Wasted Years cr-5 Read online

  Resnick’s stomach was hollow and chilled. “Where the hell’d you go?”

  A pause and then, “The States, perhaps.”

  “Don’t be daft. Whatever it is you’re running from here, ten times as bad over there. New York. L.A. You’d be …”

  “Big country, Charlie. Not all cities, you know.”

  “If it’s a quiet life you want, what’s wrong with Devon? Cornwall?”

  At the other end of the phone Ben Riley sighed. “It’s not a quiet life I’m after, Charlie. It’s a new one.”

  Not knowing what to say, Resnick said nothing. “Get to bed, Charlie,” Ben Riley said. “Maybe see you first thing? Breakfast, eh?”

  “Maybe,” Resnick said and rung off.

  There was a half inch of coffee cold in the bottom of the cup and he tipped enough Bell’s into it to make it half full. Drank it standing at the foot of the stairs. At the bedroom door he listened to the sound of Elaine’s breathing and knew that she was deep in sleep. In the bathroom, he switched on the shower and stood under it for a long time, head bowed. Then went to bed.

  Thirty-One

  “Chancy business, Charlie. Can’t say it’s the way I’d have played it.”

  “No, sir.”

  Skelton was in the midst of compiling the duty roster, colored pins and stickers strategically placed at the four corners of his desk, each ready to be slotted into place. He reminded Resnick of those elderly men at the BR Travel Centre, just aching to be asked the quickest way to get from Melton Mowbray to Mevagissey on a Sunday, calling at Wolverhampton and Weston-super-Mare on the way.

  “Conspiring to provide a known villain with an illegal weapon, that’s the way the courts might see it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Still, now it’s set in motion, best let it play itself out. But I want a close eye kept, Charlie, understood? A close eye.”

  Resnick turned towards the door.

  “Can’t remember, Charlie-squash, that your game or not?”

  “Not exactly,” Resnick said.

  Skelton nodded. “Bit of difficulty finding partners.” His gaze drifted down in the direction of Resnick’s gently spreading stomach. “Could do a lot worse than give it a thought. Getting to the age when it pays to look out for these things-health, fitness-doesn’t pay to let them slide.”

  Resnick gave it some thought while he was enjoying a smoked ham and brie sandwich, light on the mustard, heavy on the mayonnaise. That and other things. Brushing his fingers free of crumbs, he crumpled up the empty bag and dropped it in one of the black and gold litter bins around the square. Time to do a little more house hunting, he thought, crossing towards the old post office building dividing King and Queen streets.

  The young woman at the first desk had a complexion like sour milk. “Oh, that would be our Mr Gallagher,” she said in response to Resnick’s inquiry. “He’s just stepped out of the office for a moment. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Resnick was in the middle of declining when the bell above the door sounded and Gallagher returned, different suit today, a charcoal gray. He had the early edition of the local paper under one arm, a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, and a packet of twenty Benson Kingsize in his hand. He handed the chocolate to the young woman and slipped the cigarettes into his own pocket. He seemed to recognize Resnick, but not the exact connection.

  “Richmond Drive,” Resnick prompted him.

  “Ah, yes, of course. You’re interested then?”

  Resnick nodded.

  “Good, good. Not been on the market for long and already we’ve had a lot of interest.”

  “It is empty, though? Vacant possession?”

  “Oh, yes. People that lived there moved abroad. France, I seem to remember.” He gave Resnick a professional smile. “Do you have somewhere to sell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps we can help you there. Handle both ends. But first things first …” He reached for a leather-bound appointment book. “You’ll want to view the property.”

  “No, that’s not necessary.”

  “But surely you can’t …”

  “My wife’s already been round the house.”

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry, you didn’t say. I …”

  “Yes. Matter of fact, you showed her round yourself.”

  Gallagher was thumbing back in his book. “I don’t remember …”

  “Well,” Resnick said, a pace closer, “I’m sure you do a lot of that kind of thing.”

  Gallagher glanced up with a quick, uncertain smile; he was still turning, back and forth, from page to page. “I’m afraid I still don’t …”

  “Probably no reason you should. My wife, come to think of it, she didn’t have a lot to say about it either.”

  “If I could have the name?” Gallagher said.

  “Oh, Resnick. Mrs Resnick. Elaine.”

  The appointment book slipped from his hand and he caught at it, steadying it against his body at the second attempt. Much of the color seemed to have left his face. He made a guttural, stuttering sound that never threatened to become real words.

  “If there’s anything else,” Resnick said, “you can get in touch at the station. I expect Elaine mentioned I’m a policeman. Detective sergeant. CID.”

  “What the hell were you doing, Charlie?”

  Elaine had been waiting for Resnick the moment he turned the key in the front door; not waylaying him exactly, but there at the center of the hall, close to the foot of the stairs. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have had a drink or two to steady her resolve.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  He gave her a what-do-you-think? look and made to go past her into the kitchen.

  “No, Charlie. No, you don’t. We’re having this out, here and now.”

  He tried again and physically she blocked him, pushing her hands against his arms. “Talk to me, Charlie. Talk.”

  He looked into her face. “I don’t think I’ve anything to say.”

