Cold in Hand cr-11

by John Harvey

  "And the ones that weren't could be anywhere by now."

  "Absolutely."

  "There's no word about the shooter coming in off the street?" Resnick asked.

  "Not so far."

  "If anybody knew anything, you'd have thought there'd be a whisper by now."

  "One of the local firms has offered to put up a reward for information."

  "It might help. Difficult to say. Danger is, you'll get people clogging up the lines who know next to nothing, but'll make stuff up in the hope of getting their hands on the money."

  "I know."

  Resnick shifted in his chair. "Still no sign of Brent, I presume?"

  "Nothing. As far as we know, he's still in Jamaica. We're liaising with the police there as much as we can, but it's not easy. And he's not the only one missing."

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Alexander Bucur and Andreea Florescu. They seem to have been missing since the day after the murder."

  "You think there's a connection?"

  Karen smiled. "Depends how much faith you put in coincidence."

  "The reason Lynn went down, Andreea was frightened. I know from what Lynn told me, she'd been threatened before."

  "This was over the Zoukas case?"

  "Yes. They warned her with what might happen if she agreed to give evidence."

  "Which she did."

  Resnick nodded.

  "There's every sign she and Alexander have both disappeared," Karen said.

  "Together?"

  "Not as far as we know."

  Karen's phone rang suddenly. "I'll be right down," she said, and then, to Resnick: "Howard Brent's just walked into the station under his own steam."

  The reception area was busy: a couple of youths sitting morosely, one nursing a bloodied nose; a man in camouflage trousers and a Forest shirt, half his hair shaven away where a wound had been stitched; another man, older, with greying dreadlocks, reciting from the Bible, and a young woman, skinny and pale, holding a four- or five-month-old baby against her chest, while another child, barely a year older, alternately wailed and whimpered from the buggy by her side.

  In the midst of all this stood Howard Brent. Black leather jacket, white T-shirt, dark wide-legged trousers, black-and-white leather shoes; diamond stud in his left ear, gold chain round his neck. Handsome. Tall. As Karen entered, Resnick close behind her, he stood taller still.

  Seeing Resnick, his eyes gleamed.

  "I hear your woman died," he said. "Shot dead, ain't it? Shot through the head. An' you know how that make me feel?" His face broke into a smile. "That makes me feel good, you know? Good inside. 'Cause now you know. You know what it's like. To have someone you love-"

  Resnick charged at him, head down, fists raised.

  At the last moment, Brent sidestepped and stuck out a leg, tripping Resnick so that he went headlong, all balance gone, one arm twisting beneath him, his face slamming into the wall where it met the floor.

  Two uniformed officers seized Brent by the arms and pulled him back.

  Karen went to where Resnick lay, barely moving, on the ground.

  Brent still smiling, shaking his head.

  "Ambulance!" Karen shouted. "Now!"

  When she and another officer helped Resnick to sit up, there was a cut above his right eye which was closing fast. Blood from his broken nose had splattered all down the front of his shirt.

  Thirty-two

  One of the paramedics reset Resnick's nose before leading him to the ambulance. "There," he said, as Resnick screamed. "Better than new." At the hospital, seven stitches were inserted over his cut eye, and an X-ray determined that his left elbow, though extremely painful, was badly bruised and not broken; a precautionary CT scan revealed no intracranial haemorrhaging. Patched up and armed with a healthy dose of ibuprofen, he was sent on his way. Medical expertise could do nothing for his injured pride, the overwhelming sense of his own stupidity.

  With unwonted speed, the Force's Professional Standards Unit rolled into action. At a little after ten the following morning, the Police Surgeon deemed Resnick, somewhat conveniently, to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and registered him as officially unfit for duty.

  "Fine welcome," Brent had said, when Resnick was being led off towards the waiting ambulance. "Come in of my own volition, hear you wantin' to speak to me, and what happen? This feller come chargin' at me like a wild bull, no cause, no reason."

  "There was cause," Karen said sharply.

  "You think?"

  "You deliberately provoked him, wound him up on purpose."

