Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  “Oh, God,” said Hannah as he held open the door. “Your place or mine?”

  The cab dropped them off at the end of the Promenade. During the short journey they had said little, Resnick aware of Hannah’s proximity, the sleeve of her jacket almost resting on his thigh, the sounds, faint, of her breathing, the way her hands rested in a loose cradle above her lap, fingers barely touching.

  “This is it,” she said, her voice, for that moment unnaturally loud.

  Resnick nodded: he had reasons for knowing this street. The houses, tall, to the left as they began to walk along the unmade road, little more than a path; to the right, iron railings and an uneven line of bushes and small trees which separated them from the park.

  “I’m at the far end,” Hannah said, “the terrace.”

  These houses they were going past, lights muted by curtains or filtered through lace, were semi-detached; small gardens at the front, squares of grass bordered by shrubs or flowering plants. Indistinct, the sounds of voices, laughter, television, dinner parties winding down. Resnick exchanged automatic greetings with a man out walking his dog. As they passed the house where Mary Sheppard had lived, something in the pit of his stomach knotted and turned.

  When Hannah paused to ease back the gate which led to the few terraced houses at the end, she saw Resnick’s face, pale in the fall of the overhead light.

  “What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  It had been a cold night, far colder than this, and Mary Sheppard had been naked to the waist, next to naked below; Resnick remembered her legs partly raised, arms at extreme angles to the body. The officers who had arrived there before Resnick—Lynn Kellogg and Kevin Naylor had been the first—had covered her with a plastic sheet and then covered that with coats taken from inside the house. Resnick had lifted these back, looked at her with a borrowed torch. Her eyes had been open, gazing up, unseeing, at the moon.

  He followed Hannah up the short path towards her front door. When she turned, key in hand, it was almost into his arms.

  “You are coming in? Coffee? A drink?”

  For a moment he hesitated. “Maybe better some other time.” Regretful, the slow shake of the head.

  “You’re sure?” She laid her hand on his, the cold hardness of the key, the sudden warmth of her skin. Resnick didn’t move. Hannah was trying to see his face, read the expression in his eyes. After a moment, she turned and slipped the key into the lock, pushed back the door; there was a light burning, warm orange, in the hall. She looked back, then stepped aside as Resnick followed her in.

  There was an old fireplace in the living room, decorated tiles at each side, a vase of dried flowers standing before the matte black grate. Postcards stood on the mantelpiece, a small family photograph in a gray-green frame. A two-seater settee pushed up against one wall, two brightly covered armchairs, cushions on the floor. Not knowing where to sit, Resnick stood.

  From upstairs he heard the flushing of the toilet, Hannah’s feet upon the stairs

  “What’s it to be?” She had taken off her jacket; he noticed, for the first time, two rings, silver with a glint of color, on the outside fingers of her right hand.

  “Coffee, tea? There’s a bottle of wine already open. It’s not too bad. Actually, it’s pretty good.” She was smiling with her eyes.

  “Wine sounds fine.”

  “Okay.” She flapped a hand in the direction of the settee. “Why don’t you sit down? Put on some music if you’d like. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Resnick bent over a small pile of CDs beside the stereo in the corner of the room bearing names, mostly female, that he didn’t know. He looked at the cover of the case that was standing empty, presumably what Hannah had been playing when he’d called. Stones in the Road. Resnick thought he knew some of those.

  In the square kitchen, pouring wine, Hannah was amazed at the unsteadiness of her hand. Hannah, what the hell’s the matter with you, she asked? And what on earth do you think you’re doing?

  “Here.”

  He was still standing there, too big for the middle of the room. When he took the glass his fingers burned for an instant against the edge of her hand.

  “Why don’t you let me take your coat?”

  “It’s okay.” But he put down his glass, shrugged off his suit jacket, and Hannah hung it in the hall, beside her own.

  “Please, sit down.”

  Hesitating, Resnick took the settee. Not quite able to sit beside him, Hannah sat in the easy chair nearest to the stereo.

