Easy Meat Read Online Free PDF

by the door, avoiding his eyes.
    “Your case load,” Resnick asked. For whatever reason, he didn’t want her to go. “What’s most pressing?”
    “That lad, I suppose. The one who absconded from the Secure Unit …”
    “Hodgson?”
    “Martin, yes. He could be anywhere, of course. Manchester, London. But I had a call earlier from Vice, thought they might’ve spotted him, touting for business out on Forest Road.”
    Resnick sighed, all too familiar. “Who are you liaising with?”
    “Sharon. Sharon Garnett.”
    “Give her my best.”
    “Right, yes, I will.”
    Lynn hesitated just a moment longer before going back through the door. Already her phone was ringing again and Graham Millington, having finished with his witness, was waiting to ask her about overtime. Divine was back at his desk with a copy of the Post and a brace of Jamaica patties from the baker’s on Hartley Road.
    In his office, Resnick scanned the response from the Police Authority chairman to claims that the recent Audit Commission survey comparing police forces’ efficiency was scarcely worth the paper it had been printed on. He opened an envelope addressed to him in Marian Witczak’s precise hand. Is it true you are never at home any more, Charles, and, if so, who is feeding all of your beautiful cats? She had enclosed an invitation to a dance at the Polish Club for this coming weekend. Underneath the line, Dress Informal , she had added, But please bring dancing shoes!
    Resnick pushed it out of sight beneath a pile of crime reports, dancing the last of several things occupying his mind. For no clear reason he could discern, unless it were the coffee in the cup that he was holding, the words to an old Bessie Smith blues came filtering to the surface, something about waking up cold in hand.

Five
    Nicky Snape had been a busy boy. At the back of a pub edging onto the wholesale fruit and veg market he had sold one of Hannah Campbell’s two credit cards for twenty pounds; less than thirty minutes later, in the pleasant surroundings of St. Mary’s Rest Garden, her checkbook and check guarantee card had changed hands for double that. Cutting through the Victoria Centre towards the Mansfield Road, he had chanced to bump into Sally Purdy, who was just leaving the Magistrate’s Court, having a few minutes previously been released on her own recognizance on charges of fraud. Purdy sent Nicky back inside to Tesco’s to buy a six-pack of Tennents, two of which she shared with him on one of the benches opposite Peachey Street; she then bought the remaining credit card from him for three five-pound notes and an unopened can. “You give my love to Shane now, will you do that for me? Tell him I was asking after him, make sure that you do.” Nicky could see how that would go down well with his brother, and with a belch and a quick wave of the hand, consigned the idea to oblivion.
    He treated himself to a Whopper and fries from Burger King and was finishing them off, window shopping on Cheapside, when his eyes fell on a pair of purple-and-red Sanmarco walking boots, Gore-Tex lined. No way he could boost them out of there, the boots cost Nicky pretty much all he’d made in the past hour, but what else was money for?
    He left his old Reeboks in the shop and was wearing his new boots when he met his mate, Martin Hodgson, in the bowling alley by the Ice Stadium. Martin was not so many months younger than Nicky, but more slightly built; his oversized check shirt hung loose and open over a beige Sweater Shop jumper, black jeans rolled up over high-top trainers. At first glance, it was tempting to dismiss him as soft, but that would have been a mistake.
    “Fuck!” Nicky exclaimed. “Thought you was fucking locked away.”
    “Nah. Only that kids’ place, weren’t it? Not a real fuckin’ prison at all.” Martin pushed the fall of dark hair from where it shielded his dark eyes and grinned.
    Martin was about the only person Nicky had ever gone on jobs with,