Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  Petra bloody Carey! What I might do, Lynn thought, is cancel my next appointment, not go back at all.

  By the time they had finished their coffee, Margaret Aston had come downstairs and was waiting for them in the living room, the curtains pulled mostly across. No matter how much powder and foundation she had used, she had not been able to hide the extent to which she had, in these last days, yielded herself up to tears.

  “Margaret,” Resnick said gently, “are you sure you’re up to this?”

  “Yes, thank you, Charlie. I shall be fine.”

  Seated on the carpet close by her chair, Stella reached up and patted her mother’s hand.

  “Mrs. Aston,” Lynn began, “you remember there was a phone call your husband made, late on the Saturday afternoon?”

  “Yes, of course. Someone rang him and he called them back from the hall.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  Margaret Aston shook her head. “They hadn’t finished their conversation, I suppose.”

  “Yes, but, why go out into the hall? Why not ring them back from where he was? The same phone the person had called in on.”

  Margaret Aston looked bemused; she transferred her gaze from Lynn to Resnick and slowly back again.

  “I mean,” Lynn persevered, “wouldn’t that have been the simplest thing to do?”

  “I really haven’t given it any thought, but Bill had his reasons, I’m sure.”

  “What were you doing, Mum, at the time?” Stella asked, looking round.

  “Oh, I don’t know, dear. Reading, I suppose. Yes, I was, a book from the library, I can’t remember …”

  “There you are, there’s your answer,” Stella said. “Dad didn’t want to disturb Mum’s reading, that’s what it was. Nothing sinister at all.”

  Resnick and Lynn exchanged glances.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve been able to remember, Mrs. Aston,” Lynn said, “who it was your husband spoke to? You couldn’t when we talked before.”

  She shook her head. “As I told you then, Bill never mentioned who it was. But it’ll have been someone from the Church, I’m sure. For years he’s been a lay-preacher. Quite famous, isn’t he, Charlie, you would know. Famous for it.”

  Nodding agreement, Resnick leaned forward lightly in his chair. “I wonder, Margaret, does the name Elizabeth Peck mean anything to you?”

  She gave it several moments’ thought. “No. No, I can’t say that it does. But I expect you’re about to tell me that’s who Bill was speaking to, is that it?”

  Resnick nodded. “It was her number that he called.”

  “So who is she?” Stella asked, the beginnings of agitation in her young voice.

  “A social worker. She’s employed at the place where Nicky Snape died.”

  “Well then, of course,” Margaret Aston said, seizing on it quickly, “that’s why she would have wanted to talk to Bill. The inquiry. And why he would have been careful to have spoken to her in private. Confidentially. He was very scrupulous about things like that, Bill, even from me. Charlie, you should know that yourself.”

  “The trouble is, Margaret, that only makes it more difficult to understand why he would agree to a long, private conversation with one of his principal witnesses. Especially when it was so clearly off the record.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure he will have made a note at least.”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve been through all of his papers, notebooks, everything. There’s nothing about any such conversation having taken place.”

  Margaret Aston sighed; she seemed to have shrunk even deeper into her chair. “Stella, dear.” Touching her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m feeling very tired. I wonder, would you help me back up to bed. Charlie, you’ll excuse me, I know.”

  Resnick and Lynn stood as Stella assisted her mother to her feet. Resnick opened the door and as Margaret, leaning on her daughter’s arm, passed by him, he asked a further question. “One thing, Margaret. What time was it Bill got back here on the Friday night?”

  She stopped. “Almost midnight. A quarter, ten to. You should know, Charlie, it was you he was with. I remember him coming in and coming up to my room, I was in bed by then of course. Knocking gently on the door to make sure I was still awake. He sat on the bed for a moment and held my hand, told me what a nice evening he’d had. Charlie, he’d enjoyed talking to you. You could see it, see in his face, some of that old life again. Long time since I’ve done that, love, he said. Me and Charlie Resnick, closed the bar together. I shall sleep well tonight, he said, and kissed me here, on the top of the head, before saying good-night.”

  Unusually, Resnick took the keys and slid behind the wheel. Less than half a mile down the road he signaled right and pulled in outside a small parade of shops. Lynn imagined that he intended to get out, buy a newspaper, or go to the off-license for beer. But engine idling, he sat there, forearms resting on the wheel.

  “You think she’s lying?” he said finally. “Holding something back?”

  “No.”

  “Telling the truth, then?”

  “Yes. As she sees it. All she knows, yes.”

  Resnick released a slow breath. “It would be easier perhaps if she were lying, if she knew there was something going on.”

  “And is there?”

  As Resnick turned to face her, a middle-aged man coming out of the newsagent stopped and stared at the car, only slowly starting to walk away, Post rolled inside his hand. Resnick saw him and wondered what they looked like, himself and Lynn, another mismatched couple, caught in the middle of an affair, one of them married, most likely him.

  He had observed couples often enough himself, had leaped, sometimes inappropriately, to the same conclusions. Most usually, though, he had been right: lovers caught in their own cold, sticky web.

