Last Rites cr-10

by John Harvey

  “See what I mean?” Evan said again.

  “What?”

  “All those cars, nose to tail. See how many just got one person in. Not a single passenger. One car, one driver. You imagine doing that, in and out every day, morning and evening. Crazy. A nightmare.”

  “Yes,” said Wesley. “Right.” Hoping that was enough to shut Evan up; not a bad bloke, he supposed, but Jesus, wasn’t he one to rattle on? Even if they could find somewhere to rent, Wesley thought, that wasn’t really what Jane was after. In reality, her reality, he knew that she was thinking five per cent down payment, she was thinking mortgage, she was thinking the whole ninety minutes plus penalties after extra time.

  “How about you, Preston?” Evan asked, nodding his head backward in the direction of the prisoner. “Traffic-you got any thoughts on that?”

  From the way Preston continued to sit, staring blankly through the car window, one arm folded across his lap, the other, the one that was attached to Wesley, resting by his side, Evan supposed he had not.

  Twelve years into the man’s sentence, Wesley was thinking, at least another twelve to go, he didn’t see the overall transport situation as being high on the list of the man’s concerns.

  Evan Donaghy, at twenty-seven, three years in the Prison Service only, and Wesley Wilson, two years his senior, but with one year’s less experience, the pair of them detailed to escort Michael Preston, convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of his father, Matthew, in 1986 and currently serving a life sentence, to the funeral of his mother, Deirdre, there and back in the day, the prison governor grudgingly agreeing to the visit on compassionate grounds.

  Four

  Ben Fowles was the most recent recruit to Resnick’s squad. A local lad-made-good from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Fowles had been brought in when Mark Divine, victim of a life-shattering assault, had been forced to take early retirement on grounds of ill health.

  Fowles was twenty-six and just inside the height requirement for the force at five foot eight. An open-faced young man with an outlook to match, ambitious, the hobbies section on his application form had read rock climbing, music, and soccer. When he wasn’t inching his way at weekends, handhold by handhold, up some slab of sheer granite in the Peak District, Fowles’s energies were divided evenly between playing in a band called Splitzoid, and harrying his opponents’ ankles in the busy and aggressive midfield mode pioneered by Nobby Stiles and kept to the fore more recently by the likes of David Batty and Paul Ince. After the heady days of trials for Chesterfield, Mansfield, and Notts County, Ben now practiced this particular brand of artistry for Heanor Town reserves.

  “Splitzoid,” Graham Millington had asked, “whatever kind of a band is that?”

  “Ah, well,” Fowles explained, “we used to be thrash metal with a trace of dub, right, but now we’re getting more into trip-hop and garage with a touch of techno on the side. Maybe we ought to change the name to match the new image, Serge, what d’you think?”

  Millington’s reply went unrecorded.

  Fowles gave him free passes to an upcoming gig in a pub on the Derby ring road and Millington promised to check with the wife, see what Madeleine had on her calendar. He had an idea it might be rehearsals for Carousel; if it wasn’t her University open access night-currently engaged in a survey of Magic Realism and the Mid-Century Novel, if Millington wasn’t very much mistaken.

  Jimmy Peters was an entrepreneur of the old school, a failed rock-’n’roller with angina and a face like crumpled paper. He’d gone into management when a touring American singer-a minor celebrity with two top-fifty hits-had seized Peters’s guitar during a late-night session at the Boat Club and hurled it into the Trent. Jimmy Peters could take a hint. Within six months, he was managing more bands than he had fingers to count and poised to take over the license of his first premises. Take away the ballooning and the beard, and a low-rent Richard Branson was born.

  “So, Jimmy,” Ben Fowles said, not for the first time, “from where you were standing, you couldn’t see exactly how the fight started?”

  Peters scowled and rolled his eyes.

  “But it was this lot as come in late …” From force of habit, Fowles checked his notebook. “… Ellis and his mates, they were the ones that started it?”

  “If I’ve told you once …”

  “And you knew them? They were what? Regulars?”

