Easy Meat (42 page)
And when he had checked again with Elizabeth Peck’s neighbors, several claimed to have seen her, one or two of them, leaving the house in uniform, usually in the evenings, nurse’s uniform and arriving home early, between six and seven. Not regular, but quite a few times just the same. Khan checked with the hospitals, the nursing agencies in town. He was waiting for her when her car arrived back from East Midlands Airport, parked across the Street with a copy of Nancy Friday he’d borrowed from Jill’s bedside.
Women on Top.
He’d given up on Vikram Seth.
When Elizabeth Peck swung into the drive of the neo-Georgian house, on which she was still three mortgage payments in arrears, he walked across and offered to help her with her bags.
At first, she was dismissive, haughty, insistent on standing by rights she didn’t have; later, in the living room with its stone fireplace and fake leaded windows, she was penitent, sniffing back the tears. Khan gave her several clean tissues and waited for the sniveling to stop. Weighed down by debt, unable to sell the house, even had she wanted to, its current market price so far below what she had paid for it, she had been working as an agency nurse at the City Hospital, most often nights, when the pay was better and there was the greatest need. If her shifts at the local authority accommodation clashed, Paul Matthews covered for her, signed her in and out. On the night that Nicky Snape had hanged himself, she had been doing her second job out at the hospital and Matthews had been there alone.
“I don’t feel,” she told Khan, “any real guilt. I mean, whatever he did, he would have done whether I’d been there or not. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
At the station, Resnick went out of his way to compliment Khan on the way he had handled his side of the inquiry and assured him he would pass that on to Jack Skelton. Khan had tried to disguise his pleasure, without ever quite succeeding.
By then the story of what had happened to Divine, rumor and counter-rumor, had ricocheted around the station and Resnick and Millington had been chipping away at Shane’s belligerent stonewalling the best part of fourteen hours.
Off-duty, Carl Vincent had driven out to visit Divine in his side ward at the Queen’s and Divine had turned his back and closed his eyes and stayed like that even after Vincent had gone.
Then, on the second morning, when Resnick entered the interview room, Shane, as the result of a long discussion with his solicitor, began to tell them about what had happened to him when he had been taken into care as a boy. About the deputy head of the first children’s home he’d been in, who had given Shane cigarettes if he let him slip his hand up inside Shane’s short trousers, and a crisp new five-pound note if he would let him pull the trousers down.
“It wasn’t the same man?” Hannah asked.
“The same …”
“In charge. Of the place where Shane was abused. The same as the place where Nicky died?”
Resnick shook his head. “I’m afraid that would be too neat,” he said, and gave her a wry smile. “That sort of thing only happens in books. Not real life.”
What happened in real life was that those who had power all too frequently abused those who did not; and that those who were abused, abused others in turn. What happened was that many of those who grew up, for whatever reason, confused about their sexuality, often succeeded in damaging themselves and others, trying to live up to what they thought of as the norm. What happened in real life, Resnick thought, was all too often a helpless, bloody mess.
They were facing one another in Hannah’s bed, features just visible in the opaque light from the ceiling window. “Just so long as you stay till morning,” Hannah had said. “Six, at least.”
Now she said, “How do you deal with it? All of this awfulness.”
He sighed. “How do I? I went to see Norma Snape this afternoon, before I came round here. She had a friend with her and she’d been drinking, both of which were probably just as well. What else can she do?” He touched Hannah’s shoulder lightly with the back of his hand. “Seems Nicky’s dad—the one who came back out of the blue—he’s gone off again without a by-your-leave. She doesn’t know what’s hit her. Likely never will.” He kissed Hannah’s fingers when she brought them close against his face. “First Nicky and then Shane. How can she ever hope to understand?”
“All my pretty ones,” Hannah said.
“Mmm?”
“Nothing. A line from a play.” And then, “Do you? Do you understand?”
“Only that there’s nothing people won’t do to one another, if the circumstances are right. No dreadful thing.”
“Or wrong,” Hannah said. “Surely, if the circumstances are wrong?”
