Easy Meat

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.”

“And that was Paul …”

“Paul Matthews, yes.” Jardine’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, chest pressing the edge of the desk. “Inspector, you do appreciate we shall be carrying out a full internal inquiry. I’ve discussed this already with the Director of Social Services. In the meantime, I must ask you not to question any of my staff unless either myself or a solicitor is present.” He settled back into the curve of his chair. “I have no doubt whatsoever, the inquiry will establish that, as far as we are concerned, correct procedures were followed.”

If the correct procedures had been followed, Resnick thought, then maybe a boy wouldn’t be lying out there dead. He said nothing, but jardine read the accusation, unmistakable in Resnick’s eyes.

“Nicky’s mother,” Resnick said, “she has been informed?”

When Resnick left the building less than ten minutes later, it was with a sense of relief. Graham Millington had arrived moments earlier and met Resnick outside, a few crumbs of toast still caught in his mustache. Easy to imagine Madeleine sitting her husband down at the kitchen table: “Graham, you’re not going off at this hour without something inside you. You know how your stomach plays you up when you do.”

“Straightforward enough, then?” Millington said, apprized of the details.

“Who knows, Graham? The lad’s dead, no two ways about that, but how and why …?”

“Topped himself, though, didn’t he? I mean, it was suicide?”

Resnick sighed. “That seems the most likely-at present.”

Millington looked back at him quizzically, eyebrow raised. “You’ve no reason to suppose …”

“No reason, Graham, to suppose a thing. But there’s a social worker in there, Matthews, ready to come apart at the seams. And the director, Jardine, getting the hatches battened down like he was in a time of siege.”

“Or cholera,” Millington said quietly.

“Sorry, Graham?”

“It’s a book the wife was reading …”

“I dare say, Graham. Anyway, stick around, keep Scene of Crime on their toes. Soon as they’re through, you can release the lad’s body to the hospital. Oh, and Graham, so you know, Jardine gave me the benefit of a lecture, no talking to the staff without his say-so.”

“And without a social services solicitor to hold their hand.”

“Most likely.”

“Ah, well,” Millington grinned ruefully, “do what we can, eh?”

“By the book, Graham. If there is anything amiss here, we’ll not want to let it slip away.”

Millington nodded and walked towards the entrance. The morning air was cold and the sky was an almost unbroken gray. Whatever had happened to spring, Resnick thought? At the end of the drive, he looked back towards the tall windows and saw the faces staring down.