Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  “He reckons he might’ve saved Nicky Snape’s life if he’d acted quicker, that’s at the root of it, then?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Naylor. “Seems that way.”

  “You don’t think there’s anything more?”

  Naylor shook his head, but Resnick was looking at Khan.

  “I don’t honestly think we could have got anything more from him that day; he was in a pretty het-up state. But I’m sure he’s not told us everything,” Khan said after a moment. “Not yet.”

  “And you think he will?”

  Khan nodded. “I hope so. For his sake as well as ours.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “Kevin here’s not always going to be around to stop him throwing himself off the edge of the cliff.”

  “You gave him your number, in case he decides to contact you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Meantime, let’s have a closer look at Jardine. Dig around in his background a little. Previous appointments, whatever you can find. Let’s see if there are any other reasons for him wanting to keep this all under wraps. Okay?”

  As the two men turned to leave the office, Naylor automatically stood aside to let Khan through the door first.

  It was almost an hour later that Resnick met Skelton near the head of the stairs, Skelton just back from a meeting with the Assistant Chief. They were discussing the meeting when Carl Vincent walked along the corridor in front of them, heading towards CID.

  “How’s he settling in, Charlie?” Skelton asked, voice low.

  “Early days yet. But okay, far as I know.”

  “No trouble, then? On account of his color. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

  Resnick knew well enough what it would have been like in days not so long past: whispering campaigns, closed ranks in the canteen, loud references to spooks and sooties, nignogs and monkeys, spades and coons. Pakis. And the jokes—What do you call a nigger in a three-bedroom semi? A burglar. Bananas and travel brochures advertising holidays in Africa, the West Indies, all the personal details filled in, those and worse left for black recruits to find. Once, hanging down from the locker-room ceiling, a white sheet with eye holes cut in the manner of the Ku-Klux-Klan. The bad old days.

  “I’ve not heard of anything going off.”

  Skelton nodded thoughtfully. “And you’ve talked to Vincent himself?”

  “Just about to. Off to see Shane Snape, check an alibi he’s given for a mate, I thought Vincent could ride along. I’ll have a word on the way.”

  “What you mean is, Charlie, you thought he could be your driver.”

  Resnick grinned. “That, too.”

  There were roadworks south on the Ilkeston Road and an articulated lorry had got itself wedged across the entrance to Garden Street, so they cut left along Kimboulton Avenue, down Ashburnham, past the brightly painted nursery and the recreation ground, swinging out onto the Boulevard and then over the crossroads, through the lights.

  “How’s it compare, then?” Resnick asked. “To Leicester?”

  Vincent smiled gently, an eloquent shrug of the shoulders.

  “Have you been getting any hassle?”

  Vincent looked at him, perhaps for longer than he should, considering he was at the wheel. “You mean on account of being black?”

  “That’s what I mean, yes.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “You mean there hasn’t been any, or there has and you’re not bothered? You can handle it.”

  “Nobody’s spoken out of turn, no—what’s the term?—racial epithets.” Quickly this time, he glanced across the front seat. “Would you expect me to report it if there were?”

  “Yes,” Resnick said. “Yes, I would.”

  Vincent nodded, thinking it over. “Which turning?” he asked. “Must be pretty soon now. On the left, yes?”

  It was Peter who answered the door, a slight figure in a singlet and a pair of old cords, absurd almost with his little belly sticking out from below his concave chest. Resnick identified Vincent and himself and by that time Norma was there, filling out the hall. From inside came the sounds of the two fifteen from Doncaster.

  “How’s it going, Norma?” Resnick asked, friendly. Norma thinking he had come about Sheena, worried the stupid gillifer had got herself caught in the Broad Marsh Centre, some uptight store detective feeling her collar the minute she set foot outside the shop. But no, not this time.

  “Your Shane,” Resnick said. “He around?”

  He was in his usual place when home, stretched out on the settee in front of the TV, can of Carlsberg within reach. Most days, if he didn’t come out ahead at the bookie’s, he didn’t finish up so far behind.

