Wasted Years cr-5 Page 16

  “A very fine house, sir.” He was blocking Resnick’s path, professional smile in place, scent of violets faint on his breath. “Excellent value.”

  Resnick nodded and took a step to the side.

  “Was it that particular property you were interested in, that particular area? We have a number of others …”

  Resnick knew if he stayed there another minute he would hit him, full in the face. “No,” he said, pushing past, “this is fine for now.”

  Out on the street he screwed the paper down into his jacket pocket and hurried between heavy green buses towards the lower edge of the square. One hand against the railings outside Jessops, he caught his breath: not since he had been in uniform, confronted by a gang of youths shouting abuse and spitting in his face, had he felt such a need to lash out, strike back. Although he hadn’t admitted it at the time, almost certainly hadn’t been aware that it was so, this had been one of the reasons that had nudged him into CID and out of the front line. The urge to strike back-more than that, to hurt, actually hurt. It frightened him.

  Inside the Victoria Centre, he skirted round the mothers and toddlers, mothers with prams, climbed the central stairs to the upper floor. Passing between the stalls laden with vegetables and fruit, the rows of hanging plants and cut flowers, he took his stool at the Italian coffee stall. One espresso, full. He had scarcely received his change before ordering a second. And a third. He withdrew the property details from his pocket and smoothed them out upon the counter. This substantial properly provides an excellent opportunity for purchasing a large and established residence in this exclusive and much sought-after area of the city.

  “Thinking of moving?” Maria asked, settling his third espresso in front of him.

  “Something like that.”

  She moved away to serve another customer as Resnick turned over the sheet of paper. Viewing earnestly recommended, it said in thick letters across the bottom of the page.

  The police car was parked across the street from the station and Ben Riley slid from the passenger side when Resnick approached, Ben not in uniform, wearing the same sports coat and flannels he stood in on the terraces deploring another County attack gone wrong.

  “Where the hell’ve you been?”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody seemed to know where you were.”

  Hands in his pockets, Resnick shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  “You all right?” Ben Riley was craning back his neck, looking at Resnick keenly. “Okay?”

  Under his friend’s gaze, Resnick looked away. “Fine. Why?”

  “You look dreadful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “All the more reason for lunch,” Ben urged him.

  Resnick shook his head, glanced towards the station. “I can’t.”

  “I’m paying.”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  “And you have to eat lunch.”

  “I’ll get a sandwich.”

  “And indigestion.”

  “Sorry, Ben.” Resnick stepped into the street. “Some other time.” Ben Riley’s hand reached for his shoulder, holding him back. “Work, Charlie. This is work. Believe me. This is stuff you’ll want to hear.”

  “Excuse me, sweetheart. Love. Miss. Another couple of pints, please.” Ben Riley beamed and offered the waitress his glass.

  Resnick flattened his palm over his and shook his head.

  “Half?” the waitress asked.

  “Thanks.”

  They were in Ben Bowers at the top of Derby Road; if you angled your head round sharply enough it was possible to see Canning Circus police station through the window. Ben Riley was eating his way through a steak, T-bone, medium rare, french fries, broccoli, new season’s peas. Resnick had ordered the lemon sole, saute potatoes, salad. The only other diners were on expense-account lunches from the insurance company offices along the road.

  “So picture this,” Ben Riley was saying between mouthfuls, “there we are, eleven fifteen, eleven thirty, whatever, on our way out of the pub, taxi waiting, all of a sudden there’s this commotion across the street. Two couples, blokes in their Friday-night suits, women wearing dresses so thin you can see the goose pimples on their arms from where we’re standing …”

  He broke off as the waitress set the glasses on the table; used the blade of his knife to dab English mustard on to the reddish end of his steak.

  “Where are we?” Resnick asked. “This pub?”

  “Woodborough. You know, the country and western nights.”