  “You didn’t see anything you fancied?” she said, indicating the CDs.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Not your kind of music, then?”

  At last, Resnick smiled. “I’m a jazz man myself, I’m afraid.”

  “Well,” Hannah said, reaching round for the controls, “nothing ventured …”

  The sounds of a piano, tentative at first, rolled out across the room. Then a woman’s voice, slightly husky, unaccompanied, warm but bare. Why walk, she was singing, when you can fly?

  When the other instruments came in behind the vocal, Resnick thought, for a second time that evening, he could hear an accordion. He leaned forward and lifted his glass from the mantelpiece and, without drinking, placed it on the floor beside his feet. Hannah watching him, her lips moving, just faintly, to the words. The space between them seemed a million miles wide, uncrossable. Resnick moved his foot and the glass overturned, spilling wine.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “It’s okay.” Hannah was on her feet, heading for the door. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry.” Returning with a tea towel in her hand.

  “I’m sorry.” Resnick was still sitting there, legs apart, all but empty glass in his hand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hannah assured him, pressing the cloth hard against the carpet where the wine had spread. “That’s why I bought this color. Nothing shows.”

  “It’s my fault for being so clumsy.”

  “No, there. See. Nothing. Well,” laughing, “nothing much.” Straightening, she placed her hand on his leg; as she reached her other hand towards his neck, the darkened towel fell away. His mouth was closed against hers and then it was not. Wine on his tongue. Somewhere inside Hannah’s brain she was thinking, I should have waited for “Shut Up and Kiss Me!”, but track six was too far on. Resnick’s knees were tight against her side, his hand in her hair.

  “Charlie,” she said, some fifteen minutes later. He had swung one of his legs round onto the settee, and she was half-lying across him, trying not to get a cramp or notice that her hip was rubbing rather painfully against the settee’s sharp edge.

  “Mmm?” he mumbled, close against her face. His tie had disappeared and his shirt was mostly undone.

  “Come up to bed.”

  At the door he stopped her, catching at her hand. “Look, Hannah, are you sure?”

  He was startled by the ferocity of her laugh.

  “What is it?”

  “Sure?” she said. “I don’t know if I can afford to wait that long.”

  The bedroom stretched across the top of the house between two sloping roofs. The floorboards had been sanded and polished; two chests of drawers and the wardrobe were in stripped pine. There were two rugs, one at either side of the bed, one white, the other blood red. Plants hung in baskets from the ceiling, fronds pushing up towards the light that, even now, showed through the uncovered skylights, one at each side of the room. In the city it was never quite dark. Hannah would lie there some nights, staring up, vainly searching for stars.

  Now she lifted herself up onto one arm and was surprised to find that she was still shaking a little; she had not made love to anyone since Jim and that already seemed longer ago than it was. So strange, the first time with anyone new; after the first blind excitement of caressing and undressing, the clumsiness of finding that fit, the almost stubborn awkwardness of it. She remembered in a film she had seen once—Robert De Niro, was it, and Uma Thurman?—charging
at it headlong, a mêlée of arms and legs and sheets that ended up with the pair of them, startled and breathless, on the floor. And, of course, in movies there was never that embarrassing non-conversation about the condoms. Which of you, if either, has them and are they within reach? The answer had been on the upper shelf of the bathroom cabinet, behind the mouth ulcer gel and the spare dental floss, down on the second floor.

  She noticed Resnick’s breathing change and thought he might be asleep again, until, fleetingly at first, he opened his eyes.

  “What time is it?”

  Hannah narrowed her eyes towards the digital clock on the floor. “A quarter to four.”

  Resnick eased himself up onto his elbow and lay facing her, this woman he scarcely knew who had invited him into her bed. He felt honored and would have liked to have told her so, but couldn’t quite find the words. He kissed a corner of her mouth instead.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “I ought to, soon.”

  “An early start?”

