John Harvey: Easy Meat

“Norma,” Resnick said, “what’s happened? Are you all right?”

She looked at him as if she hadn’t properly heard what he had said.

“Norma, it’s Shane. Is he here?”

A slow shake of the head.

“We’ve got a warrant to search the house.”

“What do I care?”

Resnick nodded at Millington and Divine and they moved quickly towards the stairs. He waited until Norma had flopped down into the settee and then he switched down the sound on the TV; outside, in the backyard, the dog was barking frantically to be fed.

“Should I let him in?” Resnick asked.

Norma didn’t care about that, either.

He motioned for Lynn to stay with Norma while he tipped dog biscuits into a bowl and unlocked the rear door, careful to keep well to one side when the dog tore in. He could hear Millington and Divine moving around, heavy footed, upstairs. Back in the front room, he sat across from Norma, waiting for her eyes to focus on him.

“It’s serious, Norma, this time. That alibi you gave him, him and his pal, it doesn’t stand up.” Her eyes flickered as if still only half understanding what he was saying. “Where is he, Norma? Shane. Where is he now?”

Footsteps on the stairs were followed by a slow shake of Millington’s head, its expression telling Resnick they’d found nothing. Neither Shane nor any weapon: burned it or hidden it, Resnick thought. He was tempted to see the baseball bat floating off down the Trent, hurled there after Aston’s murder and never found-except for what had happened to Declan Farrell, the particular agonies he’d been put through. A varnished implement, solid, hard. They had searched along a half-mile stretch of railway line, between overgrown gravestones, in among bushes and across fields. Every dustbin, backyard, and cranny.

He smashed this bloke about the face like he wanted to take his head clean off.

Resnick pictured Shane standing there, sweat on his lip, breathing hard, hatred and anger bright on his face.

Why?

“Your Shane,” Resnick said, “when he’s not hanging round with this Gerry, are there any other friends he sees? Special, I mean?”

Norma didn’t answer.

“Girlfriends?”

“Sara Johnson,” Norma said scornfully. “Slag.”

“You know where she lives?”

Norma didn’t have a clue, couldn’t have cared less, but she thought she worked in the Viccy centre, in the Food Court, somewhere like that.

“Make sure the house is watched,” Resnick told Millington when they were back outside. “Front and back. And keep in touch with the station. Lynn, let’s you and me see if we can’t find this Sara Johnson.”

At the curb, he turned back. “Look sharp, all of you be on your guard. Think on what he’s maybe done. He’s young and he’s strong, likely he’ll not come easy.”

“Just give me the chance,” Divine said, once Resnick had gone. “Shane Snape, one on one, see how easy he comes then.”

Once in the Food Court, steering his way between the shopping trolleys and the prams, Resnick realized he had seen Sara Johnson before; she had served himself and Hannah with coffee and now she did so for himself and Lynn, strong, small espressos in waxed paper cups. They identified themselves and asked Sara if she wouldn’t mind answering a few questions; carried the coffees to one of the nearby tables and sat down, Sara, pretty in her pink uniform, a fine sculptured face and lazy eyes, seventeen.

Self-conscious, she lit a cigarette and wafted the smoke away from her face with her hand.

“I don’t know,” she said in answer to Resnick’s question. “I haven’t seen Shane for a week or more now.”

“Sara, you do understand this is important?”

The tip of her tongue pressed for a moment against the underside of her upper lip. “I’m not a liar, you know.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ve not seen him. Besides, he wouldn’t come round to me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Near them, a man in a shabby overcoat, once someone’s best, but a long time ago, was coughing repeatedly into the back of his hand, rough-edged and raw. It was enough to make Resnick’s throat sore. “Why d’you say that?”

“He just wouldn’t, that’s why.” There was irritation, mixed with amusement, in her eyes. “For one thing, on account of my old man can’t stand him, won’t have him inside the house, right? For another, I finished with him. Two weekends ago now.”

Resnick reminded himself not to ignore his espresso.

“Why did you chuck him, Sara?” Lynn asked.

Sara tilted back her head and released a thin plume of smoke. Her nails were painted, Resnick noticed, with some kind of varnish that glittered, like the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae. “We went out, right. The Sat’day. Going to the pictures, that’s what I thought, but no, he didn’t fancy that, so we went up the Malt House for a drink. After that, I don’t know where. The Dog and Bear? Anyway, after that we come back down the Square and Shane, he calls a cab, so I think, oh right, his mum must be out, back to his place, usual thing, as if that’s all he’s got on his mind. Blokes, you know. Though in Shane’s case, you had to sometimes wonder why he bothered. Anyway, I get in the cab and he tells me he’s not coming, promised to meet one of his mates. Give the driver a fiver and tells him to take me home. Well, I wasn’t having that. I told him if that was how he felt, maybe he should spend all his time with his precious mates and stop wasting it on me.” She looked at Resnick and gave a little shrug. “That was that.”

“How did he react?” Lynn said. “When you told him that?”

Sara glanced back over towards the counter where she worked. Watching her, Resnick caught himself wondering if she knew just how pretty she was. “He didn’t care,” she said. “I don’t think he ever did.”

The coughing had been joined by a small child’s shrill wailing and Resnick waited for the ensuing shout and slap. Through hidden speakers, a tinkly organ with percussion accompaniment was following “The Skye Boat Song” with “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”

“Look,” Lynn said, lowering her voice, “I don’t want to pry, but you said, well, you implied, sex with Shane, it wasn’t all it might have been.”

Sara grabbed at her packet of Silk Cut and fidgeted back in her chair. “What d’you want to ask about that for?”

“Sara, I’m sorry, I know it’s personal, but believe me, we’re not asking for no good reason.”

She took a long drag on her cigarette and momentarily closed her eyes. “It was like, you know, he always wanted it, just never … well, not never, but … Everything was always okay when we, when he … Look, I can’t believe I’m sitting here telling you this, it’s like being on that, what d’you call it, Ricki Lake Show. But sometimes, well, let’s put it this way, what he was in such a hurry to start, he couldn’t always finish. How’s that for you?” She stubbed out her cigarette and hurried to her feet, glancing back again at the unattended coffee machine. “Now I’ve got to go, I’ll get fired. All right?”

“Yes, of course,” Lynn said, leaning back. “And Sara, thanks.”

Resnick watched her go, the tight swish of her legs inside her pink uniform. Why was it, since Hannah, he had begun again to notice these things?

“Good,” Resnick said. “You made a sight better job of that than I would.”

Lynn gave him a quick smile and drained her cup. They found a phone near the Mansfield Road exit and Resnick called the station; so far, there had been no sign of Shane. But twenty minutes previously, the fibers found inside the leather glove had been successfully identified as coming from Gerry Hovenden. Nothing now to stop them charging him with the murder of William Aston.