Wasted Years

Forty-Nine

Darren pressed his finger full force against the bell and kept it there until Rylands, flushed in the face with anger, threw it open.

“What in God’s name d’you think you’re at?” Rylands demanded.

“Keith,” Darren said, ignoring his reaction. “He in?”

“Out.”

“Out where? Been walking all over the city center past couple of hours, looking for him.”

“He went to the Job Centre,” Rylands said.

“Job Centre!” Darren was incredulous “What the fuck’s he want to go there for?”

“Here you go, sarge,” Naylor said, shutting the car door with a clean thunk. “Jumbo sausage and chips.”

Millington’s eyes lit up. Go anywhere near his wife with a jumbo sausage and you risked a lecture on harmful additives and carcinogenics. “Get the mustard?” he asked.

Naylor fished a sachet containing a vibrant yellow from his breast pocket.

“Good lad!”

Naylor had fetched himself cod and chips. Or was it haddock? For the best part of fifteen minutes both men ate, neither spoke.

Millington was dipping the last few inches of his sausage into the puddle of mustard when the door to Number 11 opened and Frank Churchill came out. Without looking around, he unlocked the door of the Granada and climbed in.

“Probably off to see his mum,” Naylor suggested.

“Goes there,” Millington said, screwing up the wrappings of his lunch, “he walks.”

“Maybe he’s taking her for a drive?”

“And maybe I’ve just been eating prime beef.” Naylor fired the engine and waited while Churchill backed out across the road and headed away from them at a good speed.

“Just make sure you don’t get too close,” Millington said. “Last thing we need, him spotting us.”

Naylor nodded, indicated right, and changed down for the bend.

“Where the fuck’ve you been?” Darren grabbed hold of Keith by the shoulder, swinging him round so fast that Keith lost his balance and ended up on his knees.

“Get up, you prick! You look fucking pathetic!” Keith scrambled to his feet, aware that several passersby were looking round at him and sniggering. That’s it, lady, laugh your tossing head off, why don’t you? He shook Darren’s hand clear and said nothing.

“You avoiding me or what?” Darren demanded.

“Leave him alone, you great bully,” called an old woman with what looked like a year’s supply of papers in a pram. “He’s only little.”

“Sod off, granny!” Darren yelled back.

“Yeh,” said Keith, “sod off.”

They walked together across the road, ignoring the traffic, forcing it to stop or swerve around them.

“Gum?” Keith said, holding out a pack of Wrigley’s.

“Yeh, ta.”

They sat on the wall near the gents’ toilets, kicking their heels against brickwork that was covered in graffiti and pigeon shit.

“Your old man said you was down the Job Centre.”

“’S’right.”

“Anything there?”

“Don’t bloody joke.”

“This car,” Darren said.

“Which one?”

“The one you’re going to nick.”

“What about it?”

“Friday.”

“Why Friday?”

“Cause more people take money out Fridays, bird brain. Lot more cash there waiting.”

“We going to do another building society?” Keith asked.

“Yes,” Darren said. “And this time we’re going to do it fucking right!”

“On the M1, boss. Heading north.” Divine was monitoring Millington and Naylor’s progress as they followed Churchill’s Ford Granada. “Reckon he’s heading for a meet with Rains?”

“Any luck,” Resnick said, “he’s doing exactly that. Keep me in the picture.”

“Right.”

Resnick went into his office and dialed a number, asked to speak to Pam Van Allen.

Frank Churchill was sticking to the outside lane, keeping the speedometer between seventy-five and eighty, moving over only when some salesman, flogging his company car, came fast up behind him, flashing his lights.

Naylor kept several vehicles between himself and their quarry, alternately moving up and falling back, doing everything he could to make sure his wouldn’t be the vehicle Churchill habitually saw in his rearview mirror.

“He’s slowing down,” Millington said. “Pulling over.”

Naylor had noticed already, dropped behind a lorry carrying pharmaceutical goods north from the Continent.

“Service station,” Millington said. “Just up ahead.”

Naylor checked in his own mirror and signaled to leave the motorway.

“I don’t want you to think,” Resnick said into the phone, “that I’m pestering you about this …”

There was a silence, out of which Pam Van Allen said, “I’m trying hard not to.”

“I was interested to know how you think he’s taking to being out, settling into the hostel, whatever.”

“Pretty much the way you’d expect somebody to do when they’ve been excluded from society for ten years. He’s tense, apprehensive …”

“Angry?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know. But I’m concerned …”

“For his wife’s safety.”

“Yes.”

There was another pause, longer, and Resnick could almost hear the probation officer thinking. Through the glass at the top of his door he could see Divine’s head, bobbing a little as he spoke into the telephone.”

“After what you said,” Pam Van Allen said cautiously, “I talked to him about his wife, his feelings towards her. Everything he said suggested he sees that relationship as being very much in the past. He showed no inclination to open it up again, get back in touch. Certainly he expressed nothing like anger towards her.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Good.”

“Goodbye, inspector.” Resnick had a sudden image of her as she set down the receiver, one hand pushing up through her cap of silver-gray hair, the other pinching the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes.

“Boss!”

Alerted by Divine’s shout, Resnick hurried into the main office.

“Graham,” Divine explained, holding out the phone. “Wants to talk to you.”

Resnick identified himself down what was clearly a wavery connection.

“Good news is, it’s Rains right enough. No mistaking him anywhere. Standing in line in the cafeteria waiting for Churchill to join him over chicken, chips, and peas.”

“What’s the bad?” Resnick said.

“Where they’ve sat themselves, bang in the middle of the place, can’t get near ’em without getting spotted. Tried getting Kevin on to table behind, but what with all the chatter and the background bloody muzak and the cutlery, you’d need to be leaning over them with a hearing trumpet to know what they were talking about.”

“Lynn’s on her way in a car. Rendezvous outside. When they leave, you take Rains, let her tag along with Churchill.”

“What if she don’t get here?”

“Stick to the plan, follow Rains.”

“Right,” Millington said and then quickly, “They’re moving, got to go.”

Naylor walked down the steps from the cafeteria and ahead of him Rains and Churchill separated, neither one of them in any obvious hurry to go back to their vehicles. Churchill browsed the magazines in the shop; Rains spent a pound or so on the games machines near the exit. Churchill went into the gents and locked himself into a cubicle. Millington didn’t think they’d been spotted, though there was no way of knowing for sure. What they were observing could simply be careful practice, nothing more. At least, it gave Lynn Kellogg more time to arrive. He had no way of knowing the northbound carriageway had been temporarily blocked by an accident involving a lorry and a fifteen-year-old youth joyriding in a stolen Fiesta.

Suddenly Churchill was hurrying across the parking area towards his Granada and that diversion was enough to give Rains a vital start back up the steps towards the bridge linking the two sides of the motorway.

The three blue saloons left the service area heading south in a virtual convoy and between them Millington and Naylor got the registration of one and a half. And they couldn’t be sure which of the three Rains had been driving.

Frank Churchill, meanwhile, had continued his journey northwards and they could only hope that a sense of filial duty would take him back to Mansfield so that they could pick up his trail again.

“A balls-up, Charlie. A regular balls-up, I don’t know what else to call it,” Skelton said after Resnick had made his report.

Alone in the CID room, smarting still, Graham Millington thought after that day’s work he’d be fortunate to retain his sergeant’s stripes, never mind promotion.