Free Easy Meat by John Harvey Page B

doorway. “Norma, I think maybe you should let us in, don’t you?”
    Millington wandered off into the front room and then the kitchen, while Resnick stood with Norma near the foot of the stairs.
    “He’s still in bed, then?”
    “’Course he bloody is.”
    Resnick set his hand upon the banister and she took hold of his wrist. “You call him, then, Norma. Fetch him down.”
    At the edge of his eyeline, Millington had reappeared, slowly shaking his head.
    “Norma,” Resnick prompted.
    Heavy, she turned and called Nicky’s name; set her foot upon the stairs and called again.
    In his room, Nicky was instantly awake and throwing back the clothes.
    “Nicky, it’s the police.”
    He grabbed a pair of old jeans and was still pulling them on as he threw up the window and scrambled out onto the sloping roof above what had once been the outside lavatory.
    “Nicky!”
    First Resnick, and then Millington, elbowed past Norma and took the stairs at a run.
    Nicky slithered down the steeply angled roof, dislodging tiles as he went. One of his hands caught at the old iron guttering and it broke. Twisting as best he could, Nicky half-jumped, half-fell and then he was away, jumping the old rabbit hutch and vaulting the gate, straight into Divine’s arms where the detective waited behind the wall.
    From the upstairs window, Resnick watched as Nicky swore at Divine and struggled, until Naylor had his arms behind him and between them they’d put on the cuffs.
    “Kick me again, you little bastard,” Divine said, “and I’ll have your balls for breakfast.”
    Resnick, closing the window, didn’t hear. Shane was out on the landing, pulling a pair of cords up over his boxer shorts. “What the fuck’s going on?”
    “It’s okay, nothing to bother you.”
    “Well, s’pose I want it to bother me?”
    “I’d remind you what the magistrate said, last time you were up in court.”
    “Fuck the bastard magistrate!”
    “I dare say.” Resnick sighed. “Now why don’t you go downstairs, look to your mum? Make her a cup of tea if nothing else.”
    Shane pushed past him and slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.
    Norma was in the kitchen, head in her hands.
    “I’ll take a look round,” Millington said, and Resnick nodded and went to put the kettle on himself. Within five minutes, Millington had found the bin liner full of bloodied clothes stuffed under Nicky’s bed.
    “Take them in,” Resnick said. “Let forensic have them, first thing.” He glanced at Norma. “I’ll be along directly.” He fished out the used tea bags, tipped the lukewarm tea down the sink, and set to making some fresh.

Eleven
    Resnick watched her walk across the playground, hair moving lightly in the freshness of the wind. Despite all the forecasts, the temperature had dipped a further five degrees and, in the CID room that day, Millington had been mithering on about having to take his geraniums in again, safe out of the frost.
    “Hannah Campbell,” the school secretary had said, “she’s taking a drama group in the main hall. Should be through any time in the next half-hour.”
    In no hurry to return to the station, Resnick had elected to wait.
    Nicky Snape’s interrogation had been careful and slow. For the best part of the first hour, his mother sitting alongside him, a solicitor just behind, Nicky had said nothing, then, after continued questioning, Resnick and Millington alternating, he had admitted to spending the first part of the evening with Martin Hodgson and another friend. Where? Cinema. What did you see? Nicky told them. Had he been near the Netherfield house? No, he had not been near the Netherfield house. Didn’t know what they were on about. Didn’t know where it was.
    “Nicky,” Resnick had said, “listen to me. We’re doing tests now. They’re going on while we’re talking here. The blood on the clothes we found underneath your bed, blood around the sink in your bathroom at home, blood on a length of iron railing we