Last Rites cr-10

by John Harvey

  “What compartment? What car?”

  “The one you and your mate, Sheena, were in when your brother got himself shot.”

  Diane screwed up her face and folded her arms tight across her chest. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”

  “The Temazepam or the shooting?”

  “Neither.” There were goosebumps down Diane’s arms and her fingers rubbed her skin below her T-shirt sleeves.

  Vincent eased forward. “Come on, Diane. You were there when it happened.”

  “Yeh, well, I was out my fuckin’ head, right? No use asking me anythin’. Just forget it, right? Forget it.”

  “Diane …”

  “An’ I want to see my brother.”

  “Jason can’t see anybody at the moment,” Sharon said. “He’s in no fit state.”

  “I don’t care. I want to see him.”

  “As soon as the hospital says it’s okay for him to have visitors, then you can. But for now, you know, I’ve told you, he’s still in intensive care. He’s not seeing anyone.”

  “He’ll see me.”

  “Diane, will you ever listen?”

  “I’m his next of fuckin’ kin.”

  There were tears close to her eyes. Sharon reached out for her hand and Diane pulled it away. The solicitor lifted his head from his doodling long enough to give both officers a warning glance.

  “There.” Sharon took her pager from her pocket and placed it on the table between them. “The hospital, they’ve promised they’ll call me the moment Jason comes round. And when he does we’ll go straight there, you and me. You can be the first to see him, Diane, okay?”

  Diane was staring at the cigarette, burning down in her hand.

  “Diane? Is that okay?”

  Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Yeh, I suppose so.”

  “I think perhaps,” the solicitor said, leaning forward, “it would be a good idea if my client had a drink, a cup of tea.”

  “Diane,” Sharon said, “would you like something to drink?”

  “No,” Diane said.

  Diane Johnson had been excluded from school for much of her final year-and-a-half: open insolence, bullying, bringing alcohol onto the school premises; finally, slapping her home economics teacher round the face and calling her a jumped-up white whore. She had been cautioned by the police on several occasions for suspected shoplifting, before being brought up in front of the juvenile court and given a conditional discharge on two counts of theft, another of receiving stolen goods. As she’d entered in her defense at the time, round where she lived what other kinds of goods were there?

  Diane’s mother had gone off the day before her daughter’s thirteenth birthday, leaving a five-pound note in an envelope and a greeting card on which she’d scratched out Merry Christmas and scrawled Happy Birthday in its place. Two phone calls aside, during one of which her mother had seemed so wrecked by alcohol and remorse it had scarcely been possible to understand a word she’d said, Diane had had no contact with her since.

  Her father, who had been pushing drugs with only moderate success for years, never close enough to the top of the chain, spending too much of the profit feeding habits of his own, was doing fifteen in Lincoln for shooting a rival dealer in the face in a dispute over territory.

  Apart from Diane’s older sister, the only person in the world she had been close to, growing up, was her friend Dee Dee. And when Dee Dee fell pregnant, her father, a devout Christian, beat her with a strap, then prayed for her soul, while her mother took her to the hospital to arrange a termination. In sympathy, Diane had unprotected sex with several men until she, too, became pregnant, only to miscarry after two months. A while later, she was more successful and the baby-healthy, coffee-skinned, and strong-was named Melvin. Now Diane’s sister looked after him most of the time; it was either that or hand him over to social services. Foster parents. Children’s homes.

  “While we’re waiting to hear from the hospital,” Carl Vincent said, “how about telling us whatever you can?”

  “What is it?” Diane scoffed. “You an’ her together. Pair of black coppers. S’posed to make me feel better, is it. Trust you, like?” Diane laughed. “Talk about fuckin’ obvious. You must think I’m stupid or something. Mental.”

