Last Rites

Thirty-nine

Millington was waiting for him with a face most undertakers would have given their eyeteeth for. “That young prison officer,” he said. “Evan.”

“What about him?”

“Couple pulled into a lay-by, early hours. Wore out, wanting a rest. Loughborough road, not so far short of Keyworth. Bloke got out, wandered over t’field edge for a piddle. Found Evan face down in the ditch. Back of his head stove in. Been there a good twenty-four hours, far as we can tell, maybe longer.”

Resnick cursed softly.

“What he was doing back in these parts, Lord alone knows.”

“Follow it up, Graham. Talk to whoever’s handling the investigation. Find out what you can. God knows how it fits in with all this, but if it does we want to know.”

Resnick had scarcely had time to read the night’s reports before Helen Siddons was on the line, her voice raw and tired.

“I’ve just sent Khan round to see you, Charlie, something else about our friend Finney. Just might be the lead we’re looking for. You wouldn’t have time to follow up on it yourself? That explosion last night, we’re jumping round like blue-arsed flies as it is.”

Khan had followed Finney up the Mansfield Road, assuming he was heading home. Instead, Finney had carried on driving, north out of the city. Some ten miles short of Newstead Abbey, he’d turned off on to a small single-carriage road, not much more than a track. Three-quarters of a mile along, Finney had parked close by a small house, a cottage. White walls, a garden, a small cobbled yard. Somebody’s home. Washing on the line and a child’s bike, a red tricycle, on its side near the front door.

“You saw him go inside?” Resnick asked.

“No, sir,” Khan answered carefully. “Not actually saw him. But there was no sign of him anywhere else, nowhere else he could go, so I assumed he’d gone in. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I could hang around. Too risky. I drove back down to the main road and waited. A little under an hour later, Finney reappeared and this time he did drive home to Sherwood.”

“This place,” Resnick said, “can you show me on the map?”

“Definitely, sir. You think it’s important?”

Small lines crinkled up the corners of Resnick’s eyes. “I think it might be, yes.”

Resnick drove north on the A60, the same road Anil Khan had followed the day before. The edges of the city soon left behind, he passed between gently sloping arable fields divided by low hedgerows, here and there a cluster of trees, a tractor standing deserted by an open gate. Lapwings. Crows.

The cottage was as Khan had described it, picture perfect. Resnick left the car a little way down, where the lane slightly broadened, and walked back, not hurrying. The warmth from the sun was such that he had no need of a coat.

As he passed through the gate, a small child, a toddler, came running through the open door and stopped, uncertain, at the sight of him. Resnick smiled and the child, a boy, turned and ran inside. Moments later, his mother appeared, holding his hand.

“Hello.” Just slightly anxious. Wary. “Can I help?”

She was in her thirties, Resnick guessed, brown hair, an open face, quite tanned; wearing a loose floral-print dress, tennis shoes, unfastened, on her feet. Her pregnancy was far enough along for it to show.

“I was looking for Paul,” he said. “Paul Finney.”

“Oh,” relaxing, “you’ve missed him by a good hour or so. Work, is it?”

Resnick nodded and she smiled.

“It’s a wonder anyone can keep up with all his comings and goings,” she said, the child pulling at her hand, anxious to be away. “Sometimes I’m blessed if I can myself. But like Paul says, it’s all part of the job. Adam, don’t wriggle so. Be still.” The boy succeeded in breaking free and stood a little way off, staring up at Resnick, thumb in mouth.

She smiled again. “Who’d marry a policeman, eh?”

Resnick smiled back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I never introduced myself. Laura. Laura Finney.”

Resnick shook the proffered hand without offering a name in exchange.

“And that there is Adam.” Adam frowned and turned his face away. “We don’t get many visitors, living out here. You get out of the habit of being sociable, I’m afraid. It is lovely, though. Days like this, especially. Paul says he wouldn’t change it for anything.”

Resnick followed her gaze, down across the garden and the lane to the broad field opposite, a line of poplar trees breaking the low horizon.

“You work together, do you, you and Paul? I’ve not met so many of his colleagues. Likes to keep them separate where he can, you see, work and family.”

Resnick assured her that he understood.

Laura pointed back toward the house. “I could make a cup of tea. It wouldn’t take long to get the kettle boiling.”

“No, it’s okay. Thanks, but better not. Just passing, you know how it is.”

