Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

  28

  Resnick woke rimed in sweat. He thought it was Lynn’s voice that had woken him and then, almost immediately after, something had brushed against his face. It was a little past four in the morning, nine years before, her voice, nervous and uncertain on the telephone: ‘Sir, it’s DC Kellogg. Sorry to disturb you, but I think you’d better come out.’

  The house had been on Devonshire Promenade, overlooking the park. Close to a full moon and cold. Lynn and another officer had been first to the scene and it was Lynn who had noticed the door out into the garden was not quite closed. She who had found one of the woman’s shoes, high-heeled and black, tainted with mud, and then the woman herself, half-naked, one arm stretching out towards a mound of recently turned earth, the other reaching up in a graceful curve behind her head. Dark lines of blood like ribbons through her hair.

  By the time Resnick had arrived, other officers and an ambulance crew were already at the scene. In the kitchen, someone had made tea. He spooned two sugars into the offered cup and carried it through to the front of the house.

  Lynn had been standing close to the window, shoulders tensed.

  ‘Here,’ he’d said, and she’d taken the cup, unsteadily, in both hands.

  Her face, normally ruddy, had seemed unnaturally pale.

  There had just been time for Resnick to ask how she was feeling before the cup fell through her hands and she had pitched forward, his arms reaching out automatically to catch her, her face pressed against his chest, the fingers of one outflung hand snagged for a moment inside the corner of his mouth.

  Outside, beyond the curtains, only the blue light of a police car had pierced the dark. Lynn’s hand against his face. The first time they had really touched.

  He woke again later, cold, to a cold room. Another day. A member of the force’s Occupational Health Unit had been round to see him the previous afternoon. Help and counselling. Stress management. A brisk little chat and a cup of tea, that seemed to be the idea. Bereavement, he was told, affected different people in different ways: sometimes it resulted in a loss of identity, a sense that you could no longer function, that somehow you were the one who had ceased to exist; more commonly, there was a refusal to believe the truth of what had happened and accept the reality of death. Insomnia, agitation, different kinds of anxiety, those were all to be expected. Sudden changes of temperature and mood.

  ‘Think,’ the visitor said cheerily, ‘of all the bits and pieces of your nervous system being placed into a sack and given such a shaking that they don’t know where they are. For a while, some of them may even cease to function at all. That’s what you’re going through.

  ‘It’s only natural,’ he continued, ‘that this sense of loss you’re experiencing will leave you feeling depressed. Absolutely natural. And the closer you were to the deceased, the more dependent you might have been on one another day to day, the stronger this depression might be.’ He smiled helpfully. ‘Talk to your GP, he’ll prescribe something to get you through the worst. And if you think it will help to talk some more, either to me or someone else, a counsellor, don’t hesitate, let me know.’

  He put a card down on the table, next to his cup.

  A neat little man in a neat blue suit.

  Somehow his visit had given Resnick the impetus to make the call he’d been dreading, Lynn’s mother slow to pick up the phone and then when she did, disintegrating into tears at the mention of her daughter’s name.

  At least he had not been the one whose task it had been to break the news, some family liaison officer deputed to do that and doing it well, Resnick didn’t doubt, properly trained, the right balance of clarity and care.

  Not quite trusting himself to drive, he took the mid-morning train, an apparently endless journey across country – flat fields for the most part, deep drainage ditches in the dark soil of the Fens – through Ely and Cambridge and on to Norwich, where he would change to the small local train to Diss.

  He bought a cup of lukewarm coffee and a sandwich from the trolley and glanced at the Nottingham paper he’d picked up before leaving.

  POLICE IN SEARCH FOR MISSING FATHER. Officers investigating the death of their colleague, Detective Inspector Lynn Kellogg, who was slain by an unknown gunman outside her Alexandra Park home, were last night seeking the whereabouts of Howard Brent, whose sixteen-year-old daughter, Kelly, was shot and killed in St Ann’s on Valentine’s Day. It is believed that Mr Brent may have left the country . . .

