Last Rites

Thirty-eight

They were in Helen Siddons’s office, Resnick, Norman Mann, and Siddons herself. Despite the relative warmth outside, the windows were closed tight and the air was thickening with blue-gray smoke.

“So what we’ve got,” Siddons said, “this sorry article, Raymond Cooke, shot to pieces for no reason anyone can think of. A penny-ante restaurant raided in the early hours of the morning by two heavily armed men who got away with a couple of hundred from the till, a couple of Rolexes, and small change. That’s the cock-and-bull story they’re offering us?”

Drew Valentine, Leo Warner, and two others had been questioned by teams of officers since first light and so far none of them had deviated from their prearranged story. The interior of the Cassava had been searched and photographed by Scene of Crime. Raymond Cooke’s body had been shipped out in a heavy-duty plastic bag to the morgue.

Before the police had arrived, there had been time for Valentine and his crew to effect a minimum of salvage work, if not as much as they would have liked. First off, the Dutchman and his brother had been bustled into their car and clean away; by now, they were safely out of the country. Second, the Beretta had been stashed out back in a bin of vegetable peelings and old bones, from where it had been taken, wrapped and weighted, and thrown into the River Trent. If Valentine had had his way, and the time, that was where Raymond’s body would have been, too. Less to explain away.

“You knew him, Charlie. This Cooke. His being there, that time of night, it make any sense to you?”

Resnick shook his head. “Not right now, no.”

“Not dealing then, working for Valentine.”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Norman?”

“Cooke, I don’t see as he matters a toss one way or another. No, this was serious, a rip-off. Some other gang’s come in, taken Valentine for everything he’s got.” He shook his head, cleared his throat. “Christ knows what they got away with, thousands, probably, cash or kind.”

Siddons picked up her coffee cup, but it was already empty. “Any idea who might have been responsible?”

Mann laughed. “Too many. Could be someone lightweight, chancing his arm, looking to move up. I might’ve reckoned Jason Johnson for it, if he’d not already been nursing a sore head. If it’s not that, it’s one of the big boys, out to keep Valentine in line, make a tidy profit on the side.”

“Come on, Norman,” Siddons said. “Get off the bloody fence. You’re the one supposed to have your finger on the pulse. Or is that just so much bullshit?”

The look in Mann’s eyes was smarting and dangerous. “Bullshit, nothing. You want to know what I think, the way this was planned, executed, I’d say this was a major player, confident, not afraid.”

“Names?”

“Planer, that’s where my money’d be. Not that he’d risk dirtying his hands himself. No one too close to him, either. He’d bring somebody in from outside. Manchester, London. Whoever it was, they’ll be well home by now, late breakfast, celebration. Champagne. Bastards.”

“And it’s not worth picking him up? Planer?”

“Not unless you want him laughing in your face.”

Siddons scraped back her chair and walked to the window, stared out. “Charlie, you go along with that?”

“Norman’s area, not mine.”

“Listen,” Mann said. “Either Valentine knows who ripped him off, or he’s got a pretty good idea. And he’s not about to sit around and do nothing about it. We might not be able to lay a hand on Planer, but that’s not to say Valentine won’t find a way himself.”

Siddons knotted her hands tight. “That’s the one thing, the one thing I dreaded, the likes of Valentine taking the law into their own hands.”

“Bread-and-butter stuff,” Norman Mann said with a smile. “Slag-on-slag. Long as they stick to shooting themselves, why not keep our heads down, let ’em get on with it?”

“And if another Raymond Cooke gets in the way?” Resnick asked.

“Own up, Charlie,” Mann sneered. “Who the fuck cares about an arsewipe like that?”

Resnick didn’t recognize her at first, sitting close against the wall adjacent to his office door. Save for a few stray wisps, her red hair was hidden beneath a dark beret, the only makeup careful around the eyes. She was wearing a plain, button-through dress and flat shoes. Terry Cooke’s former common-law wife.

“Eileen, come in. Come on inside.” Holding the door, he let her precede him. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

She shook her head and he motioned toward a chair, sat down himself.

“I’m sorry about Raymond.”

Eileen bit down into her lower lip. “I’ve just come from seeing the body.”

Ray-o’s mother had run off when he was four, his father had not been seen in years, his uncle dead by his own hand; Resnick supposed Eileen, in a manner of speaking, was his next of kin.

“They pulled back this sheet,” Eileen said, not looking at Resnick, but at the floor. “They pulled it back and he was just laying there like … like meat. Something they’d hunted and shot down, that’s what I kept thinking. Meat.”

When Resnick had first run across Raymond, the lad had been working at the abattoir close by the County ground, up to his elbows in tubs of guts, intestines, blood, and bone. The stink of it had clung to his hair, his body, had followed him everywhere, rank, like a second skin.

