Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

  There was a palpable rise in sound, as some of the team took that as a signal to move away.

  ‘Another thing, important. Could be vital. DI Kellogg’s movements the evening she was killed. She’d been returning from London. Why? What was she doing there? Was it work or personal? Who did she see? Who knew she was travelling back when she did? Anil, that’s down to you. I’m hoping to speak to DI Resnick later today and anything useful I learn I’ll pass along. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘And the rest of you, there’s another question. Why did the murder take place where it did? Why elect to kill her outside her own home?’

  She gave them a few moments to think before carrying on.

  ‘That short walk from the far side of the street to the front door, that’s the only point in the journey that evening when Lynn Kellogg would have been alone and not surrounded by other people. Not only that, but the street itself is quiet, it’s narrow, rarely used except for access, and there are no buildings at all to the rear, so the killer could have waited unobserved.’ She looked up, looked around the room. ‘Reasons enough? What do you think?’

  Coughing, low-level murmuring, uncertain glances. Catherine Njoroge took a hesitant step forward.

  ‘Yes, Catherine?’

  ‘I’m not sure how relevant this is, boss, but I was just thinking, whoever it was shot Lynn, they would probably have known that DI Resnick was there, in the house. If they knew that, then they must have known that he’d be the first to find her.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, maybe what happened, it was meant for him as well. To hurt him. And maybe – I don’t know, this might be taking things too far – but couldn’t it, at the same time, have been some kind of warning? Nowhere’s safe, we can reach you anywhere, even at home, where you feel safest.’

  ‘We, Catherine,’ Karen said. ‘Who’s the we?’

  Catherine shook her head. ‘I don’t know, boss. It could be Howard Brent, after what he said, but I don’t know.’

  ‘All right. And thank you, Catherine, good point. So we might have to look back through DI Resnick’s cases as well, beyond the most recent, I mean. Villains he’s put away . . .’

  ‘Hundreds,’ someone said.

  ‘Anyone recently released from prison who might be bearing a grudge. Let’s check. And good luck, okay? Sharp eyes, hard graft and good luck, we’ll get it sorted.’

  With the team dismissed, Karen went off into a huddle with Mike Ramsden, Anil Khan and the office manager to firm up rotas and schedules and make sure that procedures were in place to prioritise and process information as it came in.

  Once that was settled, she had to retrace her steps from the night before.

  26

  Resnick had been awake since a quarter past five, when he had first stirred, shivering, in his bed. Both the pillow and undersheet were soaked through with sweat and his hair was matted to his scalp. The youngest of the cats had been sleeping on the bed, just as it had before Lynn had moved in, and when Resnick slowly straightened and swung his legs round towards the floor, it shrilled a protest and jumped reluctantly down.

  Lynn’s reading glasses, the ones she had had prescribed but rarely used, were on the cabinet at her side of the bed, along with several hairbands in different colours, an empty water glass, the hand lotion she applied each night last thing and the book she had been reading but would never finish.

  This Book Will Save Your Life.

  Not now it wouldn’t.

  Resnick swept it away with one hand and sent it skittering across the floor.

  It was still dark outside and for a moment he had to ask himself how much time had passed since Lynn had died. How many hours? How many days?

  Through the window he could see shadows from a distant street light and the shapes of trees and, below, the stone wall and gravelled path and the stubbled grass of the front garden all marked off with tape.

  Let her go.

  The young paramedic with his earnest, freckled face, kneeling beside him, Resnick’s hands still interlocked across Lynn’s chest.

  You have to let her go now. Let her go.

  In the bathroom, he stood beneath the shower and turned it to full, letting the water beat over him; he stood there until it began to run cold, then stepped out and towelled himself down, grateful for the steam that hid his reflection in the mirror.

  Back in the bedroom, he slowly dressed, the same clothes as the day before. When Lynn had first moved in, he had teased her about the amount of clothing she had brought with her, enough, he had said, to fill the wardrobe on her own and demand her own chest of drawers.

  ‘What on earth are you going to do with all this lot?’ he had asked. ‘Start a shop?’

  And then, later, after she had been living there for a while – ‘Why don’t you sort through this stuff and chuck some out? It’s not as if you ever wear most of it, anyway. Give it to Oxfam or something. It’s just taking up space.’

  As if that mattered.

  As if space were what they were short of.

  He hadn’t realised it was time.

  The material of the blue cotton dress she had worn on holiday burned like silk against his hand.

  Despite the fact that he had pulled on a thick sweater over his shirt and a worn old cardigan over that, he was still cold. The kitchen window, which, save for the fiercest weather, he was wont to open the moment he arrived downstairs, was still locked shut. The central heating thermostat was set high. It had been like this the previous day, too, a coldness that chafed his bones: save for those moments when he could feel his face begin to flush, his skin prickle and, for no reason, he broke out in a sweat.

  This morning he managed the coffee pot but not the toaster.

  The card she had given him was still there, corners bent and a little grease-marked now, tucked between the sugar and the flour.

  Still here, Charlie, against all the odds.

  Well, no . . .

