'No.' Resnick shook his head. 'Not yet.'
'But he's been charged, yeah?'
'Oh, yes.'
'With murder?'
'Yes.'
'Murderin' our daughter.'
'Yes.'
Tina Brent let out a sob and her hands went to her face.
'He say why, you know why, Kelly, why he shot her? Why? Why her?'
Resnick shook his head again. 'No.'
'But he is guilty, yeah? No doubt?'
'That's for the courts to decide.'
'Court! Decide!' Pushing back his chair hard against the wall, Brent rocked to his feet. 'Sometime this year, next year, yeah, we go, me and Tina, each day, listen to some fancy barrister talkin' 'bout this an' that extenuating circumstance, and all the while he sittin' there, the one who shot her, fired the gun, not sayin' nothing, smilin' 'cause he know the worst can happen, he go to prison for what? Fifteen years? Fifteen years and he's out on parole after ten. Ask you, man, what's that? Ten years? He what? Not twenty yet? Out here, on the street, free again, not thirty. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and our daughter she ten years dead. Ten years in the cold, hard fuckin' ground!'
Fingers in her mouth, Tina Brent made a strangled cry.
'You know how that feel, Mister Resnick? Mister Policeman. You know how that feel?'
'No,' Resnick said. 'No.'
'Then hope to Christ you never do!'
Resnick levered himself up from the settee. 'An officer will keep in touch. You will be informed of developments, the arrangements for the trial, and so on, as they occur.'
He held out his hand. Brent turned away.
Tina Brent was staring at the wall, tears drying on her face.
'Good-bye, Mrs. Brent,' Resnick said, and headed for the door.
Brent followed him outside. Two kids were kicking a ball back and forth along the pavement, making it cannon every now and then off the tightly parked cars.
'You know,' Brent said, 'that's only half of it.'
Resnick turned.
'Whoever pulled the trigger-Williams, Alston-there was only one person grabbed hold of my Kelly and used her as a shield.'
Colour burned in Resnick's face. 'That's not-'
'Not what?'
'Not worth the time of day.'
'She's still gonna pay.'
'She what?'
'You heard. One way or another, she's gonna pay for what she's done.'
'Threats against a police officer, that's a serious business.'
Brent held out both his arms, underside of his wrists uppermost. 'Okay, arrest me, why don't you? Take me in.'
He laughed as Resnick walked away.
Twenty-one
After a slow start-for Lynn, at least-Monday was turning out to be a good day. One of the night staff at the Holiday Inn in Newcastle upon Tyne had remembered something he had failed to mention when first questioned: he had seen Dan Schofield-or someone very like Dan Schofield-driving his car back into the hotel garage as he himself was leaving work. Somewhere between six-fifteen and six-thirty. While he couldn't be one hundred percent positive about Schofield, he was certain about the car. One door panel, front offside, a slightly different shade of green than the rest, where at some point it had either been re-sprayed or replaced.
''Course, by rights,' the SIO running the investigation told Lynn Kellogg later, 'I should be more than a bit pissed off at you for making my team look like a bunch of rank amateurs. Not seeing what was under their bloody noses.'
'Just luck,' Lynn said, though they both knew it wasn't that.
'Any road, let me buy you a drink after work. If you're not driving, that is.'
'Schofield's still to slip up. You sure you don't want to wait till he does?'
'No. He will and when he does we'll throw a proper party. This is just you and me, quiet, my way of saying thanks.'
Resnick was at the other end of the bar, standing with Pike and Michaelson and Anil Khan; Anil, Lynn noticed, sticking to his usual lime and soda. She sat with half a lager, making it last, while the SIO's conversation moved from speculation as to what might have pushed Schofield over the edge on to considerations of his daughter's coming wedding, the state of his allotment, and matters in between. When he asked her, nodding towards the bar, what Resnick thought about his impending retirement, she said, 'Ask him, why don't you? Ask him yourself.'
'Best not,' the SIO said with a grin. 'Might not want to be reminded.'
Lynn smiled, suggesting that was probably the case.
