Now's the Time

by John Harvey

  Still inside, Terry’s estranged wife, Mary, grabbed Sarah by the sleeve and away from Raymond. She was angry at being upstaged by Ethel but without a quick top up of Temazepam, didn’t have the strength to do anything about it. And if that weren’t enough, here was her daughter throwing herself at some totally unsuitable bloke like she was a minor royal.

  “Hasn’t that little prick got you in trouble enough already?” she hissed.

  Sarah smarted as if she’d been slapped: trouble was the best thing you could say for it and it pained her to be reminded. She allowed her mother to drag her outside. “You, my girl,” Ethel said, stopping Sarah as she made to go past. “You and me, we’ve got some serious reckoning to do. You know what I mean.”

  And she stared at Sarah so hard, for an instant the girl swore she could see it, reflected there in the older woman’s eyes, her baby, premature, stillborn, cradled inside some old woollens in her bedroom drawer, the buttons she had placed over his eyes before catching the night bus north to Scotland.

  “A reckoning, my girl. Once this is over.”

  Sarah shivered and covered her face with her hands.

  A couple of spindly youths, crematorium workers, black suits baggy at the shoulders, short in the legs, shuffled into sight with the flowers.

  “What kind of a job is that?” Khan asked.

  Naylor took a quick pull at his flask. “Yorkshire Ripper,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Worked in a cemetery. As a kid.”

  “Where he got his ideas from, you reckon?”

  Naylor shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

  Khan focused the camera and clicked off a couple of shots, just in case. “Hey up,” Naylor said, straightening. “Here they come.”

  A slow coil of mourners appeared from the side of the chapel; the men, unused to sitting so long in cramped surroundings, already reaching for cigarettes in soft-topped packets or slim gold cases, spreading their arms wide, flexing their considerable muscles. Gradually small groups formed and turned inwards with heads bowed; desultory conversations in hushed tones. Only Eileen walked with her head high, moving amongst the others without quite seeming part of them. Naylor, used to Debbie’s often sullen stance, the shrewish way she would sometimes screw up her face in imitation of her mother, felt a knot of lust twist inside him like a vice.

  “Look,” Khan said quietly, pointing, “over to the right, standing with Breakshaw . . .”

  “Frankie Farmer,” Naylor said, recognising the man he had twice put an arm lock on, heard the custody sergeant charge with aggravated burglary, seen released by some half-wit judge.

  “Right. And isn’t that his – I don’t know – brother-in-law? Polishing his shoe up the back of his trouser leg.”

  “Tommy DiReggio.”

  “Name like that,” Khan smiled, “ought to be playing for Chelsea.”

  “Mansfield,” Naylor said, “his kind of form.”

  They’d never been able to prove it, but the Christmas Eve before last, the occasion of Ethel Cooke’s sixty-ninth birthday, Tommy had head-butted a man in the face for speaking to the current Mrs DiReggio at the bar, dragged him out back and broken both his arms and one of his legs with a car jack.

  Khan paused as the film clicked off and rewound inside the camera, slipping it out into his pocket and sliding the replacement that Naylor handed him neatly into place. The vicar was moving from one group to another, nodding sympathetically and shaking hands, not averse to accepting the odd tenner should anyone feel so moved. Already, one or two were starting to drift off towards their cars. Only when everyone was safely away, would Naylor and Khan move in amongst the lilies and cellophane wrapped roses, examining the black bordered cards with care and copying each of the names down into their notebooks.

  At first Ethel had insisted the wake be held at the house, the same one in which she’d raised Terry and Jackie and which Terry had moved back into when that druggie cow of a wife of his fucked off back north of the border where she belonged. It was only a shame, Ethel thought, she hadn’t taken that slag of a daughter with her at the time. Instead Sarah had moved into the room along the hall and kept it littered with teddy bears and faceless dolls she’d won at Goose Fair, piles of clothes and tawdry make-up, comics and magazines from which she tore photographs of baby-faced men with hairless chests to stick all over the walls. That wasn’t the worst though: that had to wait till Terry convinced Ethel it would be okay for Raymond to have the spare room at the back. Thick as pig shit, Raymond, and still with that smell that lingered on his skin from the time he worked in the abattoir. Family though, mum, Terry had argued, close, you wouldn’t want to see him sleeping rough on the street. Besides, a couple of weeks, that’s all it’ll be. A month at most. Soft sod that she was, Ethel had agreed. And from the first time she saw Sarah, sitting with her skirt hiked up around her waist, licking Raymond all over with her eyes, she knew she’d been wrong.

