Downstairs, she could see him silhouetted through the mottled glass panels at the top of the door. Impatient with the bolts, her fingers finally fumbled back the door.
“Norma …”
It was still there in his eyes and in the way he stood.
“It’s Nicky, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Something’s happened to Nicky.”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Norma’s hands were at her sides, clenched; for a moment she closed her eyes.
“Norma. I think we’d best talk inside.”
“Tell me.”
“Norma …”
She caught hold of him, the lapel of his coat. “Fucking tell me!”
Resnick’s breath snagged in his throat. “He was found earlier this morning. Norma, he …”
“He’s dead.”
Resnick’s voice was quiet, each word screaming in her head. “Yes. Yes, Norma, I’m afraid he’s dead.”
She flung back her arm and her hand smashed through the glass of the door. What came from her mouth was more of a hiss than a scream. Resnick caught her and held her close, her breath against his face. Blood ran from her palm and wrist, down past her finger ends onto the floor.
“Norma, come on. Come on now, let’s get inside.” He led her, half-dragging her, along the short hall. Sheena was standing, white-faced, a towel wrapped round her, at the foot of the stairs.
“Help me get your mum into the front room.”
Sheena didn’t move.
Over and over again, Norma was saying Nicky’s name. Resnick maneuvered her onto the settee and raised her arm so that her hand was level with her head. Cartoon dinosaurs were doing battle on the TV.
Resnick looked round at Sheena, silent in the doorway. “Get a clean towel, tea towel, anything as long as it’s clean. All right? Now.”
There were slivers of glass visible in the fleshy part of Norma’s hand, below the thumb. “What … happened?” she gasped. “Nicky, what happened?”
“Let’s get this mess sorted first …”
“No! No. Tell me, I want to know.”
Careful, Resnick eased the longest of the glass shards away; he was holding Norma’s arm upright with his hand. Sheena came back carrying a hand towel. She had pulled on a T-shirt and jeans. “It’s all I could find.”
“That’s fine. Now phone for an ambulance …”
“No.” Norma was sobbing, shaking her head.
“An ambulance, this wants seeing to properly. And get the kettle on, let’s have some tea, all right? Sweet tea.”
Gingerly, Resnick fingered out another piece of glass and set it carefully with the first, on the floor by the settee.
“Mr. Resnick, please …”
He held her other hand as well. “He was found in one of the bathrooms with a towel around his neck. He was hanging. It looks as if he took his own life.”
She pulled away from him so hard that he was unable to hold her; punched and slapped against him as the cries tore from her throat and didn’t stop until he had caught her wrists and pinned them back and by then the front of his shirt and the side of his face were smeared with blood.
“It’s okay, Norma,” Resnick said. “It’s okay, it’s going to be all right.”
But Norma could only remember Nicky’s face as she chased him away, holding her ten pounds aloft and laughing. You let me get my hands on you, you little tripeshanks, and I’ll wring your miserable neck.
Fourteen
When Resnick first worked with him, Jack Skelton had begun his days in track suit and running shoes, jogging a couple of miles down the Derby Road towards the university, one lap round the lake and then back up the hill, forehead glistening with sweat and good intentions. Now, he lit his third or fourth Benson of the day between the car-park and the rear door of the station, and his breath was audible by the time he reached the second flight of stairs.
Time was, too, when Resnick would have had his work cut out to be at his desk before the superintendent of a morning, but this Monday he had almost finished briefing Millington and the rest of the team before Skelton had arrived.
It had been a weekend like many another. Half a dozen break-ins either side of the Alfreton Road and the same number in the narrow streets at the back of Lenton Boulevard. In one of these, the burglars had made themselves jam and peanut butter sandwiches, opened the mail, then sat around long enough to watch the recording of that Saturday’s Match of the Day, which had been left in the VCR. All of this while three lads slept upstairs, out to the world.
A van had been stolen from round the back of a bakery in Radford and driven into the canal behind the Raleigh cycle works. Two men had got into a fight in the early hours, which resulted in one biting off the first finger of the other at the tip; the victim had walked into accident and emergency at the Queen’s with the finger safe inside a condom he had been keeping providentially in his wallet. And at a little before seven that morning, three girls wearing face masks, one of them in what looked like a school uniform, had tried to hold up the petrol station by Abbey Bridge with what proved to be a cucumber inside a plastic bag.
“Another week, eh, Charlie?” Millington had said, stubbing out his cigarette.
“Least we don’t have Nicky Snape to fret about,” Divine said, getting to his feet.
Resnick shot him a look that would keep his head down for the rest of the day.
“The Hodgson youth,” Resnick said to Lynn as she walked by, “safely back at Ambergate?”
Lynn nodded. “Till the next time.”
“Good work there.”
“Thanks.”
“The man they picked up with him …”
“Brian Noble.”
“Vice decide to charge him or what?”
Lynn shook her head. “More trouble than it was worth in the end. Gave him a warning and kicked him free.” She smiled. “What’s the betting he was in church yesterday with his wife and kids, giving thanks.”
Across the room, Kevin Naylor turned his head from the telephone. “The hospital, sir, Doris Netherfield …” The skin tightened apprehensively around Resnick’s eyes. “No change, apparently. Still holding her own.”
“Good,” Resnick said, releasing his breath. “Thank God for that as well.”
Skelton was waiting in his office and listened with barely concealed impatience while Resnick made his report. There were more pressing things on his mind.
“Don’t know how you managed it yesterday morning, Charlie, out where that kid was found, but you got a hair stuck up the director’s arse of sizeable proportions. I had the ACC on the phone to me last evening, Assistant Director of Social Services had been onto him, asking whatever investigation we carry out, you wouldn’t be the officer in charge.”
Resnick grunted in response.
“According to Jardine you questioned staff without his authority.”
“I talked to one, the man who let me in. What was I supposed to do, maintain strict silence?”
“And then, apparently, you all but accused Jardine of culpability in Snape’s death.”
“That’s nonsense. I accused nobody.”
“All right, then, implied.”
Resnick looked past Skelton’s head towards the window; with what seemed unnatural slowness, a plane from East Midlands Airport was making a diagonal pass across a blue-gray sky. “I’d be tempted to wonder, all this defensiveness, if he hasn’t got something to hide.”
“The suicide? You think there’s something not kosher?”
Resnick shrugged. “Not necessarily. But if that is what happened, I’d like to know the reasons why.”
“The way he attacked that old man, kid or not, he might’ve been facing some heavy time. Maybe it was the thought of being shut away.”
Resnick shook his head. “I think it would’ve taken more than that.”
“Bullying, then, some of the other youths, is that what you think?”
“I don’t know. Could be a lot of things.”
“Or nothing at all.”
Resnick shifted heavily in his chair. “Dead fifteen-year-old, that’s what there is.”