  He cast the paper aside.

  At the opposite side of the aisle, a middle-aged woman glanced across at him for a moment and then looked away.

  He had made a similar journey some years before, though by car; out towards the coast by the most circuitous route possible, never wanting to arrive. The girl’s body had been found inside black bin bags on the floor of a disused building, close by the line he was now travelling. She had been missing for sixty-three days. One of the first such investigations he and Lynn had worked as part of a team. When the girl’s mother had been told a body had been discovered that might be that of her daughter, all she had said was, ‘About fucking time!’

  Not much bereavement there.

  Mostly, the girl had been brought up by her grandmother, who, after the child had disappeared – had been taken – had left the city and moved to a thirties bungalow on the coast in Mablethorpe, cut herself off from everyone, shut herself away with her guilt. She was the one who had left the girl in the park, playing on the swings, for just five minutes while she ran to the corner shop. Resnick had promised, early on, that he would break the news to her himself.

  ‘Listen,’ he told her, ‘what happened, it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No? Then who was it who ran off and left her there? Off round the corner for a packet of fags? Who?’

  There must be days, Resnick had thought, when it was all she could do to stop herself walking out across the expanse of greying sand and on into the cold waters of the North Sea.

  The first time Resnick had visited, Lynn’s father had proudly walked him round the hen houses, sucking away at the pipe which served to keep the worst of the stench at bay. Resnick, polite and wanting, if not to impress, then, for Lynn’s sake, not to antagonise, had kept his counsel, held his breath for as long as he could.

  Back indoors, Lynn’s mother could not bring herself to address him directly. ‘Does he take sugar?’ she had asked of Lynn, even though Resnick had been sitting there at the kitchen table, fully able to answer for himself. Only when her husband had been dying, his cancer unstoppable, had she softened towards him. ‘Look after her,’ she’d said, clutching at his hands. ‘She’s all I’ve got now.’

  The chicken farm had been sold, swallowed up by some giant conglomerate, and Mrs Kellogg had bought a small flat in the market town of Diss and shored herself up with the Methodist Church and the Women’s Institute, book talks in the local library once a month and, in June, two local choirs in ‘A Celebration of English Song’.

  She had bought a lemon cake against Resnick’s coming, made sandwiches with ham and cucumber, put on a clean pinafore, set the kettle to boil the minute she heard his footsteps approach the door.

  She had made up her mind: she wasn’t going to cry. She was not. The moment she saw his face, her own broke apart. Resnick held her while she sobbed, small bones hard and brittle against his hands, the front of his shirt damp with her tears.

  He finished making the tea and carried everything through from the kitchen, best plates on a tray, the size of the rooms making him feel awkward and over-large.

  ‘She told me,’ she said, cup and saucer unsteady in her hand, ‘the young woman who came, she said it was all very sudden. That Lynn . . . that she wouldn’t really have known what was happening.’

  ‘No,’ Resnick said, ‘that’s right.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have suffered then?’

  He saw again the bottom half of Lynn’s face, torn open to the bare bone of her jaw, and smelt again the blood. �
�No. I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a blessing, then, at least.’

  They sat with their tea and cake and sandwiches, a clock somewhere striking the quarter-hour and then the half.

  ‘I’ve been trying to think about the funeral,’ she said, abruptly. ‘I just don’t know what’s for the best.’

  Resnick nodded, non-committally. He knew it would be a while, at best, before the body would be released. Having opened the inquest and established the cause of death, the coroner would adjourn it again while the investigation continued. If there were an arrest reasonably soon, the accused’s defence team would have the option of a second post-mortem; failing that, and with no arrest in sight, the coroner could arrange for a second, independent post-mortem himself and then release the body, but with a burial certificate only, barring cremation.

