John Harvey: Cold in Hand

Resnick turned aside, waited, and then followed.

At the end of Angel Row, they separated, the redhead walking up Market Street towards the Theatre Royal, while Daines carried on along the upper edge of the Old Market Square. Heading for one of the Lace Market hotels, perhaps, Resnick thought, or the Travelodge, just past the roundabout on London Road. A quick right and left, however, and they were out on to Belward Street opposite the National Ice Centre and Daines was veering towards the tall block of serviced apartments on the left.

Resnick lengthened his stride, moved quickly across the foyer and into the lift before the doors had closed.

"What the fuck?"

Daines had already pressed one of the buttons to set the lift in progress, and now Resnick pressed another, halting it mid-floor.

Seeing who it was, Daines laughed, as much out of relief, perhaps, as anything else. "Took you for some bastard mugger, after my wallet. Never can tell."

Resnick positioned himself with his back towards the door.

"I thought I saw you earlier, in the bar," Daines said. "Couldn't be sure."

Resnick looked back at him, impassive.

"So I have to guess what this is all about?"

Resnick still said nothing, taking his time.

"Let's go on up," Daines said. "We can talk in the flat. Or go back out onto the street, at least. Get another drink, maybe. Not too late."

"This is fine."

Daines shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"The night Lynn Kellogg was killed, she'd been down to London, the house where Andreea Florescu had been living. The same place the two of you visited a few days before."

"So? Why are you telling me this?"

"She thought, Lynn, that whole business, that you were in too deep."

Daines scoffed and shook his head.

"Something between yourself and the Zoukas brothers that she didn't trust. She started to ask questions and you warned her off."

"She was way off limits."

"You threatened her."

"That's ridiculous."

"That evening, outside the Peacock. 'Don't make me your enemy.' She told me, less than twenty minutes later."

"She was exaggerating."

"I don't think so."

"I don't recall saying any such thing."

"'Don't make me your enemy.'"

"That's what I'm supposed to have said?"

"Word for word."

Daines's expression changed. "Maybe you should take heed, too."

"Now you're threatening me?"

A hint of a smile crossed Daines's face. "Look," he said, "I can understand why you're so wound up about this. You and her. It's personal, I can see that. I can sympathise. But the last I heard, unless it's been rescinded, you've been invalided out. 'Unfit for duty,' isn't that the phrase? And for what you're doing here, keeping me against my will, you could be in deep, deep shit. I could press charges. That incident at Central Station, an unprovoked attack on a civilian, and now this-you'd be lucky to hang on to your pension. So let's both take a deep breath, okay?" Daines gestured with his hands. "I know you've been under a strain, and I'm prepared to forget any of this ever happened. What do you say?"

"Alexander Bucur," Resnick said, "you phoned him that evening, the same day Lynn went down on her own-"

"Jesus! You don't let go, do you?"

"You called him back that evening after she'd gone."

Daines's tone changed again. "Who says? Is that what he says? Bucur?"

Resnick nodded.

"His word against mine."

"Yes? Which phone did you use? Office phone or mobile? It shouldn't be too difficult to check."

"Okay, that's it," Daines said. "I've had it with this."

He reached for the controls, but Resnick blocked him off.

"You knew which train she'd be catching," Resnick said. "What time she'd be getting in. Not difficult to calculate how long it would take from the station."

"Meaning what? What difference would it make if I did?"

As soon as the words were out, he read the answer in Resnick's face.

"You think I killed her." Daines was incredulous. "That's what you're saying? It is, isn't it? You think I killed her."

"No, you'd be too careful for that. But you could finger her to somebody else who would."

"You're crazy."

Daines pushed past him and pressed the button, and the lift slipped into motion.

"Someone," Resnick said, "who'd feel safer if she were out of the picture and not starting to dig around. Someone, maybe, who was bearing a grudge."

The lift stopped on the fourth floor and as the door slid open, Daines stepped out.

"You are crazy," he said. "Absolutely off your fucking head."

The door began to close, and as Resnick jammed his foot in its path, he had a sudden urge, a near-blind impulse to throw himself at Daines, seize him by the shoulders and slam him back against the wall, then beat him with his fists.

"We'll see." Resnick pulled his foot away so that the lift door closed and Daines was lost to sight.

Instead of reading about it first in the papers, as Resnick had suggested might be the case, Karen heard about it on the radio when she stepped out of the shower, and then, pulling on her robe, a towel wrapped round her hair, she switched on the television to catch what was still being billed as breaking news. In the early hours of the morning, officers from SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, assisted by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central Task Force and the Operational Support Department of the Nottinghamshire Police, had carried out raids on a number of addresses in north London and Nottingham. It was understood that firearms officers from the Nottinghamshire Force and from CO19, the Met's Specialist Firearms Command, had also been deployed.

Pictures of armed police in all their gear, cars accelerating along city streets, and flashing lights were screened behind the newsreader's head-all stock footage, Karen was sure.

By the time she had dressed, more details had been released. Raids had been carried out on several shops and homes in the Wood Green and South Tottenham areas of London, in addition to warehouses in Paddington and Finsbury Park. In Nottingham, police and SOCA teams had targeted buildings on an industrial estate in Colwick, east of the city, as well as in the Lace Market area of the city centre itself. A number of arrests had been made, and items seized were believed to include a considerable quantity of weapons and ammunition. There were reports, as yet unconfirmed, of shots being fired.

The pictures this time were real.

Video quickly released by the Met's public-relations team were mixed on screen with poorly focussed images e-mailed in by members of the public who had been awake enough to capture some of what had happened on their mobile phones. For a few unclear moments, the building housing the sauna where Nina Simic had been killed came into view, the front door hanging off its hinges, a police officer standing guard.

Karen rang Dixon and then Daines, but, perhaps not surprisingly, neither was answering his phone. When she rang Chris Butcher, he spoke through a mouthful of toast.

"You watching this?"

"You bet," Karen said.

"Any idea what's going on up there?" Butcher asked.

"Only what you see on screen. How 'bout you?"

"Give me an hour."

"Will do."

Wandering into the kitchen area, she made coffee, switching from national news to local and back again as she waited for it to brew. Firearms officers in Nottingham had fired eleven rounds, and in London an unconfirmed number. It was not yet known if any of that gunfire had been returned. Estimates as to the items taken varied, but sources close to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency were suggesting that as many as six hundred illegal weapons had been seized, together with several thousand rounds of ammunition. The weapons, in the main, were Baikal IZH-79 pistols, which were believed to have originated in Lithuania. According to the Reuters News Agency, the Lithuanian Police Bureau, in a carefully coordinated operation, had carried out a number of arrests in different parts of the country, including Rauba and Vilnius, the capital.