Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(28)

The knuckles of Divine’s hands, pressed back against the wall behind him, were grazed raw and yielding blood. What had he expected, coming here like this?

Sooner or later, the therapist had told him, you have to confront what happened to you, accept it even, only then will you be able to see it in some kind of perspective, move on.

Bollocks, Divine said. Accept it, bollocks. What I want to f*cking do is forget.

And there were times now, when he’d drunk enough, sometimes when he slept, when forget was what he did. Those times when he didn’t wake red-eyed and slaked in sweat, the sweet stink of blood and butchery sliding between lath and plaster till he could taste it on his tongue.

He was standing at the sink, head bowed beneath the tap when he realized someone was knocking at the downstairs door, likely had been for some time.

Resnick took him to a café on Bath Street and sat him down near the window, the market traders setting up their stalls on the uneven triangle of ground outside. Eggs, bacon, sausage, beans. Resnick liberally applied brown sauce, folded thin slices of bread and butter and dipped them into the yolk, wiped the juices from the edges of the plate.

“Eat,” he ordered Divine. “You don’t look as though you’ve had a decent meal in days.”

Divine was unkempt, unshaven, his clothes had started to hang haphazardly from his rugby player’s frame.

“Eat.”

“Not hungry,” Divine said, but little by little, grudgingly, eat was what he did. Ten minutes later, Resnick’s own plate comprehensively cleared, Divine hurried through to the small toilet at the back and threw up. By the time he returned, wiping tissue across his pallid face, Resnick had a fresh mug of tea waiting, sweet and hot.

Divine lit a cigarette and almost as quickly stubbed it out.

“These conditions of bail,” Resnick started.

Fidgeting back his chair, Divine looked away.

“There’s not going to be a problem? Mark, there’s not going to be a problem?”

“Why should there be?”

“Suzanne Olds came to see me …”

“Stuck-up cow.”

“Good at her job.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“She came to see me because she was worried …”

“Well, now she can stop worrying, can’t she, ’cause you can see. Look. Look, what’m I going to do? Nip off down the South of France? Costa del Sol?”

“You went to Derby,” said Resnick, almost smiling.

“Fucking Derby!”

“You had a knife.”

“Yeah, well I haven’t got it any more.”

“Nor anything like it?”

Divine hung his head; his skin was itching and the inside of his throat felt like a length of tubing someone had been attacking with industrial cleaner. He brought the mug to his mouth and the tea burned. More than most things in the world, he wanted to pull off his clothes and lower himself into a hot bath, close his eyes.

“Tell her she doesn’t have to worry. I’ll keep clean.”

“Good.” Resnick reached into his pocket for money to pay the bill. “You okay for cash?”

Divine nodded: fine.

“Okay, I’d best be getting back. And Mark …”

“Yes?”

“If ever you need, call me, work or home, it doesn’t matter, understood?”

“Yeah. Yes, thanks.”

Hesitating just for a moment, Resnick fished out one of his cards, bent from his top pocket, and wrote his own number and then Hannah’s in biro on the back.

“Any time, right?”

“Right.”

A quick handshake and Resnick left him sitting there, cradling the mug of tea.

Jack Skelton was loitering with intent in the vicinity of Resnick’s office. Skelton, while not exactly back to the peak of fitness which once saw him running four miles each morning, had nonetheless lost the excess ten pounds the past year had seen him put on, and was looking spruce this morning in a light wool check jacket and tan slacks, hair brushed to within an inch of its life.

Following Resnick through into his partitioned room, Skelton closed the door firmly at his back.

“Announcement’s being made any day now, apparently.”

“Announcement?”

“Serious Crimes. Who’s going to be in charge, here in the city.”

“I thought Kilmartin.”

“Kilmartin’s dropped out. Rallied round up in Paisley, offered him something he couldn’t refuse.”

“Season ticket to Rangers, was it?”

“Could be.”

“And you’ve no idea?”

Skelton shook his head. “Rumors, you know how it is.”

Resnick knew.

“Should’ve put yourself up, Charlie, then we wouldn’t have all this …” The superintendent broke off, seeing Resnick smiling widely. “What? What’s so bloody funny?”

“Marlon Brando. It was on the box the other night. Where he’s a boxer, working down on the docks. I could’ve been a contender, Charlie. Sitting there with his brother in the back of a car.”

Skelton was shaking his head. “Must’ve missed it.”

Resnick, too, if Hannah hadn’t nagged on at him. Charlie, you’ll like it. Honestly. Just give it a chance.