Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

  Of the nationals, only the Guardian gave the story any particular prominence on its front page; the Sun offered an exclusive interview with Kelly’s grieving mother on page five and the Mirror countered with a centre spread of colour photographs showing Kelly as Mary in a school production of Godspell.

  ‘All right,’ Bill Berry said, bringing the room to attention. ‘Before we get down to the main business, a word or two about Mr Brent. Unless you’ve had your head in the sand the past twenty-four hours, you’ll be aware of how he’s been shooting his mouth off.’

  There was enough angry muttering to suggest this was the case.

  ‘Well,’ Berry said, ‘we’ve been taking a closer look at the righteous Mr Brent, and he’s not the paragon he seems.

  ‘For one thing, rather than being the concerned family man he’s setting himself up to be, it seems he walked out on the family home when Kelly was just seven, her brothers eleven and nine. While he was AWOL, he was being chased by the Child Support Agency for nonpayment of dues over a period of almost two years.’

  Positive sounds from the assembled troops: payback time. They were enjoying this.

  ‘Brent moved back about five years ago, since which time he’s got himself involved in a couple of local businesses, part shares in a Caribbean restaurant in Hyson Green and some gimcrack record shop in Hockley. Both above board as far as we can tell, but might be worth taking a look.’

  Berry paused and scanned the room. ‘More importantly to us, he’s got something of a record. A twelve-month suspended sentence for possession of a class C drug back in ’89, and a three-year stretch for ABH.’

  ‘Explains why he’s not been home much,’ one of the officers at the back remarked.

  Laughter all round.

  ‘So,’ Berry continued, ‘if Mr Brent doesn’t keep his head down and his mouth closed, I’ll have the Press Office pull the rug from under him so fast he won’t know if he’s on his head or his arse.’

  More laughter.

  The DS looked towards Resnick. ‘Charlie, you want to bring us up to speed?’

  Resnick positioned himself in front of a diagram showing the immediate area where the incident had taken place.

  ‘Fortunately for us,’ Resnick said, ‘there were three CCTV cameras in operation at the time of the murder. One, here, at the side of Gordon House; another further back along Cranmer Street, the direction from which DI Kellogg would have approached; and lastly, here, on St Ann’s Hill Road, just short of the intersection.

  ‘What seems clear is that one group of youths, a number wearing Radford colours, made their way into St Ann’s along Forest Road East and Mapperley Road and entered Cranmer Street at its western end, here. They then met with a group of similar size from St Ann’s – we’re talking around a dozen to fifteen – some of whom came along Cranmer Street from the other end, some cutting up alongside these houses here, where there’s a lot of rebuilding going on, on St Ann’s Hill Road.’

  ‘Prearranged, then, sir?’ Anil Khan asked.

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Turf war,’ Frank Michaelson said.

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Radford and St Ann’s,’ Bill Berry remarked. ‘Never mind the Montagues and the bloody Capulets. Not as dead set against one another as St Ann’s and the Meadows, maybe, but close enough.’

  ‘According to DI Kellogg,’ Resnick said, ‘the shooter was wearing a black-and-white bandana, which, as we know, are Radford gang colours.’

  ‘Could be a Notts fan,’ someone suggested, jokingly.

  ‘Anything to do with County,’ someone else called out, ‘he’d have bloody missed.’

  More laughter, especially from the Forest fans in the room, Resnick, despite his allegiances, smiling along with the rest.

  ‘Tracking down the gunman,’ he said, ‘that’s obviously our priority. DI Kellogg will be working with a sketch artist later today, to see what they can come up with. We’ve spoken to Joanne Dawson, the girl who was injured before the shooting, and we’ll need to talk to her again.

  ‘Beyond that, we want as full a list as possible of all those present at the scene, those names checked through the computer, connections traced. You know the drill. Which means, aside from going frame by frame through the CCTV, talking to any local residents who might have been home, along with students from the university flats.’

  ‘Likely in bed asleep,’ someone said. ‘Lazy bastards.’

  ‘Questions?’ Resnick said.

  ‘Anything yet from Forensics on the type of gun?’ Steven Pike asked.

  ‘I spoke to Huntingdon this morning,’ Bill Berry said. ‘They’ve promised something by the end of the day. Note the promised.’

  He rolled an invisible pinch of salt between finger and thumb and threw it over his shoulder for good luck.

  ‘There’s one last thing,’ he said. ‘If this is part of a gang war, we’d best be braced for what’s to follow. Radford takes out someone from St Ann’s, it won’t be long before St Ann’s fights back. Revenge shootings, unless we’re careful. Tit for tat. I’ll talk to the powers that be about stepping up patrols, but they might say they’re already doing what they can. So let’s wrap this up fast before the proverbial hits the fan.’

