Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

  Gene Kelly, whom her mother adored, Lynn found far too smarmy and self-satisfied, always cheering at the moment when the young Debbie Reynolds punctures his complacency, at least temporarily, and brings him down to earth. Until, of course, he does the dance. The dance with the umbrella, in the rain. For that, Lynn thought, he could be forgiven more or less anything.

  She had managed the walk into the city centre without any great discomfort, her ribs still a little sore, but her breathing relatively easy and untroubled. At the market she’d bought six small chorizo sausages in a vacuum pack and, from another stall, onions and celery and a flourish of parsley; at Tesco, DVD aside, she’d picked up a tin of crushed tomatoes to go with the one in the cupboard back home and another of chickpeas. And a small pot of sour cream.

  If she managed to carry that lot back up the hill without aggravating her injury, she was well on the way to recovery.

  Early evening she stood in the kitchen, half-listening to Radio 4, chopping onions and crying, wiping the tears away with her sleeve. Run the cold water tap, that was her mother’s remedy; Charlie favoured fresh air on his face from the open window; as far as Lynn was concerned there was no way round it: if you wanted onions you got tears.

  She was just stirring in the pieces of sausage, the juices at the bottom of the pan slowly oozing orange, when she heard Resnick’s key in the lock.

  He stood for a moment inside the kitchen door, savouring the smell. ‘I could get used to this, you know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You home here, doing the cooking.’

  ‘Meal waiting for you after a hard day at the office.’

  ‘That kind of thing.’

  ‘How about everything dusted and hoovered, the ironing done, shirts on their hangers . . .’

  ‘Bloody perfection.’

  ‘Here,’ she said, slapping the wooden spoon down into the palm of his hand. ‘Get stirring. I need a wee.’

  Resnick fiddled with the tuner on the radio, searching for something other than educated chatter; the only alternatives seemed to be opera, what he believed was now called urban music, or garrulous oiks in love with the sound of their own voices. He switched off and concentrated on the stew.

  ‘How’s this?’ he asked when Lynn returned, offering her a liberal tasting from the end of the spoon.

  ‘You’ve added something.’

  ‘Just a little paprika.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’

  ‘Too much?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘By the time the sour cream’s stirred in, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Resnick had bought a bottle of wine, which he opened now, reaching down two large glasses from the shelf.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to let it breathe?’

  ‘Probably.’

  They sat at the kitchen table, the cats weaving hopefully around their feet. The meal a far cry, Lynn was thinking, from what she had grown up with, her mother’s scarcely varying rotation: roast chicken or a joint of lamb or beef at the weekend, cold meat or shepherd’s pie on Monday; Wednesdays and Thursdays, cauliflower cheese or jacket potatoes, Fridays a nice bit of fish.

  When Lynn had left home to live alone, she had existed on pasta and bought-in pizza and supermarket salads shaken straight out of the packet and on to the plate. Living with Resnick had broadened her horizons in that area, at least. That and being able to tell Billie Holiday apart from Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan; sometimes she could even distinguish Ben Webster from Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young.

  ‘How did it go today?’ she asked. ‘Any progress?’

  ‘Some.’

  She listened with interest while he told her about Ryan Gregan.

  ‘The gun,’ she said, ‘it’s not the same . . .’

  ‘As was used on you and Kelly Brent? No. It’s a semi-automatic. 9mm. Heavy bloody thing. Swiss, Gregan reckons. Swiss police or army. But odds are it’s a Croatian copy.’

  ‘And Gregan had it why?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Resnick speared a piece of chorizo with his fork, ‘. . . the trouble with people like Gregan, so much of their life is spent lying, they can make more or less anything sound plausible. But what he says, he went back up to Newcastle for New Year, see some mates, celebrate. He’d lived there for a while before moving down. New Year’s Day, they were out having a quiet drink in this club, so they thought, and it all sets off. Gregan claims he doesn’t know what started it, but the next minute everyone’s getting stuck in. Pell-mell. One of his pals gets glassed in the face and Gregan smashes a bottle on the bar, wades in after the bloke who did it and takes out his eye. Like a softboiled egg, was how Gregan put it, right there inside an empty bottle of Newcastle Brown.’

