Cold in Hand (30 page)

He laughed. "I could never tell what Lynn saw in you, but she did, and that put something of a smile back on your cheeks, a bit of snap in your walk. Gave you a second chance, Charlie, that's what she did. Second chance at a bit of happiness. So be grateful. Not now, it's all too close, too raw, but later. When you can, when you're able. She was a grand lass, and she loved you something rotten, though I'm still buggered if I can see why."

He tipped a little more Scotch into Resnick's glass and then his own.

"There's a match tomorrow, you know. Thought you might fancy it, 'fore I go back. Be a bit like old times, me and you at Meadow Lane, watching the buggers lose."

Maybe, Resnick thought, maybe. Football had been far from his mind. And he was still thinking about what Millington had said—lucky, is that what he was?

Well, yes, he thought, taking a sip from his glass. Lucky and unlucky both.

After Elaine had left him for that slippery bastard of an estate agent and argued her way to a divorce, there'd been a couple of short-lived relationships but nothing more, and he'd none too fondly imagined keeping his own company for the rest of his life. Cats aside. But then there was Lynn, looking at him now in a different way, and, like Millington, he'd wondered what it was she saw in him that was so special. Marvelled at it. Gloried. Spent the first six months in a kind of daze, half-terrified that one morning she would wake up with a start and realise the mistake she'd made, pack her bags and be out the door. And when that didn't happen, he'd allowed himself to relax, to accept that it was all right, it was real, she was here to stay.

In seconds everything had changed.

A moment and she was gone.

He felt cold again and then warm. At least he hadn't burst into tears without warning, not in the last few hours he hadn't. With a sigh, he lifted and drained his glass. Good Scotch or not, he'd have a head like nobody's business come the morning.

Out in the kitchen, he made them both cheese on toast with mustard and Worcestershire sauce, feeding ends of the cheese to the cats. Millington insisted on having his with a pot of tea, strong enough to stand a spoon upright in the cup. The spare bed was already made up. He shunted Millington up ahead of him and pottered around the kitchen for a while, clearing up. He entertained the thought of sitting a while longer on his own, listening to—what had Millington called them, one of those old crones? But, finally, he went upstairs instead. If he slept much past four, he'd be thankful.

For the first time in a long while, Resnick's heart failed to lift as he neared the ground, Graham Millington and himself part of the small crowd turning off London Road and crossing the canal, a bright sky but the air suddenly cold enough to catch their breath. Once inside, Millington, more a creature of habit even than Resnick himself, stood in line for cups of Bovril and a brace of meat-and-potato pies. Their seats were close to the halfway line, some ten or twelve rows back, the grass an almost luminous green, promising something special, almost magical.

The first fifteen minutes of mistimed tackles and misplaced passes soon gave a lie to that, the crowd saving most of their invective—officials aside—for the perceived shortcomings of their own team. Never bad enough to occasion a chorus of "You're Not Fit to Wear the Shirt," but close. Not that the visitors were a whole lot better, a mixture of superannuated cloggers and earnest youngsters, none of them showing much wit or ambition, until, the interval not far off, they went close with a twenty-five-yard volley which the Notts goalkeeper did well to tip over the bar.

"Bloody hell!" Millington said. "That was a near thing." And then, glancing sideways, "Come on, Charlie, they're not playing that badly."

Resnick was sitting there, shoulders hunched, tears running soundlessly down his face.

The second half was better; the team talk seemed to have worked. Instead of being endlessly booted high up into the heart of the defence, the ball was played out wide to the wings and then whipped across, Jason Lee making his presence felt in the goalmouth, elbows and experience counting equally. It seemed as if they must score—a Lee header bounced back off the post, a shot just cleared by an outstretched boot—and then, with less than five minutes to go, there was a melee in the home goalmouth following a corner, and the ball squeezed over the line.

Visiting supporters, collected behind the far goal, chanted and jeered. A few of the home fans jeered and gesticulated back, while others, heads down, started to leave. Resnick and Milling-ton, stoics both, waited till the bitter end.

"Nice to know some things don't change," Millington said, as they were walking away from the ground. "Still know how to throw three points away just this side of the final whistle."

At the station, they shook hands. Millington was catching a train down to Leicester, meeting up with another old colleague before travelling back to Devon the following day.