  Wrong about getting everyone back home after the funeral, she’d realised that too and in time. As Jackie had pointed out in no uncertain terms, every time some bastard pops a bottle of champagne, we’re all going to be staring up at the ceiling, thinking it’s Terry, sticking another one through his brain pan, God bless him.

  So they settled for the upstairs room at the local pub instead, lucky to get one so close to Christmas, too. A couple of hundred quid behind the bar to pay for the first few rounds and a nice cold buffet, though she’d put the bar up to cooked meats. What with all that e-coli nonsense finishing off pensioners like flies she wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances. Not this close to her seventieth.

  Once everyone was nicely oiled, Jackie made a bit of a speech and they all drank a toast to Terry’s memory; after which Eileen allowed herself to get more than a little tearful, telling all and sundry how there was nothing Terry liked better when they got to bed of an evening than to take her in his arms and give her a loving cuddle, just like she was a little girl. Well, there were tears at that, you can imagine, and a few raised eyebrows, one or two of the blokes, Norbert Breakshaw especially, voicing what he’d like to do to her instead, given half the chance.

  Aside from someone throwing up on the stairs and Sarah’s mum locking herself in the ladies, presumably searching for a vein, everything else passed off quietly. Ethel thanked them all for being there to dignify her son’s passing; it was only a shame, she said, her Terry hadn’t been with them long enough to raise a glass to her on the occasion of her seventieth birthday, that Christmas Eve. And with that she had another brandy and ginger wine and asked Jackie to drive her home. Funeral or no funeral, it was time for her afternoon nap.

  Resnick had taken the news of Terry Cooke’s death philosophically. Back in those days before he made inspector, there had been evenings when he and Terry had stood shoulder to shoulder at the same bar, trading pints, swapping stories, Resnick filtering truth from lies. It was what you did as a young detective, the company you kept: knowing the enemy. And dangerous. Insidious. Resnick knew of officers who had sunk too far in, drawn by the spurious glamour, the sly offer of a restaurant meal, a case of scotch, front row seats for the fight, a week in Cyprus or the Algarve, all expenses paid – That girl? The blonde tart over there with the gams? You can have her, no worries. Back to your place, is it, or d’you fancy a hotel?

  Compared to other villains Resnick had known, Terry Cooke was affable, a sense of humour, ambitious but not greedy, not vicious either, at least not till near the end. Which was the other side of the coin, the other part of the story. Terry, that last year of his life, with his hands in too many pies, touching stuff he’d have passed on before as too risky, too hot. It was as if, once Eileen had moved in with him, he couldn’t make money fast enough. Not that you ever saw the proceeds on her back, around her wrists or neck. No, older man with a woman half his age, Terry felt the need to protect, provide, ensure there was enough there for Eileen if ever anything should happen that meant he couldn’t look after her himself.r />
  The result was Terry Cooke’s world started to fall apart. The job he set up with his mate, Norbert Breakshaw, went pear shaped, the lads in over their heads, and suddenly there were weapons being waved around and two uniformed police in hospital, touch and go, intensive care. That was just one example. It turned people against Terry, even some of his own kind, and those that might have turned a blind eye were turning it no longer. For a while there were so many dawn raids on Terry’s various premises, he stopped bothering to set the alarm. Officers poring all over the house and shop, stripping both places almost down to bare boards, breaking down the doors to the two lock-up garages he used for storing what he optimistically described as surplus stock. Generally making Terry’s life a misery.

  He felt beleaguered; his mood changed. When he had a tip one of Resnick’s regular informers, an old dance band musician named Ronnie Rather, had grassed him up, Terry lost it in a way he never had before, beat Ronnie within an inch of his life and left him in a wheelchair, sightless in one eye.

