Last Rites

Six

“I’ve already fucking told you,” Billy Scalthorpe insisted, his voice a raw whine against the backdrop of overlapping conversations. “How many more fuckin’ times?”

Carl Vincent shifted his weight on to his other foot. “How about once more?”

“Okay. Mark’s walkin’ out, right? Me and Adam, we’re arguin’ the toss up at the counter, Adam wants Coke without ice, and what they’ve give him is Coke with ice. Anyway, I turn me head, gonna shout to Mark to hang on, right? And there’s these two blokes come at him from both sides and before you can fuckin’ do anythin’ they’ve shot him in the fuckin’ head. Legged it out of here like they was in the fuckin’ Olympics.”

“Into a car, yes? There was a car waiting?”

Scalthorpe shook his head. “I didn’t see no car.”

Three different witnesses had spoken of a black four-door saloon, a Ford, most probably an Escort.

“But you saw them, the pair who attacked him?”

“Course I fuckin’ saw ’em.”

“You recognize them?”

“What?”

“These two, you knew who they were?”

“’Course I never.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Never seen them before?”

“I dunno.”

“Then you might have?”

“Yeh, I might. S’pose I might.”

“But you claimed not to have recognized them.”

Scalthorpe shook his head in amazement. “They was fuckin’ runnin’ away. All I saw was the backs of their fuckin’ heads, wa’n it? Fuckin’ baseball caps, arse to front, like they all wear.”

“All?”

“You know what I mean.”

Scalthorpe held Vincent’s stare for a moment, then blinked. A rosary of tiny white spots circled his mouth, mingling here and there with wisps of fledgling mustache. Vincent smiled: the two attackers were black, most probably a similar shade of black to himself. Yes, he knew what Scalthorpe meant. And if a leading sports commentator could claim, without embarrassment, not to be able to distinguish between one black soccer player and another, what else could he expect?

“You did get a good look, though,” Vincent said, “at what they were wearing?”

“The one that shot him,” Adam Bent was saying, “he had on this silver jacket, short, you know? Padded, maybe. Yeh, I think it was padded. Blue jeans. Trainers. Nike, maybe, I’m not sure. Blue. Blue and white.”

“And a cap,” Naylor prompted him, glancing up from his notebook. “You said something before about a cap.”

“Oh, yeh. Dark blue with some sort of logo. Letterin’, you know?”

Naylor nodded. “And his mate?”

“Sports gear. Green and white. Cap, too. Pulled back. Washington Redskins. I know that ’cause I used to have one meself. Lost it down Forest, larkin’ around after the match. You don’t go to Forest, do you?”

Naylor shook his head.

“Used to be a lot of your lot down there, Sat’days. Hanging round, outside the ground. Still, have to be in uniform, I s’pose, do something like that?”

Naylor nodded again. “The one who did the shooting,” he said, “how much of a chance did you get to look at his face?”

Either side of Burger King, a section of Upper Parliament Street was cordoned off with yellow tape. Traffic had slowed to a single line, snail-like, in each direction. A small crowd, mostly women and small children, had gathered outside the Disney shop opposite and stood gawking.

Millington switched off his mobile and went outside to where Resnick was standing on the pavement, talking to Sharon Garnett.

“Just spoke to the hospital,” Millington said. “In surgery now, Ellis. Stable. That’s all they’ll say.”

Resnick nodded. “Sharon’s got a witness, woman who was passing, reckons she got a good look at one of them when they ran out to the car. Almost knocked her over. She’s going to take her round to Central, take a look at some pictures.”

Millington nodded. “Photofit, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

They were still standing there when a bulky man, dark-haired, wearing a leather jacket that might have fitted some years before, ducked under the tape and clasped Resnick by the shoulder.

“Charlie.”

“Norman.”

“It’s a bugger.”

“You could say.”

“Bastards shooting one another in broad daylight.”

“Yes.”

Norman Mann was the head of the city’s Drug Squad, a square-shouldered man with a reputation for calling a spade a fucking spade. He and Resnick were around the same age, had worked their way up through the Force more or less together, and treated each other with more than a little bonhomie and a careful respect.

“Let’s talk, Charlie.”

“Right.” Resnick looked round at his sergeant. “Graham?”

“You get off. I’ll hang on here.”

They sat in the small bar of the Blue Bell, Mann with a pint of best and Resnick a tomato juice liberally laced with Worcestershire Sauce.

“This kid, Ellis,” Mann said, “we’ve had our eyes on him for a while. Bits of low-level dealing, Clifton estate mostly. Out at Bulwell. Amphetamines, Es. Once in a while, a little heroin. I thought you should know.”

Resnick nodded. “You’ve never pulled him in?”

Mann supped his ale. “A little chat, nothing more. If he’s dealing heroin, any quantity, he’s got to have a line through to Planer, but we haven’t figured out yet what it is.”

Resnick knew there were two main suppliers in the city, Planer and Valentine. Something else Resnick knew: Planer was white and Valentine was black. With Planer, it was mostly pills and heroin; Valentine’s fancy was more for marijuana, crack cocaine. But there was a lot of leeway in between. The pair of them had been targeted, questioned, arrested, grudgingly allowed back out on to the streets. Several of their minions had been successfully charged and convicted, and were now serving time. But not Planer, not Valentine.

“You think that’s what this might be about?” Resnick said. “Drugs?”

Mann shifted his head to one side in a lazy shrug.

“There was a stabbing out at Jimmy Peters’s place,” Resnick said, “early hours of the morning.”

“I heard.”

“Youth as came off worse, Wayne Feraday. He’s come your way too, I think.”

“Rings a bell.”

“Ellis, the one you’ve had an interest in-he was involved.”

“You brought him in?”

Resnick nodded.

“And then let him walk?”

“Nothing to hold him.”

Mann smiled with his eyes. “That’s all right, Charlie. I know how it goes.”

Resnick reached up to loosen his tie, but it had worked loose already. “Ellis, he was still under surveillance?”

“Like I say, Charlie, we had our eye on him, but no more than once in a while. Small potatoes. Nothing worth shelling out serious overtime.”

“Beyond the obvious, you think there could be a connection between him and Feraday? Something as makes this shooting more than tit for tat.”

Mann gave it some thought. “I suppose it’s a possibility.”

“Nothing more?”

“Like I say, both of them pretty small beer. But, yeh, I’ll ask around.” He lit a cigarette. “Likely you’ll do the same. Keep each other in the picture. That’s why I came looking for you, soon as I heard.”

“Right,” Resnick drained his glass and slid it aside.

“Last thing we want, Charlie, that bitch from Major Crimes finding an excuse to muscle in.” He winked. “Let’s keep this one tight to ourselves.”

Walking back down the street, the Theatre Royal at his back, Resnick thought about what Norman Mann had said. That bitch, as he called her, was Helen Siddons, the Detective Chief Inspector recently appointed to head the Major Crime Unit based in the city. When the post had been advertised, one of only three in the county, quite a few of Resnick’s friends and colleagues had argued he should throw his name in the ring. But in the end, partly through a sense of loyalty to his existing team, partly a distaste for the whole appointments rigmarole, he had declined and Siddons had been offered the post.

One of her first actions had been to poach Lynn Kellogg, possibly Resnick’s best officer, who had recently passed her sergeant’s boards and was waiting for an opening.

Siddons was a high-flier, ambitious, hard as anthracite. Whatever Norman Mann wished to the contrary, if she wanted her squad involved in what was going on, when push came to shove, there was little he-or Resnick-could do about it.