Wasted Years (25 page)

“And was there?” Self-consciously, Pam smiled. “I don’t expect you to answer that either.”

From the adjoining room came the sound of breaking glass, the ironic roar of approval, applause.

“Look,” Pam said, “I don’t know where we’re going to go with this. Anything that passed between my client and me, that’s confidential.” She lifted her spritzer, thought better of it, and set it back down. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“You came.”

“Go and meet him, my boss said. A favor to me. Hear what he’s got to say.” She looked sideways at Resnick and then away. “I thought what else I might be doing, decided it wasn’t so important, and came.” She blinked her eyes closed and pushed one hand up through the side of her hair. “I’m not so sure it was a good idea.”

Resnick tried a little more of the wine. “What else would you have been doing?” he said.

“Tonight? Warm bath, hot as I can stand, glass of wine …” Her fingers drummed lightly on the cover of the paperback. “A book.”

Resnick’s turn to smile. “Everything except the bath.”

Pam pulled her shoulders back, making her posture more professional. “All I can do, Inspector, is listen to whatever it is you want to tell me. I can’t promise it’s going to affect my actions one way or another.”

“All right,” Resnick said, “it’s this. Remarks Prior made, at the trial and after, they were heavily vindictive. The most frequent, the most violent, were directed towards his wife. I’m concerned that after his release he might try to carry those threats out.”

Pam was looking at him evenly, paying little attention to whatever was happening around her. “Prior’s wife,” she said, “do you know where she’s living?”

Resnick shook his head. “No.”

“It could be anywhere?”

“It could be.”

Pam finished most of her drink and opted to leave the rest. When she was on her feet, Resnick pushed back his chair and followed suit and it occurred to her that he was being clumsily polite.

“When you were talking to him,” Resnick said, for a moment his hand resting on her arm, “did he mention his wife? Give some indication of how he feels about her?”

What Prior had said was: “Last thing I wanted was her traipsing out here, week after week, another of those poor bloody prisoners’ wives. Not that I didn’t want to see her, mind. But, look at it this way, ten years minimum, just not on. Best never to start than have to get less and less, once a week, once a fortnight, once a month. Then again, if we’d had kids, might’ve been different. No, what Ruth had to do, live a life of her own.”

“I’ve told you,” Pam said, “anything that passed between my client and myself …”

“But he did talk about her?” Resnick persisted.

Pam’s mouth was feeling suddenly, oddly dry. All those people. The tobacco smoke. The wine. “A little,” she said. “And when he did he was very calm, very reasonable. Now I do have to go.”

Resnick nodded and stepped back. Beyond the far curve of the bar, a group started to sing “Happy Birthday.” He stayed on his feet to watch Pam Van Allen walk away, the final glint of her hair silver as she passed through the light.

Thirty-Eight

Lorna hadn’t spent as much time in front of the mirror since she was fourteen and worried about spots. Five times she had changed her entire outfit, five times, everything from those little blue bikini pants she’d bought on sale at Knickerbox to the vaguely see-through cream blouse from Dorothy Perkins. And makeup! She’d put it on, wiped it off, finally decided on a little light eyeliner, a touch of blusher, the new lipstick she’d bought at Boots last Saturday, South Sea Coral.

Of course, she ought to have run round with the Hoover before getting herself all clarted up, but first things first and anyway it wasn’t like her mother making one of her scheduled visits. Kevin Naylor wasn’t going to be lifting up the glass Dalmatian on the mantelshelf to see if she’d moved it when she was dusting, or surreptitiously running his finger along the top of the cupboard in the bathroom.

“Doing anything special tonight?” Marjorie had asked when they were cashing up.

“No, I don’t think so. Probably stay in, watch telly, get an early night.”

She wished!

She’d nipped out in her lunch hour and bought a few nibbles—pistachio nuts and bacon-flavored crisps—which she’d emptied into cereal bowls and left casually around.