  Lynn lowered a mouthful of stew back on to the plate, uneaten.

  ‘Next thing, the police are on their way and everyone scarpers, Gregan’s back down here on the morning train. Couple of days later, one of his friends gets in touch. The blokes they clashed with know where he is and they’re out to get him back. Evil bastards, his pal says. So Gregan thinks he’d better get some protection. Goes out and buys a gun.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  Resnick shrugged. ‘Not difficult. As you know.’

  ‘A gun and – what was it? – seven hundred rounds of ammunition?’

  ‘Give or take.’

  ‘What’s he want to do? Start a small war?’

  ‘He says that was the deal. All or nothing.’

  ‘And this was how long ago? The beginning of the year?’

  ‘Yes.’ Resnick broke off a piece of bread to wipe round his plate, mopping up the juice. ‘Gregan says he tried to trade it back to the bloke he bought it from, but he’d disappeared. Done a bunk. That was when he started putting the word out he might be willing to sell.’

  ‘That’s what he does?’ Lynn said. ‘Buys and sells guns?’ Leaning across, she refilled their glasses.

  ‘Not above using them, too, if his record’s anything to go by. But in this case, I think selling’s right. Had a few people sniffing round, nothing definite, holding out for a good price, and then this Billy Alston comes to see him, all the usual haggling, but in the end it looks like they’ve got a deal. Hundred and fifty, cash. Comes to it, Alston’s standing there with ninety quid and promises, trouble getting the rest, what if he takes delivery now, lets him have the remainder in a week’s time? You can imagine what Gregan thinks of that. Tells the kid to get lost.’ Bread consumed, Resnick licked his finger ends. ‘Week later, Alston’s back. Reckons something big’s about to go down, some kind of bust-up with St Ann’s, and he’ll give Gregan the hundred and fifty, no problem. They arrange a meet and Alston shows up with half a dozen others and immediately starts trying to talk Gregan down in price. Gregan doesn’t like being pissed around, doesn’t appreciate being pressured, and gets out of there fast. Two days later he hears there’s been a shooting and Kelly Brent’s been killed.’

  ‘And he thinks it’s down to Alston?’

  ‘Got to be more than coincidence, that’s what he said. Reckons Alston dropped his name in it because the deal went sour.’

  ‘Gregan could be doing the same thing.’

  ‘I know. But with a possession charge hanging over him, he’ll want some solid ground. And we do know Alston was there, at the scene.’

  ‘You’re bringing him back in?’

  ‘Alston? First thing.’

  Lynn reached across for Resnick’s empty plate and set it on top of her own. ‘How’s it been left with Gregan?’

  ‘Police bail. He’s on the spot. Agreed to ask around. If Alston wasn’t the shooter, he might get an inkling of who was. And meantime we’ve got his statement, implicating Alston, on tape.’

  ‘You’re not afraid he’ll do a runner?’

  ‘Always a risk. But if he doesn’t, if he proves reliable, we might be able to use him again. Someone that close to the local gun scene, something we haven’t had in a while.’ Re
snick pushed back his chair. ‘You wash and I’ll wipe?’

  As was often the case, Lynn was still sitting up in bed, reading, when Resnick switched out the light on his side, stretched out, and manoeuvred the covers up to his shoulder. He was more than half asleep when he felt Lynn snuggling down beside him, one arm reaching round to his chest, her legs pressed against his own.

  ‘Goodnight, Charlie,’ she said softly and kissed him at the base of the neck.

  Some ten minutes later, awake now, he turned towards her and kissed her cheek and then her mouth, his hand moving to her breast.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Let’s just cuddle, eh?’