  Resnick didn’t like to think about it. He had never understood how a grown man, otherwise fully in control of his faculties, could break down and cry at the sound of Hank Snow singing “Old Shep.”

  “Anyroad, there I am, few more sheets to the wind than rightly I care for, looking over there, hoping it’ll all calm itself down, storm in a biryani, when one of these blokes knees the other one right in the groin. Woman I’m with, instead of hauling me off, she’s all for a bit of action. ‘Go on, then. You can’t turn your back. Go over and get them sorted.’” He cut off a wedge of meat and chewed at it thoughtfully. “I get halfway across the road, bloke who’s been hit, unlocks the boot of this car parked at the curb and comes up with a gun.”

  If he didn’t have all of Resnick’s attention before, he had it now.

  “Bloody shotgun!”

  Resnick set knife and fork quietly down and pushed away his plate.

  Ben Riley grinned. Two insurance executives across the aisle were hanging on his every word. “Where there’d been a lot of shouting and commotion, everyone was suddenly quiet. Three of them staring at this shotgun and the chap with it looking ready to take the other bloke off at the knees.”

  By now the entire restaurant was silent, wanting to know how it had worked out.

  “He was so engrossed in what he was doing, didn’t seem to hear me at all. Got right up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder. Jumped half a foot in the air, dropped the gun.” Ben Riley was smiling broadly, enjoying the audience. “Got a foot on it, showed him my warrant card, that was about that.”

  You could hear breath being released around them on all sides, click of utensils on china, conversations resumed.

  “Seemed the car he was driving wasn’t taxed, his driving license had been withdrawn six months previous and, of course, he didn’t have a license for the gun. I get the names and addresses of the others, make sure my woman gets a taxi, me and him go back inside the restaurant-pretty fair tandoori, by the way, specially when it’s on the house-anyway, we get to talking, he’s worried about this motor thing, needs it to get around, can’t believe he was so stupid as to threaten this bloke with the gun. Been mates-what? — four years, but that’s not what’s really putting the shits up him, what is, he had that gun earmarked for somebody else. One of the things he’s into, a little buying and selling on the side. It’s in police custody, how can he sell the gun?”

  Resnick could feel the small vein vibrating at the side of his skull. “Did he say who he was going to sell the shotgun to?” Hoping against hope, not really believing what Ben’s reply was going to be, but knowing all the same.

  Ben Riley leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. “Prior. John Prior.”

  Resnick picked up his knife and fork and cut across the fleshy section of lemon sole. His appetite had come back.

  The man’s name was Finch, Martin Finch, and they didn’t talk to him in one of the interview rooms at the station; they talked to him in Ben Riley’s Vauxhall, parked in a lay-by on the Kimberley-Eastwood by-pass, east of Junction 26. The temperature was such that the windows were steaming over, three men in that confined space the best part of an hour, Finch’s sweat holding his shirt flat and wet to his back, running into his groin. Finch wanted to reach down and scratch, wriggle and set himself to rights. Except for small movements with his hands, he sat quite still, leaning back into the rear corner of the car, gray tongue dabbing at his drying lips. Softly, the four-speaker
stereo was playing one of Ben Riley’s compilations of Country hits.

  “The gun that was used in the Sainsbury’s job,” Resnick asked, “did that come from you?”

  Finch mumbled something that could have been yes or no.

  “Again,” Resnick said.

  Audible this time, Finch staring at the condensation on the window as traffic, like blurred ghosts, swished by outside. “Yes.”

  “You knew what it was for?”

  “No.”

  “You must have had an idea?”

  “No. Never.”

  “The person you sold it to, that was Prior?”

  “Not direct.”

  “Explain.”

  Over the whine of a steel guitar, George Jones was preparing to get hurt all over again.

  “I met up with Frank …”

  “Frank Churchill?”

  “Yes. Through him I met Prior. After the deal’d gone through.”

  “They talked about the robbery?”

  “Course not.”

  “But you knew?”

