Off Minor

Forty-eight

Resnick was still numb. Even though he had seen the body, it was difficult to belief. CONSTABLE KILLED IN KNIFE ATTACK. POLICEMAN SLAIN IN CITY BRAWL. The headlines were there behind him, Sunday tabloids bunched on the back seat of the car. Detective Constable Diptak Patel was stabbed and fatally wounded when he sought to intervene in a vicious fight between armed youths late last night. Constable Patel, who was off duty at the time … Since the early editions, the front pages had been changed, reports that Stephen Sheppard had been charged with murder relegated to page two. On the feature pages articles charting the rise of violence and the decline of the inner cities vied with psychologists profiling the kind of man most likely to engage in pedophilia.

“Why? Why? Why?” Patel’s mother had cried in the hospital, over and over again. “Why would anyone do this to my son?”

“Stop this!” His father had interrupted, stilling her with the fierceness of his anger. “Stop this now! We know, all of us, the reason why.”

No, Resnick thought, none of it is that simple: not what happened to Patel, what happened to Gloria Summers, neither what made Sheppard the person he became, nor the youth who lashed out in ignorance and fear, a knife blade in his hand. He saw that he had missed his turning, drove to the end of the street and doubled back, the pebble-dash bungalow one block along to the right.

He was sitting with Edith Summers on the promenade, staring out over the North Sea, gray as the folds of an old man’s neck. What they sold on the front was daylight robbery, Edith had said, and anyway, at that time of the year most of the places would be closed. So they sat there, drinking tea from a Thermos, wrapped up against the cold.

“It was good of you to come and tell me,” Edith said. “Good of you to come and talk. It’s not everyone as would.”

Suddenly, Resnick had to turn his head aside, afraid of tears.

“When he’d done what he’d done,” Edith said falteringly, “to Gloria, did he tell you why he had to … to take her life as well?”

… all of a sudden there was this screaming and at first I didn’t realize, I mean I hadn’t meant to, the last thing in all the world, I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but she was staring at me and screaming and, oh, God, I hadn’t meant to hurt her, I promise, I promise, I tried to get her to be quiet, I was frightened someone would hear but she went on and on and …

“I think he got carried away,” Resnick said, “this time. I think with girls before he’d only looked, perhaps touched, but nothing, you know, nothing too serious. This time, when he realized what had happened, I think he was shocked, ashamed; scared of what Gloria would say and do, who she might tell.”

“You sound almost as if you feel sorry for him,” Edith said.

“Do I?” said Resnick. “I don’t think that was what I meant.” Though there were times, he thought, with someone like Sheppard, when perhaps I might. Oh, less than for Gloria, or for you, but a little, a residue of sympathy. But not today: today all the sorrow that I have is used up.

“They won’t hang him, will they?” Edith said. “They don’t do that anymore. They’ll put him in some place instead, Broadmoor, look after him with doctors, keep him locked away. People will write to him, it’s what happens. Say it’s not really his fault, let on they understand.”

Resnick reached out and took her hand. An elderly woman, gray-haired, walking her dog, looked at them compassionately as she passed, how nice to see, she thought, a couple like that still acting so affectionately towards one another after all those years.

“Okay, if I take him a tea?”

The custody sergeant looked up from his desk and nodded Millington through.

Sheppard was sitting on the edge of the bed, arms between his legs in that now familiar position. He was muttering to himself, something Millington couldn’t make out, falling silent as the cell door closed.

“My wife …” Sheppard began.

“We spoke to her yesterday, said she didn’t want to see you. Since then nothing’s changed.”

“Can’t you ask …?”

“She knows where you are.”

“Please ask her again.”

“We’ll see.”

You self-pitying bastard, Millington thought, I’d like to wipe your face with the wall. “Interested in this,” he said, indicating the mug. “Tea?”

Sheppard reached out a hand.

“There’s two people waiting on you,” Millington said. “Desperate. Emily Morrison’s mum and dad. Waiting for you to tell them what you did with their daughter, where she is.”

“I told you,” Sheppard moaned. “So many times. I haven’t any idea.”

Millington hurled the contents of the mug high above Sheppard’s head and let himself out of the cell fast, fearful of the damage he might cause.

The blade passed like fire across the throat and, as if opening a tap, the blood poured down, splashing back up boot-high, chasing in circles down the drain. Raymond turned and pressed the sheet to his face and the sheet stank sweet with his sweat. The body of the calf continued to shake. A cut the length of the underside and the guts fell out. He had locked the door and run the chest against it, flush. For what seemed hours now he had been dimly aware of movement, voices below. The second cut opened the animal from the rear legs to the sternum. Sweat and urine: sweat and shit. Tubs of coiled pink guts, pink and gray. Raymond crying, frightened his mother would find out and tell him off, didn’t know how it had happened, hadn’t done it on purpose, honest, he hadn’t meant to mess the bed. He felt between his legs. The last he’d seen of Sara, she’d been on her knees and crying. Stupid bitch! Serve her right, should have listened, done what he’d said. He could feel himself beginning to harden in his hand. Intestines sliding along a stainless steel chute, slithering down. On the news last night, they’d caught the bloke that had that girl, the one he’d liked to watch. Two-ball. Kiss chase.” Laughing at him from across the street. “Ray-o! Ray-o! Ray-o! Ray!” Legs kicking up beneath her little skirt. When he’d got her off on her own, what had he done? Raymond pulled the sheet up over his face and closed his eyes. Sweet stink. He spat into his hand and brought it back down to his cock.

Resnick got back to the station late afternoon. Millington looked up at him from where he was sitting and slowly shook his head. “Sheppard’s solicitor’s been on the phone again,” Lynn Kellogg said. “Been trying to get in touch with Sheppard’s wife. Won’t pick up the phone or come to the door.”

“Get the keys,” Resnick said.

She’d hoovered the house and dusted, later than usual, but still it had been done. Her bedtime drink she’d made for herself, rinsing out the saucepan and the cup and leaving them on the side to drain. She had poured a glass of water and taken it upstairs to bed. The two medicine bottles were empty on the cabinet.

Lynn looked at Resnick and went back down to the phone.

She hadn’t left a note. Instead, on the pillow next to her, where her husband’s head more usually would have lain, there was a yellow wallet, Stephen Sheppard’s final batch of photographs, the last few taken almost exactly a week ago: blurred but recognizable, Emily with her doll’s pram, waving from her front lawn.