Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  He rustled his paper aside and peered in the direction of the kitchen clock: still time for one more cup of tea. He reached for the pot.

  “Bill,” Margaret said, coming back into the room, “are you sure you want to wear those shoes?”

  Aston swung his leg round and glanced down. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I mean with that suit.”

  Gray suede with dark blue, why not? “Yes, love,” he said, “they’re fine.”

  Margaret was dressed to go out herself, an early appointment at the hair salon on Trinity Square and then she was meeting her friend, Barbara, for coffee in Jessop’s.

  “No swim this morning?”

  Aston shook his head. “Evenings all week, I should think. While this lot goes on, anyway.”

  Impulsively, she kissed him on the top of his head, behind the ear.

  “What was that all about?” Aston asked. Unbidden displays of affection had not been Margaret’s style for years, no more than they were his own.

  Margaret smiled. “I’m pleased for you, that’s all. Putting you in charge of this inquiry. Something important again. Well, it’s no more than you deserve.”

  “Thanks, love,” Aston said drily, finding it difficult to respond. “Right now, though, I’d best be off.”

  “You will give me a lift in?”

  “Yes, of course.” He swallowed down most of his tea and tipped the remainder into the sink and started to run the tap.

  “Leave that, Bill. Sally’s here today, she’ll do all of that.” He looked at her, a dumpy woman with spectacles, wearing a green plaid suit and court shoes, and was surprised by the strength of the conflicting emotions that he felt.

  A few minutes later, Margaret beside him, Aston was backing the Volvo out from the drive of the Thirties suburban house they had lived in now for nineteen years. Around him, on either side, neighbors’ gardens glowed green from the previous night’s rain.

  “You remember Charlie Resnick?” Aston said. “Seems he knew this Snape, the youth in the inquiry. I’ve got to meet up with him some night this week for a drink. Could well be back a bit late.”

  Margaret remembered Resnick well enough, around the same height as her husband but broader—broader still now, most likely. It was years since she’d seen him. But he was a nice enough man, she thought, not foulmouthed like some of them.

  “You ought to invite him round, Bill. Supper. He might appreciate that.”

  And he might not, Aston thought, but nodded anyway.

  “We used to have people round for dinner all the time.”

  Aston grunted. “We used to do a lot of things.”

  Margaret rested her hand on his knee and tried not to notice when he flinched.

  Khan was waiting for Aston in reception. Five years in the force, at twenty-seven he had benefited from the aftershock of a well-publicized case in which two Asian officers had taken the police authority to court for racially discriminating against their advancement. Khan had successfully completed his probation, spent his time in a Panda car and out on the beat; now he was in Central Division CID and confidently expecting to be made up to sergeant. The inquiry into Nicky Snape’s death would broaden his experience. His tasks were to take notes, facilitate the timetable, keep on top of the documentation, and stay alert to any nuances that his superior might miss—and to drive the car.

  He greeted Aston with a sir, a handshake, and a smile. Five minutes later they were making their way towards the Derby Road, slowed a little by the residue of rush-hour traffic. When they arrived, Derek Jardine greeted both men with brisk enthusiasm and ushered them into his office for coffee and a drab selection of biscuits. There were still twenty minutes before the case conference was due to start.

  Phyllis Parmenter, heading up the three-strong team from the Social Services Inspectorate, was already present, balancing cup and saucer on one hand and chatting to the local authority solicitor. Jardine introduced her to Aston and stepped away. Khan snagged the remaining stale bourbon biscuit and examined the photographs on the director’s wall.

  The conference room had been set out with pads of lined local authority paper, black Bics and sharpened pencils, water glasses, ashtrays, and copies of the agenda. The first item was to establish the methods by which the joint investigation should proceed. If we get that far by coffee time, Khan thought, glancing round the table, I shall be well surprised.

