Wasted Years

Thirty-Nine

“Hey up, kid!” Divine exclaimed the moment Naylor entered the office. “You look shagged out, you.”

“Give over, Mark,” Naylor said. “Just for once.”

“Didn’t know you and your Debbie were back together again,” Divine grinned.

“We’re not.”

“Oh, hey. Clocked that, everybody? Our Kev’s been getting his leg over in the line of duty. Not.”

“Leave it alone, Mark,” Lynn Kellogg sang out from the far side of the room.

“Who was she?” Divine goaded, leaning over Naylor, who had that second slumped behind his desk. “That bird you were taking a statement from? Right tasty that. Shouldn’t mind having a go at that meself. Two’s up, eh?”

Naylor’s chair went flying as he sprang to his feet, squaring up to Divine, ready for all the world to take a swing at him then and there and to hell with the consequences.

“Come on then,” Divine said, stepping back to give himself room. “Any time you reckon you’re man enough to try it.”

“Try what?” Millington asked from the doorway, freezing the action before it had started. “Well? Kevin? Mark?”

Naylor shook his head and sat back down, leaving Divine with his fists clenched, adrenaline pumped and nowhere to go.

“Get down the health club last night?” Millington asked him.

“Yes, sarge,” Divine said.

“Anything useful? New?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Good. On account the super wants to see us, ten minutes sharp. Any notes you’ve got, best make sure they’re to the point. He’ll not thank us for wasting his time.”

Divine nodded and headed back to his desk. Millington waited until he was settled before bending close to his ear. “I don’t know who started that little lot …”

“All I did was …”

“Don’t know and don’t want to know. But hark to this: what you’re doing, walking a very thin line. There’s them as’d be well pleased to see you fall off it. Carry on the way you’re going, likely they’ll get their wish. Right?”

Without looking round at the sergeant, Divine nodded.

“Understood?”

“Yes, sarge.”

“Good.” Millington straightened. “Nine minutes and counting. Buckle to.”

Naylor kept his head down, accepting the cup of tea Lynn Kellogg offered with a nod; he’d tried to get this incident report filled out three times now and still couldn’t get past the first few lines. One of those days it was difficult to spell your own name. Three o’clock when finally he’d got back last night. Who was he kidding? It had been a lot closer to four. And then he’d scarcely been able to sleep. Roaming round the house, rolling the breadth of that empty bed. “Stay,” Lorna had said. “What’s the point in going home now?” He’d tried to explain without ever himself knowing why. “You’ve said, your wife’s stopping over at her mum’s. So who’s to know?” What he hadn’t told her, his wife had been stopping over at her mum’s the best part of a year.

Light of six this morning, he’d been in the kitchen mashing tea, eating toast with raspberry jam, replaying the night over and over in his mind. My God! One thing he’d always thought, Debbie and himself, their sex life had been pretty good, up till she’d fallen for the baby at least. What he now realized was how much, in their ignorance, they’d been missing. Or maybe it had just been him who’d known no better-his experience hadn’t exactly amounted to much. Red-faced fumblings upstairs at the Savoy, tussles in the car park up the street from Madison’s, and once on a patch of grass in Wollaton Park overlooked by a small herd of grazing deer. Debbie had been the first woman he’d slept with, the first he properly made love to, just as he’d been the first for her.

He hung his head and sighed.

Most likely Debbie did know a lot more about it than him, all those articles in magazines: orgasms, arousal-what was it? — G-spots? Maybe she’d lain there night after night, waiting for him to do stuff he’d barely thought of; wanting him to but too shy to ask.

Unlike Lorna: an education in herself.

And nice. The way she said nothing about his inexperience, though it must have been obvious enough. Funny, too. Stories she’d told him about the people at work.

Why then had he left there thinking of Debbie, more so, more seriously than in a long time? He’d made his gesture a long while back, left a message asking her to call and he hadn’t heard a thing. What if Divine was right and it was really over, had been for months though neither of them was admitting it? But then they weren’t denying it either; they weren’t even talking.

He screwed the form into a ball and dropped it in the bin, pulled another one towards him. If he and Debbie no longer had a marriage, why the guilt that he’d been feeling creeping home? How much did that guilt bring to the excitement of what he’d done?