  He looked round at Resnick with flat, cold eyes; took in Vincent and dismissed him with a glance. The signs of the beating he had taken at the hands of the Turvey boys were fading but had yet to disappear.

  Resnick nodded in the direction of the television and Vincent went round behind the settee and turned the volume down; horse with a white noseband seemed to be winning by seven or eight lengths. “That pal of yours,” Resnick said. “Gerry Hovenden.”

  “Yeh, what about him?” Shane watching the screen, the last runners fading past the post.

  “Last Saturday night, you gave him an alibi.”

  “So?”

  “I thought now he wasn’t here, you might change your mind. Remember things a different way.”

  “You’re not saying I lied?”

  “Loyalty,” Resnick said, “it’s a funny thing.”

  “Mum,” Shane said, pushing himself up onto one elbow, raising his voice towards the kitchen, “where was I Sat’day last?”

  “Here,” Norma answering with prompting, walking through. “Here with that pal of yours. Gerry. Brought back those videos, remember? Elm Street and that other one. Horrible bloody things!” And then, looking at Resnick. “He was here, Mr. Resnick. They both was.” Waiting for him to say otherwise.

  What Resnick did was move closer to where Shane was sitting, sit down himself, on the arm of the settee. “You into the same things as him, Shane? Aside from horror movies, I mean. Combat 18 and the like. Extremist stuff. Fascist rallies, racist attacks.”

  Shane shifted his glance over towards Vincent, standing easily near the back of the room, and then back again.

  “’Cause if you were, I’d be surprised. Thought you had more brains than to be taken in by stuff like that.”

  Shane made a circling motion with his shoulders before looking back towards the screen and the winning jockey, dismounting in the unsaddling enclosure. After a moment, he reached for the remote and switched the sound back up.

  “Take it carefully,” Resnick said, back on his feet. “Don’t get yourself into any trouble you don’t need to.”

  Shane didn’t budge; gave no indication that he heard or heeded Resnick’s advice.

  Norma walked with the two detectives to the door. “The old girl,” she said, “the one, you know, my Nicky …”

  “Doris. She’s getting slowly better, Norma. On the mend. They both are, her and her husband.”

  Norma nodded. “Good. I’m glad for that at least.”

  Resnick and Vincent walking away then, back to the car, Vincent unlocking the doors and the pair of them getting in, kids along the street and parents at their windows, watching.

  “What in Christ’s name,” Norma shrilled at Shane the minute she got back in, “have you been up to now?”

  “Relax,” Shane said. “First horse of the afternoon just come in, twenty-five to one.”

  Thirty-six

  As luck would have it, Stella Aston had answered the phone when Resnick called; yes, of course she’d meet him, how about the Town House? Did he know it? That street off Bridlesmith Gate. Low Pavement, is that what it was called?

  It was. Resnick got there early, one of those places he had walked past numberless times in the last three or four years. Slim, pale wooden tables and waitresses who were studying fashion at Trent Un
iversity; either that, or they were sixth formers from the High School, giving off equal quantities of good breeding and disdain. Inside, casually smart young men, whose designer socks and underwear, Resnick guessed, cost more than he spent on clothes in a year, lolled back in dark glasses and looked cool. An elegant young mother—or was it the au pair?—fed what looked like purple yogurt to a toddler in a high chair. One elderly woman, gray hair unraveling round her lined face, sat unhappily over the remains of her toasted sandwich, looking as out of place as Resnick felt.

  “One, sir?” the waitress asked, friendly enough.

  “Er, I’m meeting somebody.”

  She gave Resnick a look that seemed to signify “as if” and consigned him to a table near the coffee machine, where she promptly forgot about him till Stella walked in. Stella in a bright top, colored tights and clumpy boots, and a skirt so short as to be hardly worthy of the name.

  Resnick half rose to greet her, embarrassed by her youthful attractiveness and conscious of those eyes watching from behind dark glasses, weighing up the nature of their relationship.

