Easy Meat by John Harvey

Author:John Harvey [Harvey, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781932859591
Amazon: 1932859594
Publisher: Bloody Brits Press
Published: 1996-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

Support Department had gone over the ground with a fine-tooth comb. Dog turds, cigarette ends and discarded cigarette packets, fast-food containers, used condoms and the like notwithstanding, they had come up with only two items which held potential interest: a D90 TDK audio cassette tape, unlabeled, which seemed to hold a fairly arbitrary selection of home-taped heavy metal, and a large-sized left-hand leather glove, well-worn, scuffed around the fingers’ ends and smooth in the palm. Both of these items were undergoing further tests.

Scene of Crime had presented Naylor with evidence, mostly partial, of twenty-seven sets of footprints within the immediate vicinity of the attack. A chart showing the positioning of these was still in the later stages of completion, but seemed to suggest that of this twenty-seven, nine were strongly present close to where the body had fallen; of that nine, five seemed to have partly circled around it. The impressions of three of these had been made by some kind of running shoe; one by a heavy work boot, the last, most likely, came from a regular, rubber-soled walking shoe.

After being successfully stalled by Phyllis Parmenter’s secretary for the best part of a day, Khan had installed himself in the outer offices of the local authority inspectorate, and settled himself down with a copy of Vikram Seth’s one-thousand-and-five-hundred-odd-page novel, intent upon a long wait.

The WPC walking away from Cossall had an arse on her like a pregnant duck. Cossall’s words, though he kept them to himself and supped his pint; all this questioning—publicans and bar staff—it gave a man a thirst. And besides, where women on the force were concerned, nowadays it paid to keep your mouth closed.

He knew a sergeant at one of the out stations, not so much above a month back, who had chanced to make some innocuous remark about a female officer within her hearing and, within an hour of her lodging an official complaint, the poor sod had been suspended from duty, pending an investigation. A sure sign of the way it was going, Cossall thought, the writing on the menstrual bloody calendar.

Only that morning, he had read in the paper, the first ever woman chief constable had been appointed in Lancashire. A few years shy of fifty and, wouldn’t you know it, a graduate from the Open University. And what was her degree in? Psychology. Cossall had read she’d be bringing in over seventy thousand a year salary. Seventy thousand. And a budget of close to a hundred and fifty million to dispose of. How much of that was going to go on setting up crèches, that’s what he’d like to know? Counseling sessions? Hiring some poncey interior designer to put in soft furnishings and curtains in the interview rooms, create a more trusting atmosphere.

Still, what had she been quoted as saying? It’s never been a man’s world, they only think it is. Yes, well, that’s where she was wrong: Cossall didn’t think, he knew. At least until he chucked it all in, threw in his hand with one of them home security firms, it was his world still.

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