John Harvey: Cold in Hand

Marcus pushed past his elder brother. "What? You deaf, i'n it? Not the right fuckin' time."

"Marcus!" Howard Brent's voice stopped the youth in his tracks. "Get inside."

"I-"

"Inside. Now."

Marcus scowled and slouched away.

"Now," Howard Brent said, moving to stand at his elder son's shoulder, "what seems to be the trouble?"

"I've told him he's not welcome here," Michael Brent said.

"Two minutes," Resnick said. "That's all I need."

"And I said no."

"Michael." Brent placed a hand on his son's elbow. "It's all right. Please go back into the house."

"You know you don't have to-"

"Michael, please. Look to your mother."

The young man stared hard at Resnick, then walked away.

"This so important you have to come here now?" Brent glanced round. "My family, my friends."

"Last night," Resnick said, "you made a call."

"I what?"

"You called my house and left a message. A message for the person I live with."

"I dunno what you talkin' about," Brent said.

"You don't remember what you said?" The colour was rising on Resnick's face, his body tense. "'Watch your back, bitch.' That's what you said."

"You're crazy." Brent began to turn away. "Crazy."

Resnick stopped him with a hand against his chest. "Three years, wasn't it? What you went down for? Aggravated assault. Beating some poor bastard within an inch of his life."

A smile crossed Brent's face, as if remembering what he had done. "He asked for it," he said. "And that was a long time ago. Another life, you understand?"

Resnick moved closer. "Lynn Kellogg. You come near her, try to speak to her, you as much as walk down the same side of the street, I'll have you inside so fast, your feet won't touch the ground."

"What charge?"

"Any charge I like."

"You threatening me?" Brent said. "In front of all these people, you're threatening me?"

"A warning, that's all."

For a long moment, Brent held his stare. "We done here?" he said then, stepping back. "'Cause I got friends waiting. The minister, come to pay his respects."

Smile replaced by a sneer, he turned away.

"For God's sake, Charlie, what were you thinking?"

They were facing one another in Bill Berry's office, the room untidy, impersonal, as if the Detective Superintendent had merely borrowed it for the afternoon.

"What the hell got into you? Accusations without a shred of proof. Threats in front of a dozen witnesses. Like some cowboy."

Resnick shrugged heavy shoulders.

"Letting your feelings run amok."

"He needed telling," Resnick said.

"There are ways."

"That was my way."

"Jesus, Charlie! Conflict of interest, remember? You and Lynn." Berry pushed both hands up through his hair and sighed. "Sit down, for Christ's sake."

"If I'm on the carpet-"

"And don't be clever. Just sit the fuck down."

Resnick sat.

Both men continued to sit, silently, directives and graphs and papers spread across the desk between them, until Berry leaned forward in his chair. "Before seeing you, I spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes with the Assistant Chief, explaining to him why, at the present time, you shouldn't be suspended from duty."

Resnick said nothing.

"As the ACC was at pains to remind me, I was the one who argued for you to be pulled out from behind that desk of yours to be number two in this investigation. And then this."

Resnick still said nothing.

"I mean, when you went after him like that, the way you did, what did you think was going to happen?"

"I thought it would make him think twice before doing it again."

"The phone call?"

"Yes, the phone call."

"You don't even know if it was him."

"It was him."

"She didn't recognise the voice. She didn't recognise his voice, how could she?"

"It was him."

Berry slammed both hands down hard against the desktop, sending papers ballooning. "And if it was. If it was. Supposing for a moment, in the absence of any real evidence, you're right, you think that makes it okay for you to confront him in front of the whole sodding community? Threatening him like some vigilante, Steven fucking Seagal on a white horse. Jesus Christ! You know what this man's like, you know how much he loves the sound of his own voice, how much he thrives on publicity."

Resnick looked away.

"The first thing Brent did after you left him was contact every radio and TV station in a hundred-mile radius. The Post has got a picture of him on the front fucking page, serious and responsible in his best suit, alongside some old one of you they've pulled from the files, showing you on your way into court looking as if you're wearing someone else's clothes."

"All of that-" Resnick began.

Berry ignored him, steamrollering on. "The Chief Constable's had the chair of the Police Authority breathing down his neck, the Professional Standards Committee demanding a special meeting. To say nothing of the African Caribbean Family Support Project and the Racial Equality Council practically camping outside his door. Shall I go on?"

Resnick hoped not.

"Because this murder investigation is at a crucial stage, and only because of that, you're left clinging onto your job by the skin of your teeth. But if you step out of line once more, you're finished, washed up and hung out to dry. Clear?"

"Clear."

"Then get the fuck out of here."

Resnick did as he was told.

The investigation moved on slowly. Anil Khan took Catherine Njoroge with him when he went to talk to Joanne Dawson a second time, hoping Joanne would respond more readily to a woman. The house was one of the few in the street that wasn't at least partly boarded up. Joanne's father answered the door, a short, shaven-headed man in Lonsdale sportswear, a gold chain around his neck and carpet slippers on his feet.

"What's this now?" he said, looking from one officer to the other and back again. "United fucking Nations?"

Joanne was sitting in a darkened room, curtains drawn, hiding, as best she could, the injuries to her face. Despite Catherine's presence, she didn't tell them a great deal more than she had before. It was Kelly as started it, weren't it? Going mental when she'd heard about her going with Brandon, calling her slag and whore and worse. Meeting up, like, that'd been to sort it out, not for no fight. Taken some mates with her, 'course she had, don't go down no St. Ann's on me own, no way. When they got there, everything had been cool at first, just a lot of shouting, not much more, then Kelly come out with the knife.

Whoever'd fired the gun, she didn't know who he was, never saw him, blood streaming down my fuckin' face, how could I? Just heard the noise, the shots, you know, and then everyone screaming. Kelly's laying there, blood streaming out of her. Sorry for her in a way, I's'pose, the lyin' bitch, but then, she never should have started it, should she?

"The boy who fired the gun," Catherine said, one more try before leaving, "someone said he was wearing Radford colours."

"No," Joanne said. "I don't think so. Don't see how he could be. Ask any of them I was with and they'll tell you. Not one of our lot, no way. You ask 'em. Go on."

Ask they did, and kept on asking.

Stone wall.

Seventeen of the twenty-three shown on CCTV had been identified and all but one of those interviewed, some on two separate occasions. More than half had had run-ins with the police before, a few anti-social behaviour orders, supervision orders, nothing too serious. The missing names were still being chased down. Meantime, Marcus Brent's college had confirmed that on the day of the shooting his group had been visiting a supermarket warehouse in Wellingborough.

Resnick sat at his desk, subdued.

He read reports, listened to officers, shuffled schedules, prowled the corridors like a wounded bear.