  Tears sprang to his eyes and he had to grab hold of the worktop to stop himself from shaking.

  The cup, when he lifted it from the shelf, slipped through his hand to the floor and broke.

  He couldn’t go on like that.

  He couldn’t go on.

  Cold or not, he pushed open the back door and went out into the garden, the sky striped with purple, red and grey. Traffic sounds merging with the close call of birds; a dog barking, sharp and insistent, at the far side of the allotments; from somewhere, faint and troubled, the cry of a child.

  There were things he needed to do, decisions to be taken, calls to be made. He pressed his thumb against the rough wall at the garden edge until it began to bleed.

  It had developed into a fine early spring morning, blue sky scattered here and there with wisps of cloud, pale sun. The weather forecasters had been talking of storm clouds coming in off the Atlantic, quickly changing weather patterns, but today there was no sign. Not this far inland.

  Karen had toyed with the idea of taking somebody else with her, but in the end she had gone alone. Uncertain if the bell were working, she had knocked several times, called through the letter box, tried the bell again. Turning away, she had reached the gate when the front door opened and Resnick, cardigan wrongly buttoned, stepped outside, blinking at the light.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, approaching, ‘I’m Karen . . .’

  ‘You’re Karen Shields.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘DCI.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Bill Berry gave me a heads up.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You were here last night,’ Resnick said.

  Karen nodded.

  ‘Walking the ground.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was all she could do to stop herself glancing sideways at the patch of grass where Lynn Kellogg had died.

  ‘You took a taxi from the station. The same journey Lynn made that night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Resnic
k nodded. ‘It’s what she would have done.’

  ‘What you taught her.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘You were her DI when she first went into CID.’

  Resnick’s face showed mild surprise.

  ‘I was talking to Anil yesterday,’ Karen said. ‘Anil Khan. He worked with you, too. Canning Circus, I think he said.’

  Resnick nodded. ‘You’d best come inside. There’ll be things you want to know.’

  The furniture in the front room was heavy looking, the upholstery fussy and starting to fade. The gate-legged table seemed to Karen to come from another age. She wondered how much Lynn had felt the need to change things after she’d moved in and what resistance she’d met, if any.

  ‘You lived here long?’ she asked.

  ‘Too bloody long,’ Resnick said, but he said it with a smile.

  Some women, Karen thought, would find that attractive, that quick self-deprecating smile, and would feel drawn to him, sympathetically. Would go over and rebutton his cardigan correctly. Pat him on the arm.

  Not me.

  ‘I can make coffee,’ Resnick offered. ‘Just no milk.’

  ‘Black’s fine.’

  While he was out of the room, she glanced at the books on his shelves – Looking for Chet Baker, The Sound of the Trumpet, Straight Life, several books about Thelonious Monk; clustered together, a batch of paperback novels by Alice Hoffman and Helen Dunmore, which she assumed had been Lynn’s; a couple of books she’d read herself, Beloved and The Lovely Bones. Beloved she’d read twice.

  Alongside the books were several rows of CDs, jazz for the most part, with a leavening of Prince and Madonna and Magazine, which had come into the house with Lynn, she guessed. Part of her dowry. Amongst several box sets, she noticed one of Bessie Smith, and she was looking at this, just trying and failing to free the little booklet with her fingernail and thumb, when Resnick returned, coffee mugs in hand.

  ‘Four CDs,’ she said. ‘You must be keen.’

  ‘Tell the truth,’ Resnick said, ‘I bought it a couple of months back and I don’t think I’ve listened to it more than once. And then not all the way through.’ He handed one of the mugs to Karen and set down his own. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine. I see something like that – ninety tracks for twelve pounds or whatever – and it seems too much of a bargain to resist. Lynn reckons . . .’ He caught himself and stopped. ‘Lynn used to say, where jazz was concerned, I had more money than sense.’

  He lowered himself heavily into his usual chair and Karen sat in another, her back to the window.

  ‘What happened to Lynn,’ Karen said, ‘I’m really sorry. I should have said right off, but . . . I don’t know, words, they seem so . . . inadequate.’ She drew air in sharply through her nose. ‘We’ll catch him, you know. Whoever was responsible.’

  ‘I know.’

  The coffee was strong and slightly bitter, too hot to drink quickly.

  ‘My mother loved Bessie Smith,’ Karen said. ‘Other singers, too. Dinah Washington. Aretha. But it was Bessie she loved best.’ She smiled. ‘I must have known the words to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” before I could recite “Humpty Dumpty” or “Little Bo-Peep”. Not that it ever did me a lot of good. As advice, I mean.’

  ‘Take it,’ Resnick said. ‘Borrow it. Let me have it back whenever.’

  ‘I might,’ Karen said. ‘Thanks. I just might.’ If this new apartment she was moving into had an up-to-date TV, it would surely have a CD player, too.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to know how far we’ve got,’ she said. ‘Unless someone’s brought you up to speed already.’

  Resnick shook his head.

