Easy Meat by John Harvey

the room, the old man coming at him now, swinging that damned bar towards his face. Why the hell wouldn’t he just let him run? The third time the man swung at him, Nicky was in the doorway; he ducked inside the man’s arm and came up fast, headbutting him in the face. The iron bar fell past him and bounced haphazardly down the stairs.
    Across the room, clothes pulled towards her skinny chest, the old woman was sobbing. Blood trickled from her husband’s nose.
    Stupid fuckers! Deserve whatever they fucking get! “Where’s your fucking money?” Nicky yelled, driving him back into the room.
    Eric made a fist at him and Nicky punched him in the neck, then barged him against the wardrobe hard. Wheezing heavily, Eric sank down to his knees.
    “Where’s … the … fucking … money?” Nicky shouted in the man’s ear, punching him in the head to emphasize each word.
    Slowly Eric raised his head. “Sod off, you little toerag!” he said, spittle on his lips.
    Nicky stood back and kicked him in the chest.
    “Don’t! My dear God, don’t! You’ll kill him!” Doris cried, and scrambled on all fours across the bed towards them.
    Eric had collapsed against the foot of the wardrobe and no longer moved.
    “Eric! Oh Eric!”
    Nicky pushed Doris back across the bed and raced down the stairs as fast as he could. At the turn, his foot hooked under the length of iron and he tripped and fell headlong.
    “Jesus! You bastard! You fucking bastard!” Winded, aching, Nicky leaned forward, hands on knees. The piece of railing had rolled close to his feet and now he picked it up and with a shout swung it at arm’s length, sending every ornament and picture from the mantelpiece flying. His wrist and shoulder where the man had hit him, he thought they might be broken. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his reflection, white and scared. Stupid cunt! What’d he have to have a go at him for? Why didn’t he let him just run? The mirror was hanging from a chain; he smashed it again. It wasn’t enough.
    Back upstairs, Doris Netherfield was leaning over Eric, massaging his chest. When Nicky burst back into the room, she cradled herself across her husband to protect him, clinging to him as Nicky raised the bar above his head, then brought it down, time and again until his arms had begun to ache and he had had enough.
    Seeing the blood for the first time, Nicky dropped the bar and ran.

Eight
    Resnick’s house was a substantial detached property in Mapperley Park, a short distance to the northeast of the city center. Situated on the curve of a narrow crescent, a white stone wall and a small area of lawn separated it from the road. There was a passage at the side, wide enough to park the car which Resnick seldom used, and beyond that a ragged garden of grass and shrubs, a cherry tree that needed pruning and a shed in sore need of creosote and nails. The cherry tree was already shedding blossoms.
    Almost immediately past the hedge at the garden’s foot, the land fell steeply away over the allotments of Hungerhill Gardens and the heart of the city was exposed. Between the railway station and Sneinton windmill, the floodlights of the two soccer grounds showed up clearly, perched on either side of the Trent. Terraced houses that had stood in stubby rows since the turn of the century shared the land with curves and courts of new development that was already starting to look careworn and old. Along the canal, warehouses with peeling fronts, home to flocks of graying pigeons if little else, stood beside architect-designed office buildings and the new marina, and a shopping park of superstores encouraging need and envy, good ambition and bad debts. From where he might stand, at an upstairs window or the garden’s edge, Resnick could not see the night shelters, the needles discarded below the old railway arch, the benches and shop doorways where the homeless slept, but he knew they were there.
    The interior of the house was darker than it would