  “No.” Resnick wiped his hands along his thighs. “You thought they were going out to shoot rabbits?”

  “Maybe.” A flick of the tongue. “Why not?”

  “You know now,” Ben Riley said from behind the wheel. “After last time, no way you can’t know.”

  Finch lowered his face into his hands. Count to five hundred in tens and when you look they’ll all have gone away.

  Resnick leaned closer along the back seat. “This time, Prior contacted you himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not Churchill?”

  Finch shrugged. “Maybe he’s not around. Who knows?”

  “When,” Resnick said, “were you supposed to make delivery of the gun?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Honest to God …”

  “Yes?”

  Finch’s eyes left Resnick and found Ben Riley instead. His temples were beginning to throb; it was increasingly difficult to breathe. “Tomorrow, day after. He’s supposed to get in touch.”

  “How?”

  “Phone.”

  Resnick glanced towards Ben Riley, who gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod. “Go through with it. Go through with the deal. Soon as Prior’s in touch, arrangements are in place, you call us.”

  An articulated lorry went past so fast along the bypass it made the car vibrate. Sweat dropped from Finch’s nose onto his mouth and chest. Tanya Tucker asked to be laid down in a field of stone; Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahachee Bridge. “All right,” Finch breathed eventually. “Okay. Yes. Yes.”

  Thirty

  “Whatever’s the matter with you, Charlie?” Elaine was leaning against the living-room door, a glass of white wine in her hand.

  What’s the matter with you? Resnick felt like asking. Since when did you start drinking at home, this side of seven o’clock especially. Resnick was listening to Charlie Mariano, thumbing through back issues of Jazz Monthly, the omelet he’d made earlier balanced cold on its plate at the edge of his chair, largely untouched.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her steadily. “Is something the matter?”

  Elaine held his gaze for several moments, clicking forefinger against thumb as she turned away.

  When Resnick appeared in the kitchen fifteen minutes later he was wearing his gray raincoat, unbuttoned and unbelted. “I’m going to the match.”

  “What match?”

  “Reserves.”

  Without humor, she arched back her head and laughed. “Christ! Is staying in the same house with me suddenly that bad?”

  He stood on the County Road side, near the halfway line. Rain began to fall in swathes, darkening his coat, seeping through to his shoulders. On the pitch a bunch of youngsters and the odd gnarled professional hoofed the ball out of defense in the hopeful direction of their opponents’ goal. Tackles slid fast across the greasy turf and, with so few people in the ground, you could hear, all too clearly, the crack of bone meeting bone.

  “Here! Here! Here!” a player called, arms like semaphore. “Get the bastard thing upfield!”

  Gripping the metal rail before him, Resnick failed to notice that his fingers had whitened, his knuckles were purple. So many times since the previous afternoon the words had lain on the back of his tongue, waiting to be spoken and each time he had swallowed them whole and unsaid. Whatever’s the matter with you, Charlie? Is staying in the same house with me suddenly so bad? He could smell something strange and sweet and it was the scent of violets, filling nostrils and mouth, making him retch. Married women, Rains had said, smug and handsome and knowing, a cinch.

  When, less than five minutes from the end of the match, County’s reserve striker latched on to a weak back pass and toe-poked the ball past the keeper for the game’s only goal, Resnick could scarcely raise a cheer.

  It was a drinking club near the Forest, as unlike the one where he’d been with Resnick and Cossall as it was possible to be. The DJ at the far end of the main room was playing reggae and Rains’s was the only other white face at the bar. “Scotch,” he said, “large. And a large gin.”

  He slid a note across the bar and pocketed the change, picked up the glasses and carried them to the far end where Ruth was sitting.

  “I told you …” Ruth began.

  “It’s a free country.”

  Ruth laughed bitterly. “Is it?”

  Rains sat himself on the stool beside her, tasting his Scotch. Ruth lit another cigarette and poured the gin into her own glass.