"Look after yourself," he said.

Resnick nodded, forcing a smile. "Do my best."

Instead of taking one of the waiting taxis, he opted to walk.

Resnick couldn't understand the volume of traffic noise drifting off the main road, nor the fact that the light making its way through the curtains was so bright—not until he checked the bedside clock and found it was a few minutes short of eleven o'clock. The first decent sleep he'd had in ages.

And he was hungry, too.

After a brisk shower, he laid strips of bacon along the grill, whisked eggs in a bowl with pepper and salt and a couple of shakes of Tabasco, and while the omelette pan was heating, set the coffeepot on the stove.

Breakfast over—or had that been lunch?—he called to ask about the release of Lynn's body for burial. Given the circumstances and the fact that the cause of death was scarcely open to question, the coroner said he would happy to arrange for a second postmortem himself, after which the burial could go ahead. All he needed was an okay from the Senior Investigating Officer, confirming that no arrest was imminent.

Resnick thanked him and dialled the Central Police Station to speak to Karen Shields, but had to content himself with
leaving a message. Bill Berry took his call next, but sounded so awkward and ill at ease that Resnick made an excuse and rang off.

Nothing for it but to walk into town.

The indoor market in the Victoria Centre had been in danger of being closed down several times, half of the stalls having fallen empty or changed hands, until a last-minute effort and a lick of paint had just prevented the whole enterprise from collapsing completely. The coffee stall which Resnick had patronised for more years than he cared to remember had an air now of being abandoned, and the few customers sitting disconsolately around it looked like passengers stranded at an airport from which flights no longer departed.

He drank his espresso slowly and read the report of the match in yesterday evening's paper. Notts's misery at the last. He could remember when it hadn't always been like that, but that memory was fading fast.

His mobile rang so rarely that he failed to realise at first that it was his. Karen Shields was returning his call: if he wasn't doing anything special, why didn't he come into the station and she'd bring him up to speed?

Walking into the building, he felt like a man with the plague. Officers he knew by sight and who knew him at least by name turned their backs when they saw him approaching and busied themselves elsewhere; others shook his hand and offered condolences without ever once looking him in the eye. Only Catherine Njoroge made a point of seeking him out and asking how he was coping, then listening to the answer as if she cared.

Karen Shields, he noticed, had pinned a photograph above her desk of a woman he took, from the resemblance, to be her mother, alongside a grainy picture of Bessie Smith downloaded from the computer.

"How was it?" she asked. "Coming in?"

Resnick shrugged heavy shoulders. "I hadn't realised being in mourning was a contagious disease."

"People are embarrassed. They don't know what to say, so they end up saying nothing at all."

He pulled out a chair and sat opposite her and she noted the deep shadows around his eyes.

"You've not been sleeping."

"Not till today."

"It'll pass."

With time, he imagined she'd be right: what was extraordinary would become normal, and he would carry on.

"I was speaking to the coroner earlier," he said. "It needs your say-so before arrangements can be made for the funeral."

Karen nodded. "We're still some way off making an arrest. And besides, I can't see there's anything for any defence to get specially exercised about. I'll call him first thing."

"Thanks."

"You must find it frustrating, knowing the investigation is going on and not being able to be a part of it."

"I didn't at first. I don't think I was able to concentrate on anything. Didn't seem to be able to think clearly at all."

"And now?"

"You could try me."

She reached for a file and slid it across the desk. "This came through last thing yesterday."

It was a printout of the report from Huntingdon. The markings identified the weapon used as a 9mm Baikal IZH-79 pistol and confirmed that both bullets had been fired from the same gun.

"The reason for keeping the report back an extra day," Karen said, "they were double-checking the markings against the database. A batch of same guns was seized in a raid last spring."

"Seized by the Met?"

"Met and Customs, both."

"SOCA, then?"

"Not exactly. At least, I don't think so. SOCA wasn't launched until April, and this operation went down in May and would have been set up a long time before that."

"You're following it up?"

Karen nodded. "I've spoken to one of the officers involved, and he's passed on a message to the DCI who was running the Met end of things. He's on a course somewhere, but he's promised to give me a call back. From what I understand, there've been several small batches of these weapons making their way into the country for eighteen months or more. Some have been intercepted, but not all."

"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.

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.