Although, he had thought, trousers back up and putting a brave face on it as he walked down the line of men waiting to go and get theirs, it could be a sight worse. Quick dose of NSU, that’s all it was. Not like some of these sorry buggers, take a look at ’em, if it wasn’t AIDS this time, then likely it would be next. Still, bollocking shirt-lifters, they got what they deserved. Divine shuddered and cupped his gear into his jockeys before zipping up. Anyone who’d get his jollies sticking it up some bloke’s arse … the thought of it made him want to puke.
Back in the CID room, Millington broke off in the midst of a delicate rendition of “When I Fall in Love” to remind Divine they needed to be on their way in the next ten minutes or so, a man to go and see about a pub. Though if Reg Cossall hadn’t been able to get names or detailed descriptions out of the landlord, Millington was doubtful if they’d have better luck. But it was ground that had to be covered. Good police work, steady and predictable, that’s what got results. Well, sometimes …
Shane Snape had discharged himself from the hospital and picked up a taxi on the Derby Road, close by the university roundabout. His face still showed signs of bruising and his ribs would have to stay taped up for the next couple of days, but otherwise he was feeling better than perhaps he had a right to, the beating he had taken.
Norma greeted him with a kiss and a hug that made him wince, and Peter grinned and reached up from the settee to shake Shane’s hand and say welcome home, as though it was his sodding home to welcome him into.
“How much longer’s he staying?” Shane asked Norma out in the kitchen, not bothering to lower his voice.
“Come on, love,” Norma said. “Don’t be like that.”
“I’m not being,” Shane said, “like fucking anything.”
Less than half an hour later he was off out again, ignoring his mother’s questions about where he was going and when he might be back. He caught one bus into the city center and then another out to Ilkeston; it was little more than a ten-minute walk from the bus station to where his mate Gerry Hovenden lived.
Hovenden was one of the blokes Shane hung around with, drank with at weekends: a good mate. When Shane came round the corner, Hovenden was down on his hands and knees by the front path, the exhaust of the motor bike he was repairing laid on an old length of oily blanket near the front door.
“Hey,” Shane said, “how’s it going?”
“Slowly. How about you?”
Shane grinned. “Slowly, too.”
He stood for a while on the threadbare patch of front garden, feigning interest.
“Not a lot of use asking you to pitch in.” Hovenden grinned. “Lend a hand.”
“Not a lot.”
“Go on inside if you want, nobody’s in. You know where everything is.”
Hovenden lived in the place with his dad, his mum having gone from there to a refuge five years before, before moving to Birmingham, where she was living with a long-distance lorry driver who hated Gerry’s guts. Since she’d left, his dad had taken up with a woman who worked in the local garden center and spent more time at her house than here. Added to which he worked shifts. So mostly now, it was as if Hovenden lived there on his own.
It was a flat-roofed Fifties house on a spent-up estate, a few of the places owner-occupied, but mainly not. The council, as usual, were behind on maintenance, paint flaked away from around the window frames and once enough water had gathered on the roof, it found a way through.
Shane switched on the TV and wandered off without really looking at it. There were four cans of Strongbow in the fridge and he snapped one open and sat down on the folded piece of foam that served as a settee, someone blabbing away on the TV screen, Shane still not bothering to watch. He pulled a bundle of comics towards him and started to leaf through them; finding a Judge Dredd, he read it from cover to cover. Shifting it to the bottom of the pile, he found-what was this? — not a comic, some kind of fanzine. A magazine. The Order. The cover showed a large white death’s head on a black background. One of Gerry’s old biker things, Shane guessed, back from when his hair was long and his leather stank of engine oil and never being washed for years on end. But inside, above a picture of a crowd of youths standing outside iron gates, he read: The Holocaust is a load of bollocks. C18 experts examine the myth.
As he was starting to read it, Hovenden came into the house, wiping his hands on a piece of rag.
“Oh,” he said, seeing what was in Shane’s hands. “You found that.”
“I didn’t know you was into politics,” Shane said.
“Yes.” Gerry Hovenden shrugged. “Now and again.”
Standing in the queue at the sandwich counter across the street, Resnick pondered on a largely fruitless day. He had driven out with Khan to the house in Colwick where Paul Matthews lived. At first, the place had been so quiet, they’d thought nobody was at home, but then Matthews’s mother had come through the side gate that led from the rear of the house. A birdlike woman in a yellow dress. Paul, she informed them, had been terribly upset by what had happened-that poor, poor boy-Resnick had assumed she was referring to Norma’s son and not her own, but wasn’t sure. The doctor had signed him off work, nervous exhaustion, yes, that was right, signed him off with medication and told Paul to take a rest. Ordered him. He had gone down to stay with a favorite aunt, in Wales, South Wales, Rhossili Bay. Resnick knew it, perhaps? Resnick did not. Ah! Beautiful, still a little wild, you know. And quiet, this time of the year. So restorative, the sea.
“Color blind,” Khan had said, back in the car.
“Mmm?”
“Color blind. Every word she said was aimed directly to you. I don’t think she knew I was there.”
Elizabeth Peck certainly had not been there either. Her house, one of those new pseudo-Georgian places off Wilford Lane, was locked up tight. Blinds pulled, curtains drawn, burglar alarm armed, not one, but two Banham locks on the front door. The neighbors knew her but not well; knew, at least one of them did, that she had gone away. Holiday. She did not know where. Or when she might return.
Resnick had considered dismissing Khan to the farther reaches of the Welsh coast to talk to Matthews, but for now opted to keep that particular powder dry and save on travel expenses to boot. It was Elizabeth Peck whom Bill Aston had spoken to and now Resnick wanted her to speak to him. What he sent Khan off to do was establish whether or not she owned a car; then check with the travel agencies, East Midlands Airport, the railway station, see if he couldn’t get a line on where she’d gone, when she might be expected back.
Before Resnick could carry his sandwich into the comparative privacy of his office, Naylor intercepted him, his day looking up at last. “This shoe stuff, sir, inconclusive’s putting it mildly. But I had them look again at the markings and one thing’s pretty much agreed. Whoever was wearing the boots, you can tell from the movement, variations in pressure and the like, he was the one did most of the damage, really heavy blows that did for Aston, he was the one.”
“Good work, lad. Well done.”
He was just about to bite into the sandwich, stray mayonnaise already on the cuff of his shirt, when Millington knocked and entered.
“Any luck, Graham?”
“Not a lot, still claiming not to know any names, but he’s agreed to go down to Central and look at some photos, may come up with something that way. Did catch a word with one or two regulars who were in there on the Saturday when the fight broke out, though. Confirmed these lads throwing their weight around had been at the match earlier in the day. Regular supporters by the sound of it.”