  ‘Okay.’ Trying not to sound too disappointed.

  They were both up early, Lynn, for some reason, strangely unfocused, spending longer than usual in the bathroom and then standing, undecided, in the bedroom, uncertain what to wear. She was still dithering when Resnick put his head back round the door. ‘I’m off.’

  ‘Already?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Should be lifting Alston pretty soon.’

  ‘Good luck with it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Quickly across, she kissed him on the cheek and gave his arm a squeeze. ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ There was a smile in his eyes.

  ‘Just wasn’t feeling like it.’

  ‘I know.’ He gave her a hug and then stood back. ‘Take care.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Do my best.’

  She listened to his feet, heavy on the stairs, and then the closing of the door. One more glance at the black trousers in the mirror and she changed her mind; she’d wear the brown linen skirt she’d lucked on in the Jigsaw sale instead.

  9

  With the strong possibility of Billy Alston being in possession of a firearm, or of there being guns and ammunition on the premises, Armed Response officers had been requested from the Tactical Firearms Unit attached to Operational Support – armed for their own safety and for the protection of members of the public, as the rubric goes.

  The house where Alston lived with his three younger siblings, his aunt and mother, was close to a main road which, even at that hour of the morning, could be expected to be carrying a certain amount of traffic. Immediately before officers moved in to effect the arrest, therefore, roadblocks would be moved into place.

  Resnick sat with Catherine Njoroge in an unmarked car some little way back along the Boulevard; Resnick slightly unnerved by the way in which Catherine could sit motionless, not speaking or feeling the need to speak, for quite so long.

  Otherwise, he was content to be close to the action without being directly involved; the issue of rank aside, his days of charging up and down flights of stairs, yelling at the top of his voice, were, he was not unpleased to think, well past.

  Thirty-one officers all told, nine vehicles, not exactly softly-softly, but as Bill Berry had pointed out, this was a young man they had good reason to believe had not only shot and killed at close range, but had also fired on a police officer in the execution of her duty.

  ‘No risks, eh, Charlie. Either way.’

  Amen to that, Resnick thought, and checked his watch.

  Still a good few minutes to the off.

  He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  There was a pub, he remembered, back along the Boulevard from where they were now, lively even by local standards, parties most weekends in the function room above the bar. Resnick had met a woman there once, way back before Lynn, back, even, before he was married. A young PC off duty on a Friday night, most often he’d wander down to the Bell by Slab Square, in search of some jazz; either there, or out to the Dancing Slipper, where Ben Webster, one of his heroes from the Ellington band, had turned up one night too drunk to stand, never mind to play. But this particular evening a couple of pals had been going to someone’s birthday party at the pub and they’d dragged him, reluctantly, along.

  ‘Never know, Charlie, you might strike lucky.’

  After a manner of speaking, he had.

  She was tall with that kind of tightly curled permed hair that was fashionable at the time. Dark hair and blue eyes. She’d been laughing when she’d pulled him out on to the floor. Something by Geno Washington or the Foundations; Jimmy James, perhaps, and the Vagabonds.

  ‘You can dance, can’t you?’ she’d said and laughed again.

  Well, in those days, after a fashion, he could.

  When he kissed her later, on the street outside, her mouth had been cool and quick and her hair had smelt a little of sweat and cigarettes.

  ‘Shall I see you again?’ he’d asked, as her taxi pulled in to the kerb.

  ‘Maybe,’ she’d said. And, with a pen she borrowed from the driver, had written her number on his wrist.

  He’d realised then he didn’t know her name.

  ‘Linda,’ she called through the cab window. ‘Don’t forget.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ll remember me,’ he said, when three days later he phoned.

  ‘Course I do,’ she said cheerily, ‘you’re the dancer with two left feet.’