  “Responsibilities.” He smiled. “Cats. And I have to change out of this suit. That suit.” The trousers were somewhere between the bed and the stairs.

  “And if you stay the night,” Hannah said, “it might mean something more.”

  He looked at her; in this light her eyes were gray-green, stone polished by water. “Might it?”

  With a swift movement, she was out from beneath the duvet and on her feet. “We’ll see.”

  Resnick watched her walk, barefooted, across the floor; the dark ends of pubic hair visible between her legs before she disappeared behind the door.

  In the kitchen they sat and drank tea while the light slowly changed behind the window, Resnick dressed in everything save his suit jacket, Hannah in a T-shirt and chenille dressing gown, dunking stale dark chocolate biscuits, all she had been able to find. How, Hannah thought, had she ever kept chocolate biscuits long enough to go stale? Her self-control must be better than she’d imagined. Until tonight.

  Resnick sat listening for the sound of a car engine; the cab company had told him twenty minutes to half an hour. When he heard it on the road near the rear of the house, he quickly swallowed down the last of his tea.

  Slippers on her feet, Hannah walked with him along the narrow alley to where the driver was waiting.

  “I’m not much good at one-night stands,” she said.

  “Neither am I.” He didn’t know if that were true.

  She held two of his fingers tight inside her hand. “Then I’ll see you again?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. If that’s what you want.”

  On the pavement, he kissed her softly on the mouth and she kissed him back; she watched as the car drew away, out onto the Boulevard, indicator blinking orange light. Well, Hannah, she thought as she turned back towards the house, so the earth didn’t move, what did you expect? At the gate, she laughed lightly. “You didn’t even see stars.”

  The phone was ringing when Resnick entered the house.

  “Charlie, where the fuck have you been?”

  Taken aback by the ferocity in Skelton’s voice, he didn’t know how to respond.

  “Where the hell was your bleep?”

  There on the hall table; he had forgotten to transfer it into the pocket of his suit.

  “What’s happened?” Resnick finally asked.

  “Bill Aston,” Skelton said, his voice like sour milk. “He’s dead. Some bastard’s killed him.”

  Twenty-one

  You could see the lights of the emergency vehicles once you passed the corner of Meadow Lane and approached the bridge; patches of muted color bleeding out into the day. Mist hung in low gray rags over the surface of the river. Rain teased the air. A temporary covering had been set up on the flat spread of grass of the Embankment, a tent of ill-fitting orange plastic around which lighting had been quickly rigged. Figures wearing dark-blue overalls were already examining the surrounding ground on hands and knees. At the perimeter of the scene others were gathered in knots of conversation, heads bowed. It was Skelton who turned away from one of these and moved towards the road to meet Resnick, more than tiredness darkening his eyes.

  “Jesus Christ, Charlie! Where were you?”

  “When was he found?” Resnick asked, scarcely breaking his stride.

  “An hour since.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Walking his dogs. They’re back there in one of the cars.”

  Millington was there, Divine, Reg Cossall, gray-haired, hands deep in the topcoat he seemed to wear whatever the weather; other officers, in uniform and without. Resnick pushed one of the flaps of plastic aside with an arm and ducked inside. The police surgeon turned his head towards Resnick and then away. Whatever had been used to batter Bill Aston’s head and face had been heavy and hard and wielded with frequency and great force. Beneath a coagulation of blood and hair and bone, it seemed as if the top of his skull had been stove in completely. Lower down, more bone, sharp-edged, splintered through the skin. The globe of one eye, iris and retina, lay, barely attached, among the bloodied pulp of what had been Bill Aston’s cheek.

  Resnick had to will himself to stay there, bent over, as long as it took. There were mud and grass stains thick on the dead man’s clothes, sports jacket and gray trousers, striped shirt. A smear of earth thick on the fleshy palm of his right hand. One of the nails, the finger end, deeply split. One of his shoes was missing, something the vibrant yellow of dog shit, sticking to the heel of his woollen navy sock.

  “Time of death?” Resnick asked.

