on the Mansfield Road.

“That’s where I’m staying,” Evan said.

Lorraine tore the paper in half and half again and let it fall through her hands.

“Please,” Evan said.

She turned and walked away.

Sharon Garnett was drinking instant coffee at her desk, a half-eaten Mars bar resting on a pile of blank incident report forms. “This time of the afternoon,” she said, “I always need some kind of sugar rush, you know.”

Resnick pulled over a chair. “Jack Dainty. Was he still in Vice when you were there?”

Sharon gave it a moment’s thought. “Only just. I think we overlapped by-oh, I don’t know-a couple of months. Three at the most.”

“You remember anything about him? This charge of interfering with evidence?”

“He was overweight, I remember that. Bit of a fat bastard.” She laughed. “Too many Mars bars.” Her face grew serious. “Other things, too. Only rumors, mind, but word was he turned a blind eye to some of the girls if they, you know, let him have a free ride. This evidence thing, I’m less sure. Something to do with pornographic videos. One minute, they were showing them in the back room for the lads, standing room only; the next, they’d disappeared. Dainty’d been the arresting officer.”

Sharon went thoughtful for a moment, drank some more of her coffee. “There was something else, only a whisper. Something involving drugs.” She thought a while longer, then shook her head. “No. It’s gone. If I ever knew the details at all.”

“You could find out, ask around? You’ve got friends still in Vice.”

She made a face. “Get the idea I’m turning against one of their own, even someone like Dainty, they’ll not be friends much longer.”

Resnick held her gaze for a long moment before rising slowly to his feet. “If you think it’s too difficult, of course, I’ll understand.”

Sharon laughed; snorted rather than laughed. “No, you’re all right. I’ll do what I can.”