  "What I did," Brent said, a smile playing in his eyes, "express my sympathy. For his loss, you know?"

  "His injuries are as bad as they might be, you could be facing some serious charges."

  Brent scoffed. "Anyone bring charges here, it's me. Assault, yeah? Actual bodily harm." He pronounced each syllable lovingly. "Like I say, he the one come chargin' at me, all I did, step out the way. Ask anyone." He swept his arm in a circle. "Go ahead. Ask these people here. Take witness statements, yeah? Ask these people what they see."

  Karen knew Brent was right. Provoked or not, Resnick had lost it completely. In many ways, it was fortunate that Brent had swerved out of Resnick's path as adroitly as he did. Had he sustained anything approaching a serious injury, then not only Resnick but the Force itself could be facing charges of misconduct and a battery of claims for compensation.

  She asked one of the uniformed officers to fetch Brent a glass of water, asked Brent if he would like to take a seat while she found out which Interview Room was most readily available. Ramsden could sit in with her during the questioning, but Ramsden on a short leash.

  "You've been out of the country," Karen started.

  There were no cameras switched on, no recordings being made, no lawyer present; Brent was there, as he'd said, of his own volition, and could leave, unhindered, at any time. Unless, of course, anything he admitted to gave sufficient cause for him to be restrained.

  "A few days, yeah."

  "Jamaica."

  "After what happened, a break, you know?"

  "Visiting family?"

  Brent made a sound midway between a snort and a laugh. "My family back home, they fell out with me long time back. We don't speak, don't text, don't telephone." He shrugged. "Their loss, okay? Not mine."

  "Then why-?" Karen began.

  "Friends. I got friends there."

  "Girlfriends?"

  Brent smiled. "Just friends, let's say."

  "Colleagues? Business acquaintances?"

  "Business acquaintances, sure."

  "What business, exactly, might that be?"

  " My business."

  "Your catering business or your music business?"

  Brent smiled. "I come back with a few new recipes, some-thin' to try, maybe, at the restaurant, make some changes. Keep the chef on his toes. And some new recordin's, too. Da'Ville. Jovi Rockwell. Business an' pleasure, you know?"

  "Your wife, Tina. She claimed not to know where you were."

  "Tina, she know what she need to know, that's all."

  "There was no contact between you while you were away?"

  The smile, quick and lascivious, was back on his face. "I expect she dream of me a bit, you know."

  Ramsden would have liked to knock the smile, cocky bastard, off his face once and for all. "How did you hear about DI Kellogg's death?" he asked.

  "We have newspapers over there, you know. Television. The Internet."

  "That's how you heard about it, on the Internet?"

  Brent sat straighter. "My son Michael, he told me. Called me on his mobile as soon as he heard."

  "And what did you do?" Karen asked. "What went through your mind?"

  "Be honest, I feel sorry for her, that my first thought. Sorry she lose her life in such a violent act. Still a young woman, eh? Then I go out and buy champagne. Drink a toast with my friends."

  "You were glad."

  Brent inc
lined his head, not answering.

  "You wished her dead."

  "What I wish, my daughter's life back. But that I cannot have. But now that Resnick, he knows what it is to lose the one person you love in the world most of all. An' yes, that make me feel glad. Here."

  He laid his fist over his heart.

  "How much?" Mike Ramsden said suddenly, leaning close towards him.

  Karen looked at him sharply, but he carried on.

  "Enough to arrange for it to be done?" Ramsden continued, bearing down. "Bought and paid for, while you're sunning yourself a few thousand miles away, drinking rum and Coke with your friends?"

  "That's what you think?" Brent's voice rose. "That's what you want me to come here for, to accuse me of that?" He stared at Ramsden, hard. "What you gonna do now? Get out the handcuffs? Make me confess? Or you gonna let me go an' follow me? Stop me in the street an' throw me up against the wall, huh? Search my clothes? Harass my family, harass my friends? Each time I go out in the car, someone pull me over, something wrong with your brake light, mister, or book me for speedin', thirty-two mile an hour in a thirty-mile zone? Maybe I find my letters opened? My telephone tapped?" He snorted dismissively and rose to his feet. "Do what you want till doomsday, try all you can, I'm tellin' you, you never gonna lay this at my door."

