Wasted Years (35 page)

In less than ten minutes he was asleep.

He was still asleep when a hand clamped across his mouth and a voice he failed to recognize spoke his name. Suddenly awake, he wriggled against the weight that was holding him down.

“Rains?”

The only reply was muffled, angry. What the hell was going on?

“It’s me, Prior. This is for me. And my wife. In a way it’s from Frank, too.”

It was the old coal hammer that had stood by Frank’s mum’s hearth more than twenty years. When her late husband had worked down the pit she’d got free coal and she’d kept the hammer there, handy, for breaking up the larger chunks. Prior lifted it above his head and brought it down between Rains’s eyes as hard as he could.

Likely that blow was enough to kill him, but Prior didn’t stop until the greater part of Rains’s once handsome face was spread across the pillow and beyond.

He dropped the hammer down and wiped his hands upon the sheet, wiped splashes of blood from the bottle, and gulped down some brandy, neat. There was a telephone in the next room and he used that to make the call.

“Hello? Who is this?” The voice was faltering, heavy with sleep.

“Is that Pam? Pam Van Allen?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Prior.”

“Why are you ringing me at home, and at this time?”

“You gave me your number.”

“Yes, for emergencies.”

“Right,” Prior said, “that’s what this is.”

Resnick waited a week. Prior was back inside, awaiting trial for murder. True to form, Frank Churchill had grassed on all and sundry in order to save his own hide; six men were on remand, facing five counts each of armed robbery, including Churchill himself. Ruth stayed put in her cottage, and Debbie Naylor had moved back in with Kevin and the baby, though she left some of her things at her mother’s just in case. Lorna Solomon applied for a job in the principal office of the Abbey National Building Society in Sheffield and got it. Mark Divine went to France for a weekend by Hovercraft and was sick both ways. Resnick waited a week before dialing the probation office number and asking to speak to Pam Van Allen.

“I suppose you’re calling to crow,” she said, when she knew who it was

“What over?”

“Prior, of course.”

“Why? You were right. You said he had no antagonism towards his wife and you were right.”

There was an uneasy pause and then Pam said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m really busy …”

“What would you think about meeting me some time?” Resnick asked. “A drink or something. After work.”

He imagined her staring at the phone, surprised, maybe slightly embarrassed, maybe pushing one hand up through her silver-gray hair.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’ll have to think about it. I’ll let you know.” And she hung up.

Resnick placed the receiver and went out into the CID room, hoping not too many people would notice the smile beginning to form on his face.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The lines on page 266 are from “Ghost of Chance” and those published on 268 are from “Temps Greatest Vol II” both by John Harvey and published in
Ghosts of Chance
(Smith/Doorstop. Huddersfield, England, 1992).

This edition published in 2011 by
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