  Peters lit a fresh Silk Cut from the nub of the old. Ash shone like glitter from the velvet lapels of his jacket. “They might’ve been here once or twice, it’s difficult to keep track.” He glanced round at the interior, shabby and stained in the daylight. Over by the entrance to the toilets, a cleaning woman was swabbing away listlessly with a mop and listening to local radio on a small receiver propped against the bucket. “Most nights it’s busy,” he said hopefully, “folk come and go.”

  “But members, Jimmy?”

  “Hmm?”

  “All members. Condition of your license, bound to be, drinks served to members only, outside the normal hours.”

  Peters smiled. “Members and their guests.”

  “Duly signed in.”

  “Not Ellis.”

  “A minor slip-up. Small irregularity. Heat of the moment, it can happen. Well, you’ll understand.” Peters wafted smoke away from his face. “I’ve had words with the people concerned; it’ll not happen again.”

  Fowles had had words with the door staff himself-a walking ad for Wonderbra in a black peek-a-boo dress and silver wedge sandals and a shaven-headed bouncer with an apparent steroid habit from Gold Standard Security. Neither had been exactly forthcoming. As opposed to those who’d faced up to one another when the fracas had started: they were all reading from the same script and well-rehearsed. Too much drink. Heat of the moment. No hard feelings. Handshakes all round.

  Well, not exactly that. Not with one of the home team taking up coveted space in a high-tech hospital bed, a few thousand pounds of equipment monitoring his every cough.

  “This bloke who was stabbed …”

  “Wayne.”

  “Yes, Wayne. He’s a regular, a member, right?”

  Peters nodded.

  “No reason, far as you know, why anybody might have it in for him?”

  Peters pretended to give it some thought. The cleaner had switched stations and was listening to Woman’s Hour, a lively discussion about the benefits of folic acid in the early stages of pregnancy. “No,” Peters finally said. “Nothing that comes to mind.”

  “He wouldn’t have got involved in something a bit chancy? Stepped out of line?”

  Smoke drifted across Peters’s eyes. “Not his scene. Student, I believe. You know, mature. Clarendon College. Media Studies. Brought his mum in once, some kind of anniversary.”

  Fowles had had enough. “If you do think of anything, you or any of the staff …” Out on the street, he breathed in deeply before setting off back to the station. There were dark patches close against the curb, where the blood had dried and not been washed away.

  “He’ll live,” Millington announced, back from the hospital and pushing his head round the door to Resnick’s office. “Not look so pretty, mind. Seen better stitching on them cardigans the wife’s mother knocks out of a Christmas.”

  “What’s he got to say about it?”

  “Wayne? Not a great deal. Same yarn as everyone else, give or take. No idea who it was used the blade on him.”

  “And you still don’t believe it?”

  “How it happened, yes. Just something else won’t sit right, giving me indigestion. I mean, why him? Wayne. If it’s just a free-for-all, nothing more, how come he bears the brunt of it? Oh, and here …” Despite being wrapped inside two paper bags, the egg and sausage sandwich was copiously leaking grease as he passed it into Resnick’s hand, “… you’ll be wanting this. I’ll mash if you like? Mug of tea to wash it down.”

  “Right, Graham.”

  But when Resnick wandered out into the squad room some minutes later, he
found Millington bending over his VDU screen rather than the kettle.

  “Here, take a look at this by way of a CV.”

  Resnick focused on the lines of slightly broken text. Wayne Feraday had graduated from unlawfully and maliciously throwing half-bricks at a moving train with intent to endanger the safety of its passengers, through the more normal taking of vehicles without consent, on to two charges relating to the illegal possession and sale of a controlled drug.

  “Both charges dropped,” Millington said. “Insufficient evidence. Now why does that ring a bell?”

  “But you think that accounts for what happened? Something drug-related?”

  “Maybe Wayne’s short-changed someone on his supply. Got behind on his payments. Crossed over on to someone else’s turf. It’d not be the first time.”

  Resnick’s face turned sour. “I just hope you’re not right. ’Cause if you are, it’ll not be the last.”

