Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  Skelton was toying with a pencil, daring to disturb the symmetry of his desk. “You know what it’ll mean, don’t you? Two-tier policing, that’s what it’ll mean. All the highfliers and bright boys stuck in together where they can polish one another’s Ph.Ds and the rest of us left penny-antying about with stolen mountain bikes and traffic offenses.”

  Resnick wondered if in a way that wasn’t happening already. Helen Siddons, for instance, the bright young DI who had paused at the station long enough to set a seismograph beneath the crumbling structure of Skelton’s marriage. She had been made up to inspector at an age when Resnick had still been shy of sergeant; now here he was in his mid-forties, inspector still, and where was she? Holding down a chief inspector’s post in Somerset. As Reg Cossall had put it a few nights back in the pub, “If that self-seeking cow’d had the luck to be black as well as female, she’d’ve been superintendent by now, never mind fucking chief inspector!”

  “No, Reg,” Graham Millington had laughed. “It were better’n inspector she was fucking, it was our Jolly Jack.”

  Looking across at Jack Skelton now, Resnick wondered if that had been true. Oh, Skelton had fancied her, Siddons, clearly enough, and she had turned that to her advantage. But whether it had gone beyond the lingering glances and the barely covert looks, Resnick didn’t know. And besides, it hardly mattered: what mattered was what Alice Skelton thought had happened. Adultery in the mind is as hard to shake as love stains on the sheets. The last time Resnick had been round to the Skelton house, it had been like watching bear baiting between barely consenting adults.

  “Still, with any luck, Charlie,” Skelton said, “we’ll both be up and gone, the pair of us, before it happens. Put out to grass with a pension and whatever they give you nowadays in place of a gold watch.”

  Resnick didn’t think so. Skelton, maybe, but as far as he himself was concerned, retirement was something lurking in the last gray hours before morning; one of those beasts like cancer of the prostate that stalked you in your sleep.

  “Lynn Kellogg, Charlie.” He had waited until Resnick was almost at the door. “Okay, is she?”

  Resnick was slow to answer, wondering if there were something he should have noticed, something he’d missed. “Fine. Why d’you ask?”

  “Oh, no reason.” Skelton looked at Resnick across the broad arch of his fingers. “She’s started seeing that therapist again, that’s all.”

  No reason then, Resnick thought, as he headed back along the corridor towards his own office, was not exactly true. As he well knew, there were reasons enough.

  Fifteen or so months ago, Lynn had been kidnapped by a man Resnick and his team were tracking down. The man had killed twice before, women whom he had tantalized with the prospect of freedom, before brutally ending their lives; it was a game that he played, and he had played it with Lynn, alternately being kind to her and then threatening her, keeping her cold and in chains. By day he was capable of speaking to her in the soft tones of romance, and at night, in the cramped blackness of the caravan, he would masturbate over her as she feigned sleep.

  After a lengthy trial, at which all this was painfully dragged out for everyone to read about in their newspapers and see replayed each night on their TV, the man’s pleas of diminished responsibility had been disregarded and he had been sentenced to imprisonment for life. A minimum of twenty-five years.

  By the time she herself was little more than fifty—younger than her own mother was now—Lynn knew he could be walking the same streets, breathing the same air. At the turn of any corner she might meet him, hear him again, clear across the clamor of a crowded bar, asking could he buy her a drink; his fingers tapping at the window the next time her car broke down, face peering in, drizzled out of focus by the rain, the lilt of his voice, that smile …

  And there were other things that had been stirred into consciousness by the experience, things which Lynn was struggling to forget.

  She was at her desk when Resnick entered the CID office, back towards him, a slight hunch of her shoulders as she made notes on her pad while talking on the phone. Kevin Naylor, like Lynn a detective constable in his twenties, was accessing the computer, checking through incidents of arson in connection with a recent fire in which an Asian boy of four had died. Graham Millington, Resnick’s sergeant, sat with an elderly black woman, coaxing her through the circumstances of a robbery she had witnessed in a local bookmaker’s, three thousand pounds stolen and the manager recovering from serious head injuries in the Queen’s Medical Centre. The other desks were empty, officers out and about in the city, asking questions, knocking on doors.

