Easy Meat (37 page)

Khan smiled. “Pretty much what you’d expect: the alleged incidents, which in any case were unsubstantiated, would have taken place before he was appointed; since he’d been in charge, there was a more open regime, staff and boys were encouraged to air their grievances in public.” Khan paused to read from his notes. “‘I give my word that no child under my care need ever have anything to fear.’ Interview with the
Leicester Mercury
, 1989.”

Resnick rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. “Maybe he should’ve tried telling that to Nicky Snape.”

Khan closed the folder, reversed it, and set it on the desk.

“All right, let’s have another go at Matthews. See if he’s any more willing to talk. Chances are he’s still down in Wales, but best check.”

“Sir, I wonder …”

“Yes? What is it?”

“Well, it’s just … I think if I went back to him too soon, pushed him again, all that would happen, he’d clam up even more. It might even be enough to drive him over the edge.”

“What are you saying, then? That we should leave well alone?”

“No. Just give him some more time. Even if it’s only a day or two. if we let him stew in it a little, he might even come to us.”

“To you.”

“Yes.”

Resnick sighed. Not so many hours earlier he had been making a similar request to Skelton, asking a superior officer to trust his judgment.

“Okay, forty-eight hours. Meantime plug the holes in this report. Let’s make sure if we need to use it, it’s watertight.”

Gerry Hovenden had found out that Shane had been taken in for questioning, but not that he had been released. After several hours of sitting around worrying himself half-sick, he had decided to seek out Frankie Miller and get some advice. Frank Miller, the kind of man that some people turned to when they were in a fix.

Miller worked security in the clubs, pubs; squeezed himself into a cheap dinner-jacket or a shiny fake-satin jump suit with a matte black headset crammed down onto his head like a crown of thorns and he was in business. Smiling face, raised hand—not now, sunshine, looking like that, no way, try the place down the street, patience, let’s have a little patience and an orderly line. Quite often they’d look at Frank—not so tall, more than a little overweight, out of condition, had to be pushing thirty—and think, you fat bastard, you’re not going to tell me what to do, where I can go, no way. Frank loved that. Kids giving him some mouth, showing off for the scrawny tarts they’d have up against some back wall later, a quick shag before a late-night curry and the long walk home. He loved the look on their sweaty faces when they finally gave him a push, threw a punch, and he didn’t give ground. Frank smiling before he started punching back.

Once in a while, he had to admit, things would get a little out of hand; when they did, whoever was in charge—no hard feelings, Frankie, eh?—they’d have to let him go. No sweat. There was always another pub, another door, another Saturday night. And if not … well, there were other things. Mate of a mate needing a bit of muscle, friend of a friend. He had this arrangement with a bloke who lent out money, you know, when the talking bank wasn’t talking no more, council suing for rent arrears and the bailiffs on their way in. Of course the interest was high, what did they think this was? Social fucking security or what? Frank had a way of making sure the debt was paid; or, if not, ensuring folk saw the error of their ways.

Frank Miller? Bit rough, but underneath it all, decent enough. Tell you what, any trouble, he’s the one I’d want alongside. Frankie. Good bloke, really, good bloke.

Frank was in his local pub in Heanor, not hurrying his last pint, when Gerry Hovenden came in wearing leathers, helmet in his hand.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Miller asked. “Look like the rats’ve had your balls for breakfast and now they’re startin’ on the rest.”

“It’s Shane,” Hovenden said, short of breath, near to knocking an empty glass from the table as he sat down.

“What about him?”

“The law, they’ve got him. Picked him up this afternoon.”

“What the fuck for?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, have I?”

“Then calm down. May not be anything at all. You know what coppers are like. Shane, he’s done time, right? They’ll have him in for nothing at all.”

“I know, but …”

Frank Miller’s hand clamped itself round Hovenden’s thigh, squeezing at the muscle behind the knee. “He won’t talk, your mate Shane. And if he does, without dumping himself in the shit, what can he say?”

Hovenden blinked, catching his breath, trying not to notice the pain in his leg, Miller’s thumb weeviling away against the bone.

“Trust him, don’t you?”

“Yeh, yes, yeh, of course.”

