Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  Hannah was moved by it, the shyness of him. “A penny for them, Charlie. That’s what my dad used to say.”

  “Your dad called you Charlie?”

  “No.” Laughing. “You know what I mean.”

  Resnick thought that he did. “So did mine,” he said. “Except that it was in Polish. But I suspect it was more or less the same.”

  “So what were you thinking of?” He didn’t answer.

  “Not murder?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  Hannah set down her glass and got to her feet. “Just so long as you don’t think that whenever you come here, the first thing we do is tumble into bed.”

  “No.” Looking at her mouth again, openly this time. “That’s not what I think.”

  “Good.” She was holding out her hand.

  He was aware of her moving beside him, felt a touch of her shoulder, warm and smooth, as she turned. In the almost dark of the room, he looked at his watch and was surprised that it was only a little after two. He felt as if he had been asleep for hours.

  Quietly, Hannah slid her legs from beneath the duvet and sat up. A small gasp as Resnick reached out and touched her back, the knots of spine against the skin. She reached behind and circled her fingers around his wrist.

  “Don’t stop. That’s not to make you stop.”

  He kissed the back of her hand, the space between her shoulder blades, her neck; she moved her hand from his and ran it along his chest.

  “I was going to the bathroom,” she said. And then, near the door. “Can I get you anything?”

  He looked at her, naked beneath the skylight, unselfconscious now, the dark wedge of hair between her legs that he might cover with his hand. Everything, part of him responded silently, that part to which he usually paid no heed.

  “Water, anything?”

  “A glass of water would be fine.”

  They sat together in the kitchen, dunking biscuits into tea, contentedly not talking, at least not a great deal, Resnick dressed save for his jacket, Hannah wrapped in her dressing gown, already the beginnings of what seemed like routine.

  “What’s happening …” Resnick began.

  She pressed a finger close across his mouth. “Not now, Charlie. Not now.”

  His eyes asked her why.

  “If anything’s going to happen, there’ll be time enough.”

  On cue, there was the sound of a cab approaching the rear of the house.

  “Maybe next time you’d like to come round to me? I could make a bit of supper, something like that.” He was shrugging on his coat.

  Hannah smiled. “All those cats.”

  “They’re not always all four there at once.”

  “Oh. I suppose that makes it okay.”

  At the door she went to kiss him on the cheek and deftly he moved his head so that she kissed him on the mouth instead. At the end of the alley, the taxi driver sounded his horn twice.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a law against that?” Hannah smiled.

  “Kissing?”

  “Using your horn after dark.”

  For a moment, he touched her breast beneath the soft fabric of her gown. “I have to go.”

  “Yes.”

  Stooping his head, he kissed her where his hand had been.

  She watched him walk away towards the light and already those first familiar feelings of pain were swaying inside her.

  Thirty

  As far as Kevin Naylor was concerned, this was not a good day. It had started when Debbie had walked out of the bathroom that morning, not saying anything, but the expression on her face telling him everything he needed to know. She had got her period. Punctual to the minute.

  “Deb …”

  But she had brushed him away, opening the fridge to stand there, head angled towards it, staring between the flavored yogurts, the leftover lemon pie, the lettuce, and the film-wrapped cheese at what she could no longer see.

  “Deb …”

  “Leave it, will you! Just leave it.”

  And he had, slurping down the last of his tea, grabbing a piece of toast which he ate on the way to the car. The traffic was a bastard as usual that time of the morning, and all the while Debbie’s unspoken accusation knifing into him, as if it were all his fault.

  “Maybe we should go to the doctor,” she’d ventured once before when they’d been trying. “See if there’s anything, you know, that he can do.”

  “I’m not going to see any doctor. Fuck the doctor!” Kevin had replied.

  “Okay.” Debbie grinning. “If you think he’d do a better job.”

  “Fuck you too,” Kevin had said, but with a smile. And he had, but it hadn’t made a difference, then or now.

