John Harvey - Easy Meat

“I can’t tell you everything. I don’t know … Oh, God!”

“It’s all right.” Khan put his hand on the base of Matthews’s neck and let it rest there. “Just tell me what you can.”

After some moments, Matthews reached into his pocket for a tissue and Khan moved his hand, sat back, and waited. He thought Matthews might break down again and cry, but instead he simply sat there on the side of his bed, telling his story, the one he had told so many times inside his head out walking the cliffs, watching the waves break back upon the shore.

He described how this particular group of youths, the older ones, half a dozen of them, had got up from the television room earlier on the night that Nicky died, and swaggered towards the door. How the biggest of them, at least as big as Matthews himself, if not bigger, had sauntered back over to Paul and fixed him with a grin and told him to stay where he was, carry on watching whatever he was watching-unless he wanted to go up and watch them.

And then they had gone up to Nicky’s room, all six of them, and locked the door from the inside. And he hadn’t known what to do. He’d been frightened, scared of them, the way they would swagger about the place and smoke and swear and sometimes there were these drugs they got from somewhere, and they would mock him, call him names, make threats, and he knew it was too late to stand up to them, far too late, and when the screams from Nicky’s room were so loud they could be heard, even downstairs, all he had done was go over to the TV and turn up the sound.

“You didn’t tell anyone?” Khan said after a moment.

“No, not at first. Not then.”

“But later?”

Matthews’s eyes were closed. “I told Mr. Jardine.”

Something akin to pleasure lurched deep in Khan’s throat. “You told him what you’ve just told me?”

Matthews nodded.

“Paul?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And what did Mr. Jardine say?”

Matthews opened his eyes. “He said there was no need to mention it to anyone else, especially at the inquiry. He said it would only muddy the waters. He said anyway it wasn’t relevant at all.”

“What about the other staff member on duty? Elizabeth Peck? You didn’t say anything to her?”

Matthews pressed the tips of his fingers against his temples so hard that when he finally withdrew them, there were pale ovals clear against the skin. “She wasn’t there. Not all evening. Not until I phoned her and told her she’d best come in.”

“She was ill, sick, what?”

Matthews shook his head. “She was working at another job.”

Khan got to his feet and went across to the window. On the roof opposite a workman was sitting, a brightly colored scarf tied round his head, drinking from a Thermos and reading a newspaper.

“These youths,” he said, uncapping his pen. “What are their names?” And Matthews told him, each name like a nail.

Resnick and Millington had decided to take Hovenden first. The glove they had found in his house? The one matching that discovered at the murder scene? Yes, Hovenden had agreed, it was his, but so what? He’d chucked it up months ago, before Christmas probably, after he lost the other on a ride up through the Peak District. Late November, that would have been. Snow on the tops, he remembered that. Whatever they’d found down by the Trent, no connection, nothing to do with him.

Resnick didn’t tell him that forensic were even now checking out the body fibers from inside the glove found near Aston’s body, microscopic particles of skin, matching their DNA against Hovenden’s own. That could wait till confirmation came through; enough for now to leave him rattled.

“All right, Gerry,” he said, “play it that way if you like. We’ll go and have a chat with your pal, Frank Miller, see if he can’t throw a little more light on things.”

Hovenden nervously laughed. “Frank’d not as much as never cock his leg on one of you lot if you were on fire.”

“Okay, Gerry,” Resnick said pleasantly, getting to his feet. “Have it your way. For now.”

“Cocky bastard!” Millington said, once they were out in the corridor.

“Bravado,” Resnick said. “Nothing more. Behind it all, he’s one unhappy boy.”

“Thinks his mate Frankie’s about to dump him in it, you reckon?” Outside the second interview room, Resnick grinned. “Let’s see if he isn’t right.”

Frank Miller claimed only vague memories of a Saturday night’s drinking. Yeh, yeh, this pub and that; a pint with this bloke here, a few more with these pals there. Dinner on the way home, curry maybe, fish and chips. Come to think of it, wasn’t that the night he never got back at all? Fetched up at his brother-in-law’s place in the Meadows, sharing the floor with the pair of Rottweilers his sister was hoping to breed from. Long as they didn’t do it, you know, while he was kipping there. Why didn’t Resnick send someone round, find out for himself?

Resnick less than well pleased, another alibi depending upon close family more likely to commit any amount of perjury before seeing their nearest and dearest end up in the nick.

“Meantime,” Millington said, “why don’t you try telling us about these?” And with something approaching a flourish, he produced the Caterpillar boots.

“What about ’em?”

“Well, do you recognize them, for a start?”

Miller shrugged. “Hundreds of pairs like that, must be. Thousands.”

“Are you saying they’re not yours?”

“What I’m saying,” a cocky strut to Miller’s voice, “is that I don’t know. They could be mine and then again, they could not.”

“Maybe you’d like to try one on?” Millington suggested.

“What is this? Fuckin’ Cinderella? ’Cause if it is, we got the Ugly Sisters well cast, I can tell you that.”

“These boots were found,” Resnick said, “in your garden shed. This morning.”

“Really? Amazing, i’n’it, searched for them bastards everywhere.”

“Lost,” Millington mused, “and then were found.”

Resnick sneaked him a quick sideways look. For a man whose only confessed religious experience seemed to have been Petula Clark singing one of the songs from Jesus Christ Superstar , biblical references were unexpected to say the least.

But Millington was not through. “Interesting what was found on them, too. That style of boot, you see. All those deep cracks and crevices in the sole, you’d be amazed what gets stuck in them.” He paused, Miller watching him carefully now. “Or maybe not.”

Miller slouched back in his chair, head round for a moment towards his brief, one eyebrow raised. “So tell me,” he said.

Millington flipped the cover of his notebook back. “Mud, for a start …”

“Yeh? Surprise, fuckin’ surprise,” said Miller, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Earth,” Millington went on, “consistent with that found on the section of the Embankment where Inspector Aston was murdered. Not only that, we found blood, small traces of blood across the tongue of the left boot, the same blood type as Aston.”

Blood was now in short supply in Miller’s face.

“Something else we found,” Resnick said, leaning in, “a cassette tape with a lot of music by a band called Saxon, a favorite of yours I believe? And that’s not all-it seems whoever’s tape it was had used it before, recording made at a BNP rally, autumn of last year. Shouldn’t be impossible to check if you were there.”

Miller sat there for several moments, arms resting on his knees, staring at the ground. Then he looked up and pursed his mouth into a perfect O. “Got a cigarette?” he asked. “I need a fag.”

His solicitor tapped him on the arm. “You’re under no obligation to talk about this now, not without discussing it with me first.”