Last Rites

Eight

Resnick had been close enough to the Victoria Centre to nip into the market for a quick espresso. Two quick espressos. He was on his way back down the escalator by the Emmett water sculpture when his mobile phone rang. The sound of Millington’s voice immediately put him on the alert. “Graham, where are you?”

“Back at the station. Prisoner escaped on the motorway not far south of here. Category A.”

“Our concern?”

“Our patch. Seems he was at his mother’s funeral.”

“Under escort?”

There was no hiding the sneer in the sergeant’s tone. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

Resnick cursed. “Someone we know?”

“Preston. Michael Preston.”

It had been a while back, Jack Skelton’s case and not his, but Resnick remembered the details well enough. “Anyone hurt?”

“One of the prison officers as was with him. Getting himself patched in Queen’s. Pal’s there with him, holding his hand.”

“Okay, you know the drill; airports, railway stations, buses, all the usual.”

“In hand. And I made a quick check, wives, girlfriends, the like. Looks as if closest family he’s got left’s his sister. I’ve told Carl to get over there, soon as he can free himself up at Burger King. See what she’s got to say for herself, nose around.”

Resnick adjusted his step so as to avoid a heavily pregnant woman coming out of Boots. “How about the hospital?”

“Sharon’s on her way there now.”

“Tell her I’ll meet her there, A and E. Ten minutes.” Resnick switched off his phone and cut through Jessops on to Mansfield Road in search of a cab.

Still a rarity in the Force, not only a woman detective, but also black, Sharon Garnett was doing her best to fill Lynn Kellogg’s shoes.

Before joining the police in London, she had worked as both singer and actor-all the stereotypes, as she liked to say, it’s a wonder I missed out on boxer-and had first met Resnick in the course of a murder inquiry when she was stationed in Lincoln. From there, it had been a comparatively short journey west across the Wolds.

She took the entrance into the hospital grounds just short of the University Park, left and left again, and within minutes she was inside and on the main floor, making her way between chairs and benches crowded with the city’s walking wounded: young men with shaved heads and tattoos, and old men who cursed whenever the name called was not their own; women who by now could have walked in blindfold and sometimes did, eyes swollen and closed from too much crying, from the swing of an angry fist; babies who howled and toddlers who bawled, and kids who ran up and down the aisles until one or another slipped or someone’s temper snapped and the tears they’d been warned it would end in finally arrived.

Resnick was standing near the inquiry desk, hands in the pockets of his shapeless gray suit.

“Third cubicle along,” the harassed nurse said in response to his question, head turning away before the words were fully out.

Wesley was stretched out on a narrow bed, eyes closed. His left arm lay folded across his abdomen, bandaged and strapped. Evan, who had been sitting in a chair alongside, scrambled to his feet when Resnick and Sharon Garnett entered, mistaking them initially for medical staff, but quickly realizing the truth.

“How is he?” Resnick asked, nodding in the direction of the bed.

“Okay. He’ll be, yeh, okay.”

“Sleeping?”

“They gave him something, you know, for the pain.”

“And you?”

Without willing it to, Evan’s hand went to the plaster that had been taped across his neck after the small wound had been cleaned. “I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Good. Let’s find somewhere, get a cup of tea or something, and you can tell me what happened.”

Avoiding Resnick’s eyes, Evan nodded: it wasn’t a prospect that filled him with enthusiasm.

“Sharon,” Resnick said, pushing aside the curtain as they left the cubicle. “Perhaps you could have a word with the doctor on duty. Anything that might be useful. Catch up with us in the canteen.”

“Sure.” Sharon smiled. “Mine’s coffee, black.”

Evan had been running over the events in his mind, deliberating how much of the story he should tell, how much it was wise to hold back. Decisions he’d taken that at the time … well, he wasn’t stupid, he could imagine how they might sound to anyone outside, anyone who hadn’t been in the actual situation. Think on your feet, son, his dad had liked to say, judge each case on its merits, that’s what you’ve got to learn in this world. Which was what Evan had done, only he’d landed flat on his face from the edge of a high cliff.

In the cubicle earlier, waiting for the doctor to come and stitch up Wesley’s wrist, Evan had asked him if they shouldn’t agree beforehand on a version of events.

“Events, Evan? Only one event anyone’s gonna give Jack shit about is we lost our prisoner. Okay? Far as the rest of it goes, you do the talking, right? You been doing it pretty good so far.” And Wesley had turned his face away to the wall.

Gratitude, Evan thought, after me leaping out into that bloody motorway, risking life and limb flagging somebody down to get you to the hospital, instead of chasing off across the fields after sodding Preston. He supposed that had been wrong, too.

“Okay,” Resnick said, having secured a table in the corner of the visitors’ canteen. “Tell me what happened.”

