Easy Meat

Thirty-three

The day was sharp and clear, the sky an almost unbroken blue. They walked along the upper path through the cemetery, close by the red brick wall that separated it from the road. Stone angels stared back at them, empty-eyed. Also Flora, aged four months. Agnes Hilda Jane, wife of the above. Suffer the little children. Gone to a better place. Below them, among a maze of smaller headstones and carefully carved epitaphs, the ground leveled out, before rising again with the trees and shrubs of the Arboretum.

Resnick had brought sandwiches from the deli and slices of rich pecan pie; in her bag Hannah had orange juice, pots of blueberry yogurt, paper napkins, plastic spoons: the arrangement they had made.

“You know the best places to take a girl, Charlie. I’ll say that for you.”

Resnick checked, but she was smiling, that crease that he was getting used to, quite pronounced, at the right side of her mouth.

“Do you want to sit down?”

Hannah looked at her watch. “Let’s walk a little farther. Are you okay for time?”

“Fine.”

They went through the gate and across Waverley Street, up between the aviary and the small pond with its low, curved railings, climbing the path that wound towards the bandstand, the borders rich with late spring flowers, purple and gold.

Hannah expressed her approval at the sandwiches, nothing too idiosyncratic, smoked turkey breast with cranberry, egg mayonnaise with cress. Resnick, panicking at the last moment that she might be a vegetarian, had thought this way, at least, they could have one each. But Hannah bit heartily into her half of the turkey sandwich and Resnick contrived, more through luck than judgment, to trap a sudden squish of egg on the back of his hand before it landed on his shirt. He thought he might allow her to take the second yogurt back for her tea.

“These are good,” Hannah said.

Lower down the slope, three Asian men in shirtsleeves had spread a newspaper on the grass and were using it as a surface on which to play cards. Mouth full, Resnick nodded agreement.

“D’you always eat this well?”

“If this is well, yes. I suppose so.”

Hannah pushed a straw down into the carton of orange. “I suppose 1 think of policemen as eating chips with everything. Or late-night curries, you know, the kind where, no matter what it is, it always tastes the same.”

Recognizing the description, Resnick smiled. “There’s a lot of that, too. Sometimes. It depends.”

Swiveling on the bench, she looked at him. “One thing you don’t do, Charlie, is take rejection very well.”

He blinked. “You mean last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who does? Who would? I just wanted to see you, that was all.”

With a slow shake of the head, Hannah said, “Charlie, you were feeling down. I don’t know why …”

“I …”

“And it doesn’t matter, I don’t need to know. But there you were, on your own, feeling low, and you picked up the phone. Let’s call Hannah, she’ll make me feel better, take me out of myself for a few hours. Wasn’t that it? Something like that, at least.”

Resnick put the uneaten piece of sandwich back down on the bench, appetite lost in the guilty truth of what she had said. “I didn’t think … I mean, is that so wrong?”

Lightly, briefly, she touched his hand, the back of his wrist. “I’m not a comfort station, Charlie. That’s not what I want to be. Waiting around for you to phone so that I can be pressed into service, relieving the stresses and strains of a difficult day.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said and she thought he believed it.

“The other evening, the last time I saw you, you asked-I think you were going to ask-what was happening. Between us. And 1 stopped you; it didn’t seem the right time. And I said the one thing I didn’t want to happen, that we get into that pattern where all you have to do is call and whenever you came round we ended up in bed.”

“But that’s not …”

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Oh, Charlie.” Hannah looked away towards the rose garden on the other side of the hill, the blackened cannons dragged back from the Crimea. Part of Resnick telling him, okay, stop it now, you don’t need this, get up and walk away.

“I don’t know,” Hannah said, turning back to face him, reading the concern in his eyes, “if this is going to come to anything. But I’ve got baggage, Charlie, the same as you.” She smiled, almost a grin. “Maybe not quite as much. But I’m being careful here. I know it may not always seem so, but I am. Cautious, in my way. And one thing I’m not prepared to do is become a tidy little corner of your life. The place where you go to get rid of a little passion, whatever’s extra, whatever you can’t somehow soak up in the rest of your day.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if that makes any sense; I don’t know if I’ve made that clear.”

He touched her then, high on her shoulder, his littlest finger resting against her neck; the other fingers then, circling softly against the skin. She had smooth skin.

Hannah waited for him to say something, make some response, but he didn’t speak. “So what do you want to do, Charlie?” she asked.

“You mean now?”

Grinning. “No, not now.”

“Well, I suppose that depends, you know, on you.”

“God, Charlie!”

