by John Harvey
She’d heard her one day, telling Marjorie as if she was doing her a big favor, letting her in on a secret, and Marjorie, all soggy-eyed, “Oh, Becca! How lovely!”
Never mind the way Spindler treated Marjorie herself, patronizing bastard, “Well, Marjorie, keeping these two youngsters in order, are we?” Seventeen years she’d worked there, Marjorie, passed over every chance of promotion there was, all the while pretending that it hadn’t happened.
Not me, Lorna thought, that’s not what’s going to happen to me. Eighteen months tops and I’m putting in for a transfer and if I don’t get it I’m straight off to the Halifax, the Abbey National, the Leeds. And I don’t care who knows it.
Twenty-three minutes past two. There—I looked.
Oh, well.
Lorna eased her back against the padded chair and turned the pages of last week’s Bella, which was resting on her knees. In the raised area behind her, she could hear Becca and Marjorie at their desks: Becca going on about her holiday in Orlando; Marjorie retelling the story of her sister’s ovarian cyst, the size of a small baby—Sunday mornings going round car-boot sales for a shawl and a second-hand cot before she realized the truth.
The door opened slowly and Lorna’s eyes flicked back towards the clock. Twenty-five past. Old Mr Foreman in his carpet slippers and his zip not properly fastened, paying in fifteen pounds and withdrawing five—“Did you see such-and-such last night? Bloody tripe! Don’t know why those people get paid.”
She closed her magazine and slid it beneath the ledger.
Darren stood just inside the door, Keith behind him. Already he could feel his heart pumping. Three women, one at the front, behind the only cashier’s window in use, the others farther back, neither of them looking round, paying any attention. The girl at the window, though, round glasses, staring at him through big round glasses, surprised. Well, he’d give her something to be surprised about.
“The door,” he said to Keith, moving forward.
“Uh?”
“Watch the door.”
Lorna sat readying her smile, a new customer, probably nothing more than an inquiry, how d’you go about opening an account?
“Lorna Solomon?” smiled Darren, reading her name off the engraved plate at the side of the window.
He wasn’t bad-looking when he smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “How may I help you?”
Darren laughed, more of a chuckle than a laugh. He opened the front of the loose leather jacket he was wearing and pulled out a bin bag, black. “Here,” he said, passing it through to her. “Fill that.’
Behind the blue-framed glasses, Lorna blinked. It had to be a joke, a wind-up, someone kidding her for a bet, a dare.
“Do it,” Darren said. “Don’t make no fuss. Do it now, eh?”
It wasn’t a dare.
Lorna’s gaze shifted towards the second youth, far shorter, over by the door. Neither of them older than she was herself.
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Darren said, his voice a little louder.
“Miss Solomon,” came Becca’s toffee-nosed voice from behind. “Is something the matter?”
“This gentleman has a query, Miss Astley,” Lorna said, turning her head. “Perhaps you should deal with it yourself.”
“What the fuck’re you playing at?” said Darren, face thrust close against the screen.
“What’s going on?” said Keith, stepping away from the door.
Trim legs on the short flight of steps, Becca saw the plastic bag in Lorna’s hand, read, uncertainly, the expression on her face, saw the movement of the young man behind.
Becca threw poise and elocution to the winds and screamed.
Darren pulled the hammer clear of his coat and smashed it against the center of the screen.
Fumbling with his pass book, trying to free it from its plastic cover, Harry Foreman came through the door, whistling through his half-dozen remaining teeth the theme from “Limelight.” Always one of his favorites. That Mantovani, couldn’t be beat.
“Keith, where the hell did he come from?”
Keith wasn’t certain: about anything.
“Here …” said Harry.
The third time Darren hit the screen, it splintered, top to bottom.
Lorna crouched beneath the counter, shielding her eyes. Becca ran back up the steps, turned, and ran back down.
“Here …” said Harry Foreman, as Keith grabbed hold of his bony arms and pushed him back against the wall.
