John Harvey - Easy Meat

His fist was now little more than inches from Resnick’s face. His voice more than filled the room. Millington knocked on the door and entered without waiting to be asked. “Everything okay, boss?”

“Thanks, Graham. Everything’s fine.” Resnick didn’t look at his sergeant, didn’t take his eyes off Shane Snape.

“Right, then. If you’re sure.” Millington slowly withdrew, leaving the door ajar.

Shane and Resnick were staring at each other and neither would look away.

“Shane …” Norma reached up with her bandaged hand and touched her eldest’s arm. “Please.”

With a flex of his muscles, Shane lowered his fist and stepped away. Resnick watched him for ten, fifteen seconds more and then, apparently, dismissed him from his thoughts. “What is there I can tell you, Norma?”

“My Nicky,” Norma said, leaning closer, “never mind what happened to him in the past, no matter how bad he got hurt, he’d always bounce back. Always. Even that time those bastards threw that petrol bomb at him. Nicky, he was laughing and joking about it while he was still in hospital. That’s why I don’t think he would ever have done a thing like that, Mr. Resnick, took his own life. It’s not the way he … not the way he was. Not unless there was good reason, something we don’t know about. Something that happened to him while he was there.”

“Norma, there’ll be an inquiry …” Behind his mother, Shane laughed a short, bitter laugh. “Two. One carried out by social services, and another which we’ll conduct ourselves.”

“Bloody whitewash,” said Shane. “That’s what that’ll sodding be.”

“You, Mr. Resnick,” Norma said, “you’ll be looking into it yourself?”

Resnick shook his head. “A senior officer will lead the team. Very experienced. You couldn’t ask for anyone to be more thorough …”

“But you knew Nicky, really knew him. This bloke, whoever he is …”

“He’s a good man, Norma. I can assure you of that. And I shall be giving him all the help I can.”

A smile showed fleetingly on her face and slipped away. “Nicky’s body, the funeral …”

“We’ll release it as soon as we can. I’ll do my best to find out today and let you know. Okay?”

For a moment, Norma let her head drop forward, eyes closed. Shane started to stay something but Resnick’s quick look told him he had already said enough. Resnick got to his feet and started around the desk to help Norma from her chair, but Shane placed himself in his way.

“Come on, Mum, let’s get out of here.”

Millington stood alongside Resnick, watching them go. “Aggravated burglary, wasn’t it? What he was up for last?”

Resnick nodded. “I believe so.”

“Next time, praise God, someone’ll send him down for a nice long time.”

Resnick turned aside, went back into his office, and closed the door. Untouched, his sandwich waited for him on his desk, but after all the empty words he had offered Norma Snape, his appetite had deserted him. He took hold of the sandwich and dumped it in the bin.

Resnick had a call from Bill Aston late that afternoon. For some minutes they exchanged pleasantries, gossiped about the Job. “Changed a lot since our day, Charlie. Used to be, all you did was put on that uniform, walk into a pub, anywhere in the city, people looked at you with respect. Now they’ll as like spit in your face as ask time of day.” Resnick waited for him to get to the point, smarting a little under the implication: as far as he was concerned, this was his day still.

“Thought we might have a jar, Charlie? Once I’ve got my feet under the table. One or two little things, this Snape youth, background, you could fill me in on.”

“I had the mother here today,” Resnick said. “Doesn’t see Nicky as the suicidal type; not without there was a powerful reason.”

“Only to be expected, given the circumstances. Upset, bound to be. Distraught. Probably shouldn’t give her too much credence in the circumstances.”

“She’s the lad’s mother, Bill, none the less. As a family, I think they were pretty close.”

“If there’s anything nasty in the woodshed, Charlie, I’ll poke it out.”

“I told her you’d do a good job.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for that. And our little drink some evening?”

“Ring me, Bill. Any time.”

“I will, Charlie. Thanks again.”

As Resnick rode the escalator upstairs in the Victoria Centre he was thinking about what Aston had said. They were near enough of an age for him to recognize what the older man had described, the shifts and slippages of the last twenty years. And what lay ahead? Promotion into the new Serious Crimes Unit, always supposing that memoranda became reality, or a little room of his own at HQ, a rubber stamp with which he could mark out the end of his days?

He stepped off the escalator and walked towards the market, nodding in the direction of the dozen or so elderly Poles who stood in their gray raincoats and shiny shoes, reminiscing about the good old days fifty years or more before. Resnick’s father, had he lived, would have been among them, stooped by now and shrunken, an exile from the country of his childhood, the country of his youth.

Resnick entered the market past the corner music stall where the Tremeloes’ Greatest Hits were permanently on offer at a special marked-down price. Ahead of him, shoppers hesitated before slabs of local cheddar and blue stilton, mushrooms and courgettes, potatoes-reds, whites, and the first Jersey Royals-Granny Smiths from France and New Zealand, strawberries from Israel and Spain, thick-stalked cabbages in lustrous green grown no more than a mile or two up the road. Deeper into the market, incongruously, bottles of perfume could be bought, machine-made Nottingham lace, electrical gizmos and Hoover bags by the dozen, kids’ shirts and jeans for which Council clothing vouchers were gratefully accepted.

Resnick was heading for the Polish deli, where the cheesecake stared back at him like a government health warning, threatening to push him that extra ten pounds over on the scales. The approximate ideal weight for a male with your bodyframe is … Resnick didn’t want to know. He made his purchases-several of the salamis sliced thin, a loaf of crusty rye bread with caraway, sour cream-and carried them over to the Italian coffee stall. Someone had left a Post on the counter and he skimmed through it while waiting for his espresso. Sea fishing gear had been stolen from a shed, thirty-two prize-winning budgies from a garage; a masked burglar had sat comfortably on a seventy-nine-year-old woman’s bed and chatted with her for thirty minutes before making off with her jewelry. He had asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee and when she declined, said he would make her tea instead. It was almost enough to make crime seem cozy, the stuff of Ealing comedies and Dixon of Dock Green. Except that Resnick knew what had happened when Nicky Snape had broken into the Netherfield home, and it hadn’t been a friendly bedside chat, a pot of tea. Doris Netherfield might be stable and responding to treatment, but her condition was still serious; her husband was nursing his injuries at home, and Nicky Snape had been found hanging from a bathroom shower. That was in the paper, too, front page. ALLEGED AGGRESSOR FOUND DEAD. Resnick’s own name was in paragraph three.

Setting down the espresso, the assistant tapped the paper. “Good riddance, no?”

“No. Not at all.”

The assistant shrugged, uncomprehending, took Resnick’s money, and turned away to serve an attractive young mother, well-built, bright-eyed, kids fidgeting on stools at either side of her, taking the occasional kick at one another behind her back. “Cut it out, you two. I’ll not tell you again.” Automatically, Resnick’s eyes went to her left hand, third finger. No dad at home, presumably, whom she could offer as a threat. A good thing or bad? He wasn’t sure.