  The first time he went round to her place, an old farm labourer’s cottage she was renting out at Loscoe, they’d fooled around a little on the settee and just when he’d thought push might be coming to shove, he’d been shown the door with a hug and a swift kiss goodnight; the time after that she’d left the door on the latch and was sitting up in bed with a glass of wine, the room lit by candlelight.

  For the next three months, he saw her every free minute he could, every minute she’d grant him, until one evening when he called round, hopeful and unannounced, the door was answered by an ambulance driver with his shirt unbuttoned and hanging outside his uniform trousers.

  ‘She’s busy,’ he said and closed the door again promptly.

  His jacket had been neatly folded over one of the straight-backed chairs.

  Resnick saw her a couple of times after that and then not again. He heard once that she’d moved up to Cumbria to manage one of the big hotels, stayed and got married. Resnick was married himself by then, to Elaine, and it had scarcely mattered.

  Now, for some stupid reason, it did.

  This damned place, he thought, I’ve lived here too long and the longer it goes on the more ghosts there are, beating a path to my door.

  He checked his watch again.

  ‘Okay,’ he said into the radio, ‘roadblocks in place.’

  And then, moments before giving the order to go, he cursed softly, staring down the road ahead.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Catherine Njoroge asked.

  But by then she, too, had seen the television van that had drawn up at the closest possible point.

  Smack in the middle of the inner city, early though it might be, Resnick had known there was always the possibility of the arrest being something of a public event. What he hadn’t counted on was a camera crew from the local television station and an eager young reporter who would doubtless soon be trailing her microphone around the neighbourhood, collecting a selection of vox pops she could edit to her advantage.

  ‘Go,’ he said into the radio. ‘Go now.’

  Billy Alston was a light sleeper. He was wide awake and vaulting out of bed almost the moment he heard the door going in downstairs. Wearing only the striped boxers and vest he slept in, he was out of the room while his younger brother, with whom he shared the room, was barely stirring. Heavy footsteps on the stairs below, voices shouting, ‘Police. Police. Armed police.’

  Alston kicked open the door to the attic room where his sisters were sleeping, both of them surrounded by dolls and soft toys, Lauren half out of the top bunk, her arm trailing down towards the floor. When he pushed at the catch, the window into the slanting roof refused to budge, and Alston picked a stool up from the floor and, one arm cradled across his head, smashed the stool against the centre of the glass.

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sp; He could hear both his mother and his aunt screaming now, shouting and screaming, and the voices of the police getting louder, their feet closer. Reaching up, he grasped the sides of the window and hauled himself through.

  Behind him, Lauren cried out as an armed policeman burst into the room and she ducked her head back down beneath the covers.

  Alston slid down towards the guttering, scattering loose tiles in his wake, balanced for a moment, precariously, then jumped, barefoot, on to the flat roof of the rear extension. Another jump, down into the back yard, and this time he fell awkwardly, his ankle turning under him, scrambling to his feet and part-hopping, part-jumping towards the back gate, which, hanging half off its hinges, gave out into the narrow ginnel running down between the rows of houses.

  There were police marksmen some fifteen metres along in both directions, weapons raised.

  Fuck!

  Without waiting to be asked, Alston raised both hands and placed them, fingers linked, behind his head.

  ‘Down! Down on the ground. Now! Now! Do it, now!’

  Slowly, Alston obeyed.

  ‘A charade, Charlie, that’s what it was, a fucking charade. Like something out of Life on fucking Mars.’

  They had just finished watching the television news, shots of heavily armed police swarming towards an innocuous-looking terraced house, interspersed with talking heads, both black and white, speaking, almost unanimously, of police intimidation, overkill, the harassment of an entire community.

  ‘The purpose of the raid, according to a police spokesperson, was to arrest a young male, whom the police have so far declined to name, for questioning in connection with the murder of fifteen-year-old Kelly Brent. One of the reasons given for the presence of so many armed officers at the scene, was the very real possibility that there were guns and ammunition on the premises. As far as we can tell, no guns or ammunition have so far been found.’