“Good,” Resnick said. “You made a sight better job of that than I would.”
Lynn gave him a quick smile and drained her cup. They found a phone near the Mansfield Road exit and Resnick called the station; so far, there had been no sign of Shane. But twenty minutes previously, the fibers found inside the leather glove had been successfully identified as coming from Gerry Hovenden. Nothing now to stop them charging him with the murder of William Aston.
“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?”