Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

It did the trick. A few shots exchanged late one night, alongside Hulme Market Hall, Ryan discharging all eight rounds and making most of them count; no fatalities, a few flesh wounds, the moral victory theirs. Ryan liked the heft of the gun in his hand. He loved it. He learned everything he could about guns.

  After that things got tasty, the feud with Cheetham Hill hotted up, and following a pitched battle running either side of the A57 motorway a meeting to patch things up was called. Both sides went armed and the police were forewarned. Ryan and two others were arrested and when he was kicked free, he decided it was time to move on.

  A few days after his seventeenth birthday, he followed a mate up to Glasgow, but, one way or another, he couldn’t settle, too many reminders of home. He drifted for a spell after that, Newcastle, Birmingham, Sheffield and on down to Nottingham, nineteen now and shacking up in a squat in Sneinton, out near the railway line. Just till he could find something better, which turned out to be a two-roomed flat in Radford, right around the corner from the old Raleigh factory, long since flattened to the ground.

  It was midway through the afternoon when Michaelson and Pike hammered on the door and Gregan came grudgingly downstairs, wearing a Manchester City T-shirt and an old pair of jeans, nothing on his feet, looking as if he’d just crawled out of bed.

  ‘Ryan Gregan?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘We’d like you to come with us to Central Police Station.’

  ‘A party is it?’

  ‘Depends,’ Pike said.

  ‘I’ll bring my guitar, then, should I?’

  ‘Just shoes will do for now.’

  ‘Oh, fine. I’ve this pair of new Adidas upstairs, just want wearing in.’

  ‘Make it snappy,’ Pike said.

  Gregan honoured them with a smile and went back up to comply. It didn’t take them long to realise he wasn’t coming back down. Out through the rear window and legging it across waste land for all he was worth.

  Even with a good two hundred metres’ start, he didn’t stand a chance against Michaelson’s long, loping stride, a tackle any Rugby League forward would have been proud of bringing him to the ground.

  Not so long ago, they might have shut Gregan away in an airless box-like room and left him to stew for an hour or so, the isolation preying on his mind. Now any self-respecting tearaway knew enough, if that happened, to have the duty solicitor charging false imprisonment and, if a sausage cob and a can of Ribena weren’t forthcoming inside the first twenty minutes, be prepared to petition the Hague about denial of his human rights.

  So, everything by the book.

  Something to eat and drink.

  A doctor summoned to examine and treat the injuries sustained during arrest – cuts and bruising to the side of the face, left elbow and knee, all occasioned by DS Michaelson’s flying tackle – Polaroids taken, dated and signed.

  And all of this done slowly, carefully, with punctilious attention to form and detail, all gaining time for a search warrant of Gregan’s flat to be signed and executed, more perhaps in hope than true expectation, but one never knew . . .

  As soon as he was ready, Gregan, with due representation, was ushered into an interview room with sound-recording and video facilities and invited to take a seat opposite Michaelson and Pike.

  It was Michaelson, Resnick thought, who had set this whole thing in motion and now, buoyed up as he was by successful pursuit and capture, it was only right that he should be given the chance to bring it home. And Pike – well, perhaps Pike was a more than adequate companion for the occasionally loquacious Michaelson – taciturn to the edge of rudeness, flat northern vowels in tune with his wedge-shaped head and stocky body.

  For now Resnick was content to leave them to it and observe the proceedings from an adjoining room.

  ‘Not smart,’ Michaelson began, ‘taking off the way you did.’

  Gregan shrugged.

  ‘Guilty conscience, that’s what it could make us think. Something to hide. Unless, of course, you simply fancied a run. Unquenchable thirst for exercise, that what it was?’

  Gregan shrugged again, uncomfortable on his seat. Michaelson was forced to sit back from the table, unable to get his legs comfortably underneath.

  ‘First hundred metres or so,’ Michaelson said, in the same chatty tone, ‘you were looking pretty good.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Gregan said.