“I’m sorry, Eileen. Sorry you had to see him like that.”

“Whatever he’d done, whatever he was like, he never deserved that.”

She fumbled for a tissue and Resnick waited, patient. Noisily Eileen blew her nose. “Nobody’ll tell me, not really, tell me what happened.”

Resnick leaned slowly forward. “There was an armed robbery at the restaurant. Some shooting. Raymond, as far as we can tell, just happened to be there at the wrong time. Unfortunately he got in the way, the line of fire. Of course, we’re making inquiries, but for now that’s all we know.”

“It’s not right.”

“No.”

“You’re not going to bother, are you? Over Ray-o, I mean. You’re not going to be pulling out all the stops because of him.”

“Eileen, I assure you. We’re taking it very seriously.”

“Yeah? And so far you’ve got nothing, right? You go on about how he just happened to be there. I don’t think Ray-o’d set foot in that place in his life. I know him. I don’t think he would, not without a reason.”

Resnick bent toward her. “There’s nothing you can think of that would help, like you say, give us a reason for why he was there?”

“No.”

“Maybe if you thought about it …”

“I told you, I don’t know …”

“Okay.” He sat back again. “I’m sorry there isn’t any more I can tell you. Not now, anyway.”

Pushing the tissue down into her bag, Eileen got to her feet. “Don’t hold my breath, right?”

He waited till she was almost at the door. “Sheena, Sheena Snape, you know her a little, don’t you?”

“A bit. Yes, why?”

“She and Raymond, were they, you know, friends? Anything like that?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Only I was in the shop not so many days back and she was there. Raymond seemed embarrassed at me seeing them together. I thought there might be something going on between them, that’s all.”

Eileen shook her head. “Ray-o, he might not have been God’s gift, bless him, but he knew better than to get involved with a slag like that.”

“Business, then. I remember Raymond making out she was there to buy something, but she didn’t back him up. Maybe she was the one with something to sell.”

Now Eileen was looking at him hard. “And you think, whatever it was, it might have something to do with Ray-o getting shot?”

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know.”

“Honest?”

He looked at her questioningly.

“You tried to get round me once before, remember? When Terry was still alive. All nice and understanding. Getting me to inform against him, that’s what you were trying to do. Grass. Same as what you tryin’ now. You want me to go round Sheena’s, don’t you? Do your dirty work for you. ’cause you know, after what happened to her brothers, she wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

Resnick took a breath. “All I’m saying …”

Eileen raised her head. “I know what you’re saying. And I don’t want to hear.”

What Resnick heard was the quick closing of the door and footsteps, fast across the floor.

Maureen was serving a customer when Lorraine walked in, Maureen doing her level best to persuade a matronly body from Wollaton that gold chiffon was the very thing for her husband’s firm’s annual dinner. When she saw Lorraine, Maureen took a deep breath and carried on, Lorraine standing off to one side, feigning interest in a deep-green wool and silk mix jacket by Yohji Yamamoto, a snip at £499.99.

As soon as the customer had left the shop, Maureen went to Lorraine and held her tight. “Have you heard anything?” she asked, stepping away.

Lorraine shook her head. “That’s what I came to ask you.”

“I’ve not seen him since yesterday, yesterday early.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“No.” Maureen shook her head vehemently. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I don’t ever want to see that bastard again.”

Lorraine caught hold of Maureen’s hand. “Did he …” She was looking Maureen in the eye. “Did he hurt you?”

Maureen attempted a smile. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

“And you really don’t know where he went?”

“No. I haven’t a clue.” She gave Lorraine’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “I wish there was something I could tell you. But I’m afraid I don’t know anything.” She paused. “Except I’m glad he’s gone.”

Lorraine half turned toward the door. “If you do see him …”

“I won’t, but …”

“If you do, tell him to be careful, all right?”

When Lorraine walked up the brightly painted steps toward the car park, she could feel the unsteadiness vibrating in her legs.

The news on all channels carried extracts from the Chief Constable’s press conference: serious points, seriously made. Society. Responsibility. The public good. A number of drug-related incidents. The unfortunate spread of firearms. Firm policing. Trust. Decisive action. With a slow and deliberate movement, the Chief Constable removed his rimless spectacles and delivered his final sentences straight to camera. “There will be no no-go areas, no yielding of the streets to lawlessness. You have my word-the situation is under control.”

Somewhere between midnight and one, a maroon convertible slowed almost to a halt outside Planer’s casino, bass speakers booming, and from the rear seat a young black man hurled a homemade firebomb into the foyer.

It had started with a vengeance.