  “Don’t worry,” she had said last night, taking him in her hand. “You fret too much about it, I reckon that’s what it is. I was reading, you know, this article in Cosmopolitan, how anxiety, it, you know, it’s—what you call it?—inhibiting.”

  Sometimes he even wondered if that weren’t right; after all, when making a baby had been just about the last thing on their minds, there hadn’t been any problem at all. And they’d had their two years of sleepless nights to prove it.

  And as if all of that weren’t enough, there was this, waiting on his desk for him when he walked in; the analysis of the footmarks around Aston’s body. The regular shoe, size eight, had been recently repaired with a rubber stick-on sole and a quarter heel, the kind that were fitted in over twenty instant shoe repair shops in this and any other city. Anonymity guaranteed. The work boot was a Caterpillar, size ten, well-worn. Eight local outlets, God knows how many hundred sold. And the trainer—a Nike indoor sports shoe, badminton or squash, a kidney-shaped zigzag pattern, deeply cut, below the ball of the foot, another, similar, but shaped like an elongated heart, beneath the heel. Relatively new, or, at least, sparingly used. The kind that had a color flash at the side, a scored section in a contrasting color just above the heel. Fabriqué en Thailande. US size twelve, UK eleven, European size forty-six. One of Nike’s more popular lines.

  “Jesus wept!” Naylor said, pushing the report to the other side of his desk.

  “What’s up?” Divine asked, squeezing past on his way to the Gents.

  “Nothing. Bloody nothing.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Naylor sat down, spun a pencil round and round on top of the envelope the report had arrived in, retrieved and reread it, looking at the patterns more carefully this time, and then reached for the phone and began to dial.

  Divine stood close up against the stall, grimacing, trying not to notice the burning sensation as he tried to pee. Trying and failing. Even when he wasn’t feeling it, which had not been often in the past thirty-six hours, he couldn’t seem to shake it out of his mind.

  If that little slut he’d picked out round back of the Orchid had given him a dose, he’d seek her out and give her a good backhander before she went off to get her penicillin.

  Jesus! Ow! Christ almighty, that hurt.

  Almost, but not quite as much as the time he woke up early one morning and stumbled out for his regulation slash and there it was, clear even to his befogged eyes, blood washing around in his piss. That wasn’t what had really hurt. It was later, on his back in the clap clinic, this male nurse, chubby little bastard—black, too, that had really been the icing on the sodding cake—telling him, smiling all the while, “The bad news, you’re going to feel this. Nothing we can do about that. But the good news, it’ll be over so fast, you won’t believe it’s happened. Okay. Now just try to relax.” And before Divine could protest he manipulated him a little, before pushing this umbrella-shaped needle down into the end of his penis, down into the opening and scooping it back out. “There now, all done.” Still grinning, he had patted Divine on the shoulder and for a moment Divine had thought he was going to give him a sweetie for being good, Divine lying there in that narrow cubicle, unable to believe what had just happened to his dick.

  Although, he
had thought, trousers back up and putting a brave face on it as he walked down the line of men waiting to go and get theirs, it could be a sight worse. Quick dose of NSU, that’s all it was. Not like some of these sorry buggers, take a look at ’em, if it wasn’t AIDS this time, then likely it would be next. Still, bollocking shirt-lifters, they got what they deserved. Divine shuddered and cupped his gear into his jockeys before zipping up. Anyone who’d get his jollies sticking it up some bloke’s arse … the thought of it made him want to puke.

  Back in the CID room, Millington broke off in the midst of a delicate rendition of “When I Fall in Love” to remind Divine they needed to be on their way in the next ten minutes or so, a man to go and see about a pub. Though if Reg Cossall hadn’t been able to get names or detailed descriptions out of the landlord, Millington was doubtful if they’d have better luck. But it was ground that had to be covered. Good police work, steady and predictable, that’s what got results. Well, sometimes …

  Shane Snape had discharged himself from the hospital and picked up a taxi on the Derby Road, close by the university roundabout. His face still showed signs of bruising and his ribs would have to stay taped up for the next couple of days, but otherwise he was feeling better than perhaps he had a right to, the beating he had taken.

