Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(27)
Hannah moved closer, her breast resting against the inside of his arm. “I think she’s frightened of going to see anyone. What Alex might do if he found out.”
“If she doesn’t, it could be more frightening still.” Hannah turned onto her back. “You couldn’t talk to him? Unofficially, I mean?”
“It’s difficult.”
“But if he’s hitting her, if you know he’s hitting her …”
“Unless she makes a complaint …”
“He can do as he likes.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“As good as.” Hannah was sitting up now, legs drawn up to her chest.
He reached for her arm and she shook him off.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Try and get round me.”
“I wasn’t trying to get round you.”
“Patronize me, then.”
“Fine!”
He had flung back the covers and was almost to his feet before Hannah grabbed hold of his hand and held it fast.
After a moment, Resnick knelt on the bed and kissed her forehead, the side of her mouth, her eyes.
“Oh, Charlie.”
He lay beside her and they cuddled close, listening to the whine and hum of traffic from the road, the rough synchronicity of their own breathing.
“Why doesn’t she leave him?” Resnick said eventually.
“Charlie, for the life of me, I don’t know.”
Fifteen Divine’s flat was above a butcher’s shop on Bath Street: a couple of ramshackle rooms, one of which also served as a kitchen, and a bathroom back down the hall. Despite protestations in the shop window below that only prime Scottish beef was sold, the odors of something old and inwardly rotting seeped endlessly up through the boards.
It was the third place Divine had lived in as many months; trapped inside his surroundings, self-conscious in the face of others and, despite himself, afraid, he quickly grew to hate whatever walls kept him prisoner and lashed out, defacing and despoiling before he escaped. His previous landlord, an Asian entrepreneur in Sneinton, was pursuing him with a bill for damages that didn’t fall far short of a thousand pounds. It had needed Resnick to stand surety before the owner of this building had agreed to take Divine on; a promise that the young DC had turned a corner, calmed down, and if that were not the case, Resnick himself would make whatever restitution was necessary.
So Divine spent his days with the ill-matched curtains drawn, the television playing in the corner of one room, take-out cartons piled precariously alongside the enamel sink, numerous beer cans, mugs stained orange-brown with the residue of endless tea. Night merged into day. When he ventured out, it was to walk the streets, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, face turned away. Pubs he went into were those in which he could be certain his former colleagues would not be found, old spit and sawdust bars no one had bothered to rejuvenate, forever on the verge of closing down. Here Divine would sit with a slow pint, listlessly turning the pages of the Post, the Mirror, or the Sun.
Up until a month back, he would slide into a phone booth, dial the squad room number, wait for Millington or Naylor or whoever to identify themselves, ear pressed hard against the receiver, listening to the sounds of all that activity, sucking it in.
A few times, he had rung Naylor at home, once getting Kevin himself, otherwise Debbie—the chatter of a small child in the background, the whirr and blurt of an electric mower—Divine had broken the connection without speaking.
At first, the nurse he had been seeing at the hospital had been sympathetic, gone out of her way to be understanding, tried to persuade him to continue with the therapy, spent time with him, trying to get him to talk about what had happened. But somewhere along the line there had been one sullen, half-drunken silent night too many and she had stopped calling, stopped caring. Divine, sitting there hunched in his own morbidity, had scarcely listened to what she said by way of explanation, barely registered the sound of her footsteps, brisk and assured now, relieved, walking away.
He picked up a woman on the curve of Mapperley Road and paid her the usual to undress; when his erection disappeared, she laughed it off and made him a cup of tea instead, showed him photographs of her kids. It was a slow night, and cold: she had no desire to rush back out onto the streets.
A week ago, for the first time, Divine had gone back to the street where it happened. Several hours of aimless wandering had brought him down through a maze of narrow streets on the edge of Radford and there he was. The skin along his arms prickled cold and his legs refused to move. Lights burned, shaded, in the house; normal people living normal lives. Whatever normal meant. Divine’s stomach clenched as he saw again in the corner of his eye a man moving fast toward him, sensed the heavy swish and swing of a baseball bat, the sound, brittle and clear, of splintering bone. And then his legs being kicked out from under him, forced apart. Hands tugging at his belt, his clothes. Didn’t I tell you it’d be me and you? Didn’t I say I’d have you? An arm around his neck, powerful, forcing back his head, fingers probing hard between his legs. Cunt. Whore. This is it, this is what you want. Teeth, as the man climaxed inside him, biting deep into Divine’s shoulder, breaking the skin.
It will take a long time, the therapist had said, before you can expect to assimilate all of this.