  And he was: they would consider the pathologist’s report and then begin interviewing the staff, starting with Paul Matthews and Elizabeth Peck, both of whom had been on duty the night Nicky died, and finishing with Jardine himself. The youth who had shared a room with Nicky would be brought in, along with another of the lads Nicky had apparently befriended. If either the police or social services teams found a need to re-interview separately, that was their prerogative. It was agreed that it was desirable, if possible, for a joint statement to be issued when the inquiry came to an end.

  “One point I think I should like to make clear,” Phyllis Parmenter said, “our aim here is to ascertain all that we can about the circumstances of Nicky Snape’s death. It may be, and I have no wish to prejudice the inquiry by saying this, that we discover there are certain procedures which would benefit from overhaul or change. If so, I’m sure we would all agree this can only be beneficial. But what we are not concerned with primarily here is blame; in these sad and unfortunate circumstances, we are not, I think and hope, looking for scapegoats.”

  Especially, Khan thought, if they’re to be found among local authority staff. He edged a sideways look at Aston, who was nodding in thoughtful agreement.

  Resnick had tapped Millington on the shoulder as they passed the small cafe near the fire station and, with a grin, the sergeant had performed a circuit of the roundabout and parked. Resnick had had a lousy night: broken sleep and nightmarish dreams. Finally, at something short of four, he had barefooted downstairs; thirty minutes later he was sitting with rye toast and coffee, Bud and Pepper vying for the prime place in his lap, while he tried to concentrate on a biography of Lester Young. To complicate matters he was listening, not to Prez, but to Monk. Alone in San Francisco. Between the notes, the sentences, he was wondering about Norma Snape, alone but not alone in Radford; about his ex-wife, Elaine, hoping that she was not alone anywhere. And Hannah: he was thinking about Hannah. The seriousness that turned down the corners of her eyes when she talked; the way that same seriousness would break suddenly into a smile.

  “What’s it to be?” Millington asked, as Resnick slumped into a seat near the window.

  His face brightened. “Oh, a bacon sandwich, don’t you think, Graham?”

  “Is that with the egg or without?”

  “Without. But a sausage wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “Tea?”

  “Tea.” The coffee here still had to catch up with the post-powder age.

  They ate in near silence, Resnick enjoying the salt, slightly fish-like taste of the smoked bacon, not inquiring too deeply about the occasional gristly blob that the sausage vouchsafed. Later, as Millington relaxed with a Lambert and Butler, Resnick asked about Madeleine’s latest forays into amateur dramatics and adult education and received a lecture about the perils of living with a wife who is simultaneously reading Karen Horney and Kate Millett for her course on “Feminism for Beginners” and rehearsing the part of a frustrated middle-aged wife in an Alan Ayckbourn farce.

  “Bit difficult for her, that, Graham. The play, I mean. Well outside her experience, I should reckon.”

  Millington drew in smoke and examined Resnick keenly; if that was meant as some kind of joke, he couldn’t see the humor. Of late, Millington had taken to eyeing the kitchen knives with suspicion.

  Resnick, however, solid food inside him, was beginning to feel better. The day might be salvaged after all. “All right, Graham,” he said, scraping back his chair. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

  Once inside Queen’s, they checked on Doris Netherfield, who w
as still making cautious progress and treated them to a pale smile. Her husband was making slow but significant progress at home. Shane Snape was propped irritably between pillows, fiddling with the headset of his radio. One side of his face showed some deep bruising and a neat line of stitches butterflied its way from behind one ear onto his neck, but those injuries apart he had got off surprisingly lightly. Nothing broken. Another day and he would be discharged.

  “Morning, Shane,” Millington said breezily. “Run into a spot of bother?”

  He and Resnick took seats at either side of the bed.

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” said Shane.

  “The people who did this,” Resnick said, “you’re not in a position to identify who they were?”

  Shane shook his head.

  “And the name Turvey,” Millington offered, “that doesn’t ring any bells?”

  Shane shook his head again.

  “Coincidence, then, Peter Turvey sustaining all those injuries the same time as yourself? Same place?”

  “Must’ve been.”

