Easy Meat (41 page)

“Right,” Resnick said, passing on the news to Lynn as they headed for the lift. “Let’s get back sharpish.”

“What you mean is,” Lynn grinned, “you want me to drive. Again.”

Forty-six

Naylor and Vincent relieved Millington and Divine ten minutes short of six o’clock; not that Millington himself was in any hurry—his wife, he knew, was all set for one of her evening classes, and leftover mushroom lasagna, neatly wrapped in environmentally friendly cling film, would be all there was to go home to.

“The daughter,” Millington said, “Sheena, is it? She came in about an hour ago, left ten, fifteen minutes back. Aside from that, about as quiet as the proverbial.”

Divine and Vincent contrived to change places without exchanging either a look or a glance.

“Nearly forgot,” Millington said, leaning back in through the car window nearest to Naylor. “How’d it go with Frankie Miller’s mate, Orston?”

“Clammed up at first,” Naylor said, “much as you’d expect. Once he started talking, though, everything he said pretty much agreed with Miller’s version of events. Right down to standing there while them others beat Aston senseless. I asked him if he hadn’t been tempted to step in, try and put a stop, but he said, no, it weren’t none of my affair. Only thing he was sorry about, callous bastard, was that Shane had used his baseball bat to lay into him with.”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Millington said. “What it’s all coming to, blokes like that.”

“Good bloody thumping,” Divine said, “that’s what he needs. Only thing his sort bloody understand.”

While Naylor and Vincent were on duty outside the Snape house and Millington was watching
The Bill
and washing his microwaved lasagna down with a can of Carlsberg, Divine was mooching around his flat, unable to get interested in either of the videos he’d rented from Blockbusters,
The Specialist
and
Highlander III
; the pizza he’d phoned out for sat cold in its cardboard box.

By ten thirty he was so edgy that he’d dialed the number of the staff nurse from the Queen’s who’d spent nine months getting him to change his ways and then, when he almost had, had dumped him just the same. At the sound of Divine’s voice she set down the phone.

Once in the car, he was on his way along the Radford Boulevard before he was wholly conscious of where he was heading or why.

Naylor was sitting in the unmarked Sierra, seventy yards back along the road, with an unimpeded view of the Snape house.

“Must want something to do,” Naylor remarked, as Divine got into the seat alongside him.

“Reckon so,” Divine said. “Anything up?”

Naylor shook his head. “Mrs. Snape left. Norma. Some woman friend of hers came round and they went off. Had this small bag with her. Suitcase, like. Asked her where she was going and she said round to this friend’s for the night. Made a note of the address just in case.”

“You don’t think she could have been sneaking out some clean clothes to her Sonny Jim?”

Naylor laughed. “Not unless he’s into dresses and frilly bras.”

“Never can tell nowadays. Speaking of which, where’s our Carl?”

Naylor pointed towards the house. “Watching the back entry.”

“Who better?” Divine said.

Naylor gave him a look but left it at that. He knew better than to get into an argument with Divine about what was politically correct.

After forty minutes of sporadic conversation, Divine lit another cigarette and said, “Why don’t you get off home, Kev? Keep Debbie company. No point us both sitting here.”

“No, you’re okay.”

But when Divine asked him again, twenty minutes later, he agreed. He was getting out of the car when Vincent appeared, out of the alley entrance and walking towards them across the road.

“Seen anything?” Naylor asked hopefully. Vincent shook his head. “Only the back of the house with all the lights out. Upstairs curtains drawn. Only sound’s from that dog of theirs, carrying on every once in a while to get let out.”

“Mark,” Naylor said, “if you’re serious about hanging on, why don’t you go round the back for a spell? Then Carl can take my place here for a change. I’ll get off home for a bit. All right?”

Divine didn’t like the idea of doing Carl Vincent any kind of a favor, but he agreed all the same. At least round the back he could pace up and down if he’d a mind, better than getting a numb bum in the Ford. And that’s what he did: walk, lean, light a cigarette; lean some more, walk.

He was just approaching the house from the farther end of the entry when he saw something move in the yard. A shadow, low against the wall.

Divine waited till his breathing had steadied and then moved on slowly, careful to lift his feet, not to kick a stray stone or stumble. By the time he had got to the gate, he realized it was the dog.