  Vincent rested one forearm on the edge of the table. “Would you prefer to talk to a white officer, Diane, is that what you’re saying? I’m sure we could arrange it, if that’s what you’d prefer. Of course, what with people being busy and everything, it may take a little time, but if that’s what you really want …”

  “Shove it,” Diane said. “What’s the difference? You’re all the fuckin’ same.” She took a final pull on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  “How’s the baby, Diane?” Sharon asked. “Melvin, isn’t that his name?”

  Diane stared back at her, saying nothing.

  “He must be nearly walking by now.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Sharon smiled. “Just trying to be pleasant, that’s all.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Wondering what would happen to him, the baby, if you went to jail.”

  “I i’n’t goin’ to no fuckin’ jail.”

  “Diane,” the solicitor said half-heartedly, “it won’t help if you allow yourself to get excited.”

  “Look, Diane,” Sharon said, “that amount of drugs in your possession …”

  “They wasn’t in my possession …”

  “As good as. And no court’s going to believe that was all for personal use. Which means dealing, you understand that, Diane. That’s serious. You’d be in breach of your conditional discharge. This time, you could go to prison, you really could. Which might mean Melvin being taken into care.”

  “That’s not right,” Diane said. “They’re not taking no kid of mine into care.” She looked at them defiantly, biting her bottom lip.

  Sharon offered her another cigarette, and this time Diane got it lit without a problem. “Okay,” she said, “start at the beginning and tell us as much as you can about what happened. From when you drove on to the Forest to when Jason was shot. There’s no rush. Take your own time.”

  The story, when it came, was not so very different from the one Millington dragged slowly, faltering syllable by faltering syllable, from the mouth of Sheena Snape.

  After an evening that had begun in the pub and moved on to a club, they had fetched up, the three of them, in Jason’s flat, smoking hashish and drinking vodka and Pepsi Cola. Around one in the morning, Jason had decided to call on some mates who lived north of Gregory Boulevard, but when they’d arrived there was nobody home. So they’d driven up on to the Forest instead.

  “What for?”

  “A bit of a laugh.”

  After smoking a few spliffs, Diane had curled up on the back seat and pretty much fallen asleep; Sheena and Jason had fooled around a little, nothing too heavy; all of them pretty much out of it when someone started hammering on the car window.

  Whoever it was shot Jason in the face, neither girl had the least idea. It had been sudden and dark. One thing they were careful not to do was point the finger at Drew Valentine. If Jason had stuck a knife into him, and neither of them was saying that he had, then it had to be because he was confused, mistaken. Of any argument between the two men, any exchange of words, neither Sheena nor Diane remembered a thing.

  Perhaps Norman Mann had been right, Resnick thought after listening to the reports, maybe the best thing was to chuck it all at Helen Siddons and let her make of it what she could. But the thought of stepping aside still stuck in his craw and what he didn’t understand was the ease with which Mann was prepared to do the same. Was there less, then, Resnick thought, than met the eye, or was there more?

  He dialed the number for Major Crime Unit and asked to speak to Sergeant Lynn Kellogg.

  Nineteen

  The ice-cream van just inside the Castle grounds was doing a brisk trade and the teachers steer
ing a ragged crocodile of primary school kids through the turnstile were going to have trouble containing them until after their visit to the museum. Thirty or so nine-year-olds, some of the boys wearing baseball caps, some turbans, the girls-half of them at least-kitted out in their junior Spice Girls gear, all carrying cans of pop, packed lunches, and patchily copied worksheets.

  Resnick was sitting on one of the benches lining the avenue of trees that stretched toward the bandstand. Now that the sun had broken through the cloud cover, it was warm enough for him to have removed his jacket and draped it across the bench, tugged his tie toward half-mast. Half turned toward the entrance, he shielded his eyes from the sun and watched Lynn Kellogg walk toward him; Lynn with her dark hair cut short and shaped to her head, wearing a deep-red cotton top tucked down into black denims, boots with a low heel. A soft leather bag hung from one shoulder.

  “Sorry I’m so late.”

  “Not to worry.”

  “So much going on, it was difficult to get away.”

  Resnick nodded to show he understood and shifted back along the bench. “Chance to soak up some sun. Bit of a change from earlier.”

