Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, Holy Christ! That’s it, that’s it!”

  Hips thrust forward, back arched, Noble’s head smacked back against the cemetery wall, once, twice, three times as he came between the fingers of the boy’s hand. “Oh, God! Yes!” Eyes closed, he bit down into the flesh of his lower lip and groaned his pleasure and release, even as the boy was squatting low to wipe away the semen from his hand on the rough grass.

  When Brian Noble reopened his eyes, the figures were standing silent between the nearest trees.

  “We are police officers …” one of them said and the boy was away, leaping for the cemetery wall, both arms hooked over and pulling his legs after, one foot on top and the other swinging round as Lynn caught hold of his ankle tight and dragged him back, the boy kicking now, kicking and swearing, punching out at her with his fists until the other one joined in, the pair of them hauling him back across the grass and twisting him round, arms tight behind his back and close enough to snap the handcuffs shut about his wrists.

  “Hello, Martin,” Lynn said, rolling him round onto his side. “Nice to see you again.”

  Martin jerked back his head, but she was ready for him and the mouthful of phlegm sailed harmlessly past.

  Brian Noble had sunk down to his knees in front of Sharon Garnett, shaking, tears in his eyes.

  “You do not have to say anything,” Sharon was saying. “But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Through his tears, Noble looked up at her.

  “Do you understand that?” Sharon asked. Noble nodded.

  “Well, if I were you, I’d zip myself up. Nippy, these squirrels can be, this time of year.”

  Eric Netherfield had gone to bed each night for the past dozen years with a length of railing on the floor within reach. He had picked it up one day from a skipful of rubbish where a house was being cleared. “What on earth’ve you dragged that back for?” his wife Doris had said, and Eric had given his usual little shrug. “Come in handy some day, just you see.” Since the burglaries had started in earnest, up and down the street, the last thing Eric had done each night, after dropping his teeth into the glass beside the bed and wishing Doris God bless and good-night, was trail his fingers down towards that piece of iron, as if touching it for good luck.

  Up until now, it had done the trick.

  Standing back behind the bedroom door and struggling to control the wheezing from his chest, Eric listened as the pressure on the last stair caused it to squeak.

  All Nicky saw, a faint bundle off to one side of the high bed, was Doris, one hand clutching at the turn of the sheet. He waited a moment longer, to be certain that she was asleep, then stepped inside the room.

  Eric brought the railing down with all the strength he could muster, aiming for the head but striking the top of the shoulder with such force that the weapon was nearly jarred from his hands.

  Nicky cried out at the sudden, searing pain and stumbled back across the room, the old man coming at him now, swinging that damned bar towards his face. Why the hell wouldn’t he just let him run? The third time the man swung at him, Nicky was in the doorway; he ducked inside the man’s arm and came up fast, headbutting him in the face. The iron bar fell past him and bounced haphazardly down the stairs.

  Across the room, clothes pulled towards her skinny chest, the old woman was sobbing. Blood trickled from her husband’s nose.

  Stupid fuckers! Deserve whatever they fucking get! “Where’s your fucking money?” Nicky yelled, driving him back into the room.

  Eric made a fist at him and Nicky punched him in the neck, then barged him against the wardrobe hard. Wheezing heavily, Eric sank down to his knees.

  “Where’s … the … fucking … money?” Nicky shouted in the man’s ear, punching him in the head to emphasize each word.

  Slowly Eric raised his head. “Sod off, you little toerag!” he said, spittle on his lips.

  Nicky stood back and kicked him in the chest.

  “Don’t! My dear God, don’t! You’ll kill him!” Doris cried, and scrambled on all fours across the bed towards them.

  Eric had collapsed against the foot of the wardrobe and no longer moved.

  “Eric! Oh Eric!”

  Nicky pushed Doris back across the bed and raced down the stairs as fast as he could. At the turn, his foot hooked under the length of iron and he tripped and fell headlong.