  Karen took a breath. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Brent. If we want to talk to you again, we'll let you know."

  Ten minutes later, Brent escorted from the building, they were standing in Karen's temporary office.

  "Nice going, Mike."

  "What?"

  "Subtle, the way you went about finessing information out of him."

  "Got under my skin, didn't he?"

  "Really? I'd never have noticed."

  "Bollocks," Ramsden said.

  "What did you think?" Karen asked. "That you could shake it out of him? Ruffle his feathers and he'd fall to pieces at your feet?"

  "He's a prick."

  "Doubtless. Two pricks going at it together. Mine's bigger than yours."

  Ramsden put up a hand as if to ward her off. "Okay, okay."

  Karen turned towards the window and saw her reflection, featureless against a greying sky.

  "So," Karen said, "what did you think?"

  "Seriously?"

  "Seriously."

  "I wish Resnick had hit him where it hurts and done some serious damage, instead of wallowing in like some overfed water buffalo and letting Brent take the piss. But that's not what you want to know."

  "No."

  "You want to know, do I think he was responsible for Kellogg's death."

  "Yes."

  Ramsden gave himself a moment. "Did he want her dead? Yes, I think so, beyond a fragment of doubt. Longed for it. With every bone of his jumped-up, miserable body. But did he have the balls, the common sense, the wherewithal to set it up, then give himself a nice alibi by being out of the country, I don't know." He ran his hand down across his mouth. "There's doers and talkers, you know what I mean? And up to now, I'm not too sure which Brent is."

  "He could be both."

  "He could. And he's some talker, I'll give him that. Gift of the fucking gab. But the rest-" Ramsden shook his head, uncertain.

  "What's the feeling amongst the troops?"

  "Before today? They'd like to pin it on him, all the stuff he's been coming out with especially. And, yes, I'd say some of them like him for it, but that might just be lazy thinking, you know?"

  "So we should forget about him? Cross him off the list?"

  "In a pig's ear!"

  "What then?"

  "We keep chasing down all the other lines of enquiry. By the book. You know that better than me. But, meantime, let's doublecheck Brent's contacts, ask around. Have the troops keep their ears to the ground, get every informant working overtime."

  Karen nodded. "I can chase up that guy I know from Trident, see if we can't find out a little more about who Brent was seeing when he was in Jamaica."

  Ramsden's face broke into a grin. "And then, of course, there's always stopping him in the street and throwing him up against the wall."

  Karen phoned the hospital later that evening to be told that Resnick had been treated and allowed home. When she phoned his house, there was no answer. She rang him at nine the following morning and then again at ten: still no reply. She could understand, she thought, why he might not want to be speaking to anyone, least of all her.

  Thirty-three

  "My God!" Jackie Ferris exclaimed. "What happened to you?"

  "Don't ask." The skin around Resnick's swollen right eye was a dramatic purple tinged with yellow and green; the centre of his face, all around the nose, was blue shading into black. An artist's palette run amok.

  They were in the Assembly House, Kentish Town, Ferris's pub of choice. Monday lunchtime, quiet, only a few tables occupied. A lone drinker at the bar. The sound of traffic accelerating away from the lights outside enough to muffle what conversation there was. Among the cards and letters Resnick had received after Lynn's death, expressing sympathy, Jackie Ferris's had been one of the most heartfelt and to the point.

  "I take it you didn't fall off your bike?"

  "Not exactly."

  "The other feller, then? How does he look?"

  "Not a scratch."

  Jackie lifted her glass. Coke with ice and lemon, still hours to go till the end of her day. "How've you been, Charlie?" she asked.

  "You know, okay."

  "Don't fob me off, Charlie."

  "All right. At first I could hardly sleep, a few hours at most. I wandered round as if I were in some kind of daze. Didn't know where I was, when it was. And cold, a lot of the time I was cold. Shivering cold. And Lynn, she was everywhere."

