Wasted Years

Thirty-Seven

Millington was peering at the screen of the VDU, chewing at the bottom of his moustache and pondering the wonders of modern technology, the overlap between what he’d gleaned from his informant and the facts as known. He still couldn’t decide if he were being taken for a ride.

“Anything to go on, Graham?” Resnick said, pausing at the sergeant’s desk.

Millington scowled. “Sometimes reckon we’d be as well off with crystal balls.”

Across the room a phone rang and Kevin Naylor picked it up. “CID, DC Naylor speaking.”

Resnick remembered there was a call of his own he wanted to make; he went into his office and closed the door. Down through the window, he could see the track-suited figure of Jack Skelton jogging past the lock-up garages below the main road.

“Yes, of course I know who it is,” Naylor was saying. With a half-guilty glance across the room, he angled his chair towards the wall.

“I called before,” Lorna Solomon said. “Left messages. You never phoned back.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Things have been busy.”

“I thought …” she hesitated.

“What?”

“You were avoiding me.”

“Like I said, it’s been busy.”

There was an uneasy silence between them and Kevin sensed rather than heard her breathing at the other end of the phone. He wondered where she was calling from, work or home? Behind him, one of the other officers swore lightly and slammed shut a drawer. Graham Millington was whistling something vaguely classical, the music from some advert or other.

“Kevin?”

“Yes?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were still there.”

He was thinking of sitting close alongside her in the front of the car, the warmth of her arm whenever she moved it accidentally against his, Chinese food and perfume.

“That youth, I’ve seen him again.”

“The one from the robbery?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Right outside. Just today.”

Naylor swiveled the chair back round towards his desk. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. At least I think so.”

“It couldn’t have been someone else? I mean, a bit like him? After what happened …”

“He was outside the door, staring in. When I saw him he jumped away.”

“He didn’t come in?”

“No.”

There was a pause and then Lorna said, “Kevin, it’s not the first time. I’m sure I’ve seen him before.”

“He spoke to you, on the pavement outside.”

“No, other times. And not just at work, here at the flat. Kevin, I think he’s watching me.”

Naylor reached for a ball point and flicked open the pad on his desk. “You at home now?”

“Yes.”

“Best let me have the address.”

It wasn’t a place that Resnick knew, not the inside of anyway, a wine bar-cum-restaurant on Barker Gate, across the street from the snooker club. The entrance was down a flight of steps off the pavement, the room that you stepped into had a bar away to the left, a few small tables pressed against the right-hand wall, plenty of space to stand in between. Through an archway there appeared to be a second room for more serious eating.

Most of the people near the bar seemed to have strayed in for a drink after work and stayed. Gray suits and cigarette smoke and braying conversation. Pam Van Allen was sitting at the first table, a white wine spritzer in front of her, reading a paperback book. In that light her hair was a metallic gray.

Her eyes lifted from the book as Resnick came towards her.

“Hello. Charlie Resnick.”

“Pam Van Allen.”

She held out her hand and her grip was brief but firm.

“Can I get you another drink?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

He went to the bar for a glass of house red and she read another page of her book, a novel about college friends who spend a summer together in middle age, the first time some of them have seen one another in ten or more years. Pam could only think of two people she still knew from university, none from school. All those friendships you’re sure will be so important the rest of your lives.

“It’s good of you to meet me.”

She gave a slight shrug and waited for him to settle down. He was a big man, bulky, the kind who could do with all the exercise he didn’t get. A roundish face with serious eyes. Dressed like that, he’d be less conspicuous in the side bar of a pub.

“If you’re hungry,” Pam said, making conversation, “the food’s pretty good. Snacks. Hummus. Things like that.”

“Maybe later.”

She glanced at her watch, then folded down the corner of the page and closed the book.

Resnick drank some wine. “John Prior. You’ve been to see him.”

Pam said nothing, waited.

“You’re happy about the fact that he’s going to be released?”

“You don’t expect me to answer that.”

“All right, then. Let’s put it this way. How much do you know about the circumstances of his arrest and trial?”

She turned her glass around on the table. “A little.”

“He was convinced some of the information against him came from his wife. That there was some sort of arrangement between her and the police.”

“And was there?” Self-consciously, Pam smiled. “I don’t expect you to answer that either.”

From the adjoining room came the sound of breaking glass, the ironic roar of approval, applause.

“Look,” Pam said, “I don’t know where we’re going to go with this. Anything that passed between my client and me, that’s confidential.” She lifted her spritzer, thought better of it, and set it back down. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“You came.”

“Go and meet him, my boss said. A favor to me. Hear what he’s got to say.” She looked sideways at Resnick and then away. “I thought what else I might be doing, decided it wasn’t so important, and came.” She blinked her eyes closed and pushed one hand up through the side of her hair. “I’m not so sure it was a good idea.”

Resnick tried a little more of the wine. “What else would you have been doing?” he said.

“Tonight? Warm bath, hot as I can stand, glass of wine …” Her fingers drummed lightly on the cover of the paperback. “A book.”

Resnick’s turn to smile. “Everything except the bath.”

Pam pulled her shoulders back, making her posture more professional. “All I can do, Inspector, is listen to whatever it is you want to tell me. I can’t promise it’s going to affect my actions one way or another.”

“All right,” Resnick said, “it’s this. Remarks Prior made, at the trial and after, they were heavily vindictive. The most frequent, the most violent, were directed towards his wife. I’m concerned that after his release he might try to carry those threats out.”

Pam was looking at him evenly, paying little attention to whatever was happening around her. “Prior’s wife,” she said, “do you know where she’s living?”

Resnick shook his head. “No.”

“It could be anywhere?”

“It could be.”

Pam finished most of her drink and opted to leave the rest. When she was on her feet, Resnick pushed back his chair and followed suit and it occurred to her that he was being clumsily polite.

“When you were talking to him,” Resnick said, for a moment his hand resting on her arm, “did he mention his wife? Give some indication of how he feels about her?”

What Prior had said was: “Last thing I wanted was her traipsing out here, week after week, another of those poor bloody prisoners’ wives. Not that I didn’t want to see her, mind. But, look at it this way, ten years minimum, just not on. Best never to start than have to get less and less, once a week, once a fortnight, once a month. Then again, if we’d had kids, might’ve been different. No, what Ruth had to do, live a life of her own.”

“I’ve told you,” Pam said, “anything that passed between my client and myself …”

“But he did talk about her?” Resnick persisted.

Pam’s mouth was feeling suddenly, oddly dry. All those people. The tobacco smoke. The wine. “A little,” she said. “And when he did he was very calm, very reasonable. Now I do have to go.”

Resnick nodded and stepped back. Beyond the far curve of the bar, a group started to sing “Happy Birthday.” He stayed on his feet to watch Pam Van Allen walk away, the final glint of her hair silver as she passed through the light.