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.
And when he had checked again with Elizabeth Peck’s neighbors, several claimed to have seen her, one or two of them, leaving the house in uniform, usually in the evenings, nurse’s uniform and arriving home early, between six and seven. Not regular, but quite a few times just the same. Khan checked with the hospitals, the nursing agencies in town. He was waiting for her when her car arrived back from East Midlands Airport, parked across the Street with a copy of Nancy Friday he’d borrowed from Jill’s bedside. Women on Top. He’d given up on Vikram Seth.
When Elizabeth Peck swung into the drive of the neo-Georgian house, on which she was still three mortgage payments in arrears, he walked across and offered to help her with her bags.