Free Wasted Years by John Harvey Page B

years—she’s quite a lot older than me—would you believe it, I’m the youngest?—anyway, he claims, her husband, he’s never removed his wedding ring since they got married. Not for one second. D’you believe that?”
    “I suppose …”
    “But you, you said sometimes. Meaning …?”
    “It’s a little loose. Not quite as tight as it should be. Sometimes if I’m washing my hands … in the shower …”
    She thought about Kevin taking a shower, standing there, his back towards her, water splashing over him. His backside.
    “We ought to get going,” Kevin said, looking at his watch.
    Lorna raised an eyebrow the way she’d seen Julia Roberts do it once, that movie.
    “To the station,” Kevin said.
    “Look at some photos, that’s what you said.”
    “That’s right.”
    “If it’s there, I’ll know it. I mean, the way he came over to me first off, not a care in the world. The look on his face when he pushed through the bin bag and told me to fill it. No way I’m going to forget that.”
    Kevin switched on the engine, but Lorna wasn’t through talking,
    “You know what gets me?” she said. “What really gets me?”
    He looked at her: no.
    “When Spindler came in this morning, that’s the area manager, oh, he was nice enough to Marjorie and me, good job well done, all the flannel—not that he was going to give us any money for it, no bonus, nothing like that. All the thousands we saved them. But, no, what’s he droning on about all the time is Becca, poor Becca and what a terrible shock she had, how it’s affected her. Makes me sick. It’s not as if anything happened to her. Wasn’t her that got a hammer aimed at her head. No, there she is hopping up and down on one leg, practically weeing herself.” She stopped, reading the expression on his face. “Sorry, I’m boring you, rattling on.”
    “No, it’s not that. It’s just …”
    “We ought to be going.”
    “Afraid so.”
    Kevin released the hand brake and slipped the car into gear.
    “What you ought to tell your wife,” Lorna said, as they were turning right on to Forest Road West, “next time she goes Chinese, ask them to leave out the monosodium glutamate. You can do that, you know. Tastes a lot less salty.”

Thirteen
    By midway through that afternoon, they had what looked like a breakthrough. Forensics had finally come up with a couple of prints, index finger and thumb, plumb on the hand brake of the abandoned car. Whoever had been driving had known enough to wipe around the steering wheel with a cloth—probably the one smeared with engine oil stuffed beneath the front seat—had thought of the gear handle too, but somehow missed the brake. There were a couple of partials on the chrome handle, driver’s side, one of which was a near match for those inside, the other from a different hand altogether.
    Even better, scene of crime had found a beauty smack in the middle of the side wall of the building society where the flat of the hand had gone slap against it. The officer, dusting it down, had scarcely been able to believe his luck. Three fingers, close to perfect, almost as clear as if whoever left them had been in custody—“Now roll it lightly, one side to the other, even pressure. Good.”
    Somewhere short of six o’clock the match came through, faxed back up the line. Keith Rylands: eighteen years of age, five feet five and a half, nine stone six pounds. Six months, youth supervision order, 1988–9, theft from a motor vehicle; four months on remand, 1990, taking and driving away without the owner’s consent; six months, Young Offenders Institution, Glen Parva, two more charges of TDA, one associated charge of stealing from a vehicle dismissed through lack of evidence. Last known address: 29 Albert Avenue, Gedling.
    Divine showed Rylands’s picture to Marjorie Carmichael, who tutted and sweated and finally agreed, yes, it could be him, could be the one. Lorna Solomon wasn’t a great deal more definite. “Thing was,