Easy Meat (9 page)

Resnick got out of his own car and moved to intercept her.

“Hannah Campbell?”

With a slight jump, she turned.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s all right.” She was trying to place him—one of the parents, another teacher she had met somewhere at a conference and forgotten?

“Charlie Resnick. Detective inspector, CID.” He held up his identification for her to see.

“My,” she said, eyes widening. “I
am
going up in the world. Last time it was only a—what do you call them?”

“Detective constable. DC.”

“An odd sort of a name …”

“Divine.”

Hannah smiled. “He should have gone to ecclesiastical college, become a priest.”

Resnick grinned at the thought and she saw something in his eyes that had not been there before.

He watched her place the briefcase on top of the car and turn back to face him. With the light as it was, he thought he could see traces of red, faint in the brown of her hair.

“Don’t tell me you’ve recovered my purse?”

“Not exactly.”

“Just the money and the credit cards.”

“I wish I could say we had.”

Hannah smiled. It had been a long day and the extra session she’d just had should have left her exhausted but instead it had picked her up, renewed her energy. And here was this shaggy man, hair askew, fawn trousers too baggy, brown jacket unbuttoned or it would have been too tight. She couldn’t decide if the top button of his shirt were missing, or if, shielded by the knot of his tie, it were simply undone.

“So what is it?” Hannah asked. She liked the way his eyes stayed focused on her instead of wandering off as so many people’s did. It gave the impression he was honest and she wondered if that were true.

Resnick took her library card from his wallet.

“Where did you find that?” she asked.

He told her, light on the details of the injuries the Netherfields had suffered, but making sure she understood the seriousness of what had happened. The skin prickled at the back of her neck when he mentioned Nicky Snape. When he had finished, she stood a while saying nothing, fiddling with a tissue, blowing her nose.

“When you spoke to DC Divine,” Resnick said, “you said you thought it was Nicky Snape who stole your purse.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Somehow, absurdly, Hannah wished that she had not.

“When we brought Nicky in, he had some money on him, though not a lot. As yet it’s unclear where he got it from. No sign of your credit cards, I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay. It’s not exactly important, is it? I mean, not after what’s happened.” She looked at him. “I don’t see why you’re bothering with this at all.”

“The card, if he did take it from you, if it was in your purse that morning, well, it places him there, in the house.”

“I see.”

“And it would have been in your purse?”

Hannah nodded, yes.

“As it turns out, it likely isn’t crucial. There’s other evidence enough.”

Hannah looked away from Resnick towards the Boulevard and saw men walking their dogs on the sparse green of the Forest, the slow blur of cars. “Of course I knew he was always bunking off school, getting into trouble, but this …” She turned back to face him. “It’s difficult to believe.”

“Yes,” Resnick said. “I know what you mean.”

“But you don’t?”

He gave a slow shake of the head. “No, in a way I think I do. It’s not the kind of thing I’d’ve reckoned him for at all.”

“You don’t think it could have been somebody else? I mean, with him?”

“That’s not what he’s saying.”

“I see.”

Below them, homecoming traffic was slowing to a crawl. “I should be going,” Hannah said.

“Me, too.”

Neither one moved.

“What will happen to him?” Hannah asked. “Now, I mean?”

“Oh, most likely he’ll be taken into local authority care. Secure accommodation somewhere. Until the trial.”

“And then?”

Resnick shook his head and stepped away.

Hannah’s keys were in her hand. “Be seeing you.” It was one of those things you said; it didn’t mean anything.

“Yes,” Resnick said.

From the window of her car she watched him, shoulders more hunched than they should be, head a little bowed. She sat a moment longer, wondering without reason if he might turn back, find something more to say. When he didn’t, she turned the key in the ignition, backed the car round, and headed down to join the traffic. She had one final glimpse of Resnick as he drove off in the opposite direction. That young detective, she thought, so full of himself, the one who had almost asked her out—why was it never the ones to whom you might have said yes?