  ‘You’ve had no training? Any kind of coaching?’

  Gregan squinted back at him. ‘For running, you mean?’

  ‘Running, yes.’

  ‘Not me,’ Gregan said.

  ‘Must be natural, then. Natural ability. And practice. Plenty of that, I dare say.’

  Gregan didn’t reply.

  ‘What you’d learn,’ Michaelson said, ‘with proper coaching, one thing anyway, conserve your energy. Any kind of distance, that’s the key. Stamina, of course, that can be developed, but pacing, fail to learn that and what happens? Into the bend on the back straight, final lap, and what you need is a strong sprint finish and there’s nothing left. Well, you’ve seen it yourself, probably, European Games, the Olympics, on television, this tall white guy been labouring round for God knows how long in the lead, doing all the work, and then, on the bell, these three skinny Kenyans go past him as if he’s standing still.’

  ‘And that’s me,’ Gregan said, ‘the white guy, that’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘It was today.’

  ‘And you, you and your mate here, you’re the Kenyans?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  What the holy fuck, Gregan thought, is all this about? Some kind of young offenders’ inclusion project? Community outreach? Some eager-eyed bloke in shorts, wanting him to sign up for midnight hikes through the Lake District, drama workshops in some scabby church hall. He’d fended off a few of them in his time.

  ‘Bit racist, isn’t it?’ Gregan said, playing along. ‘What you were saying, Kenyans and that.’

  Michaelson appeared to give it some thought. ‘Racial stereotyping,’ he said, ‘I know what you mean. Like saying the Irish are all thieves and tinkers. Plain wrong, wouldn’t you say?’

  Gregan didn’t say anything at all.

  ‘Not above a bit of thieving yourself, though,’ Michaelson said. ‘By all accounts.’

  ‘Nobbin’ off stuff from Woolies,’ Gregan said, ‘that the kind of thing you mean? Coin or two from my gran’s purse?’

  ‘That could be the start of it.’

  ‘Kids,’ Gregan said. ‘Part of growing up. Rite of passage, isn’t that what it’s called?’

  Enough, Resnick thought, watching, of the preamble, although he could see what Michaelson was doing, encouraging Gregan to feel relaxed at the same time as keeping him just that little bit disorientated, not knowing from which direction the next question was coming.

  It wasn’t coming from Michaelson at all.

  ‘February fourteenth,’ Pike said, his voice more jagged, harsh. ‘Valentine’s Day. Where were you that afternoon?’

  Gregan didn’t even have to think.

  ‘Skeggy,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, Skegness.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Pike said. ‘What I want to know, what were you doing there, middle of February?’

  The last time Pike had been to Skegness, three years back, it had been the middle of summer and still the wind had cut off the North Sea like a knife to your throat.

  ‘Girlfriend, she’d asked me,’ Gregan said. ‘Soft cow. Instead of the usual.’

  ‘The usual?’

  ‘Chocolates, whatever.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This girl’s name.’

  ‘Karen. Karen Evans.’

  ‘Those’ll be her knickers we found in your place, then, will they? ’Less they’re yours, of course. Bit of cross-dressing.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘This Karen Evans,’ Michaelson said, ‘does she
have an address?’

  No, Gregan thought, she lives up a tree in Clumber Park. He gave them the address, mobile number too. ‘Text her, why don’t you? Where she works. See if she don’t say she was with me that afternoon.’

  ‘And not in St Ann’s,’ Pike said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Corner of St Ann’s Hill Road and Cranmer Street, four thirty, thereabouts.’

  ‘I told you where I was.’

  ‘There was a shooting,’ Pike said. ‘Police officer injured, a young girl killed.’

  ‘I told you—’

  ‘Because somebody told us you were there.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘You said that before.’

  ‘I’m saying it a-fucking-gain. I was about a hundred fucking miles from there, in Skeggy with Karen, eating fish and chips and shagging her on the dunes while she got sand in her crack. Fucking ask her!’

