Wasted Years

Thirty-Four

Summer in the cities.

Prior was refused bail, on the grounds that he might skip the country or attempt to interfere with potential witnesses, and jailed on remand. Martin Finch was persuaded to testify that in addition to the shotgun Prior had surrendered to Resnick, he had supplied the weapon that had seriously wounded the Securicor guard and that Frank Churchill had told him it was to be used in a robbery Prior was organizing.

When Churchill stepped off the Manchester train, officers were waiting to arrest him.

Resnick was officially commended for bravery and the object of several late-night celebrations in the local force. He found himself celebrating again when the soccer season ended and County were promoted to the First Division of the Football League for the first time in fifty-five years.

He sat in front of a television set with Ben Riley, watching Spurs’ other Argentinian, Ricky Villa, plough his way through a maze of players in the Manchester City penalty area and score the winning goal in the FA Cup Final replay. When it was over, Ben told him that he’d written an exploratory letter to the Montana State Police.

One of Prior’s fellow prisoners came up to him in the exercise yard and told him his wife was getting her leg over with a copper. It took four men to prize Prior away; by the time they’d succeeded, the other prisoner had a broken nose and a ruptured spleen.

Resnick and Elaine were talking again, being civil at least; she said she had stopped seeing Gallagher, needing to think things through. There was still a great deal that went unspoken, neither of them willing to prize open what each, in their different ways, was apprehensive to examine.

In June there was more rioting in London and in July the attempt by police to arrest a black youth for stealing his own motor bike resulted in violent confrontations which lasted for three days. Petrol bombs were hurled at a beseiged police station in Manchester and riots threatened to tear apart the decaying hearts of many other inner-cities: Birmingham, Blackpool, Bradford, Cirencester, Halifax, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Nottingham, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, and Wolverhampton. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, refused to accept either swingeing unemployment or bad housing as causes, putting the violence and looting down to criminal greed.

Police used water cannon, CS gas, and plastic bullets to quell the disturbances. And Ben Riley applied to the American Embassy for his visa.

The fag end of July, Resnick, with four days’ leave and time hanging wide on his hands, bought white gloss paint and set to work on the skirting boards in the unoccupied top bedroom.

The first time Elaine came up the stairs she brought biscuits and a mug of tea; the second she stood, arms folded, and said: “Charlie, we need to talk. Charlie, I want a divorce.”