The investigation went pretty much as Resnick had anticipated; Hannah read the reports in the newspaper the next day, though for legal reasons Nicky’s name was omitted. Nicky was remanded into the care of the local authority awaiting trial. Hannah got on with her teaching, poems and book reports,
Break Point, What About It, Sharon?
, and
Macbeth.
For Resnick, other things came pressing in, the way things do. A suspected arson attack on a cafe specializing in Caribbean food; a youth of thirteen who stole a delivery van and drove it into a bus queue, leaving one person dead and four more seriously injured; one doctor who was accused of illegally prescribing drugs, another of procuring an illegal abortion; a gang of teenage girls rampaging through the underpasses around the city center, mugging two women and a twenty-seven-year-old man. A little shy of six in the morning, a Sunday, Resnick had a call from the social services emergency duty team: Nicky Snape had been found hanging from the shower in the children’s home where he was being held.

Twelve

The building was separated from the road by a parade of tightly packed firs. Its brick-and-concrete fascia and high barred windows told of decades of institutional use: children’s home, assessment center, now secure accommodation that was less than secure. There were plans to sell it into private hands; a certain amount of modification and a coat or two of paint and it would make a perfect old people’s home. Resnick recognized the police surgeon’s car at the curb; the ambulance was parked on the curve of the drive, tight to the front door. He rang the bell. Six thirty: out of the east the sky leaked a stubborn light.

The door was opened by a man in his early thirties, slightly built with thinning hair. “Paul Matthews, I …” He glanced at Resnick’s identification and stepped away. “Mr. Jardine’s busy with the Director of Social Services, on the phone, er … he asked me to show you where … where it happened and then he would like to talk to you later. Before you go.”

Resnick stepped onto the worn parquet flooring of the hall. The death of a minor in custody: he thought it would be a long time before he—he and those officers who came after him—would be taking their leave.

“It’s the bathroom on the second floor.”

Resnick nodded and followed him towards the stairs. Voices echoed faintly, back and forth along cold corridors; the interior smelled of disinfectant and waste. Several yards short of the bath-room, Matthews stopped and stared at the floor.

In the moment before he went inside, Resnick had an image, clear and defined, of what he would see. For neither the first time nor the last. He turned the rounded handle and went in.

Nicky Snape lay on a sheet of thick polyethylene, which had been doubled beneath him on the bathroom floor. He was naked to the waist and his soiled pajamas had been lowered below his buttocks to midway down his thighs. Across the cage of his ribs and taut between his hips, his skin stretched opaque and milky white. The bruising at his neck and underneath his chin had already darkened to a color that was neither black nor purple. Old burn marks stood out kidney red in the bright overhead light. In death his face was that of a child.

“Charlie.”

Resnick heard the police surgeon’s voice, but continued to stare. So small and broken there.

“Asphyxiation, Charlie. Dead, what? Couple of hours, hour and a half.” Parkinson offered Resnick a mint and when the inspector refused, popped one into his own mouth. “You see the way the lips have turned that shade of blue? And there, the nail beds of the hand.”

Bending, Resnick saw the skin around the fingers chewed raw, nails bitten down to the quick.

“There was a towel by the body, wet and twisted tight. What he used, Charlie, most like.”

Resnick could see it, coiled against the edge of the shower stall, white with a faint blue stripe.

“Your boys’ll find fibers a-plenty, like as not.” The mint cracked between the surgeon’s teeth.

“You didn’t take him down?” Resnick asked.

Parkinson shook his head. “He was propped up against the wall there, back against the tiles. Staff, I suppose.”

Resnick squatted close to the body, wondering if, when he’d been discovered, Nicky’s eyes had already been closed. An illusion he allowed himself for a moment, if he stayed there close the boy would wake.

“What was he, Charlie?” Parkinson asked, fidgeting things back into his case. “Sixteen?”

“Not that.”

Not ever, Resnick thought. He rose to his feet. Millington would be here soon, roused from his blissful bed, and then Scene of Crime, bemoaning the disruption of their Sunday, even as they counted the overtime. Others, too. Senior social workers in once-good suits engaged in damage limitation, anxious to offload the blame.

“Nasty burn marks,” Parkinson observed. “Not above a year old. Caught in a fire or some such, I suppose.”

“Fire bomb,” Resnick said. “A little surprise as he was walking home. Local vigilantes out to teach him a lesson.”