Miller released his grip and tapped Hovenden on the arm, a couple of times playfully with his fist. “Nothing to worry about, eh, then?” He lifted his pint. “I’d get you one in, only they called last orders a while back. ‘Sides, drinkin’ and driving. Don’t want you coming off that bike of yours. Loss to the human race, Gerry, you taking a tumble round Cotmanhey and fetching up in the Erewash Canal.”

Resnick hadn’t forgotten Hannah’s message: he thought he’d make himself a sandwich first and then give her a call. Indoors long enough to prize Pepper out of the vegetable steamer in which the cat had contrived to get stuck, he reversed the order and she was engaged. Oh, well. Lollo rosso, cucumber, watercress; goat cheese; a tin of anchovies which he opened, pouring off some of the oil, and then mashed the contents into a thick paste with black pepper and some dried basil; the last few pieces of sun-dried tomato fished from the jar and cut into strips. Johnny Hartman drifting through from the other room, Howard McGhee on trumpet. His friend Ben Riley had sent it out of the blue from New York.
Charlie, down here on a visit. Got myself conned into seeing the new Eastwood movie and actually liked it. Well, almost. Anyway, this guy sings all over thes oundtrack and I thought you might like him. Always assuming your technology is up to it. Your friend, Ben.
Ben, sounding more acclimatized with every postcard, every year. And now, Resnick’s technology was fine.

He cut bread, covered it with lettuce and the other salad things, spread over that the anchovy rnixture and sun-dried tomato, finishing up with thin circles of cheese.

While he was waiting for the grill to warm, he went back to the phone: still engaged. At the last minute he dribbled thick, green olive oil across both slices of bread and, licking his fingers clean, opened a bottle of Old Speckled Hen out of the fridge.

Johnny Hartman, deep-voiced: “They Didn’t Believe Me.”

This time when he tried the phone it rang and rang and rang.

Why couldn’t he see Shane Snape joining in with a bunch of yobs for whom queer-bashing was a legitimate sport? Trying not to get too much of his supper over the front of his shirt, he broke off a corner of crust, scraped it through the anchovy paste, and offered it to a mewing Bud. One of those coincidences: as the track ended, the telephone rang. Hannah, Resnick thought, reaching round for the receiver; Hannah calling him. Or else it could be Lynn.

It was neither. “Sir?” Carl Vincent’s voice, as recognizable to him already as the regular members of the team. “Sir, I think you’d best come in.”

The man sitting in Resnick’s office was forty-two or -three; his hair was medium brown; quite thick, slightly long at the back and in need of a trim, perhaps, where it was beginning to curl around his ears. He had a neat beard, tight to the jaw line; spectacles without rims. He was wearing what seemed to be a good suit, navy blue, one narrow stripe of a darker blue alongside one of gray. The knot of his tie was precise and unfashionably small.

“This is Mr. Cheshire,” Vincent said, standing between Resnick and the door.

Resnick nodded and when Cheshire offered his hand, Resnick shook it, observing the slight tremor, the patchiness of sweat.

Resnick moved behind his desk and sat down; motioning for Vincent to close the door and do the same.

“Why don’t you tell the inspector,” Vincent said, “just what you told me?” And then, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

Cheshire’s accent was regulation, well-educated, whatever local variation might once have been present was now almost totally submerged. “Ever since I read the story in the newspaper,” Cheshire said, “the man who was attacked in the Recreation Ground, I’ve been considering coming to see you. You see, I couldn’t be certain, positive that it was the correct thing to do.”

“If you’ve got information for us, Mr. Cheshire, anything that might help us with what happened …”

“No. No, you see …” A nervous glance round towards Vincent, who nodded encouragingly. “It isn’t about that, at least not directly.”

“Go on.”

“Several months ago, six, six to be exact, six months and seven days, I was attacked by a man on the Promenade alongside the park, the same park.” Cheshire removed his glasses from his face and rested his head forward at an angle into the palm of his hand. “I was … I was struck to the ground and almost throttled from behind. I was threatened with what would happen to me if I screamed … and then I was forcedly … I was raped, Inspector, that’s what happened. Six months, a little more than six months ago.”

It was quiet in the room, just the breathing of three men above the barely audible electric hum.

“This incident,” Resnick said, “you didn’t report it at the time?”