  Resnick and Ronnie had been close – as close as you can allow yourself to get to a snout – and when he heard that Terry had topped himself, Resnick kept what had happened clearly in his mind, a corrective to any excessive sympathy he might otherwise have been feeling.

  Young Eileen, though – the story was she was in bed alongside Terry when a single .38 shell redistributed Terry Cooke’s skull to various parts of the room. Resnick had spoken to Eileen several times in the weeks leading up to Terry’s death; nothing ostentatious, out of the way, Resnick encouraging Eileen to talk about how she felt, which was trapped in a situation that was making her increasingly uneasy and wanted to make a break, yet scared to try. Resnick wasn’t working for Relate: not pushing it too hard, he encouraged her to leave, suggesting ways in which she might put some space between herself and Terry and assist the police at the same time.

  Thinking about it now, Resnick wondered if there was any way Terry might have known what was going on, sensed it at least, felt something changing in Eileen the way you did when you were very close.

  Maybe someone had seen them together, Resnick and Eileen, and reported back. It wouldn’t have been so hard for Terry to have slotted two and two together; not a stupid man, and not without his sensitive side.

  Resnick even wondered if at any point the gun Terry Cooke had stashed beneath his pillow that night had ever been intended for Eileen and not himself.

  He would never know. He stood up, stretched, and poured himself a drink. Not for the first time, he had come up lucky in the Christmas sweep: a bottle of Bushmills and a Melton Mowbray pork and chicken pie. Through the window at the side of his office, he could look out over the tall Victorian mansions of the Park, windows glittering with Christmas trees and coloured lights. In the Old Market Square, revellers would be winding themselves up for the Great Event, singing carols and getting drunk. Like as not, the late night buses home to Bulwell or the Broxtowe Estate would be awash with seasonal good will.

  Glass in hand, Resnick looked again at the photographs spread out across the desk, those Naylor and Khan had taken at the funeral. Faces he expected; some he didn’t. Coughlan, for instance. Hadn’t he and the Cooke clan had a falling out? Resnick knew for a fact, but, of course, had no useful way of proving it beyond reasonable doubt, that Coughlan had three times used a shotgun in the commission of a crime. Resnick wondered who Coughlan’s prime source of weapons was now. And there was Tommy DiReggio, another certifiable hard case, shaking hands with one of the Malloy brothers from Kirkby, though whether it was the one who worked as a bouncer or the brother who toured the country as a fairground boxer, Resnick couldn’t be sure.

  What he did know was Terry Cooke’s sudden and unexpected death had left a considerable vacuum waiting to be filled. Left money, too, quite a slice by all accounts. Property, too. But to whom? He glanced again at the photographs – all those back of the hand conversations, deals being struck, incipient betrayals, new liaisons being planned. Time to keep a watchful eye, Resnick thought, stay poised on the perimeter, ready to move in fast when the time was ripe; with any luck they’d be on hand to staunch a few more self-inflicted wounds, mop up whatever blood got spilt.

  *

  Ethel dozed a little watching EastEnders, woke herself up with a port and lemon, slipped her teeth back into place and shouted Sarah down from her room. The girl stood with eyes downcast, head over to one side, as if expecting to be slapped.

  And Ethel, looking at her, a child really, no matter what traps her body had set for her and the foolhardy ways she had tumbled into them, surprised herself by feeling something close to sympathy. After all, in her own youth she had been no stranger to the sins the flesh is heir to, although all that was far behind her now.

  Hastily, she willed all such feelings away, much as she had when, searching for some old wool to unpick and reuse, she had come upon the scrap of skin and bones and never breathing flesh Sarah had run off and abandoned. Much like that.

  “You listen to me, my girl, and listen good. I want this clear. You and me, no one else needs to know. But you got yourself knocked up, I’d guess by that wastrel Ray-o, though I’d not have reckoned him to have spunk enough to sire a weasel, hid it from the rest of us, from your own family, dropped it early, poor little bastard, stillborn like as not, and left it like it was so much offal on a plate.”

  Sarah made as if to speak, then curled her fist against her mouth instead.

