Meanwhile, Alvin reached the man before he could shut the door. Alvin grabbed it and hauled it open as the driver jammed the key in the ignition and started the engine. Alvin didn’t pause for a moment. He leaned in and thrust his arm round the man’s neck in a headlock and unceremoniously hauled him out of the van. The man tried to fight free, but Alvin was far too strong.
That was when Rutherford emerged from the trees behind them and called out, ‘Take it easy, everybody. We don’t want any injuries.’
‘He just stood there grinning like an idiot,’ Alvin said over his first pint, his voice thick with disgust. ‘Telling me what a good job I’d done except for being a bit heavy-handed getting the suspect out of the van.’
‘And apparently I was too bloody slow getting to the victim. I should have had her out of there by the time the engine started,’ Nisbet complained. ‘I’d like to see him do any better with a mad Polish traffic officer from Burnley trying to take his head off. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more pointless bloody day in eight years on the job.’
‘Where’s the other two?’ Stacey asked. She pushed her chair back, preparing to get another round in, checking whether she should wait for the last two ReMIT members.
‘Getting debriefed,’ Alvin said. ‘Karim said their route took them across a car park and they spotted a lad trying to break into a car. Karim was all for getting stuck in but Sophie wanted to phone for backup. She got her phone out and told him to wait, but he ignored her and came up behind the lad. And just when he got there, a second lad jumped up from behind the car and the pair of them wrestled Karim to the ground. Sophie was still trying to give her location to the control room.’
There was a moment’s silence. Looks were exchanged, the three who knew each other well reluctant to speak till they knew which way the wind was blowing with Steve. He shrugged. ‘I’m guessing eight years in retail management didn’t give Detective Inspector Valente much experience at the sharp end.’
‘You can’t beat working your way up from the street,’ Alvin said. ‘Even Stacey played a blinder today and she hardly ever gets out from behind a desk these days.’
‘Carol would never have brought someone in off the direct entry programme,’ Paula said. ‘We’re supposed to be an elite squad, not a babysitting service.’ Too late, she caught Alvin’s warning shake of the head.
Sophie Valente rounded the wooden partition that had provided the ReMIT team with some privacy. She smiled sweetly at Paula. ‘Good to know who’s not going to have my back,’ she said. ‘Anybody ready for another drink?’
6
As the poet Philip Larkin famously said, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Sometimes, it only takes one of them.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
The years had been inexplicably kind to Vanessa, Tony thought as he was escorted across the visiting room to where she sat on the far side of a small table. He wondered whether she’d had work done to smooth some of the traces of time and malice from her face. Maybe a discreet lift behind the ears to get rid of any suggestion of a turkey neck? Her hair was the best a salon could provide, an ashy blonde with lowlights and highlights that looked as natural as a teenager’s. And as always, she was impeccably turned out. Linen jacket, silk scarf artfully draped. She was close to seventy, but she could have passed for early fifties. She looked like nobody else in the place, and he was aware of the frank curiosity of his fellow inmates and their visitors. He knew he’d be grilled relentlessly at that evening’s free association. There was always somebody looking for an angle and that was exactly what Vanessa was.
Focusing on her appearance spared him having to consider what lay beneath. This was the woman whose narcissism and casual cruelty had made his early years a place of fear, insecurity and humiliation. A life deprived of love and respect could so easily have set him on the same road as the people he’d hunted and treated over the years. But he’d been lucky. One woman had spotted his pain and vulnerability and taken him under her wing just in time to show him a different possibility. But despite that, being raised by Vanessa had left him vulnerable to the cruelty of strangers. It was Vanessa, he believed, who lay at the root of the sexual and emotional impotence that had marked his adult life.
And yet here he was, crossing the floor to face her again. He’d promised himself he was done with her. But deep down, he knew there would always be unfinished business between them till the day they put her in the ground. A ceremony he’d promised himself he would not attend. Once upon a time, he could have counted on Carol to hold him to that.
Vanessa gave him a long cool stare as he sat down opposite her. Not a trace of a smile. ‘We are not the same,’ he said. ‘Not by any stretch of the imagination.’
She seemed genuinely amused. ‘We both killed a man. We both used a knife. Up close and personal. And we were both set up. Most people would say, like mother, like son.’
‘What do you mean, “we were both set up”?’ He understood very well the equivalence she was claiming, but he wasn’t prepared to let it pass without challenge. She’d come out on top against a determined killer, but Tony knew that hadn’t been the first time she’d resorted to a sharp knife to resolve her difficulties. Another reason he hated their undeniable connection.
‘That night, you didn’t warn me there might be a homicidal maniac turning up on my doorstep. You set me up to be killed. But I outsmarted you, Tony. And you? You were set up by Carol Jordan.’ He tried to speak but she steamrollered straight over him and childhood habit made him give way. ‘I don’t suppose either of you would admit that. But I think she set out that day to commit murder in the sure and certain knowledge that you would do whatever it took to prevent that happening. And here you are: the living proof.’
‘You never did let the facts get in the way of a good story.’
She smiled. ‘Self-defence, Tony. The way you set me up, you gave me that get-out. That’s why I’m on this side of the table and you’re on that one. Poor judgement. All those years and you hadn’t learned to cover your back.’
Why had he agreed to this? She knew how to push his buttons. She didn’t excoriate him the way it had when he was a boy, but still she could sting. ‘Did you just come here to gloat? I was under the impression that you wanted something. You usually do.’
Vanessa’s face had resumed its usual repose. ‘I’ve been robbed.’
‘And why has that got anything to do with me?’
‘Because I need Carol Jordan to deal with it.’
He couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that spilled from his mouth. ‘Are you suffering from dementia? For one thing, Carol isn’t a cop any more. And for another thing, she’d crawl across the Pennines on broken glass before she’d lift a finger for you.’
‘I know both of those details. For one thing,’ she echoed sarcastically. ‘I don’t want a cop. And for another thing, what she won’t do for me, she’ll do for you.’
They glared at each other, neither bothering to disguise their feelings. ‘If you’ve been robbed, the police are the ones to help.’