John Harvey: Easy Meat

After a lengthy trial, at which all this was painfully dragged out for everyone to read about in their newspapers and see replayed each night on their TV, the man’s pleas of diminished responsibility had been disregarded and he had been sentenced to imprisonment for life. A minimum of twenty-five years.

By the time she herself was little more than fifty-younger than her own mother was now-Lynn knew he could be walking the same streets, breathing the same air. At the turn of any corner she might meet him, hear him again, clear across the clamor of a crowded bar, asking could he buy her a drink; his fingers tapping at the window the next time her car broke down, face peering in, drizzled out of focus by the rain, the lilt of his voice, that smile …

And there were other things that had been stirred into consciousness by the experience, things which Lynn was struggling to forget.

She was at her desk when Resnick entered the CID office, back towards him, a slight hunch of her shoulders as she made notes on her pad while talking on the phone. Kevin Naylor, like Lynn a detective constable in his twenties, was accessing the computer, checking through incidents of arson in connection with a recent fire in which an Asian boy of four had died. Graham Millington, Resnick’s sergeant, sat with an elderly black woman, coaxing her through the circumstances of a robbery she had witnessed in a local bookmaker’s, three thousand pounds stolen and the manager recovering from serious head injuries in the Queen’s Medical Centre. The other desks were empty, officers out and about in the city, asking questions, knocking on doors.

Inside Resnick’s office, a partitioned corner of the narrow room, the telephone started to ring. By the time he had entered and closed the door behind him, it had stopped. One glance at the jumble of papers on his desk, and he reached into one of the drawers for a half-empty pack of Lavazza caffé espresso and filled the coffee machine his friend Marian Witczak had given him as a present. “For you, Charles, to treat yourself well. I know how much you like good coffee.”

The last drops, black and strong, had not finished percolating through before Resnick, unable to distract himself any longer, pushed open the office door and called Lynn Kellogg’s name.

“Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

She kept her hair cut short now, defiantly, brushed forward at the front just like a boy’s; the only slight curl, as if to spite her, curved in front of her ears and the plain gold studs that she wore. She had never won back the fullness or the color of her face. She wore black cotton trousers, a black, round-necked top. No rings.

“Jack Skelton was asking me how you were.”

She hadn’t forgotten how to smile, at least with her eyes. “And you told him?”

“As far as I knew, you were fine.”

“That’s okay, then.”

Resnick brought the cup towards his mouth, but didn’t drink. “Except, apparently, you’re not.”

Lynn looked at him and saw a sad man with sad eyes. When he had been the first to arrive at the caravan where she was being held captive, she had clung to him and thought that she would never let him go. Now that was proving all too true: through therapy and jagged dreams, the memory of him persisted, the bulk of him hard against her, the tears in his eyes.

“The hospital,” Resnick said.

“Dr. Carey.”

“You’ve started seeing her again.”

Lynn sat forward, hands pressed between her thighs. “So much for confidentiality, then.”

Resnick set the cup back down. “As far as what’s said, whatever passes between you, of course that’s true.”

“But if I’ve gone back into therapy …”

“We have to be concerned.”

“That I might be cracking up?”

“Concerned for you.”

She laughed. “Because I might not be able to do the job?”

“Yes.” He looked away and Lynn laughed again.

“What?” Resnick said. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just … No, it’s okay, I know you’re only doing your job, too.”

Resnick shifted again, uncomfortable in his chair. “It’s the nightmares, then? They’ve started up again. Is that the problem?”

“Yes,” Lynn said. “Yes, that’s right. Same old thing.”

The lie hung between them, tangible as smoke.

“You feel okay, though,” Resnick asked. “About the job? Carrying on?”

“Yes. Really I’m fine.”

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

“Of course.” She was on her feet by the door, avoiding his eyes.

“Your case load,” Resnick asked. For whatever reason, he didn’t want her to go. “What’s most pressing?”

“That lad, I suppose. The one who absconded from the Secure Unit …”

“Hodgson?”

“Martin, yes. He could be anywhere, of course. Manchester, London. But I had a call earlier from Vice, thought they might’ve spotted him, touting for business out on Forest Road.”

Resnick sighed, all too familiar. “Who are you liaising with?”

“Sharon. Sharon Garnett.”

“Give her my best.”

“Right, yes, I will.”

Lynn hesitated just a moment longer before going back through the door. Already her phone was ringing again and Graham Millington, having finished with his witness, was waiting to ask her about overtime. Divine was back at his desk with a copy of the Post and a brace of Jamaica patties from the baker’s on Hartley Road.

In his office, Resnick scanned the response from the Police Authority chairman to claims that the recent Audit Commission survey comparing police forces’ efficiency was scarcely worth the paper it had been printed on. He opened an envelope addressed to him in Marian Witczak’s precise hand. Is it true you are never at home any more, Charles, and, if so, who is feeding all of your beautiful cats? She had enclosed an invitation to a dance at the Polish Club for this coming weekend. Underneath the line, Dress Informal , she had added, But please bring dancing shoes!

Resnick pushed it out of sight beneath a pile of crime reports, dancing the last of several things occupying his mind. For no clear reason he could discern, unless it were the coffee in the cup that he was holding, the words to an old Bessie Smith blues came filtering to the surface, something about waking up cold in hand.

Nicky Snape had been a busy boy. At the back of a pub edging onto the wholesale fruit and veg market he had sold one of Hannah Campbell’s two credit cards for twenty pounds; less than thirty minutes later, in the pleasant surroundings of St. Mary’s Rest Garden, her checkbook and check guarantee card had changed hands for double that. Cutting through the Victoria Centre towards the Mansfield Road, he had chanced to bump into Sally Purdy, who was just leaving the Magistrate’s Court, having a few minutes previously been released on her own recognizance on charges of fraud. Purdy sent Nicky back inside to Tesco’s to buy a six-pack of Tennents, two of which she shared with him on one of the benches opposite Peachey Street; she then bought the remaining credit card from him for three five-pound notes and an unopened can. “You give my love to Shane now, will you do that for me? Tell him I was asking after him, make sure that you do.” Nicky could see how that would go down well with his brother, and with a belch and a quick wave of the hand, consigned the idea to oblivion.

He treated himself to a Whopper and fries from Burger King and was finishing them off, window shopping on Cheapside, when his eyes fell on a pair of purple-and-red Sanmarco walking boots, Gore-Tex lined. No way he could boost them out of there, the boots cost Nicky pretty much all he’d made in the past hour, but what else was money for?