Wasted Years

Eighteen

“You weren’t serious, were you? What you said before?”

“Before what?” Darren was concentrating on getting his score over eleven thousand, his previous best on this machine.

“You know, about … well, you know.”

“Look, either spit it out or stop going on and on. You’re putting me off.”

“I meant,” Keith said, “about the gun.”

“Hey! Why not yell it out a bit louder, might be a couple of blokes over the back never heard what you said.” Concentration shot, game over, Darren had been well and truly zapped. “There, see. See what you done?”

Back on the pavement, blinking at the light, Darren ran a hand across the top of his head; his hair had a nice feel to it now, not brittle but soft, a soft fuzz less than half an inch thick.

“Something you got to understand,” he said, “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life just hanging round, pulling jobs for a few quid. That’s what you want you better say so now. Me, I’m going to do something with my life. Get some money, real money, get noticed.”

With a quick hunch of his shoulders Darren headed off towards Slab Square and, after a few moments’ hesitation, Keith hurried after him.

“So what do you think, Marjorie? Do you think I should get in touch with the police and tell them or what?”

It had to be the fourth time Lorna had asked-more or less the same question, more or less the same words-fourth or fifth time in the last hour. Lorna, not wanting to appear too anxious, too nervous either. “Lorna,” Marjorie had said, “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but you don’t think you’re being a little paranoid?”

Is that what she was? Or was it the opportunity to spend some more time with Kevin Naylor that had her seeing the would-be robbery merchant in otherwise innocent people?

“It’s a shame Becca isn’t here,” Marjorie said. “She’d know what to do.”

Becca knew what to do all right: stay home, send in a sick note, and work hard for the sympathy vote. Good riddance, Lorna thought; she and Marjorie could manage the branch fine without her pernickety assistance.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t conjure up the youth’s face, not exactly-the hair and the nose and the eyes but not a whole face. The walk, though, she could picture that, the slow, cocky strut along the pavement-wasn’t that the same walk as the one towards her counter, only the day before?

Here, fill that. Don’t keep me waiting.

Well, call in another time, eh?

“I’m going to do it,” Lorna said, and reached for the phone. The number was on the card that Kevin Naylor had given to her.

“I’m sorry,” Lynn Kellogg said, responding to the call. “He’s not here at the moment. Can I take a message?”

“Yes,” Lynn said, when Lorna had finished. “I’ll be sure that he gets it. I can’t promise when he’ll be able to get back to you, though. It’s pretty hectic here today.”

Lorna put down the receiver, looked into Marjorie’s fleshy, inquiring face, and forced a smile. “Well, that’s that. Nothing else I can do now.”

Naylor had been thinking about his conversation with Divine, Mark sitting there in the car, giving advice for all the world as if, where relationships were concerned, he knew something about it. And then parading this scuzzy list of one-night stands and knee tremblers as some kind of proof that he understood women. What Divine knew about women could be written on the inside of a toilet door and usually was.

“Be hard,” Divine had said. “Stand firm, it’s the only way. Whatever you do, don’t let on you care.”

Yes, Naylor thought, and see where that’s got you.

The longest relationship Divine had ever had with a woman came in short of ten minutes.

It seemed likely that after abandoning the Volvo and the Granada, the gang had doubled back on themselves, possibly using as many as four other vehicles. The only one not wearing a mask was variously described as a slim male, aged between eighteen and twenty-five, and an attractive young woman wearing rather heavy eye shadow and with the faintest suggestion of a moustache. The masks the others had worn had been stolen from a party wear and fancy dress shop the night before and comprised Mickey Mouse, Michael Jackson, the Amazing Spiderman, and the Sheriff of Nottingham. The charred remains of what appeared to be several track suits and trainers, together with what could previously have been polystyrene masks, had been found on a patch of waste ground close to the A60, north of Loughborough. The ashes were on their way to the forensic laboratory without a great deal of hope attached.

The possible identity of the young villain not averse to disguising himself as a woman was currently testing the resources of the Home Office computer.

When Resnick came into the CID room, the remains of a toasted ham and cheese sandwich in the paper bag clutched in his left hand, Graham Millington was slumped back in his chair, overcoat on, hat on, feet on his desk, asleep. Even the first two rings of the telephone failed to wake him.

“Resnick. CID.”

Of all the people it might have been, one of the last he would have expected was Rylands.

“No,” Resnick said, after listening for several moments. “No, that’s okay. I’ll come to you. Half-hour to an hour. Yes. Goodbye.”

When he set the receiver down, Millington was stirring, embarrassed to be discovered asleep.

“Sorry, I don’t know what …”

“Doesn’t matter, Graham, one of those days. Why don’t you get off home? Nothing much else any of us can hope for tonight.”

Millington, who, one way and another, had been on duty since before four that morning, didn’t need to be asked twice. “Reg Cossall said to pass on a message, reckoned you know what it was about. Bloke you were talking about the other night, word is, he’s likely to get his parole.”

Well, so Resnick had been wrong.

“Bad news?”

“Maybe not,” Resnick said. “I’m not sure.”

Millington resettled his trilby on his head. “Get back now, might be able to watch a bit of snooker before the wife gets back from Russian.”

“Taken against it, has she?”

“Not that so much. She’ll have me taking off the tiles in the bathroom. Reckons on changing them for that Italian blue.”

“G’night, Graham.”

Resnick rustled around for what remained of his sandwich, listening to Millington’s whistling the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” fading and off-key.

The pub used to be crammed full of medics from the nearby hospital, laughter and large gins and well-honed accents that cut through the ambient sound like scalpels. Now the health authority had shut the place down and sold the site to a consortium of developers whose plans ranged from high-income architect-designed flats to a covered piazza. It not only left the pub quieter, it made it quicker to get in a round of drinks.

Lynn Kellogg’s turn, spotting Naylor enter before she’d finished her order and asking for an extra pint.

“Message for you,” she said, passing Naylor his Shipstone’s. “Lorna Solomon. The building society raid. Will you get back to her. Here, she left her home number as well.”

Struggling not to blush, Naylor took the piece of paper and, without looking, pushed it down into his breast pocket. All he would have had to have done, that lunchtime sharing Chinese in the car, was reach over and she would have slid into his arms. Was that what he wanted to do? The way he’d talked about himself and Debbie, as if there was nothing there, nothing left. What was the truth? He sat forward, moving in on the conversation, trying to forget the slip of paper folded inside his pocket, sipping his pint.