  Not so much more than an hour later, Mark Ellis was standing on line with two of his mates in Burger King, wearing his new leather jacket and fresh plasters down one side of his face and across the knuckles of his right hand. Stupid fucking coppers! What did they know? He was feeling spruce enough to laugh at one of Billy Scalthorpe’s jokes, even though he’d heard it twice before.

  At the counter, he joked with the ginger-haired lass who was serving, ordered a Whopper with cheese and a double portion of fries, onion rings, apple pie, and a large Coke. He was halfway back to the doors, Scalthorpe still haggling over his order, when the two black youths fell into step either side of him.

  “Hungry,” said the one to his left, Redskins baseball cap reversed.

  “Huh?”

  “Hungry, yeh?”

  “What the fuck’s it to you?”

  “Here,” said the youth to the other side, reaching inside his silver zip-up jacket. “Eat this.”

  And he pushed the barrel end of an automatic pistol hard against Ellis’s cheek and squeezed the trigger.

  Five

  Lorraine stood on the paved area between the rose garden and the entrance to the crematorium chapel, while around her, small clusters of men and women, somberly dressed, engaged in desultory conversation. She didn’t even know who they all were.

  She took a tissue from her bag and blew her nose softly, pulled at an imaginary thread by the seam of Sandra’s sweatshirt, and shook her head at Sean to stop him kicking at the pale gravel of the forecourt. Then there was Derek’s sister Maureen approaching, a broad smile more suited to a wedding than a funeral.

  “How you doing, then? All right?” She left a smudge of coral lipstick on Lorraine’s cheek as she gave her a hug. “Nice outfit, understated, just right for the occasion. I like that. Though you could have come to me, of course. I’d’ve found something for you, special. And a good price, too.” She hugged her again. “Family.” Maureen herself was wearing a black dress with a scoop neck, mid-length, with a deep split in the skirt, front and back.

  Derek and Maureen went off into a little huddle and several people came up to Lorraine to tell her what a grand lady her mother had been and shake her hand. A man with purple veins etched across his face and a runny eye bent to kiss her on the cheek and squeeze her arm. “She did well, Deirdre,” he said, his voice low, as if this was something between the pair of them, special and caring. “Hanging on the way she did. Coping. After what that bastard-s’cuse my language-did to your father. He was a wonderful man, your dad, God rest his soul. A gentleman-but I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “Here’s the vicar,” Derek said, as a slight figure, prematurely balding, bounced brightly toward them, hand outstretched, smiling.

  But Lorraine’s eyes were fixed solemnly now on the middle distance, the pair of iron gates, open, through which the vehicle bringing her brother would enter.

  Evan was never sure how he’d come to take a wrong turning. But somewhere between Wesley’s map reading and his own instincts, they had ended up on the wrong side of the Trent and heading east. He could feel Michael Preston’s unexpressed anger burning into the back of his head as he swung the car into a U-turn. Stay calm, that’s what his father would have said, stay calm and do your best. “It’s okay,” he said over his shoulder, “ten minutes now, fifteen at most.”

  In the mirror, Preston’s eyes were flat and staring. Sweat gathered at the base of Evan’s neck.

  “We’ll get you there, don’t fret.”

  “Come on, love …” Derek’s voice patient and understanding.

  “No, wait …” Lorraine shrugged his hand from her shoulder, a quick shake of her head. “Tell them they’ll have to wait until he’s here.”

  Derek’s glance went from the direction in which his wife was looking toward the open chapel doors, through which the clumsy sounds of the organ could already be heard. “It’s too late. They’re starting.”

  “Then tell them … explain …”

  He gripped her more tightly, one arm along her back, edging her forward. “He’s got held up somewhere, traffic, you know what it’s like. Roadworks, most probably. He’ll be here, you see. Now, d’you want to borrow my hankie? No? Okay, stiff upper lip then, here we go.”

