Last Rites

Four

Ben Fowles was the most recent recruit to Resnick’s squad. A local lad-made-good from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Fowles had been brought in when Mark Divine, victim of a life-shattering assault, had been forced to take early retirement on grounds of ill health.

Fowles was twenty-six and just inside the height requirement for the force at five foot eight. An open-faced young man with an outlook to match, ambitious, the hobbies section on his application form had read rock climbing, music, and soccer. When he wasn’t inching his way at weekends, handhold by handhold, up some slab of sheer granite in the Peak District, Fowles’s energies were divided evenly between playing in a band called Splitzoid, and harrying his opponents’ ankles in the busy and aggressive midfield mode pioneered by Nobby Stiles and kept to the fore more recently by the likes of David Batty and Paul Ince. After the heady days of trials for Chesterfield, Mansfield, and Notts County, Ben now practiced this particular brand of artistry for Heanor Town reserves.

“Splitzoid,” Graham Millington had asked, “whatever kind of a band is that?”

“Ah, well,” Fowles explained, “we used to be thrash metal with a trace of dub, right, but now we’re getting more into trip-hop and garage with a touch of techno on the side. Maybe we ought to change the name to match the new image, Serge, what d’you think?”

Millington’s reply went unrecorded.

Fowles gave him free passes to an upcoming gig in a pub on the Derby ring road and Millington promised to check with the wife, see what Madeleine had on her calendar. He had an idea it might be rehearsals for Carousel; if it wasn’t her University open access night-currently engaged in a survey of Magic Realism and the Mid-Century Novel, if Millington wasn’t very much mistaken.

Jimmy Peters was an entrepreneur of the old school, a failed rock-’n’roller with angina and a face like crumpled paper. He’d gone into management when a touring American singer-a minor celebrity with two top-fifty hits-had seized Peters’s guitar during a late-night session at the Boat Club and hurled it into the Trent. Jimmy Peters could take a hint. Within six months, he was managing more bands than he had fingers to count and poised to take over the license of his first premises. Take away the ballooning and the beard, and a low-rent Richard Branson was born.

“So, Jimmy,” Ben Fowles said, not for the first time, “from where you were standing, you couldn’t see exactly how the fight started?”

Peters scowled and rolled his eyes.

“But it was this lot as come in late …” From force of habit, Fowles checked his notebook. “… Ellis and his mates, they were the ones that started it?”

“If I’ve told you once …”

“And you knew them? They were what? Regulars?”

Peters lit a fresh Silk Cut from the nub of the old. Ash shone like glitter from the velvet lapels of his jacket. “They might’ve been here once or twice, it’s difficult to keep track.” He glanced round at the interior, shabby and stained in the daylight. Over by the entrance to the toilets, a cleaning woman was swabbing away listlessly with a mop and listening to local radio on a small receiver propped against the bucket. “Most nights it’s busy,” he said hopefully, “folk come and go.”

“But members, Jimmy?”

“Hmm?”

“All members. Condition of your license, bound to be, drinks served to members only, outside the normal hours.”

Peters smiled. “Members and their guests.”

“Duly signed in.”

“Not Ellis.”

“A minor slip-up. Small irregularity. Heat of the moment, it can happen. Well, you’ll understand.” Peters wafted smoke away from his face. “I’ve had words with the people concerned; it’ll not happen again.”

Fowles had had words with the door staff himself-a walking ad for Wonderbra in a black peek-a-boo dress and silver wedge sandals and a shaven-headed bouncer with an apparent steroid habit from Gold Standard Security. Neither had been exactly forthcoming. As opposed to those who’d faced up to one another when the fracas had started: they were all reading from the same script and well-rehearsed. Too much drink. Heat of the moment. No hard feelings. Handshakes all round.

Well, not exactly that. Not with one of the home team taking up coveted space in a high-tech hospital bed, a few thousand pounds of equipment monitoring his every cough.

“This bloke who was stabbed …”

“Wayne.”

“Yes, Wayne. He’s a regular, a member, right?”

Peters nodded.

“No reason, far as you know, why anybody might have it in for him?”

Peters pretended to give it some thought. The cleaner had switched stations and was listening to Woman’s Hour, a lively discussion about the benefits of folic acid in the early stages of pregnancy. “No,” Peters finally said. “Nothing that comes to mind.”

“He wouldn’t have got involved in something a bit chancy? Stepped out of line?”

Smoke drifted across Peters’s eyes. “Not his scene. Student, I believe. You know, mature. Clarendon College. Media Studies. Brought his mum in once, some kind of anniversary.”

Fowles had had enough. “If you do think of anything, you or any of the staff …” Out on the street, he breathed in deeply before setting off back to the station. There were dark patches close against the curb, where the blood had dried and not been washed away.

“He’ll live,” Millington announced, back from the hospital and pushing his head round the door to Resnick’s office. “Not look so pretty, mind. Seen better stitching on them cardigans the wife’s mother knocks out of a Christmas.”

“What’s he got to say about it?”

“Wayne? Not a great deal. Same yarn as everyone else, give or take. No idea who it was used the blade on him.”

“And you still don’t believe it?”

“How it happened, yes. Just something else won’t sit right, giving me indigestion. I mean, why him? Wayne. If it’s just a free-for-all, nothing more, how come he bears the brunt of it? Oh, and here …” Despite being wrapped inside two paper bags, the egg and sausage sandwich was copiously leaking grease as he passed it into Resnick’s hand, “… you’ll be wanting this. I’ll mash if you like? Mug of tea to wash it down.”

“Right, Graham.”

But when Resnick wandered out into the squad room some minutes later, he found Millington bending over his VDU screen rather than the kettle.

“Here, take a look at this by way of a CV.”

Resnick focused on the lines of slightly broken text. Wayne Feraday had graduated from unlawfully and maliciously throwing half-bricks at a moving train with intent to endanger the safety of its passengers, through the more normal taking of vehicles without consent, on to two charges relating to the illegal possession and sale of a controlled drug.

“Both charges dropped,” Millington said. “Insufficient evidence. Now why does that ring a bell?”

“But you think that accounts for what happened? Something drug-related?”

“Maybe Wayne’s short-changed someone on his supply. Got behind on his payments. Crossed over on to someone else’s turf. It’d not be the first time.”

Resnick’s face turned sour. “I just hope you’re not right. ’Cause if you are, it’ll not be the last.”

Not so much more than an hour later, Mark Ellis was standing on line with two of his mates in Burger King, wearing his new leather jacket and fresh plasters down one side of his face and across the knuckles of his right hand. Stupid fucking coppers! What did they know? He was feeling spruce enough to laugh at one of Billy Scalthorpe’s jokes, even though he’d heard it twice before.

At the counter, he joked with the ginger-haired lass who was serving, ordered a Whopper with cheese and a double portion of fries, onion rings, apple pie, and a large Coke. He was halfway back to the doors, Scalthorpe still haggling over his order, when the two black youths fell into step either side of him.

“Hungry,” said the one to his left, Redskins baseball cap reversed.

“Huh?”

“Hungry, yeh?”

“What the fuck’s it to you?”

“Here,” said the youth to the other side, reaching inside his silver zip-up jacket. “Eat this.”

And he pushed the barrel end of an automatic pistol hard against Ellis’s cheek and squeezed the trigger.