  Inside Resnick’s office, a partitioned corner of the narrow room, the telephone started to ring. By the time he had entered and closed the door behind him, it had stopped. One glance at the jumble of papers on his desk, and he reached into one of the drawers for a half-empty pack of Lavazza caffé espresso and filled the coffee machine his friend Marian Witczak had given him as a present. “For you, Charles, to treat yourself well. I know how much you like good coffee.”

  The last drops, black and strong, had not finished percolating through before Resnick, unable to distract himself any longer, pushed open the office door and called Lynn Kellogg’s name.

  “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She kept her hair cut short now, defiantly, brushed forward at the front just like a boy’s; the only slight curl, as if to spite her, curved in front of her ears and the plain gold studs that she wore. She had never won back the fullness or the color of her face. She wore black cotton trousers, a black, round-necked top. No rings.

  “Jack Skelton was asking me how you were.”

  She hadn’t forgotten how to smile, at least with her eyes. “And you told him?”

  “As far as I knew, you were fine.”

  “That’s okay, then.”

  Resnick brought the cup towards his mouth, but didn’t drink. “Except, apparently, you’re not.”

  Lynn looked at him and saw a sad man with sad eyes. When he had been the first to arrive at the caravan where she was being held captive, she had clung to him and thought that she would never let him go. Now that was proving all too true: through therapy and jagged dreams, the memory of him persisted, the bulk of him hard against her, the tears in his eyes.

  “The hospital,” Resnick said.

  “Dr. Carey.”

  “You’ve started seeing her again.”

  Lynn sat forward, hands pressed between her thighs. “So much for confidentiality, then.”

  Resnick set the cup back down. “As far as what’s said, whatever passes between you, of course that’s true.”

  “But if I’ve gone back into therapy …”

  “We have to be concerned.”

  “That I might be cracking up?”

  “Concerned for you.”

  She laughed. “Because I might not be able to do the job?”

  “Yes.” He looked away and Lynn laughed again.

  “What?” Resnick said. “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just … No, it’s okay, I know you’re only doing your job, too.”

  Resnick shifted again, uncomfortable in his chair. “It’s the nightmares, then? They’ve started up again. Is that the problem?”

  “Yes,” Lynn said. “Yes, that’s right. Same old thing.”

  The lie hung between them, tangible as smoke.

  “You feel okay, though,” Resnick asked. “About the job? Carrying on?”

  “Yes. Really I’m fine.”

  “You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

  “Of course.” She was on her feet by the door, avoiding his eyes.

  “Your case load,” Resnick asked. For whatever reason, he didn’t want her to go. “What’s most pressing?”

  “That lad, I suppose. The one who absconded from the Secure Unit …”

  “Hodgson?”

  “Martin, yes. He could be anywhere, of course. Manchester, London. But
I had a call earlier from Vice, thought they might’ve spotted him, touting for business out on Forest Road.”

  Resnick sighed, all too familiar. “Who are you liaising with?”

  “Sharon. Sharon Garnett.”

  “Give her my best.”

  “Right, yes, I will.”

  Lynn hesitated just a moment longer before going back through the door. Already her phone was ringing again and Graham Millington, having finished with his witness, was waiting to ask her about overtime. Divine was back at his desk with a copy of the Post and a brace of Jamaica patties from the baker’s on Hartley Road.

  In his office, Resnick scanned the response from the Police Authority chairman to claims that the recent Audit Commission survey comparing police forces’ efficiency was scarcely worth the paper it had been printed on. He opened an envelope addressed to him in Marian Witczak’s precise hand. Is it true you are never at home any more, Charles, and, if so, who is feeding all of your beautiful cats? She had enclosed an invitation to a dance at the Polish Club for this coming weekend. Underneath the line, Dress Informal, she had added, But please bring dancing shoes!