  “Really?” Head to one side, sarcastic. “You surprise me.”

  “I’d like to think you’d surprised me.”

  She hit him, fast and unthinking, her open hand smack across his cheek, the edge of her ring catching his lip. When he moved his tongue, Resnick could taste blood.

  He walked around her and this time she made no attempt to stop him. Resnick got as far as the back door and realized he didn’t know what he was doing there.

  “Running out again, Charlie? Another football match to go and see?”

  He turned to face her. The anger had scarcely diminished in her eyes.

  “You went into where he worked and threatened him.”

  “He?”

  “Philip.”

  So: Philip Gallagher. Phil. “I didn’t threaten him.”

  “No? Well that was certainly the way it felt to him. I’m a police officer. Sergeant in the CID. Christ, it’s like a bad film.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Not on your social calendar too much these days. Films. Nor a lot else, for that matter. Forgetting the football, of course. Late-night drinking, no danger of forgetting that.” She laughed, shrill and short and bitter. “We used to go to the pictures, Charlie, I don’t know if you remember. Cinema. Dancing. Even the theater once or twice, although you did have a tendency to fall asleep after the interval. Still-used to do a lot once upon a time, you and me.”

  “Why do I think this is turning into some kind of an attack on me?”

  “Is it? Maybe because that’s the way you feel. Catholic guilt, Charlie. All that stuff you thought you’d disowned.”

  Resnick leaned away from the door. “I should’ve thought if there was any guilt around …”

  “I should have the monopoly?”

  “You were the one sneaking off in her lunch hour.”

  “Sneaking off?”

  “Making love to another man.”

  The bottle that she’d op
ened was close to where she was standing and she poured herself another glass of wine. The bottle was nearly empty. “We weren’t making love, Charlie, Philip and I. What we were doing was fucking. There’s a big difference.” Slowly, she carried her glass of wine towards him. “What you and I do-used to do-that was making love. Tender, Charlie. Careful. Solicitous. What we do, myself and Philip, other people’s beds, we fuck!”

  He swung his arm and she saw it coming, trying to block him and not quite succeeding, the heel of his hand catching her at the front of the left temple, alongside the eye. The glass she had been holding shattered against the floor. Elaine stumbled backwards, the worktop saving her from falling.

  Resnick moved towards her, arms outstretched, apologizing; instead of flinching, she lifted her face towards him, daring him to strike her again. Resnick wrenched the back door open and slammed it behind him, unable to see where he was running, half-blinded by the tears of shame and anger in his eyes.

  Thirty-Two

  “If you were going to hit anyone,” Ben Riley said, “you should have had a crack at him.”

  “Wouldn’t do any good,” Resnick said.

  Ben Riley shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that. And, by my reckoning, nine out of ten people’s think the same.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re right.”

  “Come on, Charlie. It’s a bit late to be bloody reasonable. And he was, if you’ll pardon the expression, screwing your wife.”

  “Not a crime.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Resnick got up from the table and started to pace haphazardly about.

  “For God’s sake, Charlie, have a drink.”

  “Better not.”

  “Some coffee then.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ve only instant.”

  “Never mind. Forget it.”

  Ben had been ironing shirts when his friend had arrived, bending over the board with a bottle of Jameson close to hand and a celebration of George Jones’s ten years of hits in the cassette deck. He’d switched it off when the doorbell had rung and hadn’t felt moved to turn it back on. He doubted if Resnick was ready for “Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half as Bad as Losing You),” never mind “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will).”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want me to go round, talk to her?”

  Resnick shook his head.

  “You’re sure? ’Cause I will.”

  “Thanks, no. It’s hard to see how it would help. It’s something we’ve got to sort out for ourselves.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He pointed at the bottle and Resnick shook his head. “Just give it a little time, eh?”

  “Yes.” Resnick sat back down, shaking his head. “I suppose that’s the thing to do.”

  “D’you want to stay here tonight? You know there’s plenty of room.”

  Resnick accepted gratefully, realizing that it was no more than temporary respite: a night on the couch away from what still had, painfully, to be faced.

  They ate breakfast at Parker’s, Resnick sure he would have no appetite, but something-the smell of bacon? — making him ravenous the moment he walked to the counter. Ben Riley settled for tea and a sausage cob, looking on amused as Resnick tackled black pudding, back bacon, canned tomatoes, double egg, chips, and beans.

  “Jesus, Charlie. Good job you don’t get cuckolded often. You’d be over eighteen stone.”

  “It’s not funny, Ben.”

  “I know that. What d’you think I’m cracking jokes for?”

  Resnick sawed off a slice of black pudding, wiping it round in the tomato juice before transferring it to his mouth; one of those things, if you didn’t think what it was made from, it could taste wonderful.

  “Happen we’ll hear from Finch today,” Ben Riley said without much conviction.

  Four firemen, just off night watch, came in talking about a fire on the industrial estate they were all persuaded was arson.

  “What worries me,” Resnick said, “drifts on too long, Skelton might get cold feet, have him pulled in before Prior’s in contact. That happens we’re back to square one.”

  “He’ll allow forty-eight hours, got to.”