  “Jesus! You bastard! You fucking bastard!” Winded, aching, Nicky leaned forward, hands on knees. The piece of railing had rolled close to his feet and now he picked it up and with a shout swung it at arm’s length, sending every ornament and picture from the mantelpiece flying. His wrist and shoulder where the man had hit him, he thought they might be broken. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his reflection, white and scared. Stupid cunt! What’d he have to have a go at him for? Why didn’t he let him just run? The mirror was hanging from a chain; he smashed it again. It wasn’t enough.

  Back upstairs, Doris Netherfield was leaning over Eric, massaging his chest. When Nicky burst back into the room, she cradled herself across her husband to protect him, clinging to him as Nicky raised the bar above his head, then brought it down, time and again until his arms had begun to ache and he had had enough.

  Seeing the blood for the first time, Nicky dropped the bar and ran.

  Eight

  Resnick’s house was a substantial detached property in Mapperley Park, a short distance to the northeast of the city center. Situated on the curve of a narrow crescent, a white stone wall and a small area of lawn separated it from the road. There was a passage at the side, wide enough to park the car which Resnick seldom used, and beyond that a ragged garden of grass and shrubs, a cherry tree that needed pruning and a shed in sore need of creosote and nails. The cherry tree was already shedding blossoms.

  Almost immediately past the hedge at the garden’s foot, the land fell steeply away over the allotments of Hungerhill Gardens and the heart of the city was exposed. Between the railway station and Sneinton windmill, the floodlights of the two soccer grounds showed up clearly, perched on either side of the Trent. Terraced houses that had stood in stubby rows since the turn of the century shared the land with curves and courts of new development that was already starting to look careworn and old. Along the canal, warehouses with peeling fronts, home to flocks of graying pigeons if little else, stood beside architect-designed office buildings and the new marina, and a shopping park of superstores encouraging need and envy, good ambition and bad debts. From where he might stand, at an upstairs window or the garden’s edge, Resnick could not see the night shelters, the needles discarded below the old railway arch, the benches and shop doorways where the homeless slept, but he knew they were there.

  The interior of the house was darker than it would have been, seen with someone else’s eyes, the furniture heavy and largely in need of replacement. On the ground floor, at the front, was the living room, comfortable and large, in which Resnick would sometimes sit late, listening to music, occasionally finding something that interested him on the TV. Past the middle room—a dumping ground for boxes and old magazines, whatever Resnick could not bear to throw away—was the kitchen, large enough to house a scrubbed dining-table, a miscellany of pots and pans, an antiquated stove, a refrigerator stuffed with packages from the deli, cat food, and bottled beer.

  The stairs, broad, with carved wooden banisters, curved up from the center of the house towards Resnick’s bedroom, the bathroom, other rooms he rarely entered, were less often used. At the top of the house one room had been reduced to bare boards, layers of wallpaper stripped from the wails and not replaced. A man Resnick had been pursuing, a murderer, William Doria, had killed himself there, in front of Rachel Chaplin, a woman whom Resnick had thought, however briefly, he might have loved. Resnick had labored to remove the stains of blood from his sight, but that was all and not enough; they hu
ng still in that room on the air, floated like feathers, pink-tinged and soft, that brushed his face and stirred his memory, would not let it rest.

  Resnick rarely went there, climbed those stairs. He had tried moving once, thought of it many times, but somehow he had stayed. A family house, though he had no immediate family, unless you included the cats and he did not. Cats were cats and people people and Resnick knew the difference, he was clear on that. To all intents and purposes, he lived in just three rooms and let the rest succumb to dust.

  When he arrived home that evening on foot, after buying Millington and the CID team a quick round in the pub, the black cat, Dizzy, was waiting for him, as usual, atop the length of wall. Automatically, Resnick reached out a hand to stroke the animal’s glossy fur, but Dizzy turned away from his touch and, tail raised, presented Resnick with a fine view of his backside as he ran along the wall and then sprang down towards the door, anxious to be fed. A neat encapsulation, Resnick thought, of man’s relationship with cats.