“All right, I want to carry on seeing you. I want … I’d like to find a way, something you feel comfortable with …”

“You don’t want to hide me away?”

“No.”

“Your little bit on the side?”

A shake of the head, emphatic. “No.”

“Good. Dinner, then. Friday night.”

“All right. Where …?”

But Hannah was already collecting together her things, brushing crumbs from her lap, getting ready to go. “You decide. Call me and tell me where you want to meet. Okay?”

“Yes, yes. Of course, that’s fine.”

“This yogurt,” Hannah said, holding it towards him. “Do you want it or not?”

“Probably not.”

With a small gesture of acceptance she dropped it down in her bag. “That sandwich, though, you’re not leaving that?”

“I’ll eat it on the way back.”

“You’ll get it all down yourself.”

“Look,” Resnick said, smiling. “Mothering. That’s another habit we could do without. Where I’m concerned, at least.”

Khan was waiting in the CID room when Resnick returned, head stuck into a copy of the Daily Mail. Naylor was talking into the telephone, close to the far wall. As soon as he saw Resnick, Khan hastily folded the newspaper and set it aside. “Elizabeth Peck, sir. Booked herself a holiday through American Express. One of those late-availability deals. Two-city trip to Spain, Barcelona and Madrid.”

“Good. Oughtn’t to be too difficult to track her down.”

Khan frowned. “That’s the problem, I’m afraid. The agency were quite good, put me in touch with the hotel, the place she’s meant to be saying in Madrid.”

At the “meant to be,” Resnick’s heart sank.

“She flew out, right enough, checked in. Signed up for a coach trip the first day, some kind of orientation thing, but after that it seems as if she’s disappeared.”

“And the travel company, they’ve reported this to the local police or whatever?”

Khan shook his head. “Apparently they’re not too concerned. She left a note for the tour guide, saying she had no complaints about what was happening, it simply wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She was going to go off, spend the rest of the week on her own.”

“Checked out of the hotel?”

“That afternoon.”

“Which means she could be anywhere.”

“Do you think we should contact the Madrid police, sir? Interpol, perhaps?”

Giving himself room to think, Resnick walked slowly over to where the kettle was standing, lifted it to test the weight, make sure there was water enough, then set it to boil. “I think what we’ll do is send you down to Rhossili Bay after all.” There was a faint ring as, along the room, Naylor set down the phone. “Kevin can go with you. Dig out Paul Matthews, see what he’s got to say about Elizabeth Peck, why she might have wanted to talk so urgently to Aston. Leave now, you can be down there for this evening. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Khan had promised he would go with Jill to the Cookie Club, but he would find a way of making it up to her. Besides, they’d been going together long enough now for her to get used to the fact that with a job like his, plans sometimes had to be changed, last minute.

“Kevin,” Resnick said, “how’s your Welsh?”

Divine bounded up the stairs like an oversized Rottweiler with his eyes on the back of an intruder’s bare and fleshy thigh. So intent was he on finding Resnick that he cannoned into a hazy-looking Millington, doing his level best to remember what it was Madeleine had told him not to come home without buying.

“Hey up, youth!” the sergeant exclaimed, spun half around and rubbing his arm. “What’s got up your backside all of a sudden?”

“The boss,” Divine gasped. “He still around?”

“Off to see DI Woolmer, Special Branch. Only this minute left. Might catch him in car-park if you’re sharp.”

Divine didn’t need any second urging. Back down the stairs three and four at a time, he was through the front entrance and waving both arms as Resnick indicated right to pull out onto Derby Road.

“Won the lottery, Mark?” Resnick asked, lowering his window.

“It’s the cassette, boss. The one as was found on the Embankment, near Aston’s body.”

“Music, isn’t it? Heavy metal, isn’t that what you said?”

Divine was still fighting to get back his breath. “Aye, well, sent it off to one of our tame boffins just in case. What he’s found, recorded over, but none too well, are bits of talking, speech like. This bloke going on about an Englishman’s birthright, white power’n crap like that.”

“Well,” Resnick said, a wry smile on his lips, “I’m glad you think it’s all crap, Mark. Here, you’d best jump in.”

Chesney Woolmer was the inspector in charge of the local Special Branch team, two sergeants and a dozen officers under him. Affable, if a little offhand, a portly man with receding hair, he listened to the cleaned-up version of the tape, some fifteen minutes of blinkered ranting which culminated in some ragged cheering and an even more motley version of “God Save the Queen.”

“Her Majesty,” Woolmer suggested, “would be shocked and surprised if she knew the amount of odious bollocks that went on in her name.”

Resnick asked him if he recognized the voice.