She brushed at a strand of falling hair. “Maybe some other time.”

“Maybe.”

The boy was close against her now, thumb still in his mouth, hanging on to her skirt, and for a moment she smiled down at him indulgently. “Lord knows what he’ll be like when this one comes along.” Patting her belly. “Jealousy won’t be in it.

“I’ll tell Paul you called,” she said when Resnick was at the gate.

“Yes, please. You do that.”

For several minutes, Resnick sat in the car, windows wound down, thinking. Once or twice, he heard the boy’s voice, shrill and sweet on the air.

Finney’s house was on the edge of Sherwood, not far from the City Hospital. A two-story semi in need of some paint, net curtains at the lower windows. A cat, orange and brown, lay asleep on top of a green wheelie-bin. Resnick rang the bell and, when it didn’t seem to work, used the knocker. A woman’s voice and then a child’s. The woman opened the door just enough to show her face and little more.

“Mrs. Finney?”

“Yes. Who wants to know?” She pulled the door all the way back and came out on to the step. A small woman, maybe an inch or two over five foot, blue eyes, brittle hair. Forty, Resnick wondered? She was wearing a baggy top and jeans. “I thought you were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oxfam. One of those.” She looked at him keenly. “You’re on the Job, though, aren’t you? You can always tell.”

“Paul. I don’t suppose he’s here?”

“Is he ever?” She shook her head. “If we didn’t need the overtime, I’d tell him to chuck it in tomorrow. Get something normal, nine to five. None of this working nights, weekends.” She glanced up at him. “How does your wife cope?”

Resnick hesitated too long.

“Left you, did she? Had enough.” From inside the house, there was a clatter and a fall, followed by a child’s cry, boy or girl Resnick couldn’t tell. “I’ll be glad,” the woman said, “when she goes off to school with the others. You have any kids?”

Resnick shook his head.

“Wise. Nobody thanks you for it.” The cries got louder and she shouted back into the house, “All right, all right, I’m coming.”

“Sorry to trouble you,” Resnick said, backing away.

“No problem.”

The door closed heavily behind him and, slowing his steps, Resnick stroked the cat as he passed.

When Finney walked out of the building and across the car park that afternoon, Helen Siddons and Anil Khan were waiting for him, two other Serious Crimes officers parked nearby in case of trouble.

“Paul Finney?”

“Yes?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Siddons.”

“I know who you are.”

“Then you won’t have any objection to coming with us, answer a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“See if we can’t clear a few things up.”

“Does this mean I’m under arrest?”

“Not at this stage, no.”

“Good.” He moved between her and Khan, heading toward his car. “Because I’m off duty and I was just making my way home.”

“Really?” Siddons said. “And which home is that? Which of the two?”

Finney stopped in his tracks.

Finney was handsome in an indeterminate way, the sort of face you acknowledged and then forgot, perfect for his chosen line of work. He had quite a strong nose, brown eyes, dark hair which he wore without a parting and which hung down toward his collar a little more than was fashionable. Warm, in the room, he had removed his jacket and hung it across the back of his chair, unbuttoned the cuffs of his white shirt. Which wife, Helen Siddons wondered, had ironed that?

From time to time, Finney glanced, pointedly, at the watch on his wrist. “How much longer is this going to take?”

“That depends,” Siddons said. She was sitting across the table from Finney, a buff-colored manila file in front of her; Anil Khan sat alongside, his notebook open, the pages so far blank. There was a tape-recorder with twin decks attached to the wall, so far not switched on.

“This is informal,” Siddons had said at the beginning. “At this stage, at least. I assume you’d prefer it that way. Of course, it’s up to you. How long it takes to get certain things established.”

“Such as?”

Siddons smiled. “Drew Valentine, for starters.”

Finney didn’t miss a beat. “What about him?”

“You know him, what he does? How he-I hesitate to use the word ‘earns’-how he makes a living?”

Finney not looking at her now, bored, staring idly at the cream-painted walls. This interview room like the others, like the whole two floors of the old General Hospital into which the Serious Crimes Squad had moved, had yet to lose its surface sheen.

“Paul?”

“Mm?”

“You know what he does, Valentine?”

“Of course, it’s my job to know.” Finney looking at Siddons again, Khan, like a pet beside her. If she thought this was a way to get under his skin, the same questions over and over again, she could forget it. He knew this game, this and all the others. It was his training, too; what he did best.