  Murmurs of agreement volleyed round the room.

  ‘Okay,’ Berry said, ‘all of you. Off your backsides and get to work.’

  By rights, Resnick thought, he should send Anil Khan off to talk to Kelly Brent’s parents and keep himself back from the firing line; maybe go and see Joanne Dawson instead, see if he couldn’t persuade her to be a little more cooperative. But the temptation to meet Howard Brent face to face, after the things he’d said about Lynn, was too strong.

  After all, get you out of the office, that’s what Bill Berry had promised, bit of real police work for a change. Well, the real police work, Resnick knew well enough, that was slow, laborious routine, check and double-check, two steps up, most often, and three steps back. But out and about, interviewing suspects and the like, that was, some might say, the icing on the cake.

  Lynn couldn’t shake it out of her mind. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself to forget about it, just someone hogging the spotlight, venting his spleen.

  Used my daughter as a shield. A human shield.

  Sacrificed my daughter’s life for her own.

  She had been taken through it in the debriefing yesterday: had replayed the incident, time after time, in her mind.

  Two girls facing each other at the centre of a rough circle, one of them, Kelly, armed with a knife. As Kelly jumped past her to attack Joanne, Lynn had grabbed hold of her sleeve and then her arm, applying pressure, forcing her arm upwards, Kelly all the while struggling, kicking, lashing back with her free hand – and then the youth with the gun stepping out from the crowd as Lynn, catching sight of the movement from the corner of her eye, had swivelled towards him, the movement taking Kelly with her, the gun aiming in her direction, the youth’s eyes focused, at that moment, on her. Her, and not Kelly, close alongside her? She couldn’t be sure.

  How possible was it that the gunman had been shooting indiscriminately into the crowd? How possible that both bullets had been intended for Kelly Brent rather than for her?

  It had all happened so suddenly, so fast, Kelly and herself so close together. And then the impact of the bullet sending her staggering back, falling, arms flailing, leaving Kelly standing, exposed, in her place.

  Used my daughter as a shield.

  Consciously, unconsciously, could that have been what she had done?

  Sacrificed my daughter’s life for her own.

  In the bathroom, bent low over the toilet bowl, Lynn retched until her throat was dry, each movement jarring her chest with pain.

  Sombre suit, dark tie, Resnick sat uneasily on the thin cushions of the settee, Catherine Njoroge in a plain black trouser suit alongside him, the jacket with three-quarter sleeves and wide lapels; her hair tied back with purple ribbon, hands clas
ped in her lap.

  Facing them, so close in the small room they could have reached out, almost, and touched, Kelly’s mother, Tina, sat pinch-faced, stiff-backed, dark lipstick smudged across her pale face, alternately toying with the small silver crucifix that hung from her neck or picking at skin around her fingernails that was already plucked raw. The father, Howard, leaned back into a leather chair, legs crossed, sleeves of his grey sweatshirt pushed back above the elbow, a pair of ice-blue Converse All Stars, unfastened, on his feet.

  No one spoke.

  A framed photograph of Kelly, head and shoulders, smiling, had pride of place on the tiled shelf above the fireplace, smaller family photographs to either side. There were others on the side wall and balanced on top of the widescreen TV: Tina and the children, Kelly and her two older brothers, Michael and Marcus; Michael, the elder boy, the more prominent of the two.

  Everything in the room was neat, dusted, in its place.

  A home.

  The last time Resnick had been in such a home it had been to talk to a mother whose daughter had been killed in a drive-by shooting and one of whose sons was now in prison for avenging her murder.

  Stories that repeated themselves too many times.

  Tina Brent brought her finger to her mouth and bit away a piece of fraying skin.

  It was quiet enough to hear the flat tick of a clock from one of the other rooms, the rattle of someone skateboarding past outside, the distant bass beat from a stereo along the street.

  Contempt in his eyes, Howard Brent’s gaze went from Catherine Njoroge to Resnick and back again.

  ‘What she doin’ here?’ he said. ‘Make us feel good, yeah? One of us. Token nigger. Token black.’ He leaned sharply forward, feet to the floor. ‘Girl, how that make you feel?’

  Unruffled, head turning slowly on her long neck, Catherine Njoroge looked back at him calmly through dark almond eyes. ‘I feel for you in your loss,’ she said. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ Brent said, leaning back.

  Catherine’s eyes flickered once.

  One of Resnick’s hands gripped the arm of the settee, the other, resting on his leg, had formed into a fist and he willed the finger to relax.