The most difficult decision had been about what to drink. Kevin, she thought, was probably a beer man, but, for all that, there was something nice about the idea of sitting on her freshly plumped-up settee with a bottle of wine. In the end, she’d gone to the corner shop. Had four cans of lager cooling in the fridge and a bottle of that red wine they were always advertising, the one where these old men go off into the fields at daylight to check on the grapes. She hoped it would be all right. She’d had half a mind to ask Becca’s advice, Becca not being above dropping the names of fancy restaurants she’d been taken to—“Dinky little portions, so beautifully presented!”—but in the end she’d decided against it. Another patronizing lecture from Becca about the last thing she could cope with.

Lorna looked at her watch, checked it with the clock over the oven, peeked between the living-room curtains down into the street, slipped her tape of Lionel Ritchie’s Greatest Hits out of its box and into place, and slotted it into the machine.

She was ready.

Maybe, Resnick thought, Pam Van Allen was right about Prior. Prison had calmed him, all those hours alone with four walls had helped him to see things in their true proportion, rationalize. Maybe whatever grudge he’d had about Ruth had faded into relative insignificance. Out of sight, out of mind, wasn’t that the way things worked?

He had stayed in the wine bar long enough to finish his glass of house red, okay, he supposed, but what it had given him a thirst for was a real drink, which was why he was sitting at the bar in the Polish Club, his second bison grass vodka of the night on the point of disappearing.

What probably happened, Resnick thought, was the more you brooded on things, the more significant they became. Of course, he didn’t know what it had been like for Prior, spending all that time inside. Except, he guessed, the last thing he would want to do was get back in again. Resnick remembered, as clearly as if it had been days and not years, the look on Prior’s face when they had stood, the pair of them, face to face in that garage: the look in Prior’s eyes. Fear that had locked Resnick’s muscles, knotted his stomach. The only time in his life he had been threatened with a gun. And Prior, thinking more clearly, pragmatic, weighing up the odds. The sounds of other officers outside. The way he had reversed the weapon and handed it across the roof of the car, what might almost have been a smile lighting up his eyes.

Resnick downed his vodka and pushed away the glass: there had to be a risk the prison review committee and the parole board had erred in their judgement, that Pam Van Alien, however experienced, had had the wool pulled over her eyes. It was a risk he had to minimize.

He slipped a coin into the phone box in the hall and dialed Lynn Kellogg’s number from memory.

Lorna had opened the bottle half an hour back, eaten half the nuts. The crumblings of cork that had gone into the glass she had picked out with her fingernail, sliding them over the rim. She drank it without concern for the taste, gulping it down as if it were cherryade. No way he was coming now. She was midway through her second glass when the doorbell rang and she jumped, startled, spilling it on to her hand and arm, tiny splashes across the front of her cream top.

Damn!

Kevin Naylor stood on the top step in a dark suit, pale blue shirt, maroon-and-gray striped tie, an apologetic look upon his face. “Work,” he said. “Last moment, something came up. Sorry I’m late.”

He wasn’t about to confess to sitting round the corner in the car the best part of twenty minutes wrestling ineffectively with his conscience.

“That’s okay,” Lorna smiled, reaching for his arm as if afraid he might run away. “Come on inside.”

The room was warm and comfortable-looking, two small lamps burning, knick-knacks that Lorna had been attracted to dotted around on odd surfaces, a pair of stuffed yellow bears pushed together on a low bookshelf in the alcove.

“Don’t sit there,” Lorna said, as Naylor began to lower himself into the one armchair. “This is a lot more comfortable,” patting the cushions of the settee. “I was just having a drink,” she said. “What can I get you?”

“No, it’s okay, thanks.”

“There’s wine or beer. Cold lager in the fridge.” Standing in the kitchen doorway, Lorna smiled at him and wished now she’d stuck with her new button-through skirt instead of the black trousers she was sure emphasized her hips.

“Lager’s fine,” Naylor said.

Lynn pulled into the car park at the front of the Polish Club moments before Resnick extricated himself from a one-sided conversation with a committee member and stepped through the door.

“Hope I’m not dragging you away from anything important,” Resnick said as the car slowed for the roundabout at the foot of Sherwood Rise.

“Writing to my mum,” Lynn said with a resigned smile. “Been putting it off for over a week. Another day or so’s hardly going to matter.”

“How are things?” Resnick asked. “Your dad any better?”

Lynn shook her head. “Still not sleeping. Fretting himself half to death about his chickens. Mum keeps trying to get him to go to the doctor but he refuses. Claims there’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Any chance he’s right?”

