John Harvey - Easy Meat

“But?”

To hell with it! Sharon lit up anyway, lowered the window a farther half-inch. “There’s this one guy, I don’t see him often, just, you know, when we can fix it. When he can.”

“Married, then?”

She did laugh this time. “Of course he’s married.”

Lynn stared out through the window; what she thought were shapes moving was probably nothing more than the wind in the trees. “He won’t leave her. You know that.”

“He’d better not!”

“You know you’re just saying that.”

“Like hell I am. Leave her and what’ll he expect? Me to dump his washing in the machine last thing at night, collect his suit from the cleaners, cook, be nice to his kids. I’ve had a bellyful of that once on my own account; I’m not about to fall for it again.”

“What is it, then? Why do you keep seeing him?”

Sharon drew in smoke and exhaled slowly through her nose. “Sex, why d’you think?”

It was quiet inside the car, each woman aware of the other’s breathing, the heat of her skin.

“I don’t know if I could,” Lynn said. “Not unless …”

Sharon barked out a laugh. “Unless you loved him?”

“Unless I thought it was leading somewhere.”

In the semi-darkness, Sharon was looking at her. “You’re young, you’ll learn.”

“I hope not.”

Sharon lowered the window a little more and tapped ash out into the air. “Look, me and him, we spend the night together, most of it, once every two or three weeks. He’s a nice bloke, a good lover. Treats me with respect. He’s never aggressive or overdemanding unless I want him to be, he’s got great hands and a lovely cock. And he makes me laugh. You think I should be holding out for what? A co-signee for the mortgage and someone to help me push the trolley round at Safeway?”

For a while Lynn didn’t answer. “Maybe not,” she finally said. “Only …”

“Only what?”

“After you’ve … after you’ve been to bed and …”

“And done the deed.” Sharon laughed.

“Yes, if you like. And he’s gone back home to his wife, well, how do you feel?”

Sharon put her hand on Lynn’s arm. “Somewhere between having had a Turkish and a long massage, and being seen to by the Dynorod man.”

The laughter of the two women filled the car and when it faded, Lynn said: “Look, what’s that? Over there.”

“Where?”

“Over there.”

Nicky had walked past the house three times now, a two-story end-terrace with lace curtains at the window, even those above street level. The kind of house, the kind of street where people put milk bottles out last thing at night, but no one had done that here. Okay, he thought, it was getting late but not that late, most of the other houses had lights showing in their bedroom windows at least. Not here. He turned along the side of the house to where a narrow ginnel ran into the darkness, giving access to the backs.

For as much as five minutes he stood in the center of the rear yard, letting the darkness gather round him. A few doors along someone was playing their television too loud, someone else was singing, one of those pathetic songs his mum would sing when she was in the kitchen and thought no one else was listening, or when she came back from the pub after last orders and didn’t care. There was a gap at the top of the window at least an inch wide and his guess was that whoever lived there had forgotten to close it tight. So simple, Nicky thought, so why was he still standing there when by now he could have been in and out? Another ten minutes and he’d be home. Nicky took a pace towards the window, then another; as far as he was concerned most of the evening had been a washout and here was his chance to finish it on an up.

Face close against the glass, he saw, beyond his own reflection, the contours of the neat back room, everything ordered and in its place the way old jossers’ homes were. Some of them, anyway. The ones that didn’t babble on at you in the street, half-drowned in their own dribble, sit in their own piss. Yes, he bet whoever lived here dusted it every morning, moving every sodding ornament on the shelf. Nicky had done places like this before, money hid away in the most stupid places, obvious, inside vases, between the pages of Bibles, biscuit tins. Three hundred he’d found once, three hundred almost, pushed up the arse of this donkey, a present from Skegness.

Easing himself silently up onto the tiled sill, Nicky slipped his fingers over the top of the window and began to slide it down.

Seven

Nicky stood still long enough to let his eyes grow accustomed to the light. Table, chest of drawers, sideboard, mantelpiece, chairs-gradually, the details sharpened into place. Family photographs. He had already turned the key to unlock the back door and slipped back the bolts; he could be out of there in seconds if he had to. But he wasn’t going to have to. Wherever they were, the people who lived there-off on one of them geriatric coach trips or boring the balls off their relations-they weren’t here. Quiet as the sodding grave.

He would do this room first and then the front. No rush for a change, Nicky, take your time.

Brian Noble had followed the boy down into the trees.

He had driven past him twice, the boy standing in shadow at the edge of the street light’s fall, holding his cigarette down by his side, cupped inside his hand. Noble had parked the car on the nearest of the side streets, careful to push anything which might be stolen beneath the seats. One of the women had called out to him, asked him if he wanted a good time, but that wasn’t the kind of good time that interested him. He could get that at home.

The first time he walked on past, just slowing enough to judge the boy’s age-fourteen or fifteen, soft flesh still around those hard eyes. On the way back he spoke, stopped and asked him for a light.

“You don’t want a light,” the boy said.

“Don’t I?”

“Fifteen quid,” the boy said, not looking at the man directly, glancing back and forth along the street.

“What for?”

The boy showed him with an almost elegant gesture of the hand.

“Doesn’t that seem rather a lot?” Brian Noble asked.

“Suit yourself.”

Noble was gazing at the boy’s face, the dark hair that hung loosely across his forehead, the first beginnings of a mustache darkening along his upper lip. He imagined the pubic hair around the boy’s cock and felt himself grow hard.

“Suppose there are things I want to do to you?” Brian Noble asked.

“Cost you.”

“Of course.”

The boy stared at him now. “Well?”

Across the street a car, an Astra, dark blue, slowed almost to a halt and woman jumped out of the back seat before the car had come to a proper stop. “Wanker!” She stepped off the pavement, middle finger trust high into the air as the car accelerated away.

“I have a car,” Noble said.

“Fancy that.”

“We could go to it now, it wouldn’t take a minute.”

“No.” He didn’t know why, but he didn’t fancy it. “No,” the boy said. “Back here.”

Noble looked at the headlights from Gregory Boulevard, strung in perpetual motion through the trees. “It doesn’t look so very comfortable,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

The boy ground the nub end of his cigarette beneath his shoe and started to move away. Noble detained him with a hand, restraining yet gentle on the boy’s arm. “All right. Have it your way.”

“The money first.”

“What, here? Where everyone can see?”

“The money.”

Noble fingered fifteen pounds away from the fifty he had pushed down into his trouser pocket before leaving the car; his wallet he had locked for safety inside the glove compartment.