Displaying a certain degree of weariness, Siddons opened the file and read through the top sheet with exaggerated care. “Can you explain,” she said eventually, “the circumstances in which Valentine, having been taken into custody on four separate occasions on suspicion of being in possession of significant quantities of a controlled substance, more than could reasonably be ascribed to his personal use, should have been set free without any charges having been filed?”

Finney shook his head.

“No?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember those incidents clearly.”

“Well, let me refresh your memory.” Siddons lifted the page from the desk. “Twenty-seventh of October 1996. Fourteenth of February 1997. Fourth of June 1997. First of April 1998.”

Finney shook his head.

“Are you telling me you don’t recall anything about those occasions?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What about the most recent, April of this year?”

“Without my notebook, case notes, I’m afraid …”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

Despite himself, Finney smiled.

Siddons got up from her chair and paced the room, four paces to the rear wall, four to the side, four more to the door. Khan kept looking at Finney, the confidence behind his eyes. When Siddons sat back down, she took out her cigarettes and offered one to Finney, another excuse for him to shake his head.

“When did you last see him, Valentine? And don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“I don’t remember.”

“It was three days ago, three nights.”

Finney allowed himself mild surprise. “It was?”

“At a restaurant, Hyson Green. The Cassava.”

“Red-pepper soup, they do a really good red pepper soup. Spicy.”

“You were there with Valentine.”

“I was?”

“Good buddies, bosom pals. You were seen on the pavement outside, back slapping, shaking hands. Best of friends.”

Finney smiled. “It’s my job.”

“Palling up with drug dealers?”

“Letting them believe that to be the case. How else are you going to find out what’s going down?”

“And that’s what you were doing? What you do?”

“Of course.”

“Getting on the inside track?”

“Yes.”

“So why is it this inside track you’ve been cultivating so assiduously with Valentine hasn’t resulted in a single arrest? A single case going to court? Being proved?”

Half smiling, Finney shrugged.

“Not, surely, because you are not very good at your job?”

“Not for me to say.”

“And not because there was any advantage to you in Valentine staying free?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe he could give me information others couldn’t.” Finney tapped the edge of the file. “You see how many arrests are down to me, cases which came to court, got a result. How many dealers off the street.”

Siddons blew smoke off to one side. “Leaving the field clearer for Valentine.”

“That’s nature, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Abhorring a vacuum. Maybe sometimes it’s a case of better the devil you know.”

“What you’re saying, there was a deliberate policy, on behalf of the Drugs Squad …”

Finney held up a hand. “I didn’t say that …”

“On behalf of the Drug Squad …”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“On what? Your own behalf, then? Unilateral. Pick up a few crumbs from Valentine, bang up a few street corner dealers, strictly small time, let Valentine go free. Is that it? Paul, is that what happened, what’s been happening?”

Finney shifted his weight, almost imperceptibly, from one buttock to the other.

“What else has been in it for you? Some other gain? I mean, I’m sure your friend Valentine must have felt inclined to show his gratitude in some way you both could understand? Or am I supposed to believe it was all in kind, I scratch your back if you scratch mine? That and the odd bowl of soup thrown in.”

“I never,” Finney said, “accepted a free meal. Not policy. Always paid my way. I expect I’ve got the receipts at home somewhere, if you’re interested, filed away.”

“Like the wives, the children, each in their own compartment, is that what you mean?”

Finney’s eyes narrowed. “You stay away from that, you hear? Steer well away. That’s nothing to do with what we’re discussing here.”

Siddons blew a lazy smoke ring. “Maybe you could tell me, Paul-I’m sure you’re familiar-exactly what the law says about bigamy?”

Finney scraped back his chair, started to stand, but she caught his sleeve. “When you were with Valentine three nights back, did he tell you he was expecting some kind of delivery the next day? Is that how come somebody knew exactly where and when to go wading in there, waving guns? Whose back were you scratching that evening, Paul, other than your own?”

Slowly, Finney released a long breath, a smile. Yes, he thought, you nearly did it that time, didn’t you? Almost got me going and no mistake. Carefully, he sat back down.

“I rather think the informal part of the proceedings is now over, don’t you? Before we go any farther, I’m requesting the opportunity to speak to my immediate superior and my Police Federation representative. Any more questions, I’m afraid they’ll have to be asked in the presence of a solicitor.”