  Resnick pushed it out of sight beneath a pile of crime reports, dancing the last of several things occupying his mind. For no clear reason he could discern, unless it were the coffee in the cup that he was holding, the words to an old Bessie Smith blues came filtering to the surface, something about waking up cold in hand.

  Five

  Nicky Snape had been a busy boy. At the back of a pub edging onto the wholesale fruit and veg market he had sold one of Hannah Campbell’s two credit cards for twenty pounds; less than thirty minutes later, in the pleasant surroundings of St. Mary’s Rest Garden, her checkbook and check guarantee card had changed hands for double that. Cutting through the Victoria Centre towards the Mansfield Road, he had chanced to bump into Sally Purdy, who was just leaving the Magistrate’s Court, having a few minutes previously been released on her own recognizance on charges of fraud. Purdy sent Nicky back inside to Tesco’s to buy a six-pack of Tennents, two of which she shared with him on one of the benches opposite Peachey Street; she then bought the remaining credit card from him for three five-pound notes and an unopened can. “You give my love to Shane now, will you do that for me? Tell him I was asking after him, make sure that you do.” Nicky could see how that would go down well with his brother, and with a belch and a quick wave of the hand, consigned the idea to oblivion.

  He treated himself to a Whopper and fries from Burger King and was finishing them off, window shopping on Cheapside, when his eyes fell on a pair of purple-and-red Sanmarco walking boots, Gore-Tex lined. No way he could boost them out of there, the boots cost Nicky pretty much all he’d made in the past hour, but what else was money for?

  He left his old Reeboks in the shop and was wearing his new boots when he met his mate, Martin Hodgson, in the bowling alley by the Ice Stadium. Martin was not so many months younger than Nicky, but more slightly built; his oversized check shirt hung loose and open over a beige Sweater Shop jumper, black jeans rolled up over high-top trainers. At first glance, it was tempting to dismiss him as soft, but that would have been a mistake.

  “Fuck!” Nicky exclaimed. “Thought you was fucking locked away.”

  “Nah. Only that kids’ place, weren’t it? Not a real fuckin’ prison at all.” Martin pushed the fall of dark hair from where it shielded his dark eyes and grinned.

  Martin was about the only person Nicky had ever gone on jobs with, breaking and entering in and about the Meadows, which was where Martin lived. Most times, Nicky preferred to stay on his own, a low-profit, low-risk sort of business. Martin, though, was a laugh, which was why Nicky went with him; the only thing was, Martin didn’t seem to know what risk meant.

  “So what you doing, hanging about here?” Nicky asked.

  Martin nodded in the direction of the nearest lane. “Seeing how many spares I can get in a single game.”

  They bowled for the best part of an hour and then, when Martin went to buy more cigarettes, Nicky noticed he was holding what had to be close to a hundred pounds.

  “Up on the Forest last night,” Martin explained, offering Nicky a king-size. “Would’ve scored more’n this, but the coppers came sniffin’ round. Bastards! Had to clear out.”

  Nicky stared at him in fascination. “What d’you have to do?” he asked.

  “Easy.” Martin laughed. “Hang around, just down towards the trees, like, till some punter comes along …”

  “But how d’you know?”

  “You always know. Sometimes they want you to go in their car, I always charge extra for that, mostly you just do it there. Cemetery’s a good place.”

  “Yeah,” Nicky said, “but what d’you have to do?”

  “Jesus! What d’you think? Wank ’em off, that’s the easiest. That’s a tenner. Sometimes they want to suck you off, that’s twenty. Nothin’ to it.”

  “But you don’t let ’em …”

  “Stick it up me arse? What d’you think I am? Fuckin’ mental? Think I want to get AIDS or something?”

  “No. No, course not.”

  “This bloke once though, dead rich, Mercedes, nearly new. Offered me a hundred if I’d go with him, back to his hotel.” Disgust and dismay mingled on Nicky’s face. “He had a condom,” Martin said, “so it was okay. Give me these poppers, you know, amyl nitrate, after a bit it never hurt much at all.”

  Nicky thought he was going to throw up. He nipped out his cigarette and started to walk quickly away.

