John Harvey - Easy Meat

“What’s it to be?” Millington asked, as Resnick slumped into a seat near the window.

His face brightened. “Oh, a bacon sandwich, don’t you think, Graham?”

“Is that with the egg or without?”

“Without. But a sausage wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Tea?”

“Tea.” The coffee here still had to catch up with the post-powder age.

They ate in near silence, Resnick enjoying the salt, slightly fish-like taste of the smoked bacon, not inquiring too deeply about the occasional gristly blob that the sausage vouchsafed. Later, as Millington relaxed with a Lambert and Butler, Resnick asked about Madeleine’s latest forays into amateur dramatics and adult education and received a lecture about the perils of living with a wife who is simultaneously reading Karen Horney and Kate Millett for her course on “Feminism for Beginners” and rehearsing the part of a frustrated middle-aged wife in an Alan Ayckbourn farce.

“Bit difficult for her, that, Graham. The play, I mean. Well outside her experience, I should reckon.”

Millington drew in smoke and examined Resnick keenly; if that was meant as some kind of joke, he couldn’t see the humor. Of late, Millington had taken to eyeing the kitchen knives with suspicion.

Resnick, however, solid food inside him, was beginning to feel better. The day might be salvaged after all. “All right, Graham,” he said, scraping back his chair. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

Once inside Queen’s, they checked on Doris Netherfield, who was still making cautious progress and treated them to a pale smile. Her husband was making slow but significant progress at home. Shane Snape was propped irritably between pillows, fiddling with the headset of his radio. One side of his face showed some deep bruising and a neat line of stitches butterflied its way from behind one ear onto his neck, but those injuries apart he had got off surprisingly lightly. Nothing broken. Another day and he would be discharged.

“Morning, Shane,” Millington said breezily. “Run into a spot of bother?”

He and Resnick took seats at either side of the bed.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” said Shane.

“The people who did this,” Resnick said, “you’re not in a position to identify who they were?”

Shane shook his head.

“And the name Turvey,” Millington offered, “that doesn’t ring any bells?”

Shane shook his head again.

“Coincidence, then, Peter Turvey sustaining all those injuries the same time as yourself? Same place?”

“Must’ve been.”

“There’s no chance, then,” Resnick said, “that you’ll be making a complaint, pressing charges, anything like that?”

“None.”

“Fine.” Resnick started out of his seat. “All right, Graham, we might as well go.”

Shane looked surprised they were letting him off so lightly, had just begun to relax back against the pillows when Resnick swiveled on his heels faster than a man of his size might be expected to, something like a dancer. From nowhere he was leaning over the bed, his right hand gripping Shane’s shoulder where it was bruised and swollen, finger ends not so far from where the line of stitches finished.

“Understand me. I don’t give a toss how you spend your evenings, what flotsam you hang around with, but I do care about your mother. She’s had a hard enough time as it is, bringing up the three of you, and now after what’s happened to Nicky, you’re the last thing she should have to worry about.” Resnick increased the pressure with his hand, enough to force tears to the edges of Shane’s eyes no matter how much he fought to deny them. “So stay out of trouble, right? Or I’ll come down on you so fast you’ll wish you’d paid attention.” Resnick relinquished his grip and stood tall. “Okay, Shane. Think you can learn something here?”

Shane stared back at him, humiliated, angry, a single tear making a slow track down his face.

Whistling “Winchester Cathedral” while they waited for the lift, Millington was still surprised by the force of Resnick’s anger.

Sheena had not clocked in at the factory since Nicky had died. The first day, the Monday, she had phoned in and explained; the second day she had said her mother still needed looking after. Her supervisor had been understanding, had told her to take whatever sick leave she was entitled to, and suggested that she make an appointment to see her GP on her own account, have him prescribe a tranquillizer, Valium, that new stuff even-what was it? — Prozac, that’s the one.

This morning Sheena had said nothing to her mum, had left home with her uniform ironed and folded in a plastic bag from Tesco, wandered without direction until she ended up in the Old Market Square, watching the gang of youths that sprawled extravagantly on the worn grass near the public lavatories, drinking Strongbow cider and shouting at any passerby who wore a suit. They were the usual sprinkling of latter-day punks and goths, lads with pink Mohicans or hair spiked out around their heads in blue-tipped stars, chains that hung from the pockets and lapels of torn leather jackets, ripped jeans, smaller chains dangling from their ears and the corners of their mouths. Tattoos. Girls younger than Sheena in tight T-shirts and skinny, black-legged jeans, rings through their ears and noses, mouths darkened into little black beaks.

Sheena sat a safe distance away on the low stone wall, wrists trapped between her knees. No way she was about to go near them. The clock above the Council House sounded the quarter-hour.

“Here.”

She turned with a start, almost losing her balance. Janie Cornwall was close behind her, usual superior expression on her face, an open packet of Embassy in her hand.

“Go on, have one.”

Sheena blinked up at Janie, her hard young face framed by fizzed-out hair. At the other side of the street, outside Debenham’s, Janie’s friends stood watching. Lesley Dawson, Irena, Tracey Daniels, Dee-Dee, Diane. Janie shook the packet again and with a breathed “thank you” Sheena took one and angled back her head as Janie, leaning forward, lit it for her.

Sheena drew in smoke and held it down inside.

After a quick glance back towards her pals, Janie lit a cigarette for herself and sat down. “Your brother, we’re cut up, like, about what happened.”

“Thanks.”

“You must be feeling like shit.”

“Yeh. Yes, I am.”

Janie had been in Sheena’s year right through school, they all had, Lesley, Dee-Dee, and the rest. Girls whose breasts were obvious sooner, whose periods had started earlier, who were forever bringing scratty little notes to excuse them from games. They would smoke openly on the way to school and light up again the minute they had set foot on the Boulevard. They were the ones who boasted they had done it at thirteen, gone all the way, and Sheena had believed them, jealous, frightened, in awe. When, after school, Janie and the rest had huddled among the cars parked on the Forest, laughing with boys who were as old as Shane and older, Sheena had loitered close enough for them to call her over but they never had. Now this. Nicky’s death had given her notoriety at second hand, made her acceptable where she had not been before.

One of the girls called out to Janie, who turned her head and gestured for them to go on ahead. “We’re going up Diane’s,” she said to Sheena. “Why’n’t you come?”

At the far side of the square, Janie took Sheena’s Tesco bag from her and dropped it, uniform and all, into a green council bin.

Diane and Dee-Dee were black. Except for those times when they had briefly fallen out, they told everyone they were sisters, even went out dressed in the same clothes, though it wasn’t true. Their families never spoke to one another and would cross the street to avoid contact. Dee-Dee’s father was a minister in the Pentecostal church and Diane’s was doing fifteen years in Lincoln for shooting another drug dealer in the face at close range. When she fell pregnant just eighteen days short of her fifteenth birthday, Dee-Dee’s father prayed for her while her mother took her to the clinic to arrange for an abortion. As soon as Diane heard, she went out and got herself knocked up by a friend of her brother’s and miscarried after eight weeks. The next time she was more fortunate. The baby was called Melvin and Diane’s elder sister looked after him until Diane had finished school, at which point Diane and the baby’s father were given temporary accommodation in a high-rise the council were planning to demolish. The father had left but the flats were still standing.