And, of course, Evan did. Every move in such detail that the party still hadn’t left the chapel when Sharon arrived and slid into the vacant seat.

By the time Evan had finished, his voice was little more than a whisper and Resnick’s receptive listener’s expression seemed to have frozen, immovable, to his face.

“Just one thing, er, Evan,” Sharon said, breaking the silence. “Before you put the prisoner into the car for the last part of the journey, you didn’t search him or anything?”

Evan succeeded in looking hurt. “Of course I did. We did. Wesley held him on the cuffs and I patted him down.”

“Patted him down.”

“All right, it wasn’t a strip search, I agree. But then I didn’t see any need. But it was thorough, I did a proper job.”

“Yet he had a blade,” Resnick said.

“Yes.”

“A razor blade.”

“Yes.”

“When you searched him. Thoroughly.”

There were tears welling at the back of Evan’s eyes. “Okay, Evan,” Resnick said, pushing himself to his feet.

“If we need to talk to you again, we’ll be in touch.”

The sun was surprisingly bright for so late in the afternoon and angling steeply in toward them as they crossed the car park, forcing Sharon to squint up her eyes while she fished her sunglasses from her bag.

“So what did he do?” Sharon asked. “This Michael Preston.”

“Strangled his father with his bare hands, then beat him round the head with a car jack for good measure.”

Sharon was quiet till they arrived at the car.

They were turning at the Derby Road roundabout, trailing a pair of green City buses, when she asked Resnick what else he knew about Preston.

“Hard man. Villain. Father ran a bookie’s, one of the few independents left. Been taken over now, like everything else. Preston started out doing a bit of collecting for him. Got a taste. Graduated to armed robbery. Couple of post offices, building societies and the like. Served a little time, but not as much as he should. Liked him for a big wages job, I remember, but he was alibied up and no one was prepared to drop him in it.”

Sharon grinned. “Guilty, though?”

“As sin.” Resnick laughed.

“What he did today, Preston, you wouldn’t say it was out of character?”

Resnick shook his head. “Sounds as if he was pretty much in control. He’s cool, certainly. Used to be.”

“Odd thing to say about someone who’s killed his father.”

Resnick nodded. “That was impulsive, irrational … not his normal pattern at all.”

“Twelve years inside, it changes a man.”

Resnick nodded. “A man like Preston, makes him harder.”

They were passing the Three Wheatsheaves and about to drive over the railway bridge this side of Lenton Recreation Ground. Resnick had a glimpse of teams in white, men and women, playing crown bowls; kids on the roundabouts and swings; Asian families sitting in abstract circles on the grass, women with the children, the men a way off, playing cards.

“Still seeing your lady?” Sharon asked.

“Mmm,” Resnick said, uncertain. “Sort of. Both been kind of busy lately. You know how it is.”

Hannah Campbell lived in one of the Victorian terraced houses toward the end of the promenade overlooking the recreation ground from the other side. Sharon had met her on a number of occasions now, formal and informal, and quite liked her, enjoyed talking to her, more laid-back than most of the teachers she’d had at school. A good companion for Resnick, she thought, while wondering why it was they never seemed quite at ease in one another’s company. Still, maybe that was just the way they were and anyway, who was she to judge? Stand the other halves of my relationships side by side, Sharon thought, one early sad marriage included, and you’d have enough for a basketball team and some to spare. Too much brawn and too little brain, that was what it came down to; too much concern with good pecs and muscle tone. A great body, though-oh God! — hormones in the ascendant, that could be difficult to resist. But right now she was sticking to volleyball, the ladies’ league, and sweating her way through a single life.

“How long is it now, anyway,” she asked, “you and Hannah?”

“Oh,” said Resnick, “must be a year or more.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not exactly, no.” Which wasn’t quite the truth.

Sharon laughed. “How d’you go on about anniversaries then, stuff like that?”

Resnick shook his head. Hannah had surprised him with rack of lamb for dinner, champagne, a three-CD set by Stan Getz she’d seen reviewed in the Guardian, a card showing a painting by a black American painter named William H.Johnson, on which she’d written Twelve months, two days, who’s counting? Love, Hannah. The next day he had gone to one of the stalls in the market and bought a large mixed bouquet of flowers, but by then it had been too late.

Sharon turned right off Derby Road and down the slope in the police station car park. “What d’you think?” she asked, sliding the vehicle into a vacant space. “Preston-you reckon we’ll catch him?”

Resnick shook his head. “Ask me again this time tomorrow.” Releasing his seat belt, he swiveled out of the car. “He’s a career criminal, dangerous-nobody’s fool. If he’s still around, not made a run for it, we’d best get him and fast.”