Easy Meat

by John Harvey

  “You do not have to say anything.” Vincent beginning. “You do not have to say anything …” but stopping, wanting Shane, please, to turn his head and look at him, look at him so that Vincent could hit him again, so that he would have a reason.

  Vincent getting up and leaving him cuffed to the radiator, going to where Divine lay sobbing on the bed, sobbing in his embarrassment and pain, and covering him carefully with one of the sheets, as carefully as he had ever done anything in his life.

  Forty-seven

  “How is he?” Hannah asked.

  They were in her small front garden, overlooking the park. It was two days later. Through the trees, the light angling low across the grass was beginning to fade. A few elderly men stood chatting, pausing on the curve of path as they walked their dogs. The last cries of children rose and fell from the playground at the farther side. Some of the cars heading into the city along Derby Road had switched on their lights.

  Hannah had been sitting in her doorway when Resnick had arrived, cushions piled beneath her, leaning back against the frame. A pile of folders beside her, pen in hand. A wine glass by her side. When she had heard the gate and seen him approaching along the path, she had smiled. “Just let me finish this …” but he had gestured for her to stay where she was and stepped around her, moving on inside the house. The opened bottle of wine, a semillon chardonnay, was in the door of the fridge and he removed it, letting the door swing closed, and turned to reach a glass down from the shelf.

  There was a postcard, propped against a stack of blue and yellow bowls, a reproduction, he supposed, of a painting: a town house in reddish stone, steps that climbed quite high to the front door and a couple standing there, he in a waistcoat, white shirt, and tie, she is wearing a blue dress and leaning back against the curve of railing beside the steps. Beyond the house, to the right of the picture, half in shadow, there is a spread of almost impossibly smooth grass and beyond that, rising suddenly, a wall—is it a wall?—and a rich cluster of green trees, the tallest of which is catching the last of the sun. The dull orange glow on the stone, Resnick realized, was caused by the setting sun. Evening, and this couple, they are both looking out towards the light.

  Resnick turned over the card to see who the painting was by and before he could do that or put it back he read instead, in purplish ink and lettering that was fussy and none too clear, nice to see you again, and missing you, and the name. Jim. The postmark was unreadable, smudged against the stamp.

  “Charlie! Have you got lost or what?”

  He picked up the bottle and the glass and carried them out.

  “Divine,” Hannah said, after she had sipped her wine. “How is he?”

  “He’s a strong lad. Bones’ll mend.”

  Hannah looked at him, the weariness in his eyes. “And the rest of him?”

  Resnick shook his head. So far Divine had refused to talk about what had happened, not to the doctor who had examined him, not to Maureen Madden, to Resnick, anyone. Shane’s statements had so far been only patchily coherent, but what seemed certain was that he had encountered Bill Aston in the public toilets on the Embankment late on the Friday evening, the day before the murder, and that something had happened between them, something sexual, but exactly what and how mutually consensual, it was difficult to tell. But when Aston had bumped into Shane again, presumably by accident, back on the Embankment the following night and had approached him, Shane had reacted with anger, called over his mates, and encouraged them to set upon him, bloody poof, beat him to a pulp. A bit of fun.

  Along with Gerry Hovenden, Shane had been charged with the murder of Bill Aston, and on his own account had been charged with two cases of indecent assault and one of causing grievous bodily harm; they were holding back on the charge of rape.

  Listening, Hannah reached up and squeezed Resnick’s hand.

  During the time that Resnick and the team had been preoccupied with Shane, Khan had continued to be busy. The youths who had terrorized Nicky Snape had given conflicting accounts of what had happened leading up to Nicky’s death. It was uncertain how far their threatening sexual by-play had gone on that occasion, but what was clear almost beyond dispute was that if they had not forced Nicky to take part in oral or anal sex there and then, they had made it clear that the next time he wouldn’t be given any choice. Khan also established that, while in care, at least two of the boys had gone out at night for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.

