Read Online Last Rites by John Harvey - Free Book Online Page B

children and the front door. Lorraine sensed him looking at her and raised her head, returning his gaze.
    “You’ll be okay?” he asked.
    She nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
    “I only need to make a few quick calls when I get in, no meetings, I could take a couple of hours off, come back …”
    The look in her eyes told him what he didn’t want to know.
    “As long as you’re sure?”
    “I’m sure.” She kissed the children and bundled them out the door.
    Evan looked more hangdog, if possible, than the day before. Guilty about what had happened and certain that he was returning to a reprimand at best, a suspension more than likely, he could scarcely bring himself to look Resnick in the eye. “I was wondering, you know, if there was any news? About Preston?”
    Resnick shook his head. “Nothing definite.”
    “I see. I just thought that if, you know, you’d caught him, like, had an idea where he was, well it might … make things easier, I suppose that’s what I meant.”
    “I’m sorry,” Resnick said, Evan looking so pathetic he almost meant it.
    “If you do … find him, I mean. I don’t suppose you could let me know?”
    “It’d be passed on,” Resnick said. “The appropriate channels.”
    Evan blinked. “I see.”
    “Maybe, Evan,” Resnick said, “there’s something you can tell me. Preston, yesterday. At the funeral and after. You’ve been thinking about it, bound to have. Is there anyone special you remember him talking to? Off on their own, maybe?”
    Of course Evan had been thinking about it; he’d been thinking of practically nothing else. Now he thought about it some more. “Only the sister, that’s all, really. Worked up about that, he was. Important. He asked us specially, me and Wes. If he could talk to her alone. Just the two of them, you know.”
    “And you said …”
    “I said okay. I didn’t see the harm. I mean, I was outside the door all the time.”
    “Close enough to hear what they were talking about?”
    Evan shook his head. “No. No, I’m afraid not.” He looked at Resnick anxiously. “Was it important, d’you think?”
    Resnick stared back at him. “Probably.”
    Thirty minutes later Resnick was on his way back out of the station, heading down into the center of the city.

Twelve
    Resnick nodded thanks as Aldo slid the small cup of espresso along the counter toward him. The early edition of the Post lay folded against the till and Resnick pulled it toward him. It was strangely quiet in the market that morning, only a couple of middle-aged women sitting at the far side of the coffee stall with tea and cigarettes, chatting about prices and last night’s TV.
    The article on Preston’s escape filled the whole page, raking up details of his father’s murder and the subsequent trial. Underneath an old file photograph of Preston himself, grim-faced, being led into court, were the words of the judge: It is almost beyond comprehension in a civilized society that any man would turn against his own flesh and blood with such violence and without apparent provocation.
    Provocation: an argument over money, Skelton had suggested, the siphoning off of Preston’s ill-gotten gains. Well, maybe.
    Realizing that, almost without noticing, he had finished his first espresso, Resnick ordered another.
    For the first half-hour, Lorraine wandered slowly from room to room, enjoying the silence, willing herself not to look at the clock, the telephone. Without exactly daring to admit it to herself, she knew that what she wanted was for Michael to call, though she was unsure what she might say if he did.
    Unable to settle to the Mail, she went into the living room and hoovered and dusted, tidying their few records and CDs, making neat piles of magazines. Upstairs in Sean’s room, she collected up stray socks and fetid sportswear, filched a fold-out pin-up of Pamela Anderson from underneath the bed and Blu-tacked it neatly to the wall alongside Sean’s team picture of Manchester United