Free Easy Meat by John Harvey

secured inside two plastic bags.
    “Kevin here found it. Dustbin, two streets off.”
    It was the length of iron railing from beside Eric Netherfield’s bed.

Ten
    Resnick caught a couple of hours’ sleep in his office, chair pushed back, legs forcing a space for themselves among the reports and memos that littered his desk. When he woke it was to the sound of Graham Millington clattering the kettle and treating the otherwise empty CID room to a muted rendition of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
    Resnick had his first mug of tea in his hand before realizing that the phone had failed to ring: Doris Netherfield had survived the night.
    “What’s all this I hear about Serious Crimes?” Millington asked, lighting only his second Lambert and Butler of the day. The expression of unalloyed martyrdom that Madeleine assumed if ever he dared to smoke at home was no longer anything he could bear to watch.
    “Going on around us, Graham, all the time.”
    Millington narrowed his eyes through the spiraling cigarette smoke: what the hell was the boss doing, cracking jokes at this hour of the morning? He presumed it had been meant as a joke.
    “You know what I’m on about,” Millington said, “this new Serious Crimes Unit.”
    Resnick sighed. “Yes, and the answer is, I don’t know a whole lot more than you.”
    “But if you were to guess?”
    “I’d reckon it’ll get as far as finance, someone will throw a fit about resourcing new office space, extra personnel, and it’ll get lost on its way back to the drawing board.”
    Even as the words were being spoken, Resnick wasn’t certain how far he believed them; but neither did he want to face the ramifications the establishing of the squad might have for his career. And not solely his own, Millington’s as well.
    Divine and Naylor arrived within moments of each other, Divine chirpier than the bags beneath his eyes suggested. “Tea mashed, then, Sarge?” he said, reaching for his favorite mug, decorated with a fading cartoon about rugby players and odd-shaped balls.
    As usual, Naylor was quiet, easy even among four people to forget that he was there. It was a characteristic that, in the right circumstances, made him the good detective he could be.
    Millington caught Resnick’s glance towards his watch. “Uniform backup?” he asked.
    Resnick shook his head. “Let’s not start World War Three, Graham. It’s only one youth, after all.”
    A sardonic smile played round the edges of Millington’s mouth. “Well, that’s okay then, i’n’t it? Piece of piss.”
    In his panic to get away from the Netherfields’ house, Nicky hadn’t even realized the iron railing was still in his hand. Quickly, he had dumped it in the nearest bin and continued to run. Only when he was within sight of his own home did he stop, chest tight, tears stinging his eyes. Only then did he consider the blood that was splashed across his clothes and staining his face and hands. No way he could go in like that, no way. Backtracking, he climbed into a garden and took two towels from the line, leaned against a wall deep in shadow and rubbed at his skin, his shirt, and jeans. It was still likely that if he went home now someone would be up: Sheena, listening to Blur and looking at some stupid magazine; Shane slumped down in front of a video, Jean Claude Van Damme or Bruce Lee; his mum, sewing buttons back on Shane’s shirts or lost in a world of her own, reading one of her trashy romances, Mills and sodding Bloom.
    Keeping clear of main roads, quick to cross away from any passersby, Nicky walked and walked, trying not to think about what might happen, what had happened, what he would do if the man or the old woman died.
    When he finally turned his key in the front door, legs aching, it was gone two. All of the lights in the house were out. Quick to slip off his boots, Nicky was on his way to the stairs when he heard a muffled groan from the front room: slowly undulating shapes stretched along the