  ‘We will, we will. But meantime we have a witness—’

  ‘What witness?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Course it fuckin’ matters!’

  ‘You know someone named Billy Alston?’

  ‘That scrote! You’re relying on him? I’d have to be standing up to me knees in fucking water before I’d believe Alston telling me it was fucking raining.’

  ‘Have you any idea,’ Michaelson asked, ‘why Alston might have mentioned your name?’

  ‘Because he’s a stupid twat?’

  ‘That apart.’

  Gregan could think of at least one, possibly two, neither of which he wanted to divulge. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I really think,’ the duty solicitor said, speaking for the first time, ‘that to take, as it seems, the uncorroborated assertion of one individual, as against an alibi which my client has provided and which he assures us—’

  ‘Well,’ Michaelson said, interrupting, ‘there is always the other thing.’

  ‘The other thing?’

  ‘The matter of a handgun and some seven hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, found in a holdall in Mr Gregan’s bedroom.’

  Gregan’s face at that moment, Resnick thought, watching, was a picture of despairing realisation.

  ‘I should like,’ Gregan said, his voice just a little shaky, ‘a few words with my solicitor in private.’

  There was to be no denial, no passing off, no sleight of hand. No, that’s not my bag, never seen it in my life, someone must have planted it there; no, I was just minding it for a friend, no idea what was inside. Gregan, as his solicitor had confirmed, was looking at a mandatory sentence of five years. Five years, minimum.

  He knew enough about prison to realise it was the last place he wanted to go.

  ‘If my client,’ the solicitor said, ‘can furnish you with information that is helpful in your investigation into this unfortunate recent shooting, how willing would you be to disregard the contents of the bag?’

  ‘Disregard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As in pretend it was never there?’

  The solicitor turned his head aside and coughed, once and then again; he hoped he wasn’t coming down with a cold. ‘What my client is looking for is a marked degree of leniency.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is,’ said Pike.

  ‘I shall have to take this to my superior,’ said Michaelson.

  ‘So be it,’ the solicitor said, and readjusted his glasses on his nose.

  ‘Tell him we need to check his alibi,’ Resnick said, after speaking to Michaelson. ‘Then we’ll listen to what he has to say. But Frank, no promises, okay?’

  Karen Evans scarcely looked up when Michaelson and Pike came into the shop. Time enough to register that one of them was unusually tall and that they were both police officers of one kind or another; the amount of shoplifting that went on, there were officers in and out all the time, sometimes seeming to take it seriously, sometimes not doing a whole lot more than joking around with one or other of the security staff, while pretending not to be noticing which women were taking exactly what garments into the changing rooms – fuel, she thought, for their own little fantasies when they got home. Ryan had talked her into playing that game a time or two: you’re in the changing room, stripped down to your bra and panties, and the door swings open just enough . . . panties, she hated that word.

  She was just finishing rearranging the sweaters on the shelf, when the manager came over and said the two policemen wanted to speak with her. As long as it didn’t take too long they could use the office . . .

  Michaelson would have been lying if he’d said he hadn’t hoped it would be her. Small – petite, was that the word? – but not like those models they were forever getting exercised about, so stick-like, they looked as though they’d break the moment they were touched. This one looked tougher than that, her brown hair cut short with reddish streaks, a pale top that fitted nicely and then a short little skirt, brown with large white dots, over a pair of dark tights going down to ankle-length red boots.

  ‘Your tongue,’ Pike said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s mopping the floor.’

  The office was small, the three of them close together, Michaelson bending forward uncomfortably, as if his head might graze the ceiling. He could smell the girl’s perfume – how old was she? eighteen? nineteen? – and something else that he hoped wasn’t his own sweat but probably was.

  Karen looked at them expectantly. ‘This is about last week,’ she said, ‘when those four guys steamed the shop?’

  ‘Ryan Gregan,’ Pike said.

