Karen Evans scarcely looked up when Michaelson and Pike came into the shop. Time enough to register that one of them was unusually tall and that they were both police officers of one kind or another; the amount of shoplifting that went on, there were officers in and out all the time, sometimes seeming to take it seriously, sometimes not doing a whole lot more than joking around with one or other of the security staff, while pretending not to be noticing which women were taking exactly what garments into the changing rooms-fuel, she thought, for their own little fantasies when they got home. Ryan had talked her into playing that game a time or two: You're in the changing room, stripped down to your bra and panties, and the door swings open just enough… Panties, she hated that word.
She was just finishing rearranging the sweaters on the shelf when the manager came over and said the two policemen wanted to speak with her. As long as it didn't take too long, they could use the office.
Michaelson would have been lying if he'd said he hadn't hoped it would be her. Small-petite, was that the word? — but not like those models they were forever getting exercised about, so sticklike, they looked as though they'd break the moment they were touched. This one looked tougher than that, her brown hair cut short with reddish streaks, a pale top that fitted nicely and then a short little skirt, brown with large white dots, over a pair of dark tights going down to ankle-length red boots.
'Your tongue,' Pike said.
'What?'
'It's mopping the floor.'
The office was small, the three of them close together, Michaelson bending forward uncomfortably, as if his head might graze the ceiling. He could smell the girl's perfume-how old was she? eighteen? nineteen? — and something else that he hoped wasn't his own sweat but probably was.
Karen looked at them expectantly. 'This is about last week,' she said, 'when those four guys steamed the shop?'
'Ryan Gregan,' Pike said.
Karen blinked.
'You know him?'
'Yes.' She nodded and blinked again.
'He's your boyfriend?'
'Yes, I suppose.' She glanced up at Michaelson. 'Has something happened? To Ryan?'
Michaelson shook his head. 'He's okay.'
'Really? I thought, maybe, there'd been an accident.'
'Nothing like that,' Michaelson said, and saw her body relax. 'Can you remember where you were on Valentine's Day?' he asked.
'Of course. Can't you?'
Michaelson blushed. On Valentine's Day evening, sitting across from his girlfriend of eighteen months in Hart's poncey restaurant-an arm and a leg that had cost him-he'd asked if she didn't think it was time, maybe, they got engaged or something, and she'd laughed, thinking he was making a joke, and Michaelson, despite himself, had laughed along, too, covering his embarrassment.
'Where were you?' Pike asked Karen.
'In Skegness with Ryan, freezing my arse off.'
'All day?'
'More or less.'
'What time did you get back?'
'I don't know. Six, seven, something like that.'
'Not sooner.'
'No. Why? What's all this about?'
'And Ryan was with you the whole time?'
'Yes. I mean, not every single second. But, yes, we were there together. Valentine's, you know? I had to book it off six months in advance.'
As well as the red streaks in her hair, Michaelson realised, there were a few flecks of silver that became noticeable only when she moved her head as she did now. 'Ryan,' she said, 'he's in some kind of trouble, isn't he?'
'Yes,' Michaelson said.
Karen turned away from the pair of them, towards the schedule on the wall.
'This boyfriend of yours,' Pike said, 'any idea what he does for a living?'
'Of course,' Karen said. 'He's a supervisor out at Northern Foods.'
They checked that out before returning to the station. Ryan Gregan had been temporarily employed as a sandwich filler on the night shift and had packed it in after just two weeks.
Resnick talked it through with Bill Berry, what they might legitimately offer, what they should expect in return.
'We're certain he's not in the frame for this himself?' Berry asked.
'Girlfriend could be lying, but no, looks unlikely.'
'Play him carefully then, Charlie. Talk to the CPS. If we're going to recruit him, let's have it done properly. All by the book.'
Not the same book, presumably, that Resnick had seen Bill Berry using on a suspect back at the fag end of the seventies, the local phone directory smacked hard around the back of the lad's head. 'A few more whacks like that,' Berry had joked, watching the suspect clamber shakily back to his feet, 'he'll have the bloody lot memorised, imprinted on his sad excuse for a brain.'
Happy days!
Resnick sent Pike off to check Gregan's possible contacts and took Michaelson in with him.
Gregan was sitting with his chair propped back on its rear legs, hands behind his head, and, only when Resnick had taken the seat opposite, did he let the chair come slowly forward until it was upright, hands resting now on the table edge.
'We're going to want to know about the gun,' Resnick said. 'That and the ammunition. Then about the shooting-'
Gregan started to say something, but a look from Resnick stopped him short.
'Billy Alston, Kelly Brent's murder, anything and everything you know.'
'And if I do?'
'If you do, and if what you tell us checks out, then, and only then, we'll see what we can do to help you.'
'That's it?'
'That's it.'
'And I'm supposed to give you everything on a plate without a single promise being made?'
'Correct.'
'In a pig's ear.'
'Okay.' Resnick was on his feet. 'Take him down to the duty sergeant. See he's charged. Illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition under section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006.'
'All right, all right, all fucking right!'
'Mr. Gregan?'
'I said, all right.'
Eight
Lynn had spent the afternoon watching Singin' in the Rain, the DVD bought from Tesco Metro for the princely sum of?4.99. It had been one of her mother's favourites and Lynn had bought her a video copy for her birthday one year, back when videos were the thing. On visits home they would sit together watching, her mother so familiar with the lines that at key moments she would say them along with the actors, Lynn bored by then with so much of