“Tearaway, then, was he?”

“Fond of what wasn’t properly his own.”

“Well,” Parkinson said, snapping the case shut, “not so different from the rest of us there. But now, if you’ll allow me, no excuse for not getting on the green bright and early this morning, at least.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“You don’t play, do you, Charlie?” The surgeon voiced it as a matter of regret.

Resnick shook his head.

“Ah, well. I’ll give Jack Skelton your regards.”

Paul Matthews was waiting in the corridor. “Mr. Jardine—if you’re ready, I’ll show you the way to his office.” Resnick looked at him carefully; understood that it was more than tiredness lining his eyes.

“You were the one that found him,” Resnick said.

Matthews flinched and looked away.

“What time was that?”

“Five, it would’ve been … not long after five.”

“You were the member of staff on duty?”

“Yes.”

“Just you?”

“No, my colleague, Elizabeth, she … It was routine, you see, I was just checking the bathroom. Routine.” His words were beginning to collide again, haphazard; at his sides, his hands were never still. “As soon as I went in there I could see, Nicky, I mean, I could see what had happened, what he’d done. The towel, he’d fastened it around the pipe to the shower. Behind the … behind the rose … he …”

“It’s all right, take your time.”

“I could see the way his neck was twisted off to one side …”

“Yes.”

“… and he’d, you know, messed himself. I mean, I could tell that he was dead, Nicky, dead already. It was too late. There was nothing I could do.”

“You took him down?”

“Not right away. I …”

“But you checked for vital signs?”

Matthews’s eyes were birds trapped in the space of Resnick’s gaze. “I didn’t know what to do. Whether I should touch him or not, I wasn’t sure. Elizabeth, she was … I said, she was on duty with me. I ran for help.”

Resnick struggled to keep his temper, keep the incredulity out of his voice. “You left him hanging? Without establishing that he was dead?”

Matthews scratched hard at the side of his face. “Yes, I mean, no, not for long. Just till …” He looked at Resnick imploringly. “He was already dead. He was.”

“You phoned the emergency services?”

“Yes.”

“You and not your colleague, Elizabeth.”

“I’m not … I’m not… It might have been Elizabeth, I’m not sure.”

Resnick steadied him with a hand on his arm. “All right. We’ll talk some other time. You can make a statement to one of my officers later. Now let’s not keep your Mr. Jardine waiting any longer.”

Hand on the banister, Matthews pulled in air gratefully, gathering himself together before leading the way.

The name had been written in black copperplate on white card—DEREK JARDINE—and slipped into the brass frame attached to the oak-finish door, more letters after it than in the name itself. The sound was hollow when Resnick knocked.

“Inspector.” Jardine raised himself from his chair to shake Resnick’s hand. “Please, take a seat.”

Beneath the curtained window and along one wall, shelves stood thick with books on social work and young offenders, bound copies of professional journals and reports. A write-on, wipe-off calendar bearing staff names and duties was fixed to the other side wall; beside it, without apparent pattern, an array of photographs; the youngsters, Resnick assumed, who had passed through Jardine’s hands. On top of the gray filing cabinet close by the director’s desk, framed by a browning ivy and a spider plant that had known better days, was a photograph of jardine himself in cap and gown, receiving an academic scroll.

Thirty years on, the face was more fleshy, thin lines had appeared, crisscrossing the nose and cheeks, blue like Roquefort cheese. Dark hair, graying at the temples, was receding; small flakes of dandruff decorated the shoulders of his dark-blue suit.

“Of course, this is terrible,” Jardine was saying and Resnick nodded, waiting for the second “terrible” to follow, which it predictably did.

“A young boy.”

“Yes.”

“A tragedy.”

He could be, Resnick thought, rehearsing the vicar’s empty speech. “Last night, this morning, when the incident occurred—you weren’t on the premises?” He hadn’t intended it to sound hostile, but from Jardine’s expression he could see that it had.

“I can’t be here all of the time, Inspector.”

“No, of course. I didn’t mean …”

“I left, in fact, quite late. Nine thirty or ten. My staff contacted me at home this morning when the … when Nicky’s body was discovered.”