John Harvey - Easy Meat

“Another, Inspector?”

Resnick pushed the empty cup away. “No thanks, not today.”

He was almost out of the market when he saw her, in the center row near the exit, buying flowers.

Hannah Campbell had left her VW in the underground car-park and taken the lift to Tesco’s, where she had compromised her usual healthy purchases with a Sarah Lee ready-baked Pecan Nut Danish Pastry, an impulse for which she had felt more than a twinge of guilt at the checkout. The two bags of groceries she had locked into the boot of her car, before going up to the market for vegetables, salad stuff, and cheese. It was the sign announcing wreaths and floral tributes that stopped her in her tracks.

Of course, what had happened to Nicky-rumors, innuendo, the story imperfectly patched together piece by piece-had been all over the school the entire day. Shock and genuine sympathy in the staff room had been shot through with a malicious righteousness which had made Hannah heave. Smug elegies of the I-told-you-so variety. At least one overheard remark about Nicky’s positive contribution to classroom overcrowding.

Floral tributes and wreaths: Hannah asked the aproned woman in charge of the stall about the price of a bouquet. Lilies, those nice carnations, daffs, they’re lovely this time of the year. Resnick stood at the end of the aisle, watching her, hair falling across her face as she bent forward towards the flowers; if he went to speak to her, what would he say? Far easier to walk away.

He was downstairs, hesitating outside HMV and considering a quick foray through their meager jazz section, when Hannah spotted him.

“Inspector Resnick?”

Seeing her reflection in the shop window, he smiled.

“It sounds silly,” Hannah said when he was facing her, “calling you inspector like that. Like something out of a play. J. B. Priestley. You know, An Inspector Calls. ”

Vaguely, Resnick thought that he might. “Charlie, then,” he said.

“That’s your name? Charlie?”

He nodded-“Yes”-and shifted the bag he was carrying from hand to hand.

“Somehow I never think of policemen doing their own shopping.”

“Someone has to.”

“I suppose so.” She smiled. “I know.”

He looked at the flowers she was carrying; didn’t know what more to say. “Well …” A lurch to the left, not really a step away.

“I nearly phoned you,” Hannah said, “earlier today.”

“How come?”

“What happened to Nicky. I just …” She pushed a hand up through her hair and stepped back, almost into a pushchair that was being steered past. “I don’t know, I wanted to talk about it, I suppose.”

“To say what exactly?”

She just smiled, just the eyes this time. “That’s it, I don’t really know. That’s why in the end I didn’t phone.”

“There probably isn’t a great deal I could tell you …”

“No, of course not. I understand.”

“But if …”

“Yes?”

For the first time he smiled, his whole face relaxing into it, opening wide.

“You haven’t got a few minutes now?” Hannah asked.

Resnick shrugged, glanced towards his watch without registering a thing. “Why not?”

She led him to the food court, where they bought cappuccinos in waxed paper cups and carried them towards the raised section of seating at the center. He found it strange to be in the company of this woman he scarcely knew, a good-looking woman, casually but nicely dressed, a large bouquet of flowers in her hand. For no discernible reason, a phrase from “Roseland Shuffle” sprang into Resnick’s head, Lester Young soloing against Basie’s sprightly piano.

“Is this okay?” Hannah asked, looking round.

“Fine.”

She set the flowers down carefully on the seat alongside. “I was going to take them to Nicky’s mother,” she said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

“I didn’t realize you knew him that well.”

“I didn’t. Not really. To be honest I don’t think anyone at the school did, not in the last couple of years anyway. He was scarcely there.” She sipped at her coffee and cradled it in her hands. “It’s awful to say it, but I’d go into my English class, the one Nicky was supposed to be in, and if I saw he wasn’t at his desk I’d be relieved. It’s not that he was disruptive exactly. Not all the time anyway. Mostly, he’d just sit there and let it wash over him. Never say a word. But occasionally he’d latch onto something, some idea of his own, at a complete tangent from what the rest of the class were doing, and keep on and on about it, question after question, till it was all I could do to get the lesson back on track.”

Hannah stopped and drank a little coffee, looked across into Resnick’s patient face, the skin that wrinkled past the corners of his eyes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let that matter. The plan for my precious lesson, I mean. Aim, method, conclusion. Perhaps there were more important things.”

“My guess, by the time he got to you, there’d not have been a great deal you could do.”

Hannah gave a wry smile. “Give me a child until he’s seven, isn’t that what the Jesuits say? Or is it nine? Either way, they’re probably right, don’t you think? Or in your book, are criminals born and not made? Nature or nurture, Charlie, which are you?” Even as she said it, she was surprised at the ease with which she used his name.

He had noticed a green fleck in her right eye, close to the iris, and was trying not to stare. “Some people,” he said, “they’ll engage in criminal behavior no matter what. Maybe it’s psychological, something in their genes, deep in their childhood, who’s to say? But average, run-of-the-mill crime, you just have to look at the figures. Unemployment, housing …” Resnick gestured with the palm of one hand. “… worse those problems are, higher the rate of crime.”

“Tell that to the government,” Hannah said sharply.

Resnick tasted his coffee; despite the paper cup, it was better than he’d thought. “This last election,” he said, “local. How many? Sixteen Conservatives kicked out. For Labour almost a clean sweep. Fifty seats on the council now to one Tory, couple of the other lot. I’ll be interested to see, by the year’s end, how much difference it’s made.”

“You don’t think that’s a little too cynical?”

“How about realistic?”

“And kids like Nicky, you don’t think there’s anything that can be done? Not with things as they stand?”

He sighed. “If it can, I’m buggered if I know what it is.”

“Locking them up, though? Prison. Short, sharp shocks. Boot camps, isn’t that what they’re called? Do you really think that’s the answer?”

“I doubt it puts them on the straight and narrow; figures disprove that.”

“But still you carry on, shutting them away.”

Resnick shifted a little awkwardly on his seat. “No. The courts lock them up. Or they don’t, whatever. What we do, what I do, if I can, is arrest those who’ve broken the law. Not my laws, not my punishment either.”

“But you must agree with them, the courts, what they do, or you wouldn’t carry on doing it.”

Resnick pushed back his chair, crossed his legs. “Are we having a row?”

Hannah smiled. “No, it’s a discussion.”

“That’s all right, then.”

“But is this your way,” she asked, “of avoiding the question?”

Resnick grinned and shook his head. “Youths Nicky’s age and younger, persistent offenders, they might get arrested-what? — thirty or forty times in a year. More in some cases. They’re too young to be put in prison. Bail, supervision orders, none of that does a scrap of good.”

“You think they should be shut away.”

“I think society needs protecting, yes …”