Oh, shit! Footsteps on the stairs. The door handle turned but didn’t give.
“Hang on a minute,” Nicky said.
“Nicky?” Shane’s voice. “That you?”
“Yeh, I shan’t be long.”
“What the fuck you doin’ in there?”
“What d’you think?”
Nicky waited until his brother had walked away before returning to the sink. At least the water was still hot. He found an old scrubbing brush beside the bath and lathered it with soap. He would have to wash his face, clean between his fingers, beneath his nails, shampoo his hair. As he looked into the reddening water, he saw the woman’s gray head breaking below him, felt the impact of the blows reverberating back along his arms. Who’d have thought the old girl had as much blood in her as this?
Why didn’t he run? Take whatever money was in the house, what he had himself and run. A bus to Manchester, Glasgow, London, anywhere. He could lose himself in London, knew kids who had. Kids who came back with stories of money and crack, of picking up punters on Victoria Station or at Funland in Leicester Square. Doing the kind of stuff Martin Hodgson would have been out doing last night. At the back of his throat, Nicky felt himself beginning to retch. The sensible thing was to stay here. Bugger off and they’ll take that as telling them, fair and square, sticking two and two in their hands and saying, right, what’s that? No, the thing to do was stay cool, get rid of the clothes, go to school.
Just as his mum was getting up, Nicky fell fast off, sucking at his thumb.
Norma was down in the kitchen when the cars arrived, two of them, Naylor and Divine, hurrying round to the back to cut off any possible escape. If she heard them, taking the carton of milk from the fridge, she gave no sign. Sitting down here with a cigarette, quiet, a fag and a cup of tea was the best part of the day.
First up the path, Resnick stood aside, allowing Millington to ring the bell and knock. The sergeant paused, then rang the bell again.
“Bloody hell! Who’s this?” But Norma, padding to the front door in her slippers, knew whoever it was, the news would not be good. Seeing the two men standing there, Resnick, whom she recognized, Norma felt a sudden pain fire, sharp, across her chest.
“Your Nicky,” Millington said. “Is he in?”
“Of course he’s bloody in.” But she was not looking at Millington, but at Resnick, trying to read the expression in his eyes.
“You can see where it’s heading, Norma. Clear as I can myself.” Resnick’s words, the last time he had been to her house.
“What d’you want him for?” Norma asked.
“One or two questions,” Millington told her, “about what he was up to last night.”
“Last night he was here,” Norma said, “along of me, all evening.” It was a response as automatic as drawing breath.
“I think we’d best ask him that,” Millington said.
Norma stood her ground, not knowing what to do.
Resnick shifted half a pace towards the doorway. “Norma, I think maybe you should let us in, don’t you?”
Millington wandered off into the front room and then the kitchen, while Resnick stood with Norma near the foot of the stairs.
“He’s still in bed, then?”
“’Course he bloody is.”
Resnick set his hand upon the banister and she took hold of his wrist. “You call him, then, Norma. Fetch him down.”
At the edge of his eyeline, Millington had reappeared, slowly shaking his head.
“Norma,” Resnick prompted.
Heavy, she turned and called Nicky’s name; set her foot upon the stairs and called again.
In his room, Nicky was instantly awake and throwing back the clothes.
“Nicky, it’s the police.”
He grabbed a pair of old jeans and was still pulling them on as he threw up the window and scrambled out onto the sloping roof above what had once been the outside lavatory.
“Nicky!”
First Resnick, and then Millington, elbowed past Norma and took the stairs at a run.
Nicky slithered down the steeply angled roof, dislodging tiles as he went. One of his hands caught at the old iron guttering and it broke. Twisting as best he could, Nicky half-jumped, half-fell and then he was away, jumping the old rabbit hutch and vaulting the gate, straight into Divine’s arms where the detective waited behind the wall.
From the upstairs window, Resnick watched as Nicky swore at Divine and struggled, until Naylor had his arms behind him and between them they’d put on the cuffs.
“Kick me again, you little bastard,” Divine said, “and I’ll have your balls for breakfast.”
Resnick, closing the window, didn’t hear. Shane was out on the landing, pulling a pair of cords up over his boxer shorts. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“It’s okay, nothing to bother you.”
“Well, s’pose I want it to bother me?”
“I’d remind you what the magistrate said, last time you were up in court.”
“Fuck the bastard magistrate!”
“I dare say.” Resnick sighed. “Now why don’t you go downstairs, look to your mum? Make her a cup of tea if nothing else.”
Shane pushed past him and slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.
Norma was in the kitchen, head in her hands.
“I’ll take a look round,” Millington said, and Resnick nodded and went to put the kettle on himself. Within five minutes, Millington had found the bin liner full of bloodied clothes stuffed under Nicky’s bed.
“Take them in,” Resnick said. “Let forensic have them, first thing.” He glanced at Norma. “I’ll be along directly.” He fished out the used tea bags, tipped the lukewarm tea down the sink, and set to making some fresh.
Eleven
Resnick watched her walk across the playground, hair moving lightly in the freshness of the wind. Despite all the forecasts, the temperature had dipped a further five degrees and, in the CID room that day, Millington had been mithering on about having to take his geraniums in again, safe out of the frost.
“Hannah Campbell,” the school secretary had said, “she’s taking a drama group in the main hall. Should be through any time in the next half-hour.”
In no hurry to return to the station, Resnick had elected to wait.
Nicky Snape’s interrogation had been careful and slow. For the best part of the first hour, his mother sitting alongside him, a solicitor just behind, Nicky had said nothing, then, after continued questioning, Resnick and Millington alternating, he had admitted to spending the first part of the evening with Martin Hodgson and another friend. Where? Cinema. What did you see? Nicky told them. Had he been near the Netherfield house? No, he had not been near the Netherfield house. Didn’t know what they were on about. Didn’t know where it was.
“Nicky,” Resnick had said, “listen to me. We’re doing tests now. They’re going on while we’re talking here. The blood on the clothes we found underneath your bed, blood around the sink in your bathroom at home, blood on a length of iron railing we found near the house-whose blood, Nicky, do you think that is? Do you think it belongs to that woman lying up at Queen’s in intensive care, just about hanging onto her life? Do you think that’s what we’re going to find?”
Nicky had stared at the table, his hands clenched together. Beside him, with very little noise, Norma had started to cry.
“Whatever you know about this, Nicky,” Resnick had said. “Anything at all, I think you should tell us now. Let’s talk about it now, you and me, while we’re here. While we can.”
Norma had turned away, unwilling to look at her son, afraid to, and Resnick had leaned, almost imperceptibly, forward. “Nicky, this house we’re talking about, where all of this happened, were you there?”
Nicky’s reply was so quiet it was almost as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
“Sorry, Nicky what did you say? Could you just say that again for us please?”