“Not right off. Besides, the quality leaves a lot to be desired. But if you’re happy to leave it with me, I’ll get some of my lads to have a listen. Compare it to what we’ve got.”

“And there’s no way of telling where it might have been recorded?”

Woolmer shook his head. “Some bloke with his own little tape machine, some BNP rally or other. Could be local, but who’s to say? Fairly innocuous by their standards, too.”

“We’ve no way of proving the tape was dropped by the people who attacked Aston, but, all other things being equal, it seems likely. Too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

“Well,” said Woolmer, reaching several perforated sheets of computer printout from his desk, “what I can let you have is a list of known right-wing activists in the area. Mansfield, Sutton, Ilkeston, Heanor, they’ll likely be your best bets. Any who’ve got an association with C18, that’s shown. Check these against the other names that’ve been thrown up by the inquiry, you might strike lucky. Failing that, there’s the soccer connection.”

Resnick took the list and passed it across to Divine. “If we decide to move in, knock on a few doors, see what we can turn up that way, you think you might have more than a passing interest in whatever we come across?”

Woolmer smiled. “Always grateful, Charlie, for any little tidbit you care to throw our way.”

“Ah, I was thinking of more active participation than that.”

“Bodies on the ground?”

“Just for a day or two, any you could spare.”

“Give us a bell tomorrow, first thing. If there’s anyone I can lose, short of having it checked off as overtime, I’ll tell you.” Woolmer grinned broadly. “Never like to miss a chance to give some of our white supremacist friends a spin.” He walked with Resnick and Divine towards the door. “Last time we did, we turned up bomb-making equipment and a Russian-made rifle that had made its way to Mansfield Woodhouse by way of Iran and the UDF.”

Gerry Hovenden throttled down and brought the bike through a slow curve that ended outside the house where Frank Miller lived. Couple of years now, him and Frank would spend Saturdays at the match, away games especially, those were the ones they didn’t like to miss. Few pints beforehand, more than a few after the final whistle. Blokes to meet. Once in a while it turned heavy and then it was well good, worth the journey-that Frank, didn’t know his own strength.

“This is it.” Removing his helmet, Hovenden nodded towards a two-story brick building, its front door square onto the street; a hand-lettered sign in the frosted door glass, telling callers to go round to the back.

Shane, spare helmet Gerry always lent him in one hand, waited while he lifted the bike onto its stand.

“Frank?” Hovenden pushed at the back door and as usual it swung inwards, unlocked. What cretin’d be fool enough to burgle Frank Miller?

“Frank? ’S Gerry.”

“Through here.” There was music coming from the front of the house, heavily amplified rock.

Hovenden entered, nodding for Shane to follow. The back room was a kitchen, blackened chip pan on the cooker, mugs and plates overflowing the sink. Old newspapers spread across the table, more in piles on the floor. A shelf with books about the SAS and the Falklands, the Second World War.

“Bit of a reader, is he?” Shane asked.

Hovenden didn’t reply.

Frank Miller was standing in the middle of the front room, bare to the waist save for tattoos on his back and arms, St. George, a Union Jack. He had pushed back to the wall the one piece of furniture in the room, a leather settee one of his bailiff pals had done him a deal on, and had been doing pushups with alternate hands. There was a television set on the floor, a VCR, a four-section Marantz stereo with speakers mounted high on the ceiling. Right then it was playing Saxon, Gods of War.

Miller turned down the volume, but not much. He grinned at Hovenden, nodded abruptly at Shane. “Beer?” he asked.

“Yeh,” Hovenden said. “Thanks.”

“Why don’t you get a couple of cans, eh, Shane? In the fridge.”

The moment he was out of the room, Miller grabbed Hovenden between his legs and began to twist. “What is it with you two, anyway?” Miller hissed. “In and out one another’s pockets, the whole fuckin’ time, like a couple of fairies.”

“Christ, Frank, leggo!” Tears in his eyes already. “It’s nothin’ like that, honest.”

“It better not fuckin’ be.”

“Be what?” Shane asked, leaning against the doorway, three cans of Special Brew balanced on two hands.

“Never you fucking mind.”

Shane stared at him, Miller staring back. You fat bastard, Shane was thinking, you reckon I’m afraid of you like all the rest. And one of these days you’re going to have to learn it just ain’t true.

“You got a problem,” Miller asked, half a pace towards him.

“Maybe, yeah?”

“What’s that, then?”

“That,” Shane said, nodding towards the speakers. “It’s a fuckin’ row.”

“No.” Miller laughed. “That’s Saxon. They’re the best.” But he turned it down some more and Shane tossed him a beer and all three of them drank and started to chat and for now everything was cool.