  Inside, two of the others, Miles and Pepper, threaded themselves between his legs as he walked towards the kitchen, sifting through the mail he had picked up from the floor. Bud, the fourth and last, eternally young and stupid, lay wedged, for no apparent reason, midway through the cat door, mewing pathetically. Dropping straight into the bin the usual conglomeration of circulars and catalogs, advertisements for a double CD or cassette collection of Songs that Won the War, and invitations from his bank to come in and discuss his financial affairs, Resnick bent down and prized open the cat flap and Bud came sprawling through.

  Fifteen minutes later, he had fed them, ground coffee, and set the kettle on to boil, improvised a sandwich from scraps of stilton, a few fading leaves of rocket, a rasher of cold, cooked bacon, and the last of a jar of mayonnaise. The Post had arrived, offering free tickets to Butlins, free flights to Spain, six hundred pounds’ worth of holiday vouchers and free beer. Pretty soon, Resnick thought, the entire population of the city would be off sunning itself and singing “Viva Españia!” and the crime figures would take care of themselves.

  In the front room, he dropped into an easy chair and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the night was gathering close around the windows, the coffee was cold but still drinkable, and the sandwich—the sandwich tasted just fine. As he ate it he stared across the room at his recent acquisition, a brand-new CD player to complement his stereo; his nightly project, working through the tracks of the ten-disc Billie Holiday set he had bought himself the Christmas before last.

  What would it be this evening?

  “Some Other Spring”?

  “Sometimes I’m Happy”?

  “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)”?

  When the call came through, he was listening to “Body and Soul,” the ’57 version with Harry Edison taking the bridge. Resnick recognized the slight catch in Kevin Naylor’s voice as the younger officer struggled to keep his emotions in check.

  “Alive?” Resnick asked, frowning.

  “Yes, sir. Last I heard. The old woman, though, got to be touch and go.”

  “Anyone gone to the hospital?”

  “Mark, sir.”

  “Not Lynn?”

  “Already out. Something to do with this kid as absconded.”

  “Right. Call Graham, tell him to meet me at the house. And you, stay there till I arrive. And for Christ’s sake don’t let any bugger trample over everything.”

  Without waiting to hear Naylor’s reply, Resnick set down the receiver and headed for the door. Near enough eleven thirty and it was going to be a long night. He found his car keys on the table in the hall and grabbed a topcoat from the hooks inside the door. Long and likely cold.

  Unaware, though she was never really that, Billie Holiday sang on in the empty room.

  Graham Millington, burly, hands in pocket, was pacing the pavement inside the area that had been cordoned off, firing an occasional scowl in the direction of those bystanders who were still lingering in the wake of the sirens’ call. Naylor stood in the doorway, face paler than usual in the fall of the street light, one of those faces that were forever young until the day that suddenly they were old.

  Resnick parked at the opposite side of the street and strode across.

  “Break-in, looks like,” Millington said, falling into step.

  “Entry?”

  “Round back. Shimmied in through the window.”

  “How many?”

  “Hard to say as yet. By sight of what’s in there, happen half a hundred of ’em.”

  Resnick blinked. Something was pulsing away behind his left temple, some premonition of pain.

  “I’ve this minute had a call from Mark,” Naylor said. “Woman’s in the operating theatre, crushed skull. Brain damage, sounds like. Serious.”

  “And the husband?”

  “Be okay, I think. Cuts and bruises. Shock.”

  Resnick turned towards the street, faces indistinct between curtains pulled back. “Witnesses? Anyone seen running away?”

  Naylor fidgeted uneasily on the step. “None come forward, sir, as yet.”

  “Chances are this wasn’t the only house broken into. Get yourself about, find out what you can. We’ll organize a proper house-to-house first thing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Think he’ll ever break the habit?” Millington asked, watching Naylor in sports jacket and khaki trousers walking towards the next-door house.