  “Hold up!” Martin called. “Where you off to now?”

  “Home,” Nicky said. “Supposed to have been in school, haven’t I.”

  “Nah,” Martin said, catching him up. “You don’t want to do that. I’m meeting Aasim later. You want to stick around, chill out, we’ll have some fun.”

  Sharon Garnett was wearing a short red skirt over ribbed tights, a dark cotton jacket buttoned over a cream shirt; as if she weren’t tall enough already, she was wearing boots.

  “Blending in with the scenery?” Lynn asked, the hint of a smile in her eyes.

  “Something like that.”

  “I got you half of bitter, that all right?”

  “’S fine.”

  They had agreed to meet in the Lincolnshire Poacher, a pub that promised good beer, good food, and a courtyard out back, which was where they now sat. It was early evening and there was a decided nip in the air, the temperature down below fifty.

  “You working?” Lynn asked.

  “Yes, later. You?”

  Lynn shrugged. “Depends.”

  “Martin Hodgson?”

  “Yes.”

  Lynn had first arrested the youth when he was thirteen, on the run from a children’s home and caught by an alert store detective in Woolworth’s with several hundred pounds’ worth of computer games stashed inside the Head sports bag he’d stolen just an hour before. Since then, he’d been arrested and charged more than thirty times, running a succession of social workers, short-term foster parents, and police officers ragged. Unable to find sufficiently secure local authority accommodation within the county, Martin had finally been sent to a custom-built facility in Northumberland on a temporary basis. When a place became available at the Ambergate Secure Unit, reasonably close to the city, he was brought back and placed there. Eight days later he had escaped and had been living rough ever since.

  “Fifteen, isn’t he?” Sharon asked.

  Lynn shook her head. “Fourteen.”

  “Some future ahead of him.”

  Lynn nodded and drank her beer.

  By that time, Nicky Snape and Martin Hodgson had met with Martin’s friend, Aasim, and they had decided to go off to Derby, where one of Aasim’s cousins worked as an attendant at the multiplex cinema and could get them in free. The first car Martin broke into they couldn’t get started, but the second, a two-year-old Honda Civic that had been parked on Lenton Road in the shadow of the Castle, that was fine. Aasim had stolen
his older brother’s license, so Aasim drove.

  “You still applying for CID?” Lynn asked Sharon. They were walking up the Mansfield Road, heading round the block to where Lynn had parked her car.

  “Not really,” Sharon said. “Not since the last time.”

  “What did they say?”

  Sharon laughed. “Asked me if I was interested in a place in the Domestic Violence Unit.”

  Sharon had begun her police work in London, for her a second career after a spell in community theater, and domestic violence was where she had quickly become sidelined. Not that it wasn’t important, even interesting, but Sharon bridled at the obviousness of the thinking—woman, black woman, area with high ratio of Afro-Caribbean and Asian families, let her deal with them, she speaks the language. But she didn’t want to be the token friendly face and she didn’t want to be a social worker—she had done her share for her sisters, up and down the motorways of the country, putting on agit-prop plays about incest and wife battering, What she wanted was to be out on the street, solving crime, serious crime, something that would further quicken her wits, sharpen her already sharp reflexes; something to make the adrenaline flow.

  And now? Well, most nights, one way or another, she was on the streets at least.

  “How d’you feel about Vice?” Lynn asked.

  “You mean, am I for it or against it?”

  It was Lynn’s turn to laugh. “I meant working it.”

  They paused at the corner. Ahead of them, the Victorian headstones of the cemetery on Forest Road East were beginning to stand out, white against the gathering dark. Lower down the hill, the floodlights of a five-a-side soccer pitch were sharpening into focus. The broad expanse of the Recreation Ground eased away to the left, trees shielding the open tarmacked car-park for the daily Park and Ride and, beyond that, the Goose Fair site. It was early yet for many of the prostitutes who worked the area to be on the street, and most of the cars that passed Lynn and Sharon seemed to be heading for other destinations rather than seeking out business. Give it another hour and the curb crawling would have begun in earnest.