Easy Meat Read Online Free Page A

younger than he’d imagined, for a start. Middle thirties, maybe; possibly even younger. Scrub the glasses, too. Her hair was longer than he’d pictured, bushing out a little at the sides and back. Light brown. Under a tan jacket she was wearing a lilac top, three buttons to the neck. Lilac or purple, he could never be certain which was which. A black skirt, calf-length, and comfortable shoes on her feet.
    “I spoke with two officers already,” Hannah said. “Explained to them what happened, as best as I know.”
    “Uniform, yes. Routine.”
    “And you’re a detective, isn’t that right? CID, that’s what it means?”
    Divine nodded, resisting the idea that, ever so slightly, she might be sending him up.
    “And you’d like me to tell you what happened?”
    “Yeh, that’s right.”
    She looked at him, the natural cockiness of his face offset by the tiredness round his eyes.
    “Aren’t you going to take notes?” Hannah asked.
    Only when Divine had taken out his notebook and pencil did she begin.
    “So do you think you’ll catch him?”
    “Nicky Snape?”
    “That’s who we’ve been talking about, isn’t it?” They were walking along the bottom corridor, Hannah escorting him off the premises, out of school.
    “You seem pretty certain it was him,” Divine said.
    Hannah shrugged. “My purse disappeared, Nicky disappeared, both at the same time. Added to which, he does seem to have a penchant for this sort of thing.”
    “A what?” Divine wondered again if she were sending him up.
    “Stealing. He’s been in trouble before.”
    The laugh lines crinkled around Divine’s mouth. “Just once or twice.”
    “And you didn’t catch him then?”
    “We caught him right enough, courts bounced him off out again. Can’t hold ’em, you see. Not that young. Twelve when he started, thirteen.” Divine looked around them, windows and doors. “You must know what it’s like, mixing with them every day.”
    Hannah didn’t say anything, carried on walking until they had passed beyond the office and were standing on the shallow steps outside. The building was sending shadows long across the tarmac and there was a bite still in the spring air. Hannah was conscious of Divine looking at her, her neck and breasts.
    “You make it all sound pretty much a waste of time,” she said.
    “Catch him with any of your property still on him, credit cards, say, someone might actually have the nous to stick him away.”
    “And is that likely? Catching him like that, I mean?”
    Divine pushed out his chest a little, stood an extra inch taller. “Best detection figures in the country this year past, you know, Notts.”
    “Really?”
    “Clear-up rate per officer of fourteen cases a year.”
    “That doesn’t seem,” Hannah said, “an awful lot.”
    “Better’n anybody else, though, isn’t it?”
    “Statistics.” Hannah smiled. “To get a real sense of it, you’d need to set that figure against the one for the amount of crime that took place. You know, to see it in the right perspective.”
    “Yes, well,” Divine said, gazing away, “I can’t bring to mind what that was, not exactly.” It was 148 crimes per 1000 of the population, the second highest after Humberside, he knew it by heart. He said, “I’d better be going, then.”
    “All right.” She hesitated a moment longer before turning back into the school.
    “Look, I don’t suppose …” Divine began, a light flush on his cheeks.
    “No,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry, not a chance.”

Four
    “You’d think,” Skelton said, “when you get something right, the last thing anyone would want to do is mess about with it and run the risk of losing everything you’d gained.”
    From the chair opposite the superintendent’s desk, Resnick grunted something which might be taken for agreement.
    “You know and I know, Charlie,” Skelton went on, “most forces in the country would give their eyeteeth for figures like these.”
    Nodding, Resnick shifted his