  Lynn dropped her bag between them and sat down. Close to, she looked tired; dark, purplish shadows around her eyes. She seemed to have lost weight also; her face was less full, cheekbones hard against the skin.

  “Are you okay?” Resnick asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You look a bit … well …”

  “It’s that woman. Siddons. Slave-driver isn’t in it.”

  “Not like me, then?” Resnick grinned.

  “Expects everybody to work a thirteen-hour day and keep pace with her afterward in the bar. Glad it’s her liver and not mine.”

  “As long as it gets results.”

  Lynn sighed. “I suppose.”

  “You’re not regretting it?”

  “Transferring to Major Crimes?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  The gates at the far end of the drive swung open and a single-decker bus chartered by one of the local day centers nosed slowly in. On the bench opposite where Resnick and Lynn were sitting, a couple in his-and-hers pin-stripe suits were opening Tupperware containers and settling into an early lunch.

  “I talked to Norman Mann earlier,” Resnick said, “about your boss’s involvement in this firearms business out on the Forest. He’s a sight less fussed about it than I thought he’d be.”

  Lynn didn’t answer for some little time. “Maybe that’s not too wise. From his point of view, at least.”

  Resnick looked at her questioningly.

  “There’s rumors going round someone in his squad’s dirty …”

  “Norman … that’s daft. Whatever he is, he’s not crooked.” He looked at Lynn and she looked away. Behind her, a phalanx of half a dozen wheelchairs were being pushed in slow formation past the ornate flower municipal beds, up toward the Castle.

  Lynn drew a deep breath. “All the reports we’ve seen-Open Doors, people on the Crack Awareness team, the APA-they all say drug use in the city is up. Eighteen months to a year. Heroin. Crack cocaine. During the same period, even though arrests for possession have risen in roughly the same proportion, arrests for dealing have stayed pretty much the same. And convictions have actually fallen.”

  “Maybe the dealers are getting better organized?”

  Lynn pushed her fingers up through her hair, then brushed it down flat. “Siddons has got Anil going back through cases where there’s been an acquittal, or where the bench has just thrown it out of court, no case to answer. Seems there’s a handful of instances where blame could be laid at the door of the officers concerned-poor preparation, evidence mislaid, you can imagine the kind of thing.”

  “But a pattern?”

  “Not so far. If it was just one or two, the same names cropping up again and again, that would be easy.” Lynn shifted position, leaning back against the bench. “What’s interesting is who’s getting pulled in, who isn’t. You go through the interviews with users, low-level dealers, and the same suppliers get mentioned over and over again. Valentine. Planer. But look for those names on the arrest reports and what do you find? No mention of them. Hardly at all.”

  “That couldn’t be because they’re keeping it all at arm’s length, not getting themselves involved?”

  Lynn nodded. “They all use runners, sure. And what the runners do, in turn, is dilute it down, get the stuff rebagged, send it out on the street with runners of their own. Kids, for the most part. Same as it’s always been. But that doesn’t mean nobody knows who’s back of it all, bringing the stuff in; they’re just not touching them, that’s all.”

  “And your boss thinks it’s her business to know why?”

  “Somebody must. There’s people under thirty-five, no visible means of support, driving round the clubs in brand-new scarlet Porsches, Mercedes convertibles. They’re wearing Versace gear and more gold than you’d see in Samuels’s shop window. They didn’t all win the Lottery. And if they’re dealing, getting away scot-free, they’ve got to be buying protection. What else can it be?”

  “That’s what Siddons thinks, too?”

  Lynn looked back at him, serious-faced. “Probably.”

  “And you think Norman Mann knows all about this? You can’t think he’s actually involved?”

  “Involved, I don’t know. It’s too early to say. But if he doesn’t know, then he’s lost all track of what’s going on in his team.”

  “And if he does, he’s got to be turning a blind eye.”

  “At least.”