  She gave him a summary of what little they knew so far and the main areas the investigation would be moving into. ‘Is there anything,’ she said, when she’d finished, ‘that you think we might be missing?’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  ‘You know we’ll be running an eye over old cases of yours?’

  ‘Someone after payback? Getting at me through Lynn?’

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Stretching it a little, I’d have thought. And besides, why go after her? Why not me instead?’

  ‘Maybe whoever it was wanted to see you suffer. Cause you pain.’

  ‘Like Howard Brent?’

  ‘You think that’s where we should be looking first?’

  ‘Him or someone close to him, yes. Aside from whatever grudge he holds against me, he felt Lynn was responsible for his daughter’s death.’

  ‘This call he was alleged to have made . . .’

  ‘“Watch your back, bitch.” ’

  ‘That’s what was said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As I understand it, Lynn didn’t recognise the voice. She couldn’t say definitely it was Brent.’

  ‘Not definitely, no.’

  ‘And we still don’t have proof. We don’t know for a fact it was him.’

  Resnick leaned forward abruptly. ‘Look, he was convinced Lynn had used his daughter as a shield. He’s on record as saying so. “One way or another, she’s gonna pay for what she’s done.” His words. One way or another, she’s going to pay.’

  ‘When they’re angry people say a lot of things. You know that. More often than not it’s just hot air, letting off steam.’

  ‘Lynn’s dead. That’s not just words. That’s fact.’

  ‘And you think Howard Brent was responsible? Directly? I just want to be clear.’

  ‘Directly? Personally responsible?’ Resnick shook his head. ‘It’s not impossible, but no, I doubt if he actually stood there and squeezed the trigger himself.’

  ‘You think he set her up, then? Paid someone to have her killed.’

  ‘Paid, bribed, cajoled. Then put some distance between himself and what he knew was going to happen. Gave himself an alibi.’

  Karen leaned back in her chair. Howard Brent was how old? Late forties? Fifty? He had a record for violence, she knew. Drugs, also, though only possession, not supply, and that in ’89. Right when the first serious spate of crack cocaine in the UK was at its height and gangs were moving in from Jamaica in large numbers. No matter how straight he might be now, if he had commissioned the shooting of Lynn Kellogg, it was likely he’d used whatever contacts he’d made in the past. And there were instances she knew, well documented, where a gunman had been brought into the country on a false passport, carried out two shootings and been back on the plane twenty-four hours later.

  ‘More coffee?’ Resnick asked.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Resnick was half out of his chair.

  ‘All right then, go on. But if I start climbing walls later, you’re to blame.’

  The moment Karen, following Resnick, walked into the kitchen, both of the cats who’d been waiting hopefully by their bowls turned and fled.

  ‘A clear case of colour prejudice if ever I saw one,’ Karen said, amused.

  ‘Tall, authoritarian women, they’re not used to it.’

  She laughed. ‘Authoritarian, is that what I am?’

  ‘You’ve got an air about you.’

  ‘God knows, some days I need it. There’s still enough men out there who don’t like taking orders from a woman. And a black woman especially. Though some of them might not admit it.’

  Resnick nodded, rinsing the coffee pot under the tap.

  ‘How about Lynn?’ Karen said. ‘How did she cope, being a woman in charge?’

  ‘Okay, I think. People liked her, she earned their respect.’

  ‘She’d got her promotion quickly.’

  ‘It was deserved.’

  ‘There wasn’t any tension between the two of you? Professionally?’

  Resnick put the base of the pot aside. ‘Was I jealous, do you mean?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. I mean – and correct me if I’m wrong – but you were already a DI when she started out . . .’

  ‘And here I am, still a D
I, and she’s . . .’ The words stuck in his throat. ‘She was the same rank and likely to have been promoted higher.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want to know how that made me feel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It made me feel proud. It didn’t make me jealous, or angry. It didn’t even make me feel bad about myself, as if somehow I was washed up or left behind. Okay? It didn’t make me feel as if my masculinity was threatened, and it didn’t mean I couldn’t any longer get it up.’

  He stared at her hard, just this side of losing his temper.

  ‘That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? One of the things you’ve come to ask? How things were between us? Had I been taking the Viagra? Keeping her satisfied? Or had she been going over the side, having an affair? Had I? Maybe she was going to leave me, walk out? The second time in my life. How would that make me feel? Enough to push me over the edge? Enough to take her life?’

  The blood had risen to his face and his voice was loud and unsteady. His fists were still clenched, but down by his side.

  ‘You’re right,’ Karen said. ‘I have to know. I have to ask. In my position, you’d do the same.’

  Resnick pushed his hands up through his hair. ‘I know.’

  ‘And things between you, they were okay?’

  ‘I think we were happy enough, yes. Not ecstatic, not any more. That doesn’t last. And we both worked hard at what we did – Lynn especially. Long hours, stress, not much time to yourselves. You don’t need me to tell you how that is. But there were no big traumas. Any little niggles, we ironed them out. An ordinary couple, I guess you’d say, just like lots of others.’

  ‘Ordinary couples,’ Karen smiled ruefully. ‘I wonder if they really exist.’