  ‘I’d like her to be lain next to her dad,’ Lynn’s mother said. ‘I think she’d have wanted that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Resnick said, ‘that would be fine.’

  ‘Please,’ she said, reaching towards the table, ‘have a piece more cake. I bought it specially for you.’

  It was like ashes in his mouth.

  On the way home, he dozed fitfully, the dark coming in to meet him across the fields. Crossing from the station, he walked into the nearest pub, an old travellers’ hotel, ordered a large Scotch and carried it to a table, delaying the moment when he would turn the key in the lock and step back through the door.

  ‘You ought to sell that place of yours,’ Lynn’s mother had said as he was leaving. ‘Get yourself somewhere like this. It’ll be easier to manage, now you’re on your own.’ Her kiss, dry and quick on his cheek.

  He bought a second whisky and stood drinking it at the bar. A large television screen, high in one corner, was showing a soccer match from the Spanish Liga, with a commentary running across the bottom of the screen in Arabic. Seated at a table immediately below it, but not watching, unconcerned, a grey-haired man in an ageing three-piece suit sat nursing a pint of Guinness and speaking, at intervals, to someone opposite who was no longer there.

  The bank of fruit machines on the far wall was going full swing.

  Further along the bar, two coach drivers, still in their uniform, were conducting an earnest conversation in Polish, not close enough for Resnick to understand every word, but it seemed to revolve around the poor facilities on the Autobahn east of Hanover.

  ‘Another?’ the barman asked.

  Resnick shook his head. ‘Best not.’

  He walked past the bus station and along the underpass that would take him on to Lister Gate and from there up towards the Old Market Square.

  A Big Issue seller Resnick had once arrested for breaking and entering accosted him as he was crossing Upper Parliament Street, close by the restaurant where he and Lynn were to have celebrated Valentine’s Day. A city this size, she was everywhere.

  ‘Big Issue?’ The man smiled broadly through broken teeth. ‘Help the homeless. Just these left.’

  Resnick bought all three.

  A dozen young women in varying stages of undress came cavorting down the street towards him, blowing kisses and shrieking loudly, someone’s hen night off to an early start.

  ‘I don’t fancy yours much,’ one of them shouted with a laugh, as a blonde in a silk top and skintight pants collided with Resnick and caught hold of his arm so as not to lose her balance altogether and go sprawling.

  When she’d gone, stumbling after her mates, there was powder on his sleeve.

  As he turned off the main road and into the narrow, poorly made-up road that led to his house, a chill settled over his bones. When he was no more than thirty metres off, he thought he saw something move in the shadow at the side of the building, just a few paces from the front door, exactly where Lynn’s killer would have stood. Resnick stopped, the backs of his legs and arms like ice, his breath caught in his throat. Imagination, he thought, like so much else? Two, three steps and then he quickened his pace, breaking almost into a run, slowing again when he reached the gate.

  ‘Charlie . . .’

  He recognised Graham Millington’s voice before he saw him, his former sergeant stepping forward to greet him, hand outstretched. ‘Charlie . . . Thought I’d best come by, see how you were getting on.’

  29

  That Friday morning, the day Resnick was making his reluctant journey east to visit Lynn’s mother, Karen had an appointment to see Stuart Daines.

  It was an easy walk from her apartment, down towards Wellington Circus, the building anonymous, only the number to mark it out. Daines had assured Karen he would be at his desk by eight thirty, nine at the latest, and he was true to his word, busy at his laptop when she arrived, and begging a moment before saving whatever was on the screen. He was quick then to shake her hand, pull out a chair and make her welcome, Karen briefly returning his smile, noting the crisp pink shirt with the cuffs turned back, the Tag Heuer watch, the fleck of green in the corner of one eye.

  ‘DI Kellogg’s murder,’ Daines said pleasantly, ‘there was something you wanted to ask.’

  ‘Just one or two things,’ Karen said, almost casual. ‘Background really.’