  “Which habit’s that?”

  “Calling you sir.”

  Resnick didn’t bother to reply. He was looking at the turmoil in the small back room, like one of those newspaper photographs showing the spread of damage some distance from the epicenter of an earthquake. A small world turned upside down.

  “Something got him in a rare snit,” Millington said.

  “Him?”

  “Them. Maybe.”

  Resnick surveyed the shattered ornaments, broken picture frames, the shards of mirrored glass. In his mind’s eye it was the work of one man, one pair of hands, a sudden unleashing of bewildered rage. Which was not to say that others had not been present, looking on.

  “It happened up here,” Millington said, close by the foot of the stairs.

  Resnick nodded, cast his eyes around one last time before going up. Shielded by the seat of a fallen chair, something caught his eye, shiny and plastic, a library card, computerized. Gloves already on, he bent down and picked it up carefully between forefinger and thumb.

  The moment Resnick entered the bedroom it was like stepping back in time. The way the blood seemed to have spun, spiraling around the walls, across the bedspread and the wardrobe face. And the smell of it. The smell he could never clear from his mind.

  “Looks like they got trapped somehow,” Millington said, “between here and the end of the bed.”

  “Yes.”

  Behind Resnick’s temple the same nerve triggered again, a pulse of memory. If he closed his eyes he knew he would hear, along with the cries of those who had been attacked where he now stood, the screams of Rachel Chaplin, jagged and sharp, echoing from the upper bedroom of his own house. Would see the dead man’s savagely self-mutilated body lodged between floor and wall.

  “Think he was trying to knock it out of ’em, where they were hiding whatever he were after?”

  “I don’t know, Graham.” Stretching his leg across the perimeter of blood, Resnick moved to the far side of the bed. “I don’t know if whoever did this was being that rational.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How come she came off so much the worse for wear?”

  Resnick was staring at the space, the floor. “Whatever damage was done, it was done there. She must have been leaning over him, protecting him in some way. Whatever way she could.”

  Naylor called up from below and a few moments later appeared at the door. “People two doors down, sir, friends of the Netherfields …” Netherfield, Resnick thought, up to that moment he had not known their name. “… seems th
e husband, Eric, always kept this piece of iron railing beside the bed. In case of burglars, that’s what he always said.”

  “Right,” said Resnick, “find that and I wouldn’t mind betting we’ve found the weapon that did this.”

  Sounds from below informed him that the Scene of Crime team had arrived and while they photographed and dusted, employed the proverbial fine-tooth comb, Resnick and Millington could make themselves scarce, make themselves useful elsewhere.

  “You’ll be wanting to get out to Queen’s, I reckon,” Millington said by the front door. “I’ll just hang on and give Kevin a hand here. Get a start on the morning.”

  Crossing the street towards his car, Resnick checked his watch: morning had already started.

  Nine

  “Why did you run away from the home, Martin?” Lynn asked.

  From under the fall of dark hair, Martin Hodgson squinted back at her in disbelief.

  “Why, Martin?”

  “Why d’you think?”

  “I don’t know, I’m asking you.”

  “If you don’t know, you must be thick.”

  “And if I were you, I’d watch my mouth.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Martin contorted his face and peered downwards. “All I can see is me top lip.”

  She controlled the urge to slap him hard across the face, kick the chair out from under him, cocky little sod, and see him sprawling on the floor. For a moment she wondered whether if someone had done that to him sooner, and hard enough, he would still have turned out the way he had; or was he like he was because that had happened too many times?

  “When we brought you in,” Lynn said, “you had over a hundred pounds in your pockets.”

  “So?”

  “So where did it come from?”

  Martin shook his head; the same expression was back on his face again, sullen and hard. “Where d’you think?”

  “Tell me.”

  “You shouldn’t be doin’ this, interrogating me on me own. You know how old I am, you know the rules.”