  “We can’t talk here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m known. Besides, he might come waltzing in any minute.”

  “Okay, my car’s outside. We could go for a drive.” He drained his glass and began to get to his feet. Ruth scowled and looked straight ahead but otherwise she didn’t move. Rains settled back down and gestured to the barman for a refill. He thought if there were any real danger of Prior arriving she would have left the moment she’d recognized him at the door.

  Ruth held the glass by the stem, tight, wondering if some kind member was in the entrance hall already, letting Prior know his wife was sitting there, taking drinks from a sodding copper. She could see Rains’s reflection mirrored above the bottles, so fucking good-looking it made you want to throw up.

  “Another?”

  She didn’t answer and he took her silence for agreement and bought a large gin. Ruth waited for him to start in on Prior’s activities, how did it feel being married to a villain? He surprised her by asking her how it felt, not being able to sing any more.

  “Not able? How d’you mean?”

  “Don’t suppose he takes to the idea much, does he? Wife up on stage, on show? Bit old-fashioned about things like that, I should imagine.”

  Before they were married, Prior had gone everywhere to see her. Step out onto the stage and there he was, somewhere at the back of the room, leaning, smiling. Later, it was, “Jesus, Ruthie! You have to start that caterwauling, every minute of the bloody day?” At first, career going nowhere, bands breaking up around her, record contracts not materializing, she had found it difficult to mind. The joy had gone out and all that was left were torn vocal cords and hard work.

  “Don’t you wish,” Rains said, “you could do it again, now and then, just for the hell of it?”

  Ruth stubbed out her cigarette, automatically reaching for another. “It’s been too long. Any voice I might’ve once had’s gone.”

  He put his hand over the one that was bringing the cigarette to her lips. “Maybe then you shouldn’t smoke so much?”

  She shook him free. “My father, that’s what you want to be? My agent? You’re short of an act for the police smoker? What?”

  Rains waited until she was looking full into his face. “I like you. Talking to you, it’s good. I like that. Paying you a bit of attention, I reckon it’s too long since anyone’s done that. You deserve bett
er. That’s all.”

  Ruth sat there, you cocky young bastard, you’re so full of shit; but listening all the same, knowing he was lying, enjoying every word.

  When he arrived back at the house all the lights were out and Resnick assumed that Elaine had grown tired of her own company, caught a cab to someone welcoming. But she had gone to bed early, her face blinking back at him from the pillow when he switched on the light. She covered her eyes and he snapped it back off.

  “Coffee? Tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The usual courtesies.

  Resnick spread the coffee beans across the palms of both hands, lowering his face towards them. Even so, it lingered: sweet-sour smell of the sheet, oil of violet on the breath. In the living room he thought of playing Parker’s “Lover Man,” one of those bruised ballads Billie Holiday sang with Lester Young. Either, he realized, would reduce him further into self-pity. He fetched a notebook from the desk by the window and wrote up that day’s conversation with Martin Finch. If anything went wrong, he was going to need all the accurate documentation he could muster.

  Almost an hour later he called Ben Riley on the phone.

  Ben’s voice was quiet and Resnick wondered if there was someone there with him, the woman who had witnessed the incident with the shotgun or someone else. “What’s the matter, Charlie? Can’t sleep?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “Not to fret. What can I do for you?”

  “That deal today, with Finch? You think it was all right?”

  “Will he follow through, you mean?”

  “Yes,” Resnick said.

  “Depends who he’s more frightened of, us or Prior.”

  They talked some more, Resnick reluctant to put down the phone.

  “You know what I was on about the other day,” Ben Riley said eventually. “About getting out.”

  “Leaving the force?”

  “Quitting the whole bloody lot, lock, stock, and barrel. Well, I’m serious. Maybe didn’t think I was at the time, but I am. I’m getting out, Charlie. Started looking into it, serious. Got an appointment to talk to the union rep later this week.”