pasta.
‘Hope you’re good and hungry.’
‘You know…’ Her head appearing round the door. ‘…I’m not sure if I am.’
But she managed a good helping nonetheless, wiping the spare sauce from her plate with bread, washing it down with wine.
‘So — how was it?’ Resnick asked between mouthfuls.
‘All right, I suppose.’
‘Not brilliant then.’
No, some of it was okay. Useful even.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, ways of avoiding tunnel vision. Stuff like that.’
Resnick poured more wine.
‘I just wish,’ Lynn said, ‘they wouldn’t get you to play these stupid games.’
‘Games?’
‘You know, if you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be? If you were a car, what car?’
Resnick laughed. ‘And what were you?’
‘Vegetable or car?’
‘Either.’
‘A first-crop potato, fresh out of the ground.’
‘A bit mundane.’
‘Come on, Charlie, born and brought up in Norfolk, what do you expect?’
‘A turnip?’
She waited till he was looking at his plate, then clipped him round the head.
Later, in bed, when he pressed against her back and she turned inside his arms, her face close to his, she said, ‘Better watch out, Charlie, I didn’t tell you what kind of car.’
‘Something moderately stylish, compact, not too fast?’
‘A Maserati Coupe 4.2 in Azuro Blue with full cream leather upholstery.’
He was still laughing when she stopped his mouth with hers.
The bullet that had struck Jahmall’s shoulder was a 9mm, most likely from a plastic Glock. Patched up, replenished with blood, Jahmall was sore, sullen, and little else. Aside from lucky. His girlfriend, Marlee, had twenty-seven stitches in a gash in her leg, several butterfly stitches to one side of her head and face and bruises galore. The BMW was found on open ground near railway tracks on the far side of Sneinton, burned out. No prints, no ejected shell cases, nothing of use. It took the best part of a week, but thirty-seven of the fifty or so people who had been at the party in the Meadows were traced, tracked down and questioned. For officers, rare and welcome overtime.
The Drug Squad had no recent information to suggest that Jahmall was, again, dealing drugs, but there were several people at the party well known to them indeed. Troy James and Jason Fontaine in particular. Both had long been suspected of playing an active part in the trade in crack cocaine: suspected, arrested, interrogated, charged. James had served eighteen months of a three-year sentence before being released; Fontaine had been charged with possession of three kilos of amphetamine with intent to supply, but due to alleged contamination of evidence, the case against him had been dismissed. More recently, the pair of them had been suspected of breaking into a chemist’s shop in Wilford and stealing several cases of cold remedies in order to manufacture crystal meth.
James and Fontaine were questioned in the street, questioned in their homes; brought into the police station and questioned again. Jahmall spent as much as fourteen hours, broken over a number of sessions, talking to Maureen Prior and Anil Khan.
Did he know Troy James and Jason Fontaine?
No.
He didn’t know them?
No, not really.
Not really?
Not, you know, to talk to.
But they were at the party.
If you say so.
Well, they were there. James and Fontaine.
Okay, so they were there. So what?
You and Fontaine, you had a conversation.
What conversation?
There are witnesses, claim to have seen you and Fontaine in conversation.
A few words, maybe. I don’t remember.
A few words concerning…?
Nothing important. Nothing.
How about an argument… a bit of pushing and shoving?
At the party?
At the party.
No.
Think. Think again. Take your time. It’s easy to get confused.
Oh, that. Yeah. It was nothing, right? Someone’s drink got spilled, knocked over. Happens all the time.
That’s what it was about? The argument?
Yeah.
A few punches thrown?
Maybe.
By you?
Not by me.
By Fontaine?
Fontaine?
Yes. You and Fontaine, squaring up to one another.
No. No way.
‘There’s something there, Charlie,’ Maureen Prior said. ‘Something between Jahmall and Jason Fontaine.’
They were sitting in the Polish Diner on Derby Road, blueberry pancakes and coffee, Resnick’s treat.
‘Something personal?’
‘To do with drugs, has to be. Best guess, Fontaine and James were using Jahmall further down the chain and some way he held out on them, cut the stuff again with glucose, whatever. Either that, or he was trying to branch out on his own, their patch. Radford kid poaching in the Meadows, we all know how that goes down.’
‘You’ll keep on at him?’
‘The girlfriend, too. She’s pretty shaken up still. What happened to Shana. Keeps thinking it could have been her, I shouldn’t wonder. Flaky as anything. One of them’ll break sooner or later.’
‘You seem certain.’
Maureen paused, fork halfway to her mouth. ‘It’s all we’ve got, Charlie.’
Resnick nodded and reached for the maple syrup: maybe just a little touch more.
The flowers were wilting, starting to fade. One or two of the brighter bunches had been stolen. Rain had seeped down into plastic and cellophane, rendering the writing for the most part illegible.
Clarice Faye came to the door in a dark housecoat, belted tight across; there were shadows still around her eyes.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Resnick said.
A slight shake of the head: no move to invite him in.
‘When we were talking before, you said Shana didn’t have any boyfriends, nobody special?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Not Troy James?’