  “There’s no chance, then,” Resnick said, “that you’ll be making a complaint, pressing charges, anything like that?”

  “None.”

  “Fine.” Resnick started out of his seat. “All right, Graham, we might as well go.”

  Shane looked surprised they were letting him off so lightly, had just begun to relax back against the pillows when Resnick swiveled on his heels faster than a man of his size might be expected to, something like a dancer. From nowhere he was leaning over the bed, his right hand gripping Shane’s shoulder where it was bruised and swollen, finger ends not so far from where the line of stitches finished.

  “Understand me. I don’t give a toss how you spend your evenings, what flotsam you hang around with, but I do care about your mother. She’s had a hard enough time as it is, bringing up the three of you, and now after what’s happened to Nicky, you’re the last thing she should have to worry about.” Resnick increased the pressure with his hand, enough to force tears to the edges of Shane’s eyes no matter how much he fought to deny them. “So stay out of trouble, right? Or I’ll come down on you so fast you’ll wish you’d paid attention.” Resnick relinquished his grip and stood tall. “Okay, Shane. Think you can learn something here?”

  Shane stared back at him, humiliated, angry, a single tear making a slow track down his face.

  Whistling “Winchester Cathedral” while they waited for the lift, Millington was still surprised by the force of Resnick’s anger.

  Sheena had not clocked in at the factory since Nicky had died. The first day, the Monday, she had phoned in and explained; the second day she had said her mother still needed looking after. Her supervisor had been understanding, had told her to take whatever sick leave she was entitled to, and suggested that she make an appointment to see her GP on her own account, have him prescribe a tranquillizer, Valium, that new stuff even—what was it?—Prozac, that’s the one.

  This morning Sheena had said nothing to her mum, had left home with her uniform ironed and folded in a plastic bag from Tesco, wandered without direction until she ended up in the Old Market Square, watching the gang of youths that sprawled extravagantly on the worn grass near the public lavatories, drinking Strongbow cider and shouting at any passerby who wore a suit. They were the usual sprinkling of latter-day punks and goths, lads with pink Mohicans or hair spiked out around their heads in blue-tipped stars, chains that hung from the pockets and lapels of torn leather jackets, ripped jeans, smaller chains dangling from their ears and the corners of their mouths. Tattoos. Girls younger than Sheena in tight T-shirts and skinny, black-legged jeans, rings through their ears and noses, mouths darkened into little black beaks.

  Sheena sat a safe distance away on the low stone wall, wrists trapped between her knees. No way she was about to go near them. The clock above the Council House sounded the quarter-hour.

  “Here.”

  She turned with a start, almost losing her balance. Janie Cornwall was close behind her, usual superior expression on her face, an open packet of Embassy in her hand.

  “Go on, have one.”

  Sheena blinked up at Janie, her hard young face framed by fizzed-out hair. At the other side of the street, outside Debenham’s, Janie’s friends stood watching. Lesley Dawson, Irena, Tracey Daniels, Dee-Dee, Diane. Janie shook the packet again and with a breathed “thank you” Sheena took one and angled back her head as Janie, leaning forward, lit it for her.

  Sheena drew in smoke and held it down inside.

  After a quick glance back towards her pals, Janie lit a cigarette for herself and sat down. “Your brother, we’re cut up, like, about what happened.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You must be feeling like shit.”

  “Yeh. Yes, I am.”

  Janie had been in Sheena’s year right through school, they all had, Lesley, Dee-Dee, and the rest. Girls whose breasts were obvious sooner, whose periods had started earlier, who were forever bringing scratty little notes to excuse them from games. They would smoke openly on the way to school and light up again the minute they had set foot on the Boulevard. They were the ones who boasted they had done it at thirteen, gone all the way, and Sheena had believed them, jealous, frightened, in awe. When, after school, Janie and the rest had huddled among the cars parked on the Forest, laughing with boys who were as old as Shane and older, Sheena had loitered close enough for them to call her over but they never had. Now this. Nicky’s death had given her notoriety at second hand, made her acceptable where she had not been before.