“Yes.” He reached his arm behind her, hand open across the curve of her back, and she eased herself towards him, face close to his face. “Yes, 1 suppose that’s what I mean.”
After a while she said, “If they’re right, if things are right, do you think, what we do to one another, it can be good?”
“Yes,” Resnick said, kissing her. “I do think that. I want to.” Hannah brushed her lips again against his mouth. “It’s what,” he said, “I want to believe.”
Before Peter had left he had written a letter to Sheena and left it on the pillow in her room; there had been nothing, not a message, a blind word for Norma herself. Tears so strong she had not clearly been able to see, Norma had ripped the letter again and again until all that had been left were little pieces, unreadable save for the odd word. “Love” and “home.” Norma had scooped the fragments up into her hands and carried them to the sink and burned them. Ashes by now.
Sheena had gone home when she’d heard about Shane, but she hadn’t stayed. Her mum bawling and scraighting and wanting to grab hold of her all the time, she couldn’t cope with it. It was too much. And besides, Rosa was there for her mum and she was her best friend, after all. She’d look after her, make sure it was all right.
Back at Diane’s, Dee-Dee had got some acid, ten quid for a small strip and Sheena was just in time for her share; the others were well away, with the baby crawling between them, nappy filled and nobody paying attention until he started to cry and then Diane pushed him at Sheena and told her to get him into the bathroom and sort him out and Sheena had giggled and done as she was told.
“And get a fuckin’ move on,” Dee-Dee had called. “We’re already late as it is.”
They were meeting Janie in town, near the bowling alley. Janie on speed or something when they got there, had to be, she was really manic the way she was carrying on and screaming. Sheena watched as she pushed her way past this bloke, not much older than her but wearing some uniform like he worked there, wasting his breath telling Janie she had to leave. But Janie had laughed in his face and then felt between his legs, just for the hell of it, to see what he’d do.
The bloke saying how if they didn’t leave he’d call the police and Janie grabbing hold of him and pointing at Sheena, saying, see her, her brother he just killed a fucking copper, so just you fucking watch out. And then leaving anyway, ’cause he’d run off into the office, probably pissed his pants.
Diane shouting from the burger bar, “Wait! Hang on a fuckin’ minute. I ’in’t got my chips yet.”
But Janie didn’t care and they pushed their way outside and went off down the street, arms linked, blocking the pavement, singing this stupid song at the tops of their voices.
Then there was this guy, just this old guy, Sheena saw him first, weaving across the road towards them, drunk, right up to Janie, big smile all over his face, singing along even though his was a completely different bloody song. “Come on, sweetheart! You and me, eh? You and me.”
And this drunken old bastard, must have been forty or fifty years old, pulls up his shirt and starts rubbing his chest all up against Janie. “Come on, sweetheart, you an’ me.” Which is when Janie pulls out this screwdriver she’s got inside her jacket, just a screwdriver, broken off halfway down the blade and sharpened to a sort of point, and she sticks it in this drunk’s disgusting fat belly, right above the buckle of his belt, and he falls there, down on his knees, this thing sticking out of him, almost to the hilt, and Janie, she’s laughing, pointing, and the rest of the girls, most of them, are running.
Diane is standing there outside the bowling alley, chips falling between her fingers, watching Dee-Dee trying to pull Sheena away. “Come on, for Christ sake, girl! You mad? Let’s get out of here.”
Sheena staring at the blood beginning to swell up around the man’s white belly, fascinated, and Janie, out of her head beside him, laughing.
“Come on, girl! Move it!”
Running then, leaving Janie to face the music, the first sounds of a police car approaching at speed along Canal Street and Sheena, as she allowed herself to be dragged away, turning now and stumbling, looking back and thinking, awesome, truly awesome. I mean, absolutely fucking brilliant! Brilliant, right?
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The lines from “Tami Jane Tells Him What Has Been On Her Mind For a Long Time” by Albert Baker reprinted here in Chapter Sixteen are taken from
The Sound of Wings
(Slow Dancer Press: London, 1995)
copyright © 1996 by John Harvey
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