  Resnick shook his head, forked up the last of his beans. “No got to about it.”

  “Should have played squash with him,” Ben Riley grinned. “Sweat your way into his good books.”

  “Yes.” Resnick eyed his empty plate. “Can just see me chasing a little green ball after that lot.”

  “If you want to stay over again,” Ben said when they were on the pavement.

  “Thanks. Best not. Sooner or later it’s got to be faced. Sooner’s the better.”

  “Who you trying to convince, Charlie? Me or you?”

  One question Resnick did know the answer to.

  Resnick had to take a statement from a thirty-year-old curate who’d witnessed a mugging on his way back from a parochial visit. Another case he was working on. They sat the best part of an hour in a draughty church hall decorated with Sunday School paintings and posters advertising a fund-raising dance for the end of Lent. As he sat listening, taking notes, asking questions, Resnick tried to imagine Elaine and himself visiting someone like this to discuss their problems. That or a marriage guidance counselor. Was that what you did when you could no longer speak to one another? Talk through a third party? He was only now beginning to realize they hadn’t been communicating: what they’d been doing, opening their mouths, pronouncing words.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the curate. “Could you just say that again?”

  When he got back to the CID office there was a sheaf of messages on his desk, the last of them, written hastily in blue Biro, Finch and a six-figure number. At the bottom, the initials, barely legible, RC.

  Reg Cossall was out interviewing a remand prisoner at Lincoln Prison. Resnick dialed the number on the paper and after thirty rings no one had answered. He tried again on the quarter-hour for an hour and when somebody eventually picked up it was a girl of around nine or ten who told him he was calling a public call box on Valley Road.

  Resnick thought about driving out there and decided against it. Chances were Finch might ring in again and if he did it was better if he were there to take the call. So he did paperwork, tried not to look at his watch, kept an ear open for Cossall’s voice on the stairs.

  When Cossall finally returned, he was unusually subdued. The young man he’d been out to see, two days short of his twentieth birthday, had tried to kill himself that morning by puncturing his wrist with the broken end of a fork he’d stolen from the dining hall. When that hadn’t worked he’d broken it again and pushed the pieces down his throat. “All the bastard’d’ve got was six month suspended. Likely probation.” But something about it had got even to Cossall-that degree of self-inflicted pain.

  “Reg,” Resnick said, approaching. “You took this message. Finch.”

  “Yeh. Wants you to ring him. Regular cat on hot bricks, sound of it.”

  “I tried. Call box. No one there.”

  “That’s ’cause you tried at the wrong time then, isn’t it?”

  Resnick showed him the note. “How was I supposed to know the right one?”

  Cossall took the slip of paper from his hand. “Sorry, Charlie. Must’ve forgot to write it down.”

  “You haven’t forgotten what it is?”

  “No way. Three o’clock. Four o’clock. On the hour.”

  It was seven minutes past four. Resnick dialed the number, held his breath, willing the receiver to be picked up.

  “Yeh?”

  He thought he recognized the voice as Finch’s, but he wasn’t sure. “Martin Finch?” he said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “DS Resnick,”

  “Why the hell didn’t you phone before?”

  “Never mind that, I am now. What have you got?”

  “He’s been in to
uch. I’m meeting him tonight.”

  “He still wants to buy?”

  “There’s something coming up. Pretty soon. Wants it bad. Tried putting him off, tomorrow, but no, got to be tonight or he’ll go someplace else.”

  “Tonight’s fine. Where’s the meet?”

  Finch’s voice was like a leaf. “I’m going to be all right here, aren’t I? You’re not going to get me mixed up in this? If Prior ever susses …”

  “Listen, I’ve told you. You won’t even be involved.”

  “Involved to the sodding eyeballs, that’s all!”

  “Relax. We won’t go near him when he’s with you. Anywhere near you. Nobody ever has to know …”

  “He’ll know.”

  “Just tell me,” Resnick said, letting the firmness back into his voice, “where the meet’s arranged for, place and time.” Nodding into the telephone then, “Uh-huh, uhhuh,” writing the details carefully down.

  Skelton was not long off the squash court; his hair, prematurely starting to gray a little, was brushed back flat upon his head and his face was flushed. He was wearing a navy blue track suit and white Adidas shoes with green piping. “One thing I’m not prepared to countenance, letting him take delivery of a weapon and then using it to commit a robbery. It’s not on.”

  “Our information suggests whatever’s going down, it’ll be pretty soon. That time, we can keep him under observation, twenty-four hours. As soon as he moves, we move too.”

  “And all that needs to happen is we put one foot wrong, someone gets shot, maybe this time they get killed, where does that leave us? I’m sorry, Charlie, the risks are too high. Walk into the super’s office with that and I’m as like to walk out again with a flea in my ear as anything. No, we’ll do the simple thing and we’ll do it right.” Skelton looked at his watch. “Incident room, eight o’clock. Make sure everyone knows.”

  Back in the CID office, Resnick phoned Elaine.

  “Look,” he said, “tonight, something’s come up. I’m sorry. I’ve no idea what time I’ll be back.”

  “How convenient,” Elaine said and hung up.

  Thirty-Three