  Derek, serious-faced as he led her into the chapel and down toward the empty spaces reserved for them in the front row beside Sean and Sandra; the vicar standing at the center waiting, smiling now his careful smile of welcome, and everyone else leaning forward, not wanting to be seen staring but concerned, inquisitive, staring all the same. And with each step he took beside her, proud at her bravery, Derek thinking if there was any such thing as justice then Michael would not be serving life nor anything like it, Michael would have been taken from that place and hung by the neck until dead, dead as his father before him. “Okay, now?” he whispered as Lorraine stood beside him. “Okay, sweetheart?” And squeezed her hand.

  The crematorium car park was full to the gills and they had to pull over against the grass verge, temporarily blocking the way. When Evan switched off the engine, the sound of singing could be heard, muffled, from behind the chapel doors.

  “You take him,” Evan said, sitting round in his seat. “I’ll deal with the car. Go on. Before it’s too late.”

  Preston leaned forward. “The cuffs,” he said. “I don’t want to go in there wearing no cuffs.”

  Evan hesitated.

  Alongside Preston, Wesley shook his head.

  “Do it,” Evan said decisively. “Uncuff him.”

  Disbelief in Wesley’s eyes.

  “We’re wasting time.”

  Out of the car, Evan moved in quickly on Preston, stopping close enough that their bodies were almost touching. “I’m trusting you,” he said. “Don’t let me down. When it’s over, you stay inside, wherever you are, let everyone else leave. That’s when the cuffs go back on. Agreed?”

  Preston held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once, Evan hesitating, waiting perhaps for thanks that didn’t come. “Okay,” Evan said, stepping back.

  Wesley walked with Preston toward the chapel doors, keeping approximately half a pace behind, Evan standing his ground until they had stepped inside and the doors had closed again behind them. Then, without looking either to left or right, he got back into the car and drove it slowly up toward the road.

  If this goes wrong, he was thinking … And then, if this were my dad, here in my shoes, this situation, what would he have done?

  It was Derek who noticed Michael first, glancing round at the sound of the heavy doors squeaking to a close. Michael standing quite still for a moment, blinking at the change of light before starting to walk slowly forward down the center aisle; the black man-his guard, Derek supposed-who had come in with him, remaining where he was. The congregation was singing a psalm about passing into the golden yonder.

  Lorraine sensed Michael’s presence before she saw him, recognizing, perhaps, the weight of his footsteps, clear along the cold tiles. Like a slow wave, voices broke around her and she, almost alone, continued singing, u
nable to turn her head for fear she was wrong.

  “Hi, Lo.” He repeated their old joke greeting close into her ear and something clutched and swept through her stomach, and then it was his hand steadying the small blue hymnal that shook between her fingers. “Budge up.”

  To Lorraine’s left, Derek moved along to make room, edging the children closer to the wall; Lorraine standing there with Michael’s shoulder touching hers, his elbow hard against her upper arm. The warmth of him. Lorraine terrified she might cry out, faint.

  The last sounds of the organ echoed to a halt and the vicar stepped forward, head raised, waiting for silence before beginning to speak.

  “We are here to celebrate the life of a remarkable woman; one to whom life presented a more than usually difficult path. A path which many of us would have found too arduous or too long, yet one which Deirdre traveled with great fortitude and grace.” The voice was oddly high and clear, somehow both old and young. “She was a valued member of the community, a willing worker, and, as the presence of so many of you here today testifies, a loyal and much-loved friend. Perhaps above all, though, we will remember her as a devoted mother, the loving and strong center of her family, a rock of consolation and forgiveness which held firm in the face of adversity of a singular and most terrible kind.”

  Lorraine sensed Michael tense beside her, heard his breathing change, a low clearing of his throat. Behind them, the chapel was silent, poised. For a moment, she thought that Michael might be about to move, step forward, speak. Then she realized that he was crying, making no effort to disguise it, tears that curled around the corners of his mouth, ran without let or hindrance down his face.

  “If there is one thing,” the vicar continued, “we should remember most about the life of Deirdre Preston, it is that, no matter what the pain she suffered, no matter the magnitude of sorrow and sadness she was forced to face, she never once sank into despair, she never lost her faith.