  And when he had checked again with Elizabeth Peck’s neighbors, several claimed to have seen her, one or two of them, leaving the house in uniform, usually in the evenings, nurse’s uniform and arriving home early, between six and seven. Not regular, but quite a few times just the same. Khan checked with the hospitals, the nursing agencies in town. He was waiting for her when her car arrived back from East Midlands Airport, parked across the Street with a copy of Nancy Friday he’d borrowed from Jill’s bedside. Women on Top. He’d given up on Vikram Seth.

  When Elizabeth Peck swung into the drive of the neo-Georgian house, on which she was still three mortgage payments in arrears, he walked across and offered to help her with her bags.

  At first, she was dismissive, haughty, insistent on standing by rights she didn’t have; later, in the living room with its stone fireplace and fake leaded windows, she was penitent, sniffing back the tears. Khan gave her several clean tissues and waited for the sniveling to stop. Weighed down by debt, unable to sell the house, even had she wanted to, its current market price so far below what she had paid for it, she had been working as an agency nurse at the City Hospital, most often nights, when the pay was better and there was the greatest need. If her shifts at the local authority accommodation clashed, Paul Matthews covered for her, signed her in and out. On the night that Nicky Snape had hanged himself, she had been doing her second job out at the hospital and Matthews had been there alone.

  “I don’t feel,” she told Khan, “any real guilt. I mean, whatever he did, he would have done whether I’d been there or not. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

  At the station, Resnick went out of his way to compliment Khan on the way he had handled his side of the inquiry and assured him he would pass that on to Jack Skelton. Khan had tried to disguise his pleasure, without ever quite succeeding.

  By then the story of what had happened to Divine, rumor and counter-rumor, had ricocheted around the station and Resnick and Millington had been chipping away at Shane’s belligerent stonewalling the best part of fourteen hours.

  Off-duty, Carl Vincent had driven out to visit Divine in his side ward at the Queen’s and Divine had turned his back and closed his eyes and stayed like that even after Vincent had gone.

  Then, on the second morning, when Resnick entered the interview room, Shane, as the result of a long discussion with his solicitor, began to tell them about what had happened to him when he had been taken into care as a boy. About the deputy head of the first children’s home he’d been in, who had given Shane cigarettes if he let him slip his hand up inside Shane’s short trousers, and a crisp new five-pound note if he would let him pull the trousers down.

  “It wasn’t the same man?” Hannah asked.

  “The same …”

  “In charge. Of the place where Shane was abused. The same as the place where Nicky died?”

  Resnick shook his head. “I’m afraid that would be too neat,” he said, and gave her a wry smile. “That sort of thing only happens in books. Not real life.”

  What happened in real life was that those who had power all too frequently abused those who did not; and that those who were abused, abused others in turn. What happened was that many of those who grew up, for whatever reason, confused about their sexuality, often succeeded in damaging themselves and others, trying to live up to what they thought of as the norm. What happened in real life, Resnick thought, was all too often a helpless, bloody mess.

  They were facing one another in Hannah’s bed, features just visible in the opaque light from t
he ceiling window. “Just so long as you stay till morning,” Hannah had said. “Six, at least.”

  Now she said, “How do you deal with it? All of this awfulness.”

  He sighed. “How do I? I went to see Norma Snape this afternoon, before I came round here. She had a friend with her and she’d been drinking, both of which were probably just as well. What else can she do?” He touched Hannah’s shoulder lightly with the back of his hand. “Seems Nicky’s dad—the one who came back out of the blue—he’s gone off again without a by-your-leave. She doesn’t know what’s hit her. Likely never will.” He kissed Hannah’s fingers when she brought them close against his face. “First Nicky and then Shane. How can she ever hope to understand?”

  “All my pretty ones,” Hannah said.

  “Mmm?”

  “Nothing. A line from a play.” And then, “Do you? Do you understand?”

  “Only that there’s nothing people won’t do to one another, if the circumstances are right. No dreadful thing.”

  “Or wrong,” Hannah said. “Surely, if the circumstances are wrong?”