  “How’s your mum holding up?” Resnick asked, once Stella had sat down.

  “Oh, you know, pretty well considering. Sometimes I think it still hasn’t properly sunk in. Maybe it won’t while I’m still around.”

  “How long’s that likely to be?”

  “I ought to go back, oh, the end of the week.”

  Resnick ordered a double espresso and Stella a fizzy mineral water and a piece of chocolate cake that came, small and rich, marooned in the middle of a large white plate.

  For ten minutes or so they talked about nothing very much, Resnick relaxed enough now to enjoy Stella’s company, the way she would throw back her head and laugh aloud at one of her own anecdotes about college. They think I’m her father, he thought, sneaking an hour off work to spend with his daughter, one of her rare visits home from university.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” Stella said, suddenly. “I know my dad always used to call you Charlie.”

  “Charlie’s fine.”

  But she shook her head. “Not serious enough.”

  “Is that what I am?”

  “Aren’t you?” Cake finished, she surprised him by taking a packet of cigarettes from her bag, signaling to the waitress for an ashtray. “You see, you’re disapproving.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.” Drawing the first lungful of smoke down deep. “You think, nice young girl, into the environment, ought to be taking care of her body in the same way. Something like that, anyway.”

  Resnick supposed she might be right.

  “You’re not—what’s the word?—frivolous, are you, Charlie? You have to do things for a reason.”

  Despite himself, almost as if to disprove her, Resnick laughed. “How do you know, I mean, here you are, the first time I’ve seen you in years. Certainly the first time we’ve ever …”

  “Been alone.”

  “Had a proper conversation …”

  “And I’m analyzing you.”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “Charlie, I don’t just know about trees. The reason we’re here, for instance, it’s not casual. You didn’t call me on the spur of the moment. Not that there’d be anything wrong in that, but you just wouldn’t do it.” She grinned. “Even if it occurred to you, you’d hold back. Too many possible complications.”

  Uncomfortable, Resnick looked round for the waitress. “D’you want anything else? I’m going to have another espresso.”

  She watched him while he ordered, waited while the waitress cleared their used crockery away. “Well? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Resnick leaned forward. “I wanted to ask you …”

  “Yes?”

  “Your parents, they had separate rooms.”

  “Yes, Dad’s insomnia …”

  “And this first happened when?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Two or three years ago, maybe. But why do you want to know?”

  “You were still living at home then, when they made this decision?”

  “Doing A levels, yes.”

  “And did they say much, d’you remember, about why they were going to make this change?”

  “Yes, like I said, my dad, he couldn’t sleep properly, he thought it would be best for my mum, they both thought it would be …” Stella broke off abruptly and reached for another cigarette; there were things she didn’t want to see forming behind her eyes. “You think something was going on, don’t you? You think he was having an affair? My dad. That’s what you were on about the other day, all that fuss about that phone call. God, Charlie! You think he was sleeping around.”

  Slowly, Resnick shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Stella shook her head and laughed. “You didn’t know him very well after all. He just wasn’t like that. I know that’s what you’d expect me to say, but it’s true. He just wasn’t. Apart from anything else, there was all that religion. His preaching. Even if he’d been tempted, he’d never have let himself.” She held the smoke inside her mouth, releasing it through her nose. “If it was either of them having an affair, it would have been Mum. Not him.”

  It was Resnick’s turn to be surprised. For some moments, he tried to imagine Margaret, small, dumpy Margaret … “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Because she was the one who had nothing else.”

  “She had children, you.”

  Stella laughed again, brittle and raw. “I was seventeen, eighteen, my brothers had long left home. I had this boyfriend, older than me. We were sleeping together. Mum and I we never talked about it, but she must have known. It’s not so difficult to imagine what that’s like, your baby girl out there having sex and enjoying it, night after night, and you … I doubt if she and Dad had done it for years.”