  ‘Of course, anything I can do you think might help. What happened, it was terrible. I mean, I didn’t know her that well, but she seemed committed to what she was doing. Efficient. A good officer.’ He leaned forward a little in his chair. ‘Like I say, I didn’t really know her well at all.’

  ‘You didn’t send her flowers?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Flowers. You sent her flowers.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’d forgotten. There was this incident, not so many weeks back, a girl was killed.’

  ‘Kelly Brent?’

  ‘Yes. Kellogg had somehow got involved, ended up stopping a bullet herself, but, thank God, she’d been wearing a vest. Nothing too serious in the end.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know her well,’ Karen persisted.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then . . . ?’

  Daines smiled. ‘We’d met on a SOCA course I’d helped to organise. I’d been kidding her about jumping ship, throwing in with us. A new challenge, I suppose. She hadn’t been keen. The flowers, they were just a way of – I don’t know – building bridges. Then we met again over this Zoukas business, the trial – you know about that?’

  Karen nodded.

  ‘After the trial was adjourned, you went down with her to London, I understand? To talk to one of the witnesses?’

  ‘Andreea Florescu, yes. I thought she might have been able to identify one or two people we’re interested in.’

  ‘In what connection?’

  ‘A long-term investigation. Ongoing. Just looking for confirmation, really.’ Another smile, there and then gone.

  ‘And could she help?’

  ‘She said not.’

  ‘Which sounds as if you didn’t believe her.’

  ‘She was frightened. She might have thought keeping quiet the best policy.’

  ‘But you didn’t take it any further?’

  Daines crossed his legs, one ankle over the other. ‘Like I said, it wasn’t crucial, more a case of dotting the “i”s, crossing the “t”s.’

  ‘Did you know,’ Karen asked, ‘about this last visit DI Kellogg made, the evening she was killed?’

  Daines looked puzzled. ‘Visit where?’

  ‘To London. To where this Andreea had been staying. The man whose flat she’d been living in was worried about her. Seems to have thought she might take off, disappear.’

  ‘These people,’ Daines said, ‘they do.’

  ‘These people?’

  ‘You know. Migrants. Asylum seekers. Keeping one step ahead of the authorities if they can.’

  ‘It’s my understanding she was here legally, a student visa.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘You don’t sound too concerned.’

  Daines shrugged. ‘Bigg
er fish to fry, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And, just to be clear, you had no idea that’s where DI Kellogg had been the evening she was killed?’

  Daines shook his head, impatiently. ‘I can’t see it matters, but no. I thought I said.’

  Karen got to her feet. ‘There’s nothing else you can think of that might be relevant?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Nothing. I’m sorry. If anything does occur to me, then of course . . .’

  Karen gave him a perfunctory smile and turned towards the door.

  ‘The investigation,’ Daines said, ‘you’re making progress?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Karen said, ‘slow but sure.’

  ‘Good luck with it, anyway.’ He was back to his computer before she’d left the room.

  Outside, it was promising a better day. Karen walked on down the hill and took a seat outside the Playhouse café, opposite a large concave sculpture in shiny metal that shimmered back large sections of sun and cloud. Other than a woman in an expensive-looking black suit, busily working her BlackBerry, she had the place to herself. When the waiter came out, she ordered an Americano with a little cold milk on the side, considered some kind of muffin or maybe a chocolate brownie – to die for, the waiter said, just this side of over-friendly and ever so slightly camp – but finally rejected both. The sight of herself in the mirror that morning, the beginnings of a tummy more obvious than she liked, enough to bring about restraint.

  When the coffee came she wished, as she sat there gazing at the metal sheen of sky, that she still smoked. A good few years now since she’d given up and yet, on occasions like this, there was the same faint but insistent need, niggling away. The woman with the BlackBerry – some kind of marketing whizz from the conversation she’d just been having – chose that moment to light up and the nicotiney smell floated across, insidious, on the air.