  One of the girls called out to Janie, who turned her head and gestured for them to go on ahead. “We’re going up Diane’s,” she said to Sheena. “Why’n’t you come?”

  At the far side of the square, Janie took Sheena’s Tesco bag from her and dropped it, uniform and all, into a green council bin.

  Diane and Dee-Dee were black. Except for those times when they had briefly fallen out, they told everyone they were sisters, even went out dressed in the same clothes, though it wasn’t true. Their families never spoke to one another and would cross the street to avoid contact. Dee-Dee’s father was a minister in the Pentecostal church and Diane’s was doing fifteen years in Lincoln for shooting another drug dealer in the face at close range. When she fell pregnant just eighteen days short of her fifteenth birthday, Dee-Dee’s father prayed for her while her mother took her to the clinic to arrange for an abortion. As soon as Diane heard, she went out and got herself knocked up by a friend of her brother’s and miscarried after eight weeks. The next time she was more fortunate. The baby was called Melvin and Diane’s elder sister looked after him until Diane had finished school, at which point Diane and the baby’s father were given temporary accommodation in a high-rise the council were planning to demolish. The father had left but the flats were still standing.

  “Fucking lift!” Diane screamed, kicking at the graffitied doors. “Never fucking working!”

  Diane’s neighbor had been looking after Melvin and Diane collected him to show him off to Sheena.

  “Gorgeous, i’n’t he? I’n’t he fuckin’ gorgeous?”

  Tightly curled black hair, coffee skin, wide brown eyes; Sheena had to admit that he was.

  The girls all bundled into Diane’s living room to play with Melvin and watch TV, pass round the bottle of vodka that Irena had lifted from the corner shop. Seated on the floor by the settee, Lesley carefully rolled a couple of spliffs. An hour or so later, when Janie tipped some pills into Sheena’s hand, she didn’t think twice, popped them into her mouth, and swallowed what was almost the last of the vodka to wash them down.

  Peter was waiting when Norma got home from visiting Shane at the hospital, sitting on the uneven paving stones where days before Nicky’s flowers had huddled haphazardly against each other. He was leaning back against the wall when Norma saw him, a hand-rolled cigarette between his fingers, his feet bare, shoes neatly placed alongside him, socks rolled into a ball. So
mething lurched through Norma like a fist and she thought she was going to be sick.

  Peter spotted her and stared, then pushed himself slowly to his feet. My God, Norma thought, how he’s changed. Most of the hair had gone from his head and what remained was flat against his scalp and dark. His face had never been full, but now the skin seemed to be stretched too tight across his forehead and both cheeks had sunken in. Inside a striped shirt, his chest appeared to have collapsed inwards, though a little potbelly strained awkwardly against the top of his trousers. How long was it since she had seen him? Twelve years? More? She had never imagined he could look so old. He could not have been more than forty-five.

  Norma could no more stop the tears than she could stop time.

  Peter tossed the nub end of the roll-up towards the curb and took her in his arms.

  “Come away, you great geck! Let’s get inside else we’ll have neighbors goin’ round with a hat.”

  In the kitchen she made him tea and toast while he told her how he had hitched three lifts from Peterborough to get there, the last a laundry van on its way in from the RAF base outside Grantham. He asked Norma how she’d been keeping, told her how good she looked in that blue-and-orange dress. Had she lost a bit of weight? Well, it suited her, there was no denying that. He asked her about Sheena and Norma told him she was at work; asked about Shane and looked concerned when she told him about the beating he had received. It was not till Norma had mashed a second pot that he asked about Nicky.

  Without crying this time, clear-eyed, Norma told him what she knew.

  Peter was silent for a long time and then asked if the inquest had been opened and adjourned.

  Norma nodded and Peter, one-handed, rolled another cigarette. “If you like,” he said, not looking at her, looking at the pile of crockery heaped alongside the sink, “I could stay for a while. A few days at least. I’d not be in the way.”