  “If any of this is true, then there ought to be an inquiry. Official. Someone from an outside force. Whatever evidence Major Crimes gets should be handed over to them.”

  Lynn smiled and shook her head. “Maybe it will. In the end. But only after Siddons has got what I think she wants. The dealers in one hand, whoever they’re buying off in the other. Twice the arrests, twice the glory. She wants it all.”

  Resnick was thinking about Norman Mann, cases they’d worked on together, bars that in their younger days they’d closed down. All those marriages, three kids, a new house apparently; something going on with one of his younger DCs, or so Resnick had heard. Not without his prejudices, Norman, not above doling out the odd backhander if he thought it might speed up inquiries and there wouldn’t be any bruising, but, all that aside, as honest, Resnick would have thought, as the proverbial day was long.

  “Come on,” Lynn said, getting to her feet. “Let’s walk.”

  They were leaning on the parapet, gazing out over the slow waters of the canal and across the Meadows toward the Trent when she told him what else was preoccupying her mind, stopping her from sleeping. “It’s my dad,” she said. And suddenly, from nowhere, there were tears at the corners of her eyes. “The cancer. It’s come back. I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

  Resnick reached for her hand to give it a consoling squeeze, but fumbled and missed; finally, embarrassed, he flung an arm around her shoulder and settled for a clumsy hug. “Lynn, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

  “It’s okay. No, no. It’s okay. I’m … I’m fine.”

  In the brief moment he had held her close against him, her tears had left dark patches on his shirt.

  “Lynn, look …”

  She cried now, without attempting to stop herself or hide what she was doing; Resnick looking on, helpless, hands in his pockets, stranded in his own awkward uncertainty.

  It was twenty minutes later and they were in the cafeteria, drinking coffee at a corner table shy of visitors. Lynn had ordered a sandwich and, after two small bites, it lay unwanted on its plate. The hum of conversation rose and fell around them.

  “Your dad,” Resnick said, “when did you hear?”

  She didn’t answer straightaway, but took another sip at her coffee, already growing cold. “Last weekend. I was meant to be driving over, you know, going home. Then pretty much at the last minute I canceled. Phoned Mum and
said something had come up at work, overtime. It wasn’t even true. And the peculiar thing is, I don’t even know why. It wasn’t as if there was anything going on here, anything special. Oh, Sharon was planning to go out on the Saturday, girls’ night out sort of thing, asked me to come along. But it wasn’t that, I just didn’t … I just didn’t want to go. So I lied.

  “Mum said all right and that she understood; she sounded a bit down, but I thought that was because she’d been, you know, looking forward to me being there. Then she rang me back on the Sunday morning when Dad was out with the hens and told me. He’d been having a lot of pain again, down in his gut where it all happened before. Bleeding when he went to the toilet. His doctor made an appointment for him to see the specialist at the Norfolk and Norwich.”

  There was a catch in her voice and for a moment Resnick thought she might be about to cry again. But she carried on. “Colorectal cancer, that’s what it’s called. Cancer of the bowel. Last time, two years ago now, more, they cut away part of the intestine. That was supposed to have dealt with it, once and for all. ‘Clean bill of health,’ that’s what the doctor said. ‘You don’t have to worry about your father, young lady, he’ll live till he’s a hundred.’ Patronizing bastard. Liar, too.”

  “It’s returned,” Resnick said.

  “Worse than before. He’s had X-rays, another endoscopy. Given the spread and the state of Dad’s health, they’re not keen on operating again.”

  “There must be something they can do?”

  “Chemotherapy. Large doses. The only thing they can promise for certain is it’ll make him feel like shit: it might not do any good.”

  “But if they don’t do that?” Resnick asked.

  Lynn shook her head and made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Treat the pain and let nature take its course. Mum says they started talking to him about going into a hospice and he told them all to bugger off. Said he’d rather die at home with his hens.”

  Resnick had a vision of the poultry farm he had never seen; row after row of wooden huts, chicken wire, and husks of grain. “You’ve been over?” he asked.