  Norma greeted him with a kiss and a hug that made him wince, and Peter grinned and reached up from the settee to shake Shane’s hand and say welcome home, as though it was his sodding home to welcome him into.

  “How much longer’s he staying?” Shane asked Norma out in the kitchen, not bothering to lower his voice.

  “Come on, love,” Norma said. “Don’t be like that.”

  “I’m not being,” Shane said, “like fucking anything.”

  Less than half an hour later he was off out again, ignoring his mother’s questions about where he was going and when he might be back. He caught one bus into the city center and then another out to Ilkeston; it was little more than a ten-minute walk from the bus station to where his mate Gerry Hovenden lived.

  Hovenden was one of the blokes Shane hung around with, drank with at weekends: a good mate. When Shane came round the corner, Hovenden was down on his hands and knees by the front path, the exhaust of the motor bike he was repairing laid on an old length of oily blanket near the front door.

  “Hey,” Shane said, “how’s it going?”

  “Slowly. How about you?”

  Shane grinned. “Slowly, too.”

  He stood for a while on the threadbare patch of front garden, feigning interest.

  “Not a lot of use asking you to pitch in.” Hovenden grinned. “Lend a hand.”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Go on inside if you want, nobody’s in. You know where everything is.”

  Hovenden lived in the place with his dad, his mum having gone from there to a refuge five years before, before moving to Birmingham, where she was living with a long-distance lorry driver who hated Gerry’s guts. Since she’d left, his dad had taken up with a woman who worked in the local garden center and spent more time at her house than here. Added to which he worked shifts. So mostly now, it was as if Hovenden lived there on his own.

  It was a flat-roofed Fifties house on a spent-up estate, a few of the places owner-occupied, but mainly not. The council, as usual, were behind on maintenance, paint flaked away from around the window frames and once enough water had gathered on the roof, it found a way through.

  Shane switched on the TV and wandered off without really looking at it. There were four cans of Strongbow in the fridge and he snapped one open and sat down on the folded piece of foam that served as a settee, someone blabbing away on the TV screen, Shane still not bothering to watch. He pulled a bundle of comics towards him and started to leaf through them; finding a Judge Dredd, he read it from cover to cover. Shifting it to the bottom of the pile, he found—what was this?—not a comic, some kind of fanzine. A magazine. The Order. The cover showed a large white death’s head on a black background. One of Gerry’s old biker things, Shane guessed, back from when his hair was long and his leather stank of engine oil and never being washed for years on end. But inside, above a picture of a crowd of youths standing outside iron gates, he read: The Holocaust is a load of bollocks. C18 experts examine the myth.

  As he was starting to read it, Hovenden came into the house, wiping his hands on a piece of rag.

  “Oh,” he said, seeing what was in Shane’s hands. “You found that.”

  “I didn’t know you was into politics,” Shane said.

  “Yes.” Gerry Hovenden shrugged. “Now and again.”

  Standing in the queue at the sandwich counter across the street, Resnick pondered on a largely fruitless day. He had driven out with Khan to the house in Colwick where Paul Matthews lived. At first, the place had been so quiet, they’d thought nobody was at home, but then Matthews’s mother had come through the side gate that led from the rear of the house. A birdlike woman in a yellow dress. Paul, she informed them, had been terribly upset by what had happened—that poor, poor boy—Resnick had assumed she was referring to Norma’s son and not her own, but wasn’t sure. The doctor had signed him off work, nervous exhaustion, yes, that was right, signed him off with medication and told Paul to take a rest. Ordered him. He had gone down to stay with a favorite aunt, in Wales, South Wales, Rhossili Bay. Resnick knew it, perhaps? Resnick did not. Ah! Beautiful, still a little wild, you know. And quiet, this time of the year. So restorative, the sea.

  “Color blind,” Khan had said, back in the car.

  “Mmm?”

  “Color blind. Every word she said was aimed directly to you. I don’t think she knew I was there.”

