Easy Meat Read Online Free PDF Page B

breaking and entering in and about the Meadows, which was where Martin lived. Most times, Nicky preferred to stay on his own, a low-profit, low-risk sort of business. Martin, though, was a laugh, which was why Nicky went with him; the only thing was, Martin didn’t seem to know what risk meant.
    “So what you doing, hanging about here?” Nicky asked.
    Martin nodded in the direction of the nearest lane. “Seeing how many spares I can get in a single game.”
    They bowled for the best part of an hour and then, when Martin went to buy more cigarettes, Nicky noticed he was holding what had to be close to a hundred pounds.
    “Up on the Forest last night,” Martin explained, offering Nicky a king-size. “Would’ve scored more’n this, but the coppers came sniffin’ round. Bastards! Had to clear out.”
    Nicky stared at him in fascination. “What d’you have to do?” he asked.
    “Easy.” Martin laughed. “Hang around, just down towards the trees, like, till some punter comes along …”
    “But how d’you know?”
    “You always know. Sometimes they want you to go in their car, I always charge extra for that, mostly you just do it there. Cemetery’s a good place.”
    “Yeah,” Nicky said, “but what d’you have to do?”
    “Jesus! What d’you think? Wank ’em off, that’s the easiest. That’s a tenner. Sometimes they want to suck you off, that’s twenty. Nothin’ to it.”
    “But you don’t let ’em …”
    “Stick it up me arse? What d’you think I am? Fuckin’ mental? Think I want to get AIDS or something?”
    “No. No, course not.”
    “This bloke once though, dead rich, Mercedes, nearly new. Offered me a hundred if I’d go with him, back to his hotel.” Disgust and dismay mingled on Nicky’s face. “He had a condom,” Martin said, “so it was okay. Give me these poppers, you know, amyl nitrate, after a bit it never hurt much at all.”
    Nicky thought he was going to throw up. He nipped out his cigarette and started to walk quickly away.
    “Hold up!” Martin called. “Where you off to now?”
    “Home,” Nicky said. “Supposed to have been in school, haven’t I.”
    “Nah,” Martin said, catching him up. “You don’t want to do that. I’m meeting Aasim later. You want to stick around, chill out, we’ll have some fun.”
    Sharon Garnett was wearing a short red skirt over ribbed tights, a dark cotton jacket buttoned over a cream shirt; as if she weren’t tall enough already, she was wearing boots.
    “Blending in with the scenery?” Lynn asked, the hint of a smile in her eyes.
    “Something like that.”
    “I got you half of bitter, that all right?”
    “’S fine.”
    They had agreed to meet in the Lincolnshire Poacher, a pub that promised good beer, good food, and a courtyard out back, which was where they now sat. It was early evening and there was a decided nip in the air, the temperature down below fifty.
    “You working?” Lynn asked.
    “Yes, later. You?”
    Lynn shrugged. “Depends.”
    “Martin Hodgson?”
    “Yes.”
    Lynn had first arrested the youth when he was thirteen, on the run from a children’s home and caught by an alert store detective in Woolworth’s with several hundred pounds’ worth of computer games stashed inside the Head sports bag he’d stolen just an hour before. Since then, he’d been arrested and charged more than thirty times, running a succession of social workers, short-term foster parents, and police officers ragged. Unable to find sufficiently secure local authority accommodation within the county, Martin had finally been sent to a custom-built facility in Northumberland on a temporary basis. When a place became available at the Ambergate Secure Unit, reasonably close to the city, he was brought back and placed there. Eight days later he had escaped and had been living rough ever since.
    “Fifteen, isn’t he?” Sharon asked.
    Lynn shook her head. “Fourteen.”
    “Some future ahead of him.”
    Lynn nodded and drank her