John Harvey - Off Minor

If the nerve beating beside Shepperd’s head accelerated any more, it might burst through the skin.

“Just a few, Stephen, only a very few, but still enough to make comparisons. Lucky for us that she struggled, Gloria, when you were doing whatever it was you did to her, lucky that she fought and tried to get away …”

“Don’t!”

“Otherwise we might never have found those scrapings …”

“Please don’t!”

“Trapped beneath her nails, pressed flat against the skin.”

“No! No, no, oh, God, oh, God, no, no, please, no. No.” Shepperd pushed himself back from the table, twisted sideways on his chair, threw himself at his solicitor, clinging to his arms as his words degenerated into a broken succession of cries and moans.

Frightened, embarrassed, the solicitor seemed to be pushing Shepperd away with one hand, holding on to him with the other. Over Shepperd’s shoulder, his expression appealed to Resnick for assistance.

“Graham,” Resnick said.

Millington went round the table and tapped Shepperd on the shoulder, careful to treat him gently now, any hint of physical coercion to be avoided at all costs.

Only when Shepperd was upright in his chair, his clothing set to rights, his breathing back to almost normal, did Resnick, sitting opposite him, softly say, “Wouldn’t you like to tell us about it, Stephen? Don’t you think you’d feel better if you could do that?”

And Stephen Shepperd horrified Resnick by grabbing at his hand and clutching it tight, his voice as quiet as Resnick’s own. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“Fuckin’ ’ell, Ray! You gone to sleep in there or what?”

“Got the tweezers out again. Trying to find his prick.”

“Come on, Raymond, give us all a break. It is sodding Saturday night.”

Back in his room, Raymond eased himself into his black jeans, tucked down the tail of his shirt before zipping up his fly. Front of the shirt unbuttoned, he took the deodorant from the end of the bed and sprayed again under his arms. Money in his back pocket, keys. Before leaving he tugged at the front of his shirt so that it was hung loosely over his waist. Like someone who can’t stop themselves touching their tongue to a painful tooth, he pressed the ends of his fingers close against his nose. Nothing would get rid of the faint ripeness of fresh blood, raw meat.

Sara came out of the shop wearing low heels, black skirt inches over the knee; underneath her coat Raymond caught the gleam of a white blouse. Tonight they’d be like twins.

He waited in the doorway across the broad swathe of pedestrianized street; Sara chattering to two of the other girls, one with a cigarette already in her hand, the other lighting up as she spoke. Just when Raymond was starting to get restless, scuffing his feet, the other pair turned and walked off towards the city, arm in arm. Sara waited a couple of moments, only acknowledging Raymond when he stepped out of the doorway and began, hands in pockets, to walk towards her.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

Raymond sniffed and shrugged. They stood close, facing in opposite directions, movement on either side of them, groups of youths walking up from the station, in by train from the suburbs, the surrounding towns. Saturday night.

“What you want to do then?” Raymond said.

“I don’t know, do I?”

A few more moments of silent indecision. No more than fifteen, a lad, jostled by his mates, bumped into Raymond and Raymond whirled round, angry, “Watch where you’re fucking going.” The boy backing away, laughing it off, “Sorry, mate. Sorry.” Fear in his eyes. His friends gathering him up and sweeping him away.

“Raymond, what’d you do that for? It was only an accident.”

“Not going to let him push me around for nothing,” Raymond said. “Bastard! He wants to fucking watch out.”

“What is he like, this boy?” Sara’s mum had said. “You haven’t told us much about him.”

“You hungry?” Raymond said.

Sara was looking over towards HMV, the posters for the new George Michael album in the window; maybe she’d get that before the end of the week if her money held out. “No,” she said, “not really.”

“Come on, then,” Raymond, starting to move away, “might as well get a drink.”

The ground floor of the restaurant was small and already quite crowded, the waiters either asking newcomers if they minded sitting upstairs or if they would like to try again in an hour, an hour and a half. Patel and Alison were in the corner, behind the door, next to two couples who had greeted the owner familiarly and proceeded to talk loudly through their meal, spraying advice on the relative hotness of the curries and details about their planned winter holiday round all and sundry.

“I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I?” Alison grinned, spooning lime pickle on to a piece of popadum.

Patel shook his head. “You? No, I don’t see how.”

The grin broadened. “Wearing this.”

This was a low-cut chenille top beneath which it was impossible to disguise the fact that she’d elected not to wear a bra. The top was the color of cream, worn over raspberry culottes in cotton velour. Patel was wearing dark gray trousers, brown leather shoes, shirt and tie under a burgundy jacket. He was trying not to stare each time Alison leaned forward towards the pickle jar.

“Not at all,” he said.

Alison laughed, not unkindly. “The girls at work said you’d take one look and run a mile. Either that or put me under arrest for offending public decency.”

Patel’s turn to smile: by the standards of a normal city Saturday she was quite conservatively dressed.

“You have arrested someone, haven’t you? It was on the news.”

“For the murder of the little girl, yes, that’s right.”

“I thought there were two,” Alison said. “Two girls.”

The waiter squeezed his way between the tables with their portions of chicken tikka, shami kebab.

“So far, I think he’s only been charged with the first murder. I don’t know about the second.”

“But he did do it?”

Patel nodded thanks to the waiter and realized that their noisy neighbors at the next table had fallen quiet to listen.

“I don’t know,” Patel said. “I haven’t really been that involved. Look at all the chicken tikka you’ve got, you’ll never be able to finish your main course.”

Stephen Sheppard lay on a plain, thin mattress in the police cell, a continuous period of eight hours’ rest, free from questioning, travel or any interruption. Whenever the duty officer looked through the door, Sheppard was a moving tangle beneath his blanket, the shal-lowness of broken sleep.

“Remorse, then, Charlie, that what you’d say he was feeling?”

Resnick sighed. Since his first waking thoughts about the Shepperds’ new carpet, he had been functioning for close on sixteen hours. “Oh, yes, remorse by the bucketload. Even then not above trying to twist the blame.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, so beautiful, so lovely I couldn’t stop myself from touching her. The way she smiled, not like a little girl at all. Always smiling, clinging to my hand. As if somehow she’d been egging him on.” A shudder ran through him and he struck his fist against the side of Skelton’s desk. “Trying to make her complicit. Six years of age. What kind of twisted mind can convince itself of that?”

Skelton’s father-in-law had arrived long since, replete with urinary sheath, leg bag and new three-piece suit in Donegal tweed; three times his wife had phoned to inquire when he would be home. “Nothing about the Morrison girl?” Skelton said.

Resnick shook his head. “Still reckons to know nothing about her. Beyond who she is, stuff he’d agreed to before.”