  “You think it’s the woman? Peck?”

  “How d’you mean?” Resnick asked.

  “Well, you know …”

  “That he was having an affair? Bill?”

  “That is what you were thinking, isn’t it? The path you’re going down.”

  “But with Peck?”

  “Why not?”

  Resnick shook his head, came close to a smile. “He’d only known her less than a week.”

  Lynn’s turn to smile. “Come on,” she said. “How long does it take?”

  Instead of answering, Resnick turned towards the windscreen and stared out. What he was thinking of, what he was seeing, was Hannah that first time, walking across the front of the school towards her slightly battered red VW, pausing to speak to those two kids, firm enough, not without understanding; the way, after they had spoken, she had placed her briefcase on the roof of the car and then turned back to face him, that flash of red, visible in the swirl of her hair. Her smile.

  How long does it take?

  For a brief period—what was it? Four years ago now, slightly more?—he would have thought of Rachel Chaplin at that moment, after that question. For a long while, before and since, it would have been Elaine.

  “Even so,” he said, “it’s doubtful Bill would have had the chance during the inquiry to speak to her alone.”

  “The interview?”

  Resnick shook his head. “Khan was there all the time.”

  “Then it was to do with the inquiry, maybe something she felt she couldn’t say at her interview.”

  “Because she was afraid?”

  “Possibly, yes. Or maybe it was something she didn’t know at the time, that she only learned later.”

  “Then why on earth did Bill break the habit of a lifetime and not note it down?”

  They looked at one another along the front seat of the car. Three kids, one not much more than seven or eight, went past on roller blades, heads bent forward, arms swinging professionally out.

  “You think it’s something personal, don’t you?” Lynn said.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I do, but I still don’t see how that could have worked. Time, access …”

  �
�Maybe,” Lynn said, “it wasn’t, you know, an affair. At least, not yet. What if there was just a connection, somehow, between them? Something they were just starting to—I don’t know what you’d call it—explore.”

  “What? In his own house in the middle of the weekend with his wife in another room?”

  “Wouldn’t some people find that exciting? The possibility of being found out.”

  Resnick gestured with open hands. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “And you’d know Bill Aston? Well enough to be sure?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “No.”

  “Him and his wife, they’ve got separate rooms, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Separate beds.”

  “Uh-hum.”

  “Do you know for how long?”

  “Quite a while, I think. I’m not exactly sure. But that in itself doesn’t mean anything.”

  Lynn smiled. “Surely it means something.”

  Resnick knew: there were times after he had found out Elaine was having an affair that he had lain in their shared bed, unable to sleep, terrified that by accident or habit they might touch, impossible to erase the images his imagination had conjured up so vividly from his mind.

  What had happened, Resnick wondered, in the Astons’ lives however many years it was ago?

  “It is sex, then, isn’t it?” Lynn said. “If it’s not to do with the inquiry, it is sex.” She smiled ruefully. “One way or another, it usually is.” And then, a sudden catch in her voice. “It nearly got me killed.”

  “That was different. He was some kind of psychopath.”

  Lynn’s head was angled away but he heard her well enough. “Don’t forget, at first I wanted him.”

  He drove then without speaking, back towards the center of town. He would call in at the Partridge, find out if the staff remembered how long Aston had stayed in the bar that night. Lynn sat with her hands clenched, mind churning, overbite of her teeth nervously worrying at the inside of her lip.

  “You got business back at the station, or should I drop you near home, it’s not far out of my way?”

  For the first time since they had moved off, she dared to look into his face. “Stop here,” she said.

  “I can’t, not here. I’ll just go up to …”

  “Charlie, stop here!” How long—if ever—since she had called him that?

  No mistaking the urgency in her voice, Resnick made a left and a right and came to a halt on one of the narrow cobbled roads that run through the wholesale flower and vegetable market. One glance and he switched off the engine and waited.

  Lynn not quite looking at him again, not yet; she was having a little difficulty breathing evenly. “This isn’t—I don’t suppose there’s ever a right time.”

  Not knowing, partly knowing afraid of what was to come, Resnick’s stomach ran cold; for just a moment he closed his eyes.

  “You remember,” Lynn said, “after the kidnapping, the rescue, all of that, something I said to you one day, we were having coffee, I …”

  “Yes, I think so, go on.” When what he wanted to say was stop.

  “I told you I’d been having these—I don’t know what you’d call them—nightmares, dreams, fantasies. You, my father, him, the kidnapper. All mixed up together. It was all because of what happened, of course, what might have happened. Would have done if you …”

  “It wasn’t just me.”

  “If you hadn’t saved me. It sounds melodramatic, I know, but that’s what you did.”

  “Lynn.” Leaning a shade closer towards her now, though she was still keeping her body, her face angled away. “It could have been any one of a dozen officers. It just happened to be me.”

  She laughed, suddenly and loud.

  “What?” Leaning back again, taken by surprise.

  “That’s what I say to my therapist.”