Marjorie eased her way across the rear of the office towards the telephone.
“Stuff the money in that bag,” yelled Darren, “and quick.”
But Lorna didn’t seem to be listening. Inch by inch, she was sliding her hand towards the alarm.
“Take your hands off of me,” Harry said, ducking his balding head towards Keith’s face. “Don’t think I’m going to be pushed around by the likes of you.”
Darren knocked away a section of screen and vaulted onto the counter. Becca stopped screaming and cried instead. “Hello,” said Marjorie quietly into the receiver she was shielding behind her size-sixteen dress, “I want to talk to the police.”
Lorna squinted up at Darren’s black jeans, the worn soles of his Nike trainers, fear and fury on his face, and pressed her thumb against the button hard.
“Darren!” called Keith. “The alarm!”
“Fucking genius!” Darren said. “That’s you.” He aimed a kick at Lorna’s head and missed, swung wildly with the hammer and liberated several inches of varnished chipboard from the counter top.
Harry Foreman stuck out a leg and Keith half-tripped, staggered wildly before breaking open the skin above his left eye on the corner of the wall beside the door.
“What’s this?” Darren said, jumping down. “Home fucking Guard?”
“Don’t think I’m frightened of you,” Harry said.
Darren swung the hammer two-handed and cracked it against the side of his head, just in front of the ear. Before the old man had finished falling, Darren was out of the door.
In front of him, Keith was skating across several yards of mud like they were glass. An Asian face peered around the newsagent’s door, then pulled back from sight. Farther up the street, a mother pushed two children under two in a pram. As Darren cursed him, Keith’s fingers fumbled with the keys. His head felt like it had been split open and blood was trickling into the corner of his eye.
Darren snatched the keys from him and pulled open the car door. “What the hell d’you lock it for?” he asked, pushing Keith inside.
“Leave it unlocked outside here,” said Keith, “some clever bastard’ll have it away.”
He turned the key in the ignition and the engine fired first time; scraping the gears, he revved hard and swung the wheel. The first police siren could be heard no more than half a mile away.
“Watch the pram!” Darren called as Keith hit the curb and skidded up over the pavement, evading the pram but striking the mother, rear bumper swiping her legs and knocking her off her feet. Swerving wildly, Keith rounded a lamppost, squealed back on to the road, and accelerated away.
“Next time,” Darren said, as Keith threw the car into a right-hand turn and headed the wrong way up a one-way street, “make sure you’re not fucking late!”
Five
“Bloody mess, Charlie, that’s what it was. Beginning to end.” Skelton hung his overcoat behind the door, automatically smoothing the shoulders along with his hands. He and Malcolm Grafton had been comparing notes over a couple of glasses of a nice Valdepeñas when his bleeper had sounded the alert. “Bunch of professionals is one thing, but this—couple of cowboys without a brain between them …”
Distaste showed clearly on the superintendent’s face as he settled behind his desk, careful first to unbutton the jacket of his double-breasted suit, a soft gray wool-mix smelling faintly of the dry cleaner’s.
“Walk in off the street and ten minutes later there’s an old boy fighting for his life in intensive
care, one woman with a suspected broken leg, and another under sedation for shock.”
Sitting across from Skelton, Resnick nodded. He had spoken to the doctor at the hospital himself. Harry Foreman’s condition was touch and go. The injured mother’s two children were being looked after by the Social Services Emergency Duty Team until contact could be made with either the estranged father or the grandmother, living out at Heanor.
“Week before last,” Skelton was saying, “went to this seminar at Loughborough, Department of Criminology. Pair today would have given them a field day. Deprived area. Disadvantaged youth. Striking at a building society because it symbolizes the property-owning class that is still presented as the desirable norm.”