“Lost nearly two stone in four months. He wasn’t big to begin with.”

“Maybe you should take some time off? Go home.”

“Yes, I expect you’re right.” She lost her patience with the driver in front and swung wide to overtake before the lights. “That’s what my mum says, anyhow.”

“So how many times is it you’ve seen him?” Kevin Naylor asked. He was leaning back against one arm of the settee, Lorna facing him, one leg tucked beneath her, the other one inches away from brushing his own.

“Four or five,” she said. “That at least.”

“And that’s definite? I mean, each occasion, you’re positive it was him? The same bloke came into the office that afternoon?”

“I’m not going to forget that in a hurry, am I?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“That poor old boy, the way he got hit round the head.”

“When you’ve seen him,” Naylor asked, “he hasn’t, well, he hasn’t threatened you in any way?”

“No, but you see that’s what I don’t like about it. Not that I want him to, you know, threaten me or anything. But it’s the way he looks at me, this sort of grin, as though there was some big secret between us and I knew what it was.”

Naylor lifted the can from the table and realized it was empty.

“I’ll get you another.”

“No, you’re all right.”

But she was already on her way, hand smoothing along his shoulder as she squeezed between the edge of the settee and the low table.

“The worst thing is,” Lorna said, coming back into the room, “I get this feeling he’s watching me, other times as well. Even here, in the flat.”

“Inside?”

She shook her head. “Out there, I suppose. Like he’s watching me come in and out.”

“But you’ve not seen him? Hanging around?”

“Only at work, nearby.”

Naylor smiled reassuringly. “Likely you’re getting all worked up over nothing.”

“Am I?” Lorna handed him the can, fingers accidentally pressing against his.

She sat on the arm of the settee and he shifted along but not far. Through the thin material of her trousers, he could feel the warmth of her leg against his side.

“Kevin?”

“Um?”

“Your wife, what time’s she expecting you home?”

“She isn’t.”

Lorna reached for his hand, width of her fingers easily masking his ring.

Rylands had been down in the cellar when Resnick and Lynn Kellogg had arrived; someone had told him that old copies of music papers were selling for a pound a throw down in London and he was sorting through his copies of
Melody Maker
and the
NME
, thinking to make an accurate list of exactly what he had. He led Resnick and Lynn into the kitchen and made a pot of tea.

“This matter we talked about before,” Resnick said.

“Which one?”

“Ruth first.”

“I still don’t know anything definite.”

Resnick wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or hoping to bargain. “Prior’s a lot closer to getting out. Could be any time.”

Rylands half-turned. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Your son,” Lynn Kellogg said, “you do want us to do what we can to help him?”

“Yes, of course. Like I said, he’s not really a bad lad, it’s more …”

“You’ve spoken to him?” Lynn pressed. “You know he’s willing to co-operate?”

“Not in so many words, no. Not exactly.”

Resnick was quickly to his feet, Lynn following suit. “If you don’t want him back inside, Keith, I shouldn’t waste a lot more time. If he goes down again …”

Resnick moved towards the door, letting the sentence hang.

“Thanks for the tea,” Lynn said.

They were at the end of the narrow hall before Rylands called them back. “About Ruth, I did hear something. Just a whisper. Nothing definite.”

Resnick felt himself relax; he was close to smiling as he turned. “Check it out. Be sure. You know the deal. I get to Ruth in time, we’ll go easy as we can on your Keith. Just as long as he’s prepared to talk to us.”

“Yes,” Rylands nodded. “I know.”

“DC Kellogg here,” Resnick said, “that’s who Keith will be dealing with.” Lynn reached out and opened the front door. “Twenty-four hours,” Resnick said, “I think that’s all we can afford.”

Thirty-Nine

“Hey up, kid!” Divine exclaimed the moment Naylor entered the office. “You look shagged out, you.”

“Give over, Mark,” Naylor said. “Just for once.”

“Didn’t know you and your Debbie were back together again,” Divine grinned.

“We’re not.”

“Oh, hey. Clocked that, everybody? Our Kev’s been getting his leg over in the line of duty. Not.”

“Leave it alone, Mark,” Lynn Kellogg sang out from the far side of the room.