  Resnick’s mind was on overtime. “What you’re saying …”

  “Do I know it for a fact? No, not at all. I certainly didn’t think it at the time. But then I would have been so wrapped up in what was happening to me, I think she could have done it on the kitchen table and I’d hardly have noticed.” She giggled, suddenly young again. “Well, I think I might have noticed that.”

  She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. “About Mum, you won’t need to say anything, will you? Ask her, I mean? It probably isn’t true, none of it. Just my fertile imagination and besides, even if there was some truth in it, it couldn’t have anything to do with what happened to my dad, could it? I mean, how could it?”

  Resnick shook his head. “I don’t know. But you’re right, it’s difficult to see.”

  “Then you won’t say anything to her, to my mum?”

  “I shouldn’t think so.”

  Stella beamed and ordered a hot chocolate. “You notice a bit of a theme here?” she asked. “Hot chocolate, chocolate cake.” And then, “All those times you used to come round to the house with Dad, I used to hang around, follow you from room to room. I always wanted you to notice me, but you never did.”

  “I’m sorry, I …”

  “I used to think you were lovely. I had this photograph of you, I’d cut it from the paper. I used to keep it in my room, hidden in case anyone saw it. You never even noticed I was there.”

  Resnick was blushing. “God, Stella, you were about twelve.”

  Stella laughed, spilling hot chocolate over the table. “I can’t help it, I was advanced for my age.” She was dabbing at the table with her napkin. “Now I’ve shocked you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I have. All these steamy revelations about the Aston family women in one afternoon?

  The waitress was weighing in with a cloth, murmuring something about coming back to mop the floor. Stella scraped back her chair, smoothing down her skirt onto royal-blue thighs. “I think we ought to go, don’t you? Before we turn this place into a wreck.”

  Resnick thanked the waitress and paid the bill.

  On the cobbled street outside, for a moment Stella took his a
rm. “So, Charlie—I like calling you that now—how about you, have you got a girlfriend or what?”

  It took him a while to answer. “Yes,” he said. “At least, I think so.”

  “Ooh.” Stella laughed. “I should make sure, if I were you. You never know, whoever she is, she might not see it that way at all.”

  Thirty-seven

  He saw her rounding the corner into Broad Street, hurrying a little, but not so much that she didn’t pause to check her reflection in the window of an Italian restaurant: a linen jacket over a pale-blue top, dark-blue, wide-cut linen trousers. She looked, Resnick thought, lovely.

  “Charlie, I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “No, it’s me. I was early.”

  In a slightly proprietorial way, Hannah touched her lips to his cheek. “I phoned ahead,” she said, “and reserved two tickets, just in case.”

  Resnick reached for his wallet, but she stopped him, her fingers circling his wrist. “My treat.”

  They took their seats just as the film was about to start. A street scene in what Resnick presumed was New York: the Alfreton Road it certainly was not. Too bright, too brash, too fast-moving—all those garish signs and yellow cabs. But then the camera followed a number of the people into the calmer space of an old theater, men and women dressed casually, greeting one another as old friends. Actors, Resnick supposed. Hannah had told him—all she had said by way of warning—it was about actors rehearsing a Russian play. Well that, he supposed, was what this was.

  A fortyish man complaining to an older woman about how hard he has been having to work, so many jobs, different times of the day. When they sat down, she asked him if he would like a drink, and the man shook his head ruefully and told her he was trying to stop drinking vodka in the middle of the day.

  Vodka: Resnick’s attention perked up. And as they continued to talk, this couple, their language barely changing, he gradually realized that what he was hearing was the beginning of the play. Without announcement or much preamble, the thing itself had begun. Uncle Vanya. They were watching it now.

  For close to two hours, Resnick fidgeted a little in his seat—legs too long, body weight not distributed quite right—but his attention rarely wavered from the screen; and when it did, it was only to glance across at Hannah, her close profile, the degree to which she was held rapt. Near the end, the way she pulled a tissue from her bag and dabbed away the tears.