  “I’m not here to judge,” Ethel said. “What’s done’s done and it’s no use pretending anything else. But you have to know, what I did, clearing up for you, protecting you, lying to my poor dead son, that’ll live with me the rest of my misbegotten days. You understand?”

  Sarah nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of her head.

  “I need you to acknowledge that.”

  “Yes, gran.”

  “And pay me back.”

  Sarah started, screwing up her face.

  “Whatever else my Terry was,” Ethel said, “he was softer than pig shit where the likes of that Eileen were concerned. You, too, though sometimes he might not have shown it. Even that sorry specimen, Ray-o. So come tomorrow, the reading of the will, it won’t be the likes of Norbert Breakshaw or those fat bastards from Kirkby as’ll be rubbing their hands like they’d won the lottery. And it won’t be me, either. You’re the one who’ll be sitting pretty, you see. You and Eileen, both.”

  Ethel moved faster than Sarah could anticipate, faster than a woman of her age had any right. The grip she had on Sarah’s wrist was like a vice.

  “You’re going to promise to see me right, anything and everything you can. I want to carry on living here, in this house till they carry me out, and I never want to have to worry about opening that purse of mine and finding it empty. You understand?” Sarah winced. “Yes, gran,” she said, little above a whisper.

  “Again.”

  “Yes, gran. I promise.”

  “Right.” And smiling, Ethel released the girl’s arm and turned back around; another port and lemon and then she’d be ready for an early night. One thing and another, it had been a tiring few days.

  If Ethel had ever hankered after a second career, one more in the line of Original Famous Gipsy Rose Lees who scattered themselves the length and breadth of the land, reading palms, tea leaves and crystal balls and telling fortunes, she would have shot to the top of her profession. Anyone might have thought – and a few did – that she had seen her boy Terry’s will before it came to be signed and sealed.

  But there in the solicitor’s office, a cold December afternoon with the frost still edging the window panes, she sat still and impassive as Cleopatra’s needle, listening as Declan Travis intoned the terms of Terence Cooke’s testament. Close alongside her, Terry’s brother, Jackie, nudged at his moustache with his bottom lip and occasionally wriggled his finger back and forth inside a collar one size too tight. Eileen, a new black coat open over what looked suspiciously like a new black dres
s, sat well to one side, a Kleenex in her hand, anticipating tears. Sarah, the only other clear potential benefactor, was bundled up in a fake fur she had borrowed from her mum, gazing at the polished beech floor and sniffling back what sounded like a dreadful cold.

  “No use you wasting your time there,” Raymond’s dad had said. “Only thing Terry’d leave you’d be a boot up your backside.”

  So Raymond spent the afternoon in the shop as usual, listening to the Spice Girls on Radio Trent.

  “. . . all of the properties listed above,” the solicitor read, “including such of their contents as are mine to dispose of, in addition to the total amounts remaining, after necessary expenses, in my various bank and building society accounts, also listed hitherto, I bequeath in equal amounts to my daughter, Sarah Jane Cooke . . .”

  Sarah squealed and came close to having a little personal accident.

  “. . . and my common law wife, Eileen Patricia Pendleton.”

  Eileen let slip a controlled sigh and recrossed one slender but athletic leg over the other.

  “This is on the understanding that the aforementioned Eileen Patricia Pendleton will control and administer that which I have bequeathed to my daughter until her eighteenth birthday.”

  The solicitor stopped, coughed into the back of his hand, and looked around. “What you tellin’ us?” Jackie Cooke demanded. “That’s it? That’s soddin’ it?”

  Declan Travis raised a hand. “There is a codicil.”

  “I should fuckin’ hope so,” said Jackie, leaning back again in his chair.

  “With respect to the lock-up shop in Bobber’s Mill, Mr Cooke has requested that his nephew, Raymond, continue to be employed there in the position of manager until such time as he himself wishes to leave.”

  “That’s it?” Jackie said, heaving himself to his feet. “That’s fuckin’ it?”

  “I’ll speak with Ray-o,” Eileen said. “Find out what he wants to do. You never know, he might want to take the chance to move on elsewhere.”