Resnick looked past Skelton’s head towards the window, the red brick of factory buildings that had either been left to crumble or were slowly being turned into architect-designed flats with central saunas and swimming pools that no one had the money to rent or buy. Out there, the norm was mornings at the Job Centre, signing on, filling in forms for housing benefit; afternoons among the bright lights and plastic plants of the shopping centers, trying to keep warm. Whatever language the professor might have couched it in, Resnick thought, as far as he was concerned the economic theories about the causes of crime held more water than most.
More so than those of the Secretary of State for Education, who had recently blamed the increasing crime rate on the church’s failure to preach the perils of hellfire and damnation. Over half the churches in Resnick’s patch had been pulled down or deconsecrated and turned into sports centers; of the rest, at least two had themselves been set on fire.
“Banks and building societies,” Skelton said, “hundred per cent increase in robberies in the last two years. Mostly armed.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between index finger and thumb. “As we know all too well. At least those two today only went in with a hammer.”
“I don’t suppose Harry Foreman’ll be thankful for that,” Resnick said.
“If it had been a gun,” Skelton said, “he might not have been so keen to get involved.”
“And if he had?” Resnick asked.
Skelton shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Members of the public, situations like that, best keeping their heads down, eyes open. No place for heroes.”
Do that, Resnick thought, not going to be a great help as witnesses, aside from remembering the color of their own shoes.
“Interviews proceeding, Charlie? Your team.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me up to date. Anything that looks like a positive ID. Should be in a better position when we get prints in tomorrow.”
Resnick was on his feet.
Skelton lifted a memo from his desk. “Two calls already from the local union rep, Banking, Insurance, and Finance. Requests an urgent appointment. Why aren’t we doing more to protect his members?”
He sighed and straightened the family photographs on his desk and Resnick, sensing his own stomach about to rumble, managed to keep it under control until he was on the other side of the door.
The CID room was in chaos. Four days before, the station’s heating system had gone on the blink and, despite having the central boiler overhauled, there were still parts of the building to which no heat had returned. This was one of them. Cold enough, in Mark Divine’s words, to freeze a witch’s tit.
Some of the desks had been hauled out into the corridor, others piled on top of one another while the source of the trouble was tracked down. Several lengths of floorboard had been prized up and now rested precariously against a well-marked street map of the city. Pieces of piping lay on most available surfaces and a workman in gray overalls lay on his stomach, hammering cheerfully while his mate sipped cold tea and labored over the previous day’s quick crossword.
“Is it always like this?” Lorna asked, the tempo of the hammering increasing.
Kevin Naylor, interviewing her about the robbery, shook his head and smiled. “Not always.”
“You are busy, though? Plenty to do.”
“Oh, yes. Pretty busy.”
Lorna crossed her legs: soft, between hammer blows, the faintest swoosh of nylon over nylon. “You’re lucky,” she said.
Naylor looked at her: how come?
“What happened today, first bit of excitement in weeks. Months. Since before Christmas.” She leaned forward just a little. “What it was, this chap come in, red nose and top hat, tinsel all over it, collecting for charity. Children in Need, one of them. Anyway, there he was shaking his bucket under Marjorie’s nose and he keeled right over. Started kicking his legs, nineteen to the dozen against the floor, having some kind of a fit. Marjorie put her Bic in his mouth, stop him swallowing his tongue, and he bit right through it.”
Naylor was still looking at her, questioning now, and she stared right back at him, eyes unwavering behind her glasses. “The pen, not his tongue.”
“Our Kev,” Divine said quietly, leaning over Lynn Kellogg as she sat questioning Marjorie Carmichael, “on to a good thing there. Dip his wick before the night’s out.”
Lynn scowled and refused to turn her head to as much as look at him, while close beside her Marjorie pretended that she hadn’t heard.
“All right, Marjorie,” Lynn said, as Divine walked off, chuckling, “why don’t we try and concentrate on the hair?”