  ‘Mr Brent,’ he said, speaking deliberately, ‘so far, apart from one brief instance, you have refused to allow the family liaison officer into the house. You declined to take part in the official press conference, choosing instead to make a statement of your own, in which you made a rash and wholly unfounded accusation against a member of this force. In fact, you’ve shown much more interest in talking to the press than you have to the police. And now you insult one of my officers with what could only be described as racist remarks.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ Brent said.

  ‘Well, what?’ Resnick said sharply. ‘You want us to find your daughter’s killer or not?’

  ‘What sort of stupid question’s that?’

  ‘The one I’m asking.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Brent said, just beneath his breath, and, rising, quick to his feet, he turned and left the room, slamming shut the door in his wake.

  Tina Brent winced and shrank even smaller into her chair. Brittle, she was close to tears, close to collapse.

  Catherine Njoroge looked quickly towards Resnick, a quick nod telling her to go ahead.

  ‘Mrs Brent,’ Catherine said, ‘Kelly was wearing a gold chain with the name Brandon.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That would be Brandon Keith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was her boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And she was still seeing him? Brandon?’

  ‘Far as I know, yeah.’

  ‘She hadn’t said anything about them breaking up, some kind of a row, nothing like that?’

  ‘Not to me, no.’

  ‘And she would have talked to you? If it had been anything serious?’

  ‘She might.’

  ‘Only we think Kelly might have gone to Cranmer Street because of some kind of argument over Brandon, with another girl.’

  Tina Brent reached down into her bag for her cigarettes. ‘I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that.’

  ‘Joanne Dawson,’ Resnick said, ‘does that name mean anything to you?’

  A quick shake of the head.

  ‘Mrs Brent . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never heard Kelly mention her name?’

  ‘I just said.’

  Using a disposable lighter, she lit her cigarette.

  ‘The afternoon that Kelly was killed, she and Joanne Dawson were fighting.’

  ‘I said I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that.’

  ‘Kelly attacked her with a knife.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘There are witnesses.’

  ‘Some people, they’ll say anything.’ She drew the smoke down into her lungs, held it there, and then released it slowly from the corners of her mouth.

  Catherine Njoroge picked up Resnick’s glance. ‘Mrs Brent, do you know if Kelly had a knife?’

  ‘What knife?’

  ‘You didn’t see her, that day, with a knife in her possession?’

  ‘Course I didn’t. What would she be doin’ with a knife?’

  ‘Perhaps she thought she needed it,’ Catherine said. ‘For protection.’

  ‘She didn’t have no knife. How many more times?’ The cigarette was trembling in her hand. ‘What the fuck’s it matter, anyway, she had a knife or not? My daughter, shot with a fucking gun and you’re sitting there asking me about some stupid, sodding knife.’

  Ash fell across her lap and she brushed it away, smearing grey across her skirt.

  ‘What we’re trying to do,’ Resnick said patiently, ‘is establish the reason for Kelly being there that day so that we can find out just why she was killed.’

  ‘Why she was killed?’ Tina Brent’s eyes were suddenly bright. ‘We know why she was killed. One of you lot, that’s why. That’s what got my Kelly killed.’

  Angrily, she stubbed out her cigarette. There were tears at the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away with her sleeve.

  ‘Your daughter,’ Resnick said evenly, ‘was killed because someone that afternoon was in illegal possession of a firearm, which they discharged into the centre of a crowd of people.’

  ‘So what? Some kind of soddin’ accident, that what you’re saying now?’

  ‘What I’m saying, Mrs Brent, is we don’t yet know. We don’t have all the facts that will tell us exactly what happened. We don’t know if your daughter was deliberately targeted or if her death was a terrible accident. But it’s our business to find out – and we can do that better with your cooperation, yours and your husband’s.’

  Tina Brent took a quick sideways glance towards the door. ‘You’ll get no cooperation from him, I’ll tell you that now.’

  ‘But you can help us,’ Resnick said.

  She nodded and lit another cigarette. The bass sounds from down the street were louder now, more insistent.

  ‘Brandon Keith,’ Catherine Njoroge said, ‘have you seen him recently?’

  Tina Brent shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Can you remember when you saw him last?’

  ‘Yeah, matter of fact I can. Last weekend. He come round for her. Sat’day, it’d be. That motor of his. Some fancy bloody thing.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  ‘Like I said.’

  ‘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?’ Resn
ick 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 further over his head.

  ‘Marcus,’ Resnick said.

  A grunt and nothing more.

  With a quick movement, Resnick pulled the covers clear. ‘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 on to one elbow. ‘What you gonna do? Arrest me? Skippin’ off?’