All right. The breath punched out of him with a sigh. Only the sodding dog. And then, instantaneously, his palms began to sweat. The dog: the dog was inside, Carl had said so. Whining inside the house, wanting to be let out. And for him now to be out, someone must have gone in.

He lifted the latch on the gate, and eased it open. Haif a dozen paces and he was at the back door. Listening, he heard no sound. He thought the door would have been locked again from the inside, but it had not. At the doorway leading off from the kitchen he paused and listened again, nothing but the pump of his own heart. Sweat was in his hair now, running the length of his neck. Holding his breath he stepped quickly into the front room and waited to let his eyes become more accustomed to the light. Nothing beyond the usual.

Divine turned towards the stairs.

Only once, when he hesitated midway up the stairs, did he ask himself the question he would ask himself a thousand times later, why hadn’t he called Vincent for backup before going in?

Three of the four doors were open, partly at least. Divine’s mouth was dry and he ran his tongue across his lips; started counting to three inside his head and on two, turned the handle and pushed the door back as fast as he could. Flicked on the light.

A girl’s room, posters of Take That and Keanu Reeves on the walls. Cuddly toys on the bed. The small wardrobe was crammed with clothes, some on hangers, many not.

Maybe, Divine thought, Vincent had been wrong; what he had heard had been the dog in the backyard, yammering to get in.

He could see the shape of a double bed through the doorway to the next room, covers all in a nick. Norma Snape’s room, he supposed. Shoes scattered across the floor, haphazard piles of clothes, pairs of tights hanging from a dressing-table mirror—Jesus! What a mess! He stepped over a discarded pair of jeans and a high-heeled shoe and that was enough; some sense alerted him, so that he swung his head towards a sound felt rather than heard and turned smack into the full curve of a baseball bat, swung with all the force of a young man, fit and in his prime, striving to strike the ball clear out of the park. The crack as Divine’s cheek-bone fractured was sharp and clear and as he catapulted back across the room, before he lost all hearing in that ear, he heard Shane say, smiling, “This what you’re looking for?”

Divine bounced forward off the wall and Shane swung the bat again, down onto the top of his shoulder, breaking his collarbone.

“Didn’t I tell you it’d be me and you?”

Without Shane having to do anything more, one of Divine’s legs buckled under him and he went sprawling to the floor, crying out as his injured arm fell against the base of the bed.

Shane grabbed him by his other arm, the collar of his coat and shirt and lifted him up, throwing him down again upon the mess of sheets.

Divine wanted to shout, but somehow he couldn’t think how. Shane on one knee on the bed beside him, reaching underneath him, feeling for his belt. Oh, Christ!

“Didn’t I say I’d have you?”

A wrench and Divine’s legs kicked upwards as his trousers were yanked down about his knees, his boxer shorts next, Divine struggling to fight back, use his elbows, arms, the back of his head, anything, but when he did the pain that seared through him was enough to make him cry out and that was before Shane slid one arm around Divine’s neck and began to squeeze it back, his other hand feeling between Divine’s legs, fingers beginning to push against the clenched sphincter, all the time repeating words Divine could barely hear.

“Slut. Whore. Cunt. This is it, this is what you want, you know it is.”

Shane pulling at the front of his own jeans, freeing himself, and then kneeling above Divine, one arm still so tight about his neck that Divine was close to fainting, wishing he could faint, praying for it, rocking his body backwards, trying to throw him off, trying … Oh, God! The pain was sudden like a knife and sharp and then Shane was pushing into him and shouting louder and louder that litany of words again.

“Whore! Cunt! This is what you want, you bastard! You fucking cunt!” Shane throwing himself across Divine as he came, sinking his teeth into the flesh at the back of his shoulder and puncturing the skin.

The sound of the door slamming downstairs must have registered seconds after it happened. Shane pulling away and clutching at the top of his jeans, trying and failing to cover himself and at the same time reach for the baseball bat that had become jammed between the mattress and the foot of the bed before Carl Vincent burst through the door.

