John Harvey: Cold in Hand

"How about the other day? The afternoon Kelly was shot. Did you see him then?"

Tina Brent's face tightened. "No."

"You're sure?"

"Sure." She wafted cigarette smoke away from her face. "'Sides, he wouldn't've had nothin' to do with this. Kelly hangin' out with her mates an' that, he don't like it. Told her so, I heard him."

"And you don't know where he might be now?"

"Brandon? No. Sleepin', most likely. Works nights, don't he?"

"Works where?" Resnick asked.

"DJ, i'n he?"

"You know where? Where he DJs?"

Tina Brent shrugged. "All over. Golden Fleece, maybe. The Social?"

The front door closed firmly. Howard Brent leaving or someone else coming in?

"Your boys-two, isn't it?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"They around?"

A shake of the head. "Michael, he's down London."

"Working?"

"No, university, i'n he?" As if daring him to contradict. "King's College, studying law." For a moment, pride lifted her head and added resonance to her voice.

"The youngest boy," Resnick said, "Marcus, is it?"

"How 'bout him?"

"He still lives at home?"

"What of it?"

"That wouldn't have been him coming in just now?"

"No, still sleepin', i'n he? Lazy sod. Anyway, no point talkin' to him. That day, he weren't even here."

"Oh?"

"Work experience, from the college. South Notts. Bunch of 'em. Wellingborough somewhere. Got the train down that morning. Didn't get back here till… till after it happened."

"You won't mind if we have a word? Just to check?"

For a moment, it looked as if she were about to protest, but then she slumped back against her chair. "Suit yourself. Upstairs, back."

Marcus Brent's room was small and dark, the curtains closed. It smelt of tobacco and dope and unwashed clothes. Posters of rap stars, nude women, and Premiership footballers filled the walls. A stereo, a bunch of CDs, PS3 and a small TV. Jeans across the foot of the bed, T-shirts on the floor. Several pairs of trainers, Adidas, Nike. A crumpled can of Coke.

Marcus stirred when Resnick entered the room and pulled the covers farther over his head.

"Marcus," Resnick said.

A grunt and nothing more.

With a quick movement, Resnick pulled the covers away. "Rise and shine."

"What the fuck?"

"Lovely day. Time you were up and about. Besides, haven't you any classes, lectures?"

Marcus pushed himself up onto one elbow. "What you gonna do? Arrest me? Skippin' off?"

Resnick smiled. "You know who I am, then?"

"Smelt you when you come through the door."

The smile disappeared. "The day your sister was killed, where were you?"

Wearily, Marcus told him: exactly as his mother had said.

"If I get in touch with the college, someone will confirm that?"

"Try it and see." He lay back down and yanked the covers over his head.

"Nice meeting you." Resnick closed the door and went back downstairs.

"Satisfied?" Tina Brent said.

"Michael, where's he live when he's away?"

"Some student house in Camberwell."

"Best let us have the address, just to keep things tidy."

Catherine Njoroge wrote it down. Resnick thanked Tina Brent for her time.

Howard Brent was on the pavement outside, smoking a cigarette. Flowers, most, but not all, wrapped in cellophane, rested up against the low wall, along with several teddy bears and a cloth doll. Expressions of sympathy on small, decorated cards. Never forgotten. Luv Always. Kelly-U R the Greatest. Rest in Peace. Others, in plenty, had been left at the site of the shooting.

Brent looked at Resnick with a taunting sneer. "Word is, you and the cop who was shot, you're like this, yeah?" And he ran the index finger of one hand slowly back and forth through the cupped palm of the other.

For a big man, Resnick moved with surprising speed, fists raised.

"Come on," Brent said. "Take a swing, why don't you? Here." And he thrust out his jaw. "Go on!"

"Boss," Catherine Njoroge said quietly from just behind him. "We should go."

She turned and started to walk away and, after a moment, Resnick fell into step beside her, Brent's mocking laughter following them down the street.

Shortly after she'd moved in, Lynn had come home one afternoon with a pair of bird feeders and a bag of mixed seeds.

Resnick had taken one look and laughed. "The cats'll love you," he said.

Only a few days before, Dizzy had dragged the mangled body of a robin through the cat flap and laid it at Resnick's feet, purring proudly, tail crooked and raised, for all the world as if he were still a quick young hunter and not a fading champion with a half-chewed ear and burgeoning arthritis in his hind legs.

But Lynn remembered with pleasure the birds that had gathered in her parents' garden in Norfolk-the middle of the country, admittedly-and had bided her time. Early the following spring, by dint of standing, tiptoed, on a chair, she had attached the feeders high on the trunks of two fruit trees that stood towards the back of the garden, close against the wall; an apple tree, whose fruit was small and somewhat sour, and a pear whose blossom promised more than it delivered.

For the first few mornings she saw nothing and wondered if she had sited the feeders wrongly, or if the mere presence of the cats-just three, now that one had wandered off and failed to reappear-was sufficient deterrent.

But then, suddenly, there was a blue tit on the apple tree; perching on an overhanging branch at first, before darting down to grab a seed, then skittering away. Five minutes later, it was back, and this time not alone. Within the space of a week there were great tits, a pair of blackbirds, robins, a wren, and once, a goldfinch, with its red-banded head and the fierce yellow of its wings.

Occasionally, either Dizzy or Pepper would gaze upwards wistfully, attracted by the quick flutter overhead, but other than that, they seemed to pay little heed.

"Happy now?" Resnick had said one morning, stopping behind her as she stood at the kitchen window, looking out.

"Yes." She twisted her head to give him a kiss. "Reminds me of home."

"I thought that's what this was," Resnick said.

She turned it over in her mind, now as she had then: how long did it take, living with someone, living in their house, before you felt that you belonged?

Lynn walked out into the garden, shoots already appearing here and there, fresh buds on the roses well ahead of their time, the pink flowers of the camellia scattered over the ground. New growth enough on the lawn for it to need a trim. Careful not to lean too heavily on the wall, loose bricks shifting slightly beneath her hand, she looked down on to the allotments of Hungerhill Gardens and watched for a moment as a man wearing an old, patched tweed jacket, grey trousers tied above the ankle with string, paused in his digging long enough to lift his grey herringbone cap from his head, wipe an arm across his brow, then replace his cap before resuming digging. The man sufficiently like her father to make her catch her breath.

The last time she had seen him, almost five years ago now, he had been sleeping, oblivious, thankfully, to pain, to every- thing, his skin a murky bilious yellow, the cancer eating into his liver, kidneys failing, a mask of hard unforgiving plastic over his mouth and nose.

"No heroic measures," the doctor had said. "He's lived a good life. You have to let him go now, in peace."

And she had continued to sit, holding her father's hand, talking every now and then, saying the first things that came into her head, not supposing the words mattered, if anything now did, other than the sound, perhaps, of her voice.

Once or twice, he had moved his head, as if to speak, and she had lowered her face close to his and, for a moment, lifted away the mask; but all there had been was a faint, dry gurgling deep in his throat and the smell of rot and decay: his teeth, yellow and crooked, and the parched skin flaking back from his lips.