  Parkinson removed his spectacles, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Between four to six hours ago. Around one o’clock.”

  Resnick nodded and swung out of the tent to where Skelton stood smoking a cigarette. “All right,” Resnick said, “what do we know?”

  The superintendent waited until they were up on the road, the houses opposite—mock-Tudor, mock-Gothic, mock-something—at the end of their deep gardens, mostly dark. Skelton lit a fresh cigarette from the nub end of the last.

  “This youth found the body around three a.m. He’d been sleeping rough, down by that bandstand, other side of the memorial gardens. Woke up, started to wander, keeping out the cold. That was when he heard the dogs, barking and whining. Followed the sound to the body, so he says.”

  “Called it in?”

  A shake of Skelton’s head. “Not straight away. Panicked. Ran off. While later—says he’s not sure how long, half an hour, maybe more—he went back. Took another look. That was when he phoned.” For a moment, Skelton turned his head, down towards the river, the splash of birds disturbing the water. “The two lads who arrived first, uniform patrol, they had no idea who he was. It was only after the ambulance had arrived, one of the paramedics found his wallet, kicked it up from the grass. About the only thing left in it, his warrant card. That was when all hell broke loose.”

  “The youth who found him …”

  “At the station now. Being questioned. First reports, seems straight enough.”

  “And Aston’s wife?”

  Again, Skelton shook his head. “Would you want her to see him first like this?”

  Cold air slithered down into Resnick’s lungs like a wave; he could already see Margaret Aston’s slow-collapsing face, the lance of pain that stripped across her eyes.

  “She’s not reported him missing? Made inquiries, anything?”

  For a second, Skelton’s eyes were closed. “Not as far as we know.” And then, “You know her, Charlie, don’t you? Socially, I mean.”

  “Not well. Not for a long time.”

  Skelton nodded; not well was better than not at all. “There’ll be an incident room set up at the station, Charlie. Whoever it was, we’ll get him.”

  “Yes.” It was almost fully light now to the east. Resnick sighed and began to walk back in the direction of the bridge.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yes?”

  “You talked with him, didn’t you? Aston.
About the inquiry? That kid Snape’s death.”

  Resnick nodded. “Just last night.”

  “There wasn’t anything he said … Nothing he said about it that might lead you to believe, well, that it had anything to do with this?”

  “No. Nothing. But …”

  “But?”

  Resnick recalled the almost glib ease with which Aston had seemed to be accepting the social services’ version of Nicky Snape’s death; had there been anything murky going on, Aston didn’t seem to have been aware of it—unless something had come to light between his conversation with him in the pub and the attack. “No,” Resnick said. “Not as far as I know.”

  Skelton released a slow breath of relief. “Mugging, then. Out on his own, late at night, someone saw their chance.”

  “Yes,” Resnick said. “Likely that’s how it was. We’ll see.”

  Resnick stood with his back half towards the front door as the next-door neighbor eased his BMW out of the drive and onto the road. Birds were making a racket in the trees. The lock clicked open and as the door swung inwards, Resnick turned.

  “Bill, I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on, never mind our keys …” Seeing Resnick, only half recognizing him, she faltered into silence.

  “Hello, Margaret.” He made a move, unthreatening, towards her.

  “Bill, I thought he’d gone out early. With the dogs. To … to …” But she had been a policeman’s wife long enough to know this moment, to have rehearsed it often enough in the long flat hours before dawn.

  “Margaret, why don’t you let me come inside?” Stubby, short, pink dressing gown tied round her, curlers in her hair, she stood her ground, challenging him for the truth.

  “Margaret, I’m sorry …”

  She opened her mouth to scream, drowning out his words.

  “… he’s dead.”

  Resnick caught hold of her and held her close, muffling her screams against his chest. Three minutes, more. When he was able, he shuffled her far enough into the hallway to push the door shut at his back. It smelled of lavender in there, strong, like soap on his fingers, the palms of his hands. His shirt was damp with Margaret Aston’s tears.