“Now then, Charlie,” Skelton said. He was retying the lace of his Nike Air Tech shoes, the ones with pockets of inert gas in the soles to help with shock absorption. Nigh on a hundred pounds and worth every penny. “Seems these lads of yours might be on to something. Whispers young Divine’s been picking up about some kind of French involvement in these robberies, didn’t look to be panning out at first. Sight too fanciful, aside from anything else. But rechecking passenger flight lists into East Midlands, back from Birmingham, could be something to it.”

Resnick nodded, increasingly conscious that mayonnaise was beginning to seep through the brown paper bag in his hand.

“Thought we might let the pair of them fly over, Paris. Little gentle fraternization. See if they can tie things together.”

“Millington and Divine?” Resnick said with vague incredulity.

“Bound to happen more and more. Just wait till that bloody tunnel’s up and running.”

“Even so.”

Skelton decided to do a little gentle limbering up on the spot. “They’ll cope right enough. Besides, Graham Millington, got a bit of a thing for languages, hasn’t he?”

“I think that’s his wife.”

“Oh, well, he’s no fool. He’ll cope.”

Resnick transferred the sandwich from one hand to another, set it down on the ground and Skelton was likely to land one of his size tens on it. “I was more concerned about Divine. My guess, he travels about as well as the average English soccer fan. Out of his head before the plane’s started circling Orly Airport.”

Skelton was bracing himself against the wall, stretching his hamstrings. “He’s the one put in all the spadework, Charlie. Credit where credit’s due.”

Resnick shrugged and stepped back. “Your decision, sir, not mine.”

“Yes, well, I’ll give some thought to what you say. Any movement on this other business you’ve got yourself stuck on? Prior, is it?”

Resnick nodded. “Due out any day. I’m keeping an eye.”

Skelton lifted first one foot then the other hard against his buttocks. “Bit of a sideshow, isn’t it, Charlie? My way of thinking. Wouldn’t want to explain away too many man-hours boxing with shadows. Chasing old ghosts. Eh, Charlie?”

The superintendent moved off with a sprightly step, leaving Resnick to walk heavily up the stairs towards his office. As Resnick knew, ghosts could be real enough and you ignored them at your peril.

“Wondered if you’d spoken with your Pam Van Allen?” Resnick said, when he’d raised Neil Park on the phone. “Since she and I had a chat.”

“Only briefly.” Something about the connection made it sound as if the senior probation officer were standing in a deep hole. “I got the impression she resented the degree to which you were putting her under pressure.”

“I didn’t think that’s what I was doing at all.”

“Come on, Charlie. You’re male, more experienced, high-ranking, used to telling people what to do and expecting them to do it. Other ways of applying pressure than waving a big stick.”

“It wasn’t what I intended,” Resnick said.

“I daresay. All I’m saying is, whatever you were hoping for, you might just have pushed her the wrong way.”

“It shouldn’t be to do with any of that,” Resnick said. “All I want is for her to be aware of the risks …”

“What you want is for Prior to stay locked away.”

“It’d make life a lot easier all round.”

“But not for him, eh, Charlie? Not for Prior.”

“Look …”

“Sorry, Charlie. Rushed off my feet. Got to go.” The voice fell lower into the pit and finally disappeared, leaving Resnick staring at a dead telephone and a half-eaten chicken and Jarlsberg salad sandwich.

Kevin Naylor had walked around in his lunch break, window shopping in Saxone’s and the Camera Exchange and what had once been Home Brothers but was now a bizarre floating market offering T-shirts, three for?5.00, assorted CDs?2.99 each. When he finally convinced himself to make the call, he was so worked up the coins fell between his fingers and rolled across the floor.

“Debbie?”

He knew if her mother answered he was sunk and the pleasure at hearing his wife’s voice would have been hard to fake.

“Kevin?”

Debbie was surprised to hear his voice at all, never mind the tone; surprised to the point where she came close to seeming pleased herself. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea, though,” she interrupted him, “you coming round.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Kevin said, taking the bit between his teeth. “What I thought was, you could ask your mum to look after the baby, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Meet me in the city. Go somewhere for a meal. Somewhere nice.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line and Kevin braced himself for the worst, but “All right,” Debbie said, still sounding doubtful. “I’ll have to check with Mum, though.”

“I’ll meet you in Yates’s,” Kevin said, quick before she could change her mind. “That upstairs bar. You know, looking out over the square. Debbie? Okay?”

“Yes, I suppose …”

“Eight o’clock. See you. Bye.”

He rang off before she had a chance to say anything more. In the small rectangle of glass at the center of the box, he could see his eyes were unusually bright and there was perspiration on his skin. He knew, without having to look, that his hands were shaking.