'Police bail. He's on the spot. Agreed to ask around. If Alston wasn't the shooter, he might get an inkling of who was. And meantime we've got his statement, implicating Alston, on tape.'
'You're not afraid he'll do a runner?'
'Always a risk. But if he doesn't, if he proves reliable, we might be able to use him again. Someone that close to the local gun scene, something we haven't had in a while.' Resnick pushed back his chair. 'You wash and I'll wipe?'
As was often the case, Lynn was still sitting up in bed, reading, when Resnick switched out the light on his side, stretched out, and manoeuvred the covers up to his shoulder. He was more than half asleep when he felt Lynn snuggling down beside him, one arm reaching round to his chest, her legs pressed against his own.
'Good night, Charlie,' she said softly and kissed the base of his neck.
Some ten minutes later, awake now, he turned towards her and kissed her cheek and then her mouth, his hand moving to her breast.
'Charlie,' she said sleepily.
'Mm?'
'Let's just cuddle, eh?'
'Okay.' Trying not to sound too disappointed.
They were both up early, Lynn, for some reason strangely unfocussed, spending longer than usual in the bathroom and then standing, undecided, in the bedroom, uncertain what to wear. She was still dithering when Resnick put his head back round the door. 'I'm off.'
'Already?'
He glanced at his watch. 'Should be lifting Alston pretty soon.'
'Good luck with it.'
'Thanks.'
Quickly across, she kissed him on the cheek and gave his arm a squeeze. 'I'm sorry about last night.'
'That's okay.' There was a smile in his eyes.
'Just wasn't feeling like it.'
'I know.' He gave her a hug and then stood back. 'Take care.'
'You, too.'
'Do my best.'
She listened to his feet, heavy on the stairs, and then the closing of the door. One more glance at the black trousers in the mirror and she changed her mind; she'd wear the brown linen skirt she'd lucked on in the Jigsaw sale instead.
Nine
With the strong possibility of Billy Alston being in possession of a firearm, or of there being guns and ammunition on the premises, armed response officers had been requested from the Tactical Firearms Unit attached to Operational Support-armed for their own safety and for the protection of members of the public, as the rubric goes.
The house where Alston lived with his three younger siblings, his aunt and mother was close to a main road, which even at that hour of the morning, could be expected to be carrying a certain amount of traffic. Immediately before officers moved in to effect the arrest, therefore, roadblocks would be moved into place.
Resnick sat with Catherine Njoroge in an unmarked car some little way back along the boulevard; Resnick slightly unnerved by the way in which Catherine could sit motionless, not speaking or feeling the need to speak, for quite so long.
Otherwise, he was content to be close to the action without being directly involved; the issue of rank aside, his days of charging up and down flights of stairs, yelling at the top of his voice, were, he was not unpleased to think, well past.
Thirty-one officers all told, nine vehicles, not exactly softly- softly, but as Bill Berry had pointed out, this was a young man they had good reason to believe had not only shot and killed at close range, but had also fired on a police officer in the execution of her duty.
'No risks, eh, Charlie? Either way.'
Amen to that, Resnick thought, and checked his watch.
Still a good few minutes to go.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
There was a pub, he remembered, back along the boulevard from where they were now, lively even by local standards, parties most weekends in the function room above the bar. Resnick had met a woman there once, way back before Lynn, back, even, before he was married. A young PC off duty on a Friday night, most often he'd wander down to The Bell by Slab Square, in search of some jazz; either there, or out to the Dancing Slipper, where Ben Webster, one of his heroes from the Ellington band, had turned up one night too drunk to stand, let alone to play. But this particular evening, a couple of pals had been going to someone's birthday party at the pub and they'd dragged him, reluctantly, along.
'Never know, Charlie, you might strike lucky.'
After a manner of speaking, he had.
She was tall, with that kind of tightly curled permed hair that was fashionable at the time. Dark hair and blue eyes. She'd been laughing when she'd pulled him out onto the floor. Something by Geno Washington or the Foundations; Jimmy James, perhaps, and the Vagabonds.
'You can dance, can't you?' she'd said and laughed again.
Well, in those days, after a fashion, he could.
When he kissed her later, on the street outside, her mouth had been cool and quick and hair had smelt a little of sweat and cigarettes.
'Shall I see you again?' he'd asked, as her taxi pulled in to the kerb.
'Maybe,' she'd said. And, with a pen she borrowed from the driver, had written her number on his wrist.
He'd realised then he didn't know her name.
'Linda,' she called through the cab window. 'Don't forget.'
'I don't know if you'll remember me,' he said, when three days later he phoned.
''Course I do,' she said cheerily. 'You're the dancer with two left feet.'
The first time he went round to her place, an old farm labourer's cottage she was renting out at Loscoe, they'd fooled around a little on the settee and just when he'd thought push might be coming to shove, he'd been shown the door with a hug and a swift kiss good night; the time after that she'd left the door on the latch and was sitting up in bed with a glass of wine, the room lit by candlelight.
For the next three months, he saw her every free minute he could, every minute she'd grant him, until one evening he called round, hopeful and unannounced, the door was answered by an ambulance driver with his shirt unbuttoned and hanging outside his uniform trousers.
'She's busy,' he said and closed the door again promptly.
His jacket had been neatly folded over one of the straight-backed chairs.
Resnick saw her a couple of times after that, and then not again. He heard once that she'd moved up to Cumbria to manage one of the big hotels, stayed, and got married. Resnick was married himself by then, to Elaine, and it had scarcely mattered.
Now, for some stupid reason, it did.
This damned place, he thought, I've lived here too long and the longer it goes on, the more ghosts there are, beating a path to my door.
He checked his watch again.
'Okay,' he said into the radio. 'Roadblocks in place.'
And then, moments before giving the order to go, he cursed softly, staring down the road ahead.
'What's wrong?' Catherine Njoroge asked.
But by then she, too, had seen the television van that had drawn up at the closest possible point.
