“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
Ruth climbed out of the bath, water streaming down her thighs. She’d lain in there too long, idling with her thoughts, the skin on her fingers ridged and puckered. Reaching for a towel, she rubbed a circle on the steam-covered mirror with her fist. Jesus! Like waking up and discovering you’d turned overnight into your mother. She wound a white towel about her head, began to pat her legs dry with another. How’s it feel, then, after all that time, not being able to sing? Cocksure bastard with his hands round the glass, nails even and smooth like they’d been manicured, long fingers. How’s it feel?
“Ruthie, you going to be all night?”
The look in his eyes when he took her hand and pressed it against him. Bastard! Excited, she hated him for that.
“Ruthie!”
Every night I’m kept waiting, she started singing to herself, face blurred in the mirror, gaunt and unfocused. All those dreams and wasted tears …
Prior knocked loudly on the door. “There’s other people in this house, you know.”
“Couple of minutes.”
“You better be.”
There’d been other people, right enough, same old faces along with a few new ones; conversations that petered out the minute she walked into the room. Phone calls that would be terminated at the least chance of being overheard. Something new was in the offing, something big, and he wouldn’t say anything about it till it was over. Then there’d be the bragging-“Ought to’ve seen their faces” or “Like a bleeding dream, Ruthie, clockwork wasn’t bloody in it”-the celebrations with champagne swilled down like water and holidays to exotic places. The lies. “Papers. Ruthie, you know what they’re like, blow it all up out of proportion. Hardly laid a finger on them.” And last time: “All an accident, never should’ve happened. Wouldn’t’ve done if he hadn’t took it into his head to be a sodding hero. Me? Ruthie, come on! When did you ever know me as much as touch a gun?” God! The lies. How she hated the same old, senseless lies.
“Ruth!”
“All right!” She wrenched the door open and moved quickly past, into the bedroom, Prior’s voice trailing behind her.
“Jesus! What you been up to in here? Like a bloody sauna!”
Ruth closed the door and unwound the towel from her body, draping it over the end of the bed. In the full-length mirror her breasts were getting smaller, the flesh over her hips and around her thighs was thickening. Sighing, she closed her eyes. All those lonely wasted years. Rain’s face, wide-eyed with honesty even as he lied. I like you. Talking to you. The beginnings of a well-trained smile edging his face. You deserve better, that’s all. Well, she wasn’t going to get it if she stayed where she was now with Prior forever breathing down her neck.
Resnick was to be in the lead car with three others, Hallett and Sangster and a new lad called Millington. Skelton would be in car two with Maddoc and McFarlane and Terry Docker. “Your show this, Charlie, I’m just along for the ride.” The third car contained Rains and Cossall and Derek Fenby. Uniforms were providing extra backup, sealing off the area around the Prior house once the time was ripe. Resnick had asked for Ben Riley and got him. One officer in each car was armed.
The first car alone would stand close watch on the pub, where two plainclothes officers were already stationed, borrowed from outside the city so there was less chance of them being recognized. As soon as the deal had gone down, the other cars would close in.
“All right,” Skelton said, “nobody loses their head. We want a result here, not gunfight at the OK Corral.”
A couple of officers politely laughed.
“Charlie? Last thoughts?”
Resnick was on his feet. “Thanks, sir. I don’t think so. We all know what we’ve got to do.”
“Yes,” said Reg Cossall, “make sure that bastard Prior goes down for a long time.”
There were cheers for that.
“Ruth?” He’d changed into light blue slacks, dark crew neck sweater under a brown leather coat. Tan shoes with tassels. Where’s the gold chain, Ruth thought? “I’m off out. Shan’t be long.”
She swung her legs down from the settee. On the TV an off-duty surgeon was performing an emergency operation with the assistance of one of the night cleaners and a hastily sterilized Swiss army knife.
“Going to the club?”
“No,” Prior said and winked. “See the well-known man about the well-known dog.”
Ruth looked back at the screen. “Is this the dog that takes a.38 caliber bullet or the one that prefers shotgun shells?”
Prior laughed as he closed the door; over the sound of the TV she could hear him doing a really bad Presley impression down the hall. Now or never, Ruth thought, might be just about right.
The pool tables in the side room were crowded round with onlookers, the occasional shout at a lucky shot or a bad miss rising above the general noise. At the back of the main bar a woman in a floral dress was plying coins into the electronic fruit machine as if feeding a long-lost child. The juke box cut in with a sudden burst of eighties’ techno-pop, fighting it out with the landlord’s tape of Western theme tunes which was playing through the speakers above the bar.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Prior asked as Finch made his second return from the gents in fifteen minutes. “Got the runs or what?”
“This ale,” Finch said, holding up the glass. “Goes through me like nobody’s business.”
“So stop bloody drinking it,” said Prior, who was sticking to Scotch and water, nibbling his way through a packet of nuts, shells overflowing the metal ashtray. “Anyway,” he said, puffing back his jacket sleeve to see his watch, “almost time we weren’t here. Got the wife to get back to, know how they are.”
“Give her one,” Finch laughed nervously.
Prior scowled and pushed back his chair. Coins spilled from the fruit machine so liberally that the woman couldn’t hope to catch them in her hands. “Parked round the back?”
“Yes,” Finch said. “Hang about while I finish this.”
Prior took the glass from his hand and set it down. “In your own time. Let’s do this now.”
They walked out past the pool players, half of them sixteen at best. There’d been something in the Mirror that morning about underage alcoholics, Esther Rantzen or Anneka Rice or one of them setting up a telephone helpline. “Any kid of mine …” Prior had started over his scrambled eggs, but the look on Ruth’s face had shut him up. Far as the pair of them knew any kid of his hadn’t been born yet.
“Just left the pub,” the detective said into his two-way radio. “Rear car-park, the pair of them.”
The shotgun was wrapped in a length of wool blanket, sheathed inside thick plastic; the notes were in fifties, rolled tight and held in place with a rubber band. The exchange took less than forty seconds. “Okay,” Resnick said into the handset. “We’re on.”