  “Yes.” He reached his arm behind her, hand open across the curve of her back, and she eased herself towards him, face close to his face. “Yes, 1 suppose that’s what I mean.”

  After a while she said, “If they’re right, if things are right, do you think, what we do to one another, it can be good?”

  “Yes,” Resnick said, kissing her. “I do think that. I want to.” Hannah brushed her lips again against his mouth. “It’s what,” he said, “I want to believe.”

  Before Peter had left he had written a letter to Sheena and left it on the pillow in her room; there had been nothing, not a message, a blind word for Norma herself. Tears so strong she had not clearly been able to see, Norma had ripped the letter again and again until all that had been left were little pieces, unreadable save for the odd word. “Love” and “home.” Norma had scooped the fragments up into her hands and carried them to the sink and burned them. Ashes by now.

  Sheena had gone home when she’d heard about Shane, but she hadn’t stayed. Her mum bawling and scraighting and wanting to grab hold of her all the time, she couldn’t cope with it. It was too much. And besides, Rosa was there for her mum and she was her best friend, after all. She’d look after her, make sure it was all right.

  Back at Diane’s, Dee-Dee had got some acid, ten quid for a small strip and Sheena was just in time for her share; the others were well away, with the baby crawling between them, nappy filled and nobody paying attention until he started to cry and then Diane pushed him at Sheena and told her to get him into the bathroom and sort him out and Sheena had giggled and done as she was told.

  “And get a fuckin’ move on,” Dee-Dee had called. “We’re already late as it is.”

  They were meeting Janie in town, near the bowling alley. Janie on speed or something when they got there, had to be, she was really manic the way she was carrying on and screaming. Sheena watched as she pushed her way past this bloke, not much older than her but wearing some uniform like he worked there, wasting his breath telling Janie she had to leave. But Janie had laughed in his face and then felt between his legs, just for the hell of it, to see what he’d do.

  The bloke saying how if they didn’t leave he’d call the police and Janie grabbing hold of him and pointing at Sheena, saying, see her, her brother he just killed a fucking copper, so just you fucking watch out. And then leaving anyway, ’cause he’d run off into the office, probably pissed his pants.

  Diane shouting from the burger bar, “Wait! Hang on a fuckin’ minute. I ’in’t got my chips yet.”

  But Janie didn’t care and they pushed their way outside and went off down the street, arms linked, blocking the pavement, singing this stupid song at the tops of their voices.

  Then there was this guy, just this old guy, Sheena saw him first, weaving across the road towards them, drunk, right up to Janie, big smile all over his face, singing along even though his was a completely different bloody song. “Come on, sweetheart! You and me, eh? You and me.”

  And this drunken old bastard, must have been forty or fifty years old, pulls up his shirt and starts rubbing his chest all up against Janie. “Come on, sweetheart, you an’ me.” Which is when Janie pulls out this screwdriver she’s got inside her jacket, just a screwdriver, broken off halfway down the blade and sharpened to a sort of point, and she sticks it in this drunk’s disgusting fat belly, right above the buckle of his belt, and he falls there, down on his knees, this thing sticking out of him, almost to the hilt, and Janie, she’s laughing, pointing, and the rest of the girls, most of them, are running.

  Diane is standing there outside the bowling alley, chips falling between her fingers, watching Dee-Dee trying to pull Sheena away. “Come on, for Christ sake, girl! You mad? Let’s get out of here.”

  Sheena staring at the blood beginning to swell up around the man’s white belly, fascinated, and Janie, out of her head beside him, laughing.

  “Come on, girl! Move it!”

  Running then, leaving Janie to face the music, the first sounds of a police car approaching at speed along Canal Street and Sheena, as she allowed herself to be dragged away, turning now and stumbling, looking back and thinking, awesome, truly awesome. I mean, absolutely fucking brilliant! Brilliant, right?

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The lines from “Tami Jane Tells Him What Has Been On Her Mind For a Long Time” by Albert Baker reprinted here in Chapter Sixteen are taken from The Sound of Wings (Slow Dancer Press: London, 1995)

  copyright © 1996 by John Harvey

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