They had been sitting for close to half an hour, turning the sections of a spiral-bound book back and forth. Facial types: heads divided into three. A game, the object of which was to match up the most likely combination. She had had one similar as a girl, Lynn remembered, but that had been the whole body, top to bottom, a picture-book blonde for whom you chose from different sets of clothes.
“Oh, Lynnie,” her mother had exclaimed, “just look at you. You can’t put them colors together, pink and green.”
“Why not?” Lynn had asked.
“Because they just don’t go. Anyone tell you that.” And she had stopped briefly to brush Lynn’s straight dark hair with her fingers and stroke her cheek with the palm of an oven-warm hand.
“There,” Marjorie said, pointing. “I’m sure that’s right.” Lynn looked at the high forehead, generous mass of curly hair.
“Isn’t that the one I picked before?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Oh, dear. I am sorry.” Marjorie turned towards Lynn, disappointed, wanting so much to please.
“Don’t worry,” Lynn said, smiling faintly. “It’s not easy.” Shifting a little in her seat, more cramped than usual, telling herself that women Marjorie’s size were prone to problems with perspiration, it wasn’t really her fault.
“You weren’t frightened, then?” Kevin Naylor was saying.
“Not at first,” Lorna said. “It didn’t seem real. You know, the way he come over to the counter, taking his time. Posing, almost. I didn’t think he was serious …”
“No.”
“Then, later …” She was trying not to make it too obvious, the way she was angling her head, trying to look at Naylor’s left hand, tucked under his notebook, not certain whether she’d seen a wedding ring or not. “Later, when he started going a bit wild, I suppose I was frightened then. Well, anyone would be.”
“Of course.”
“Anyone in their right mind.”
Kevin Naylor nodded.
“I mean, look at what happened to poor Mr Foreman.”
“He was trying to stop them, was he, from getting away?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Tell the truth, I didn’t really see. I was still behind the counter, ducked down out of the way.” She smiled and he moved his hand and there it was—damn!—thick and gold and looking as if it could do with a bit of a shine. Third finger, left hand.
“You didn’t actually see, then, what happened? Which one of them hit him?”
“Had to be him, didn’t it? The one who did all the talking. I mean, he was the one with the hammer. The other one, the little bloke, he just stood there l
ike a spare part, never done a thing.”
“Do you think either of the others would have seen—the manageress, for instance—do you think they would have seen the blow being struck?”
“I don’t know, I doubt it. I mean, Marjorie might, ask her. But Becca …”
“That’s the manageress?”
Lorna sucked in her cheeks and put on an accent. “Rebecca Astley. Little Miss Hoity-Toity. Real mardy, she was. Scraightin’ and carrying-on.”
“Lots of people panic, situations like that.”
“Even so.”
“You were the one sounded the alarm, though.”
“That’s right’
“Not easy, thinking what to do.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean it.”
For a second, Lorna touched her hand to the frame of her glasses. “So noisy in here, isn’t it? Hardly hear yourself think.”
Naylor glanced over his shoulder and saw Divine grinning right back at him. “Been like this for a couple of days,” he said.
“There isn’t anywhere else …” She waited until he was looking at her again. “There’s nowhere quieter we could go? You know. Somewhere else?”
“Yes,” Naylor said, standing, feeling himself starting to go red. “We could try.”
Lorna was on her feet already, noticing the way he was blushing and not caring, thinking it sweet. So what if he did wear a ring, that didn’t have to mean so much, did it? Not these days?
“What’d I tell you?” Divine called above the sound of hammering. “Over the side and no messing.”
“Your trouble,” Lynn Kellogg sang back. “Judge everyone by your own standards. Least, you would if you had any.”
Divine was still laughing when Resnick came into the room. “Busy, I see, Mark?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Best take a rest, then. Tea break.”
“No, you’re all right …”
“Get yourself over to the deli, fetch me a couple of sandwiches. Ham and cheese and a chicken mayonnaise and salad. Mustard on both. Right?”
Divine took the proffered five-pound note and headed for the door.