  “And she says?”

  “What might have happened doesn’t matter. What does is that it was you.”

  He looked at her serious, still somewhat round face, though she had never put back the weight she had lost; short brown hair, wide brown eyes.

  “I’m glad,” he said quietly. “Glad that you were safe. Glad that it was me.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know.” Her voice so quiet it was almost lost under the noise of cars passing at either end of the street. “At least, I think I know.”

  He had an instinct to take her hand and another which prevented him; instead she took his. “Charlie, I’ve got to get this sorted. I mean it’s stupid, I can’t go on like this. The way I’ve been lately, walking round you on, I don’t know, eggshells; at least that’s the way it seems.”

  “All right.” Resnick nodded. “What do you want to do?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think you understand. I don’t want to do anything. There’s nothing to do.”

  “But, then …”

  She squeezed his hand once, then let go. “I just needed to say, tell you what’s been going on in my mind, not all of it, the stupid details, but that I have been having these thoughts about you …”

  “That doesn’t matter …”

  “Charlie, I’ve thought about making love to you, but I know that’s not going to happen. Only in my mind.”

  “Lynn …”

  “I don’t think I even want it to happen. Not really. I know I don’t. But I had to say it, had to tell you. Because if I keep it all inside any longer, it’s going to explode.” Slowly, she lowered her face into her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “Isn’t there?” Looking at him now.

  “No.”

  It was hot in the small space of the car, claustrophobic. Resnick could feel the sweat gathering in the palms of his hands and between his legs, dampening the hair at the nape of his neck. A kind of free-floating panic aside, he had no clear idea what he was feeling.

  “Well.” Lynn laughed abruptly. “My therapist will be pleased.”

  “Getting it out into the open …”

  “Yes.”

  “Making it all go away.”

  She turned towards him in the seat and he thought she was going to take his hand again and he tensed inside, not knowing how he might respond if she did. But she shifted again and leaned forward, face close to the windscreen, staring out.

  “Is that what you want?” Resnick heard himself saying. “To make it all go away?”

  She looked round at him, surprised. “Of course. What good would it do?”

  A car went by too fast on the opposite side of the road, music spilling from its open windows.

  “None,” Resnick said.

  Lynn thought she might get out of the car and walk, not heading anywhere special, just walk. But she continued to sit there, they both did, waiting until the unevenness of their breathing had subsided, until Resnick could trust himself to set the car in gear and drive back into town. “The Partridge,” he said, “we could check it out before I drop you off.”

  The barman in the Partridge remembered Resnick’s friend. He had ordered another half of mild after Resnick had gone, but left it on the table, scarcely bothered, when he left. Fifteen minutes later, twenty tops.

  Back home, Resnick fed the cats automatically, made himself strong coffee, and carried it through to the front room, where it stayed till morning, cold and untouched. For what seemed a long time he stared at the rows of albums and CDs and saw nothing he wanted to listen to, nothing he wanted to play.

  Silent, save for Lynn’s words, insinuating themselves into his thoughts no matter how much he tried to keep them out. I thought about making love to you but I know it’s not going to happen. Only in my mind.

  Resnick crossed the room to the telephone and dialed. “I was wondering if I could come over and see you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie.” Hannah’s voice sounded distant and tired. “Not this evening, okay?”

  “Of course. It was just an idea. That’s fine.”

  Th
e Stolichnaya was in the freezer: he wondered how much was in the bottle, how long it would last?

  Thirty-two

  The first thing Resnick recognized, warm, soft, and resting close against his ear, was a cat’s paw. The second, moments after, close and strangely muted, was the sound of a telephone ringing. And the third, realized with painful accuracy as he lifted Bud cautiously clear and gingerly lowered his own feet towards the floor, was that for the first time in many months he had a hangover of king-sized proportions. He blinked at the clock: six forty-nine. He should have already been up. Louder now, the telephone continued to ring and fearing the worst, without knowing exactly what that worst was, he lifted it towards his ear.

  “Yes. Hello.”

  “Charlie, is that you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Um, why?”

  “You sound as if you’re at the bottom of the sea.”

  “I slept a little heavily, that’s all.”

  “Look, Charlie, can I see you today? Not for long; lunchtime, maybe. Just for twenty minutes, half an hour. I think we need to talk.”

  No reply.

  “I could meet you somewhere.”

  Resnick wished his head didn’t feel like a sack of gently swaying cement. “Look, let me call you … No, I will. This morning. Soon. How long are you around? … All right, I’ll phone before then. Probably in the next half-hour.”

  In the shower, water streaming across the folds and plains of his body, he kept wondering what had prompted Hannah to phone so early, what it was she needed to talk about so urgently, lathering shampoo into his hair now and wincing as he did so, once more fearing the worst.

  He hadn’t been the only person tying one on last night. The entrance to the police station was crowded with people in various stages of sobriety, many of them adorned with quite spectacular cuts and bruises, most talking at once. Loudly. A uniformed sergeant and two of his minions were patiently trying to sort them out.