  "Oh, Charlie!"

  "Everywhere I looked. Not just at home, but out in the city. I'd see her on the bus or just across the street, the back of her head just turning a corner. I still do. Once today, coming here. And I can't"-he shook his head-"I keep bursting into tears, no warning, no reason."

  "You've got reason."

  "Standing at the counter waiting to buy a loaf of bread, and suddenly these tears were running down my face. I felt… ridiculous."

  "You're grieving. What do you expect?"

  "Going crazy, that's what I'm doing. A little bit crazy."

  Jackie smiled. "It's not crazy, it's normal. Perfectly natural."

  "That's what he said, the bereavement counsellor. Absolutely natural."

  "Well, he's right."

  "I suppose so."

  "How long is it, Charlie? How long's it been? Not long."

  He held her gaze. "You want the hours, the minutes, or just the days?"

  She placed her hand over his. "I'm sorry."

  "I know."

  "And I need a real drink." Pushing her Coke aside, she got to her feet. "You want anything?"

  Resnick's pint was barely touched. "I'm fine."

  Jackie Ferris came back from the bar with a large Scotch, just a little water. She could pick up some mints on the way back to the station.

  "You saw her not so long before it happened, one evening, before she caught the train back to Nottingham."

  Jackie nodded.

  "How was she?"

  "She was… she was good. It was great to see her. I was teasing her about this bloke behind the bar, I remember. We had a laugh."

  "Did she say anything?"

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Anything that might have some bearing on what happened."

  "I don't think so. She'd been to see this woman over in Leyton. Andreea something? Herself and someone called Daines."

  "From SOCA."

  "That's right. The two of them went together, and then Lynn nipped back later alone. She wanted to talk to this Andreea on her own. Apparently she claimed to have seen Daines getting his rocks off in some dodgy sauna where she was working, being pally with the owner. But then, when they'd been to the flat earlier, Daines had looked right through h
er, as if he'd never seen her before at all."

  "She challenged him about it later. She told me."

  "What did he say?"

  "Denied it. Said the girl was lying. Told Lynn to mind her own business in no uncertain terms."

  Jackie raised an eyebrow. "She didn't trust him; that was obvious. Said she was going to ask around, I don't know where. I said I'd do the same."

  "And did you?"

  Jackie took a sip from her glass. "There was a joint operation, came to a head round here, about a year ago now. Customs and Excise and the Met. Illegal firearms. Four arrests."

  "You were involved?"

  "Not directly. But I know a couple of people who were. Not that they were exactly forthcoming. Daines was with Customs and Excise then-this was before SOCA really got going-part of the team. A lot of the information they were using came from him."

  "It worked out?"

  "Spot on, apparently. Kept surveillance on this cafe where it was all due to go down. Made the exchange between lattes. 'Red-handed' didn't come into it. Semiautomatics and ammo packed into a rucksack with an old peace sign on the back." She smiled. "Someone with a sense of humour, at least."

  "Four arrests, that's what you said?"

  "Yes. And three sent for trial. Found guilty, all of them. Ten years apiece."

  "The one who walked, he was what? Someone's informant?"

  "Looks that way. And not just to me. He was found three months later. Over in Ireland. County Wexford. Nailed to a tree."

  Resnick winced at the thought.

  Jackie drank a little more of her Scotch.

  "These people you spoke to," Resnick said, "there wasn't any suggestion about Daines being, I don't know, dodgy in one way or another?"

  Jackie shook her head. "Not really. I meant to dig a little deeper, get back to Lynn and pass on what little I'd heard, but then…"

  "Yes."

  Resnick's beer tasted sour; his palate, not the pub's cellar. "These guns, the ones that were seized."

  "Semiautomatics."

  "Baikals?"

  "I think so, yes."

  "The gun that killed Lynn was a Baikal 9mm semiautomatic."

  For some moments, neither of them spoke. The few customers who had been there had mostly drifted away.

  "You think there's a connection?" Jackie Ferris asked.