Vincent, diving at Shane headlong, the top of his skull striking Shane’s breastbone as the bat flew from Shane’s hand and he fell backwards against the wall beneath the window. Vincent punching him once, twice, then slamming the point of his elbow hard into the center of Shane’s face, before seizing his arm and turning him, one knee driving down into the small of his back, Vincent’s cuffs in his hand now, one of them fastening about Shane’s wrist and the other half locked around the pipe from the radiator.

“You do not have to say anything.” Vincent beginning. “You do not have to say anything …” but stopping, wanting Shane, please, to turn his head and look at him, look at him so that Vincent could hit him again, so that he would have a reason.

Vincent getting up and leaving him cuffed to the radiator, going to where Divine lay sobbing on the bed, sobbing in his embarrassment and pain, and covering him carefully with one of the sheets, as carefully as he had ever done anything in his life.

Forty-seven

“How is he?” Hannah asked.

They were in her small front garden, overlooking the park. It was two days later. Through the trees, the light angling low across the grass was beginning to fade. A few elderly men stood chatting, pausing on the curve of path as they walked their dogs. The last cries of children rose and fell from the playground at the farther side. Some of the cars heading into the city along Derby Road had switched on their lights.

Hannah had been sitting in her doorway when Resnick had arrived, cushions piled beneath her, leaning back against the frame. A pile of folders beside her, pen in hand. A wine glass by her side. When she had heard the gate and seen him approaching along the path, she had smiled. “Just let me finish this …” but he had gestured for her to stay where she was and stepped around her, moving on inside the house. The opened bottle of wine, a semillon chardonnay, was in the door of the fridge and he removed it, letting the door swing closed, and turned to reach a glass down from the shelf.

There was a postcard, propped against a stack of blue and yellow bowls, a reproduction, he supposed, of a painting: a town house in reddish stone, steps that climbed quite high to the front door and a couple standing there, he in a waistcoat, white shirt, and tie, she is wearing a blue dress and leaning back against the curve of railing beside the steps. Beyond the house, to the right of the picture, half in shadow, there is a spread of almost impossibly smooth grass and beyond that, rising suddenly, a wall—is it a wall?—and a rich cluster of green trees, the tallest of which is catching the last of the sun. The dull orange glow on the stone, Resnick realized, was caused by the setting sun. Evening, and this couple, they are both looking out towards the light.

Resnick turned over the card to see who the painting was by and before he could do that or put it back he read instead, in purplish ink and lettering that was fussy and none too clear,
nice to see you again
, and
missing you
, and the name.
Jim.
The postmark was unreadable, smudged against the stamp.

“Charlie! Have you got lost or what?”

He picked up the bottle and the glass and carried them out.

“Divine,” Hannah said, after she had sipped her wine. “How is he?”

“He’s a strong lad. Bones’ll mend.”

Hannah looked at him, the weariness in his eyes. “And the rest of him?”

Resnick shook his head. So far Divine had refused to talk about what had happened, not to the doctor who had examined him, not to Maureen Madden, to Resnick, anyone. Shane’s statements had so far been only patchily coherent, but what seemed certain was that he had encountered Bill Aston in the public toilets on the Embankment late on the Friday evening, the day before the murder, and that something had happened between them, something sexual, but exactly what and how mutually consensual, it was difficult to tell. But when Aston had bumped into Shane again, presumably by accident, back on the Embankment the following night and had approached him, Shane had reacted with anger, called over his mates, and encouraged them to set upon him, bloody poof, beat him to a pulp. A bit of fun.

Along with Gerry Hovenden, Shane had been charged with the murder of Bill Aston, and on his own account had been charged with two cases of indecent assault and one of causing grievous bodily harm; they were holding back on the charge of rape.

Listening, Hannah reached up and squeezed Resnick’s hand.

During the time that Resnick and the team had been preoccupied with Shane, Khan had continued to be busy. The youths who had terrorized Nicky Snape had given conflicting accounts of what had happened leading up to Nicky’s death. It was uncertain how far their threatening sexual by-play had gone on that occasion, but what was clear almost beyond dispute was that if they had not forced Nicky to take part in oral or anal sex there and then, they had made it clear that the next time he wouldn’t be given any choice. Khan also established that, while in care, at least two of the boys had gone out at night for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.