John Harvey: Cold in Hand

Daines was sitting on the stairs outside Karen's apartment. Though it was far from a cold night and certainly not cold inside the building, the collar of his suit jacket was turned up against his neck. His tie was loose, the top button of his shirt unfastened.

"Good night?" he asked.

"Lively," Karen said.

"I'll bet. Somehow my invitation got lost in transit."

"From what you said earlier, I didn't think you were exactly cheering."

"About Lazic getting arrested? We did our best earlier. Bastard tried to shoot his way out. That's how he stopped one himself."

"A good result for you, though. All those weapons seized. Arrests aplenty. Though I hear both Zoukas brothers somehow slipped the net."

Daines gave a small shrug. "It happens."

"Doesn't it though?" She was looking at him hard.

Daines smiled. "You wouldn't want to invite me in?" he asked, with a nod towards her apartment door. "Nightcap. One for the road."

"That's right," Karen said, "I wouldn't."

"Too bad." He got to his feet and, when he did, because of the stairs, he was a good head taller. "I tried to see Lazic at the hospital. Couple of guys sitting there with submachine guns in their laps wouldn't let me in. Acting on instructions, they said."

"We wouldn't want to risk losing him now. Not any of us, I'm sure."

"Did he say anything about me?"

"About you? No, why? Should he?"

He moved in closer and Karen readied herself; if he tried anything, he was just at the right height for a quick elbow in the balls.

"You're playing games with me, aren't you?" Daines said.

"Not at all. If you want a report of Lazic's medical condition, that can be arranged. As soon as he's fit enough to be moved down to London, you'll be informed. You've got my assurance he won't be questioned while he's here, and I'm sure you can liaise with SCD once he's in their care." She took a step up and moved to go round him. "Now that about sorts it, don't you think?"

He stepped across into her path and his face was pressed close to hers; his breath warm on her face. Even in the subdued light of the stairs, she could see the green glimmer at the corner of his eye.

"If I thought you were fucking with me-"

"Yes?" She held his gaze. Not for the first time, she wondered if he were armed.

"If you are-"

"Then what?"

He stared at her and then, as if making a sudden decision, he stepped away. "Just wanted to add my congratulations," he said, with a quick, almost apologetic shrug. "Job well done."

"Thank you."

Karen waited until he was out of sight, his footsteps fading down the stairs, before letting herself into the apartment and securing the door behind her.

When Resnick had got home, some time earlier, he had made himself a sandwich-all that beer, more than he was used to, making him hungry-and put a pot of coffee on the stove. Chet Baker somehow suited the mood. It was a while before he thought to check his phone: three messages from Ryan Gregan, the most recent an hour before.

After meeting Gregan, Resnick had made himself take a long, slow walk, back through the Arboretum and along Mansfield Road as far as the Forest Recreation Ground before cutting through to St. Ann's. The manner in which he'd confronted Daines had been foolish. Juvenile. Sufficiently out of character for him to take the judgement "unfit for duty" to heart. Unfit? "Unfit" was too bloody right.

Not now.

Howard Brent was outside his house, touching up the offside front wing of his car where someone had scraped it driving past. He had barely paused to look up as Resnick approached, but when Resnick spoke, he had listened. Listened and replied, his normal hostility tempered by something he would have been hard put to explain. Slowly, he straightened and watched Resnick as he walked away.

Jason Price lived in the upper two rooms of a terraced house in one of the short streets that narrowed out either side of Sneinton Dale; one room had a narrow bed and a spare mattress on the floor, the other an old two-seater settee that had been dragged in from a nearby dump, a couple of wooden chairs and a thirdhand stereo along with, Price's pride and joy, a large-screen plasma TV he had traded for ten grammes of amphetamines and fifty tabs of LSD. There was a microwave in one corner, next to a sink with a small hot-water heater alongside. The lavatory was on the floor below.

When Resnick arrived, Price was in'T-shirt and boxer shorts, having not long got out of bed. It was a few minutes past eleven, Sunday morning. Church bells all over the city were ringing, calling the people to shopping centres and supermarkets, Homebase and B amp; Q.

"What the fuck-?" Price said, opening the downstairs door.

"Marcus here?" Resnick asked. Price nodded. "Snorin' upstairs, i'n it?"

"Get on some clothes and get lost. And don't wake him. Let him sleep."

"What's this all about?"

"Just do it."

Price knew the law when he saw it; knew better than to argue. Thank Christ him and Marcus had smoked the last of his stash before turning in. Five minutes and he was gone.

The upstairs room smelt of dope and tobacco and the slightly sweet, not-unfamiliar stink of two young men who slept with the window firmly closed. Resnick flicked back the catch and levered the top half of the window down and Marcus, angled across the mattress, one bare foot touching the floor, stirred at the sound. Stirred and rolled onto one side and resumed sleeping.

What was he, Resnick asked himself. Eighteen at most? Asleep, he looked younger, his face smooth and his skin the colour of copper. Fragile. Vulnerable. Somebody's son.

"Marcus." Resnick pushed at the side of the mattress with his shoe. "Marcus, wake up."

Another push and the youth spluttered awake, twisting his head towards Resnick and gasping as if seeing something in a dream, except that this, he realised seconds later, was worse.

No nightmare: This was real.

"Get up. Put something on."

Marcus rolled sideways and pushed himself to his feet. Bollock naked, he reached for his jeans and a V-necked top.

"What the fuck is this? Where's Jason? What's goin' on?"

"I've been trying to figure it out, Marcus, and I'm still not sure. Which was it? Greed or plain stupidity?"

"What? What the fuck you talkin' about?"

"Selling the gun."

"What? What the-? I dunno what you're on about. What fuckin' gun? I dunno nothin' ' bout no fuckin' gun."

But the shiver in his eyes said that he did.

"A Baikal semiautomatic, Marcus, remember? I don't know who you bought it from, haven't been able to find that out yet, but I know who you sold it to. A man named Steven Burchill, round the back of the Sands in Gainsborough."

Marcus bolted for the door and Resnick grabbed his arm and swung him round hard, so that he landed on the floor with a loud thump, then rolled hard against the wall and caught the edge of the skirting board with enough force to open a cut above his left eye.

"Waste of effort," Resnick said, dismissively. "You didn't think I'd come here without backup? There's men downstairs, front and back. Cars at the end of the street."

Marcus shivered, believing Resnick's lie, and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing blood.

"Here." Resnick took a handkerchief from his pocket. "Use this."

He had thought, when he finally found Lynn's killer, when he confronted him face-to-face, that he would be unable to control his anger, that it would need others to hold him back, to stop him from trying to take vengeance into his own hands; but now, in that small sad room, looking down at that skinny youth, not yet twenty, not too bright, not so very different from the scores of similar young men he'd had to deal with over the years, he found the anger draining out of him-the anger at this individual, at least.