  Elizabeth Peck certainly had not been there either. Her house, one of those new pseudo-Georgian places off Wilford Lane, was locked up tight. Blinds pulled, curtains drawn, burglar alarm armed, not one, but two Banham locks on the front door. The neighbors knew her but not well; knew, at least one of them did, that she had gone away. Holiday. She did not know where. Or when she might return.

  Resnick had considered dismissing Khan to the farther reaches of the Welsh coast to talk to Matthews, but for now opted to keep that particular powder dry and save on travel expenses to boot. It was Elizabeth Peck whom Bill Aston had spoken to and now Resnick wanted her to speak to him. What he sent Khan off to do was establish whether or not she owned a car; then check with the travel agencies, East Midlands Airport, the railway station, see if he couldn’t get a line on where she’d gone, when she might be expected back.

  Before Resnick could carry his sandwich into the comparative privacy of his office, Naylor intercepted him, his day looking up at last. “This shoe stuff, sir, inconclusive’s putting it mildly. But I had them look again at the markings and one thing’s pretty much agreed. Whoever was wearing the boots, you can tell from the movement, variations in pressure and the like, he was the one did most of the damage, really heavy blows that did for Aston, he was the one.”

  “Good work, lad. Well done.”

  He was just about to bite into the sandwich, stray mayonnaise already on the cuff of his shirt, when Millington knocked and entered.

  “Any luck, Graham?”

  “Not a lot, still claiming not to know any names, but he’s agreed to go down to Central and look at some photos, may come up with something that way. Did catch a word with one or two regulars who were in there on the Saturday when the fight broke out, though. Confirmed these lads throwing their weight around had been at the match earlier in the day. Regular supporters by the sound of it.”

  “Right, Graham. Tell Mark to contact that pal of his in the Football Intelligence Unit, set up a meeting.”

  Millington was scarcely out of the door when Lynn Kellogg came in. Resignedly, Resnick pushed the sandwich back in its paper bag and shut the bag in his desk drawer.

  “I’ve been going over that breakdown I did,” Lynn said. “Aston’s last twenty-four hours. And there’s one period I’m not clear about. He met you in the
Partridge on the Friday evening to talk about Nicky Snape and didn’t get back to the house until pretty late, between eleven thirty and midnight Mrs. Aston said.”

  “And I left him at around half nine, sitting with half an inch of mild.”

  Lynn nodded. “According to Mrs. Aston, he said he was there talking to you the whole time. Made a point of it.”

  Resnick shrugged. “She could have been getting confused.”

  “She might. Or Aston might have lied.”

  Resnick looked at her seriously. “In which case he’d likely have had good reason.”

  “I thought,” Lynn said, “before taking it any farther, I’d pop out there and talk to Mrs. Aston again, see if she’s still saying the same. If that’s okay with you.”

  Resnick was already reaching for the phone. “I’ll call her first, then ride out with you. We can ask her together.”

  Thirty-one

  Stella Aston met them at the door, wearing jeans and an oversized sweater; her hair hung slightly damp against her shoulders, washed and imperfectly dried. She smiled a greeting and stood back to let Resnick and Lynn enter, but there was a tiredness behind the smile that she couldn’t disguise.

  “Mum’s been lying down,” she said. “Why don’t you come through to the kitchen? She’s just getting dressed. I don’t suppose she’ll be very long.”

  Stella made instant coffee, chatting with just a slight awkwardness to Lynn, Resnick off to one side, staring out at the garden. Although he imagined it had not long since been done, the grass would soon be in need of cutting again.

  When Stella carried over Resnick’s cup, Lynn watched her, without knowing exactly what she was looking for, a change of expression on her face, the way she smiled. You think she could have had a crush on him: Petra Carey’s words. Well, why not? Others had, Lynn was certain. Fleetingly, Stella’s fingers, surely by accident, brushed against the back of Resnick’s hand. Little girls love their fathers. Usually they replace them with other men. But if that other man’s too much like her father, what she ends up feeling is guilt. More of Petra Carey’s words.