Cheshire shook his head.

“Not your doctor, hospital …?”

“No.”

“Did you tell anyone about this at all?”

“No, I did not.”

“It’s okay,” Vincent said reassuringly.

“I feel as if I’m being accused here.”

“No,” Vincent said, glancing across at Resnick.

“No, Mr. Cheshire,” Resnick said. “I assure you, that’s not the case at all.”

“Because if I hadn’t thought this important, I would never have come forward at all.”

Resnick nodded. “We understand that.” And then, “And the reason you’ve come forward now, you think there might be a comparison between the two attacks …?”

“Well, yes.”

“A possibility they might have been carried out by the same man?”

“Yes, of course. I mean, it has to be likely, doesn’t it, after all?”

“There’s something I have to ask you, Mr. Cheshire,” said Resnick, leaning slightly forward, hands loosely joined. “When you were in the Recreation Ground that evening, had you gone there with the possibility in mind that you might meet someone, for the purposes of sex?”

“Look, I’m sorry …” Cheshire was on his feet and turned towards the door, Vincent half out of his chair to intercept him.

“Mr. Cheshire,” Resnick said. “Mr. Cheshire, please sit down.”

Cheshire took a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and wiped at his face, cleared his nose, turning back to face Resnick. “I’m sorry.” He resumed his seat. “And yes, your assumption, as to my reasons for being there that night, they are correct.”

“And this wasn’t the first or only time you had been there in similar circumstances?”

A slow shake of the head.

“Are you married, Mr. Cheshire?”

He glanced towards the third finger of his left hand, the indentation gone now but the skin where the ring had fitted still a touch paler than the rest. “Not any more.”

“Your job?”

“I work for an investment company, pensions and loans.”

“And this side of your life, no one else knows?”

Avoiding Resnick’s eyes. “That’s correct.”

“The person who attacked you,” Resnick asked, “can you describe him?”

Cheshire shook his head.

“Not in any way at all?”

The silence was long. “He was strong,” Cheshire finally said. “Very strong. I thought, of course there is no way to be sure, but I thought he might have been under the influence of drugs.”

“Because?”

“His strength seemed so unnatural, and his anger. I think—I thought—he wanted to kill me. That was what he really wanted to do. And instead he … he … he tried to cause me all the pain he could.”

Cheshire’s glasses fell from his hand and he cried. Fingers meshed across his face, he cried. After some moments, Vincent went over and stood close beside him, resting a hand across his shoulders. Only when Cheshire had begun to recover himself did Vincent move away to his own chair and sit back down. Resnick fetched a glass of water and Cheshire sipped at it, then gulped, choked a little, thanked him, wiped at his glasses with his damp handkerchief, set them back on, took them off again.

“There’s one more thing,” Vincent said quietly, “I wonder if I could ask you, about what happened.”

Cheshire nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Penetration, when it took place …”

“A bottle,” Cheshire said, eyes clenched shut, remembering. “He used a bottle and then smashed it on the railings when he was through.”

Forty-three

If Hannah had woken earlier than usual that morning, and looked out from her upstairs window, she would have seen several men in overalls down on their hands and knees among the bushes which grew along the railings separating the Recreation Ground from the Promenade. She would have wondered exactly what, with their reinforced gloves and careful manner, they were looking for.

Up early himself, scarcely able to sleep, Resnick had driven out there and stood, hands in pockets, while the officers were making their search. He was present when one of the men, triumphantly, uncovered one section of bottle, a piece broken away from near its mouth and now wedged full of something dark, excrement or earth or both. Inside a curved oval of glass, there were dried streaks of what was almost certainly blood.

Just to contemplate what had happened, how these things could have come to pass, was enough to make Resnick drive the ends of his fingers hard into the palms of his hands.
He used a bottle and then smashed it on the railings when he was through.
Who, Resnick wondered, did the person who could perform such an act hate most, his victim or himself? Who was suffering the most pain?

He walked down towards the small row of terraced houses nearest to the church. No lights showed on the ground floor of Hannah’s house; one only, burning high towards the roof. He thought of knocking, but knew he would be waking her for nothing; there was precious little time for anything approaching conversation and there was nothing he might say at that moment that he could imagine her wanting to hear.