Dead Time by Tony Parsons Page A

coming now then I would wait for help to arrive. But all I heard was the silence.
    I ran my hand over my face and walked inside the meat market. Everywhere seemed to be locked up for the holidays but I could hear voices inside – low, business-like, working out how to get this thing done. And then I heard the man – whimpering, pleading, moaning – the sound of terror. A man begging for his life.
    There were sudden footsteps behind me.
    I whirled around and saw a uniformed police officer.
    He was walking towards me, his flat cap pulled low over his eyes and his Met winter fleece dusted with snow. I held up my hand and he stopped. I pointed inside. We could both hear the voices, very clear, more excited now. They were talking in a language I did not recognise while the man begged for his life in English.
    I gestured for the young copper to follow me. He nodded and I saw him reach for the baton on his duty belt. At least, it should have been some kind of baton – rigid, side-handled, extendable, telescopic. Whatever kind of baton they were carrying this year. But definitely a baton.
    Instead he produced an old-fashioned wooden truncheon. Strange, I thought, turning to work out how the men had got inside the meat market.
    And that is when he hit me.
    The blow exploded on the side of my neck, somewhere between my left ear and my shoulder blade; I went down on my hands and knees, the breath knocked out of me, too shocked to register any pain.
    ‘Not me, you thick bastard,’ I said. ‘Them.’
    He was banging on the door of the meat market. The door opened and they let him inside. I heard that unknown language again, voices raised, and then a scream. I was still on my hands and knees when the three of them came back out. They stood around me, and then two of them moved off, leaving only the legs of the young copper, or whatever he was, in front of me.
    Van doors opened and closed. The engine gunned. But the legs were still there. He was wondering what to do with me. While he was thinking about it, I saw a broken beer bottle glinting in the gutter.
    I picked it up by the neck and rammed the broken end into the copper’s legs, although by now I had stopped thinking of him as a colleague.
    He screamed.
    ‘Bah kwai!’
he shouted.
    He started to beat me with his truncheon. I think he meant to kill me but his friends called to him in their language and he left me there on my knees.
    I heard the sirens as the van pulled away.
    I got up. My head hurt but there was no blood. Nobody had ever taught him how to use that truncheon.
    I stumbled inside the meat market. There were dozens of individual stalls, all locked up for the holidays. Apart from one. I went inside and for a long moment I could not understand what I was looking at on the floor. It was a head. Just a head.
    The mouth half-open and the eyes half-closed. No longer quite human. The body was on the other side of a large piece of machinery.
    The machine was made of stainless steel and it was the size of a small car. It had a large, heavy-duty, 500-litre steel bowl that fed into a barrel that led to a giant ejector chute. There were controls for different speeds, gears and cycles, and various options for cutting, deboning and the removal of gristle.
    The sirens were directly outside now. Blue lights shone on the stainless steel of this monstrous machine.
    The sight of it choked my throat and suddenly I was overwhelmed by the smell of a thousand years of town-killed meat.
    Because they had not brought the man here merely to kill him, but also to mince him.

2
    ‘Do you have to help them, Daddy?’ Scout said.
    We were having a late breakfast in Smiths of Smithfield, sitting in one of the window seats, Scout focusing on her drawing while I let my porridge get cold as I watched the action across the street.
    Smithfield meat market was the scene of a murder investigation.
    The mortuary van had come and gone before first light but now the gang was all here. Where there were