  Karen blinked.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded and blinked again.

  ‘He’s your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose . . .’ She glanced up at Michaelson. ‘Has something happened? To Ryan?’

  Michaelson shook his head. ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘Really? I thought, maybe, there’d been an accident . . .’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Michaelson said, and saw her body relax. ‘Can you remember where you were on Valentine’s Day?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. Can’t you?’

  Michaelson blushed. On Valentine’s Day evening, sitting across from his girlfriend of eighteen months in Hart’s poncey restaurant – an arm and a leg that had cost him – he’d asked if she didn’t think it was time, maybe, they got engaged or something, and she’d laughed, thinking he was making a joke, and Michaelson, despite himself, had laughed along too, covering his embarrassment.

  ‘Where were you?’ Pike asked Karen.

  ‘In Skegness with Ryan, freezing my arse off.’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘What time did you get back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Six, seven, something like that.’

  ‘Not sooner.’

  ‘No. Why? What’s all this about?’

  ‘And Ryan was with you the whole time?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, not every single second. But, yes, we were there together. Valentine’s, you know? I had to book it off six months in advance.’

  As well as the red streaks in her hair, Michaelson realised, there were a few flecks of silver that only became noticeable when she moved her head as she did now. ‘Ryan,’ she said, ‘he’s in some kind of trouble, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Michaelson said.

  Karen turned away from the pair of them, towards the rota on the wall.

  ‘This boyfriend of yours,’ Pike said, ‘any idea what he does for a living?’

  ‘Of course,’ Karen said. ‘He’s a supervisor out at Northern Foods.’

  They checked that out before returning to the station. Ryan Gregan had been temporarily employed as a sandwich filler on the night shift and had jacked it in after just two weeks.

  Resnick talked it through with Bill Berry, what they might legitimately offer, what they should expect in return.

  ‘We’re certain he’s not in the frame for this himself?’ Berry asked.r />
  ‘Girlfriend could be lying, but no, looks unlikely.’

  ‘Play him carefully then, Charlie. Talk to the CPS. If we’re going to recruit him, let’s have it done properly. All by the book.’

  Not the same book, presumably, that Resnick had seen Bill Berry using on a suspect back at the fag end of the seventies, the local phone directory smacked hard around the back of the lad’s head. ‘A few more whacks like that,’ Berry had joked, watching the suspect clamber shakily back to his feet, ‘he’ll have the bloody lot memorised, imprinted on his sad excuse for a brain.’

  Happy days!

  Resnick sent Pike off to check Gregan’s possible contacts and took Michaelson in with him.

  Gregan was sitting with his chair propped back on its rear legs, hands behind his head, and, only when Resnick had taken the seat opposite, did he let the chair come slowly forward until it was upright, hands resting now on the table edge.

  ‘We’re going to want to know about the gun,’ Resnick said. ‘That and the ammunition. Then about the shooting . . .’

  Gregan started to say something, but a look from Resnick stopped him short.

  ‘Billy Alston, Kelly Brent’s murder, anything and everything you know.’

  ‘And if I do?’

  ‘If you do, and if what you tell us checks out, then, and only then, we’ll see what we can do to help you.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to give you everything on a plate without a single promise being made?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘In a pig’s ear.’

  ‘Okay.’ Resnick was on his feet. ‘Take him down to the duty sergeant. See he’s charged. Illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition under section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006—’

  ‘All right, all right, all fucking right!’

  ‘Mr Gregan?’

  ‘I said, all right.’

  8

  Lynn had spent the afternoon watching Singin’ in the Rain, the DVD bought from Tesco Metro for the princely sum of £4.99. It had been one of her mother’s favourites and Lynn had bought her a video copy for her birthday one year, back when videos were the thing. On visits home they would sit together watching, her mother so familiar with the lines that at key moments she would say them along with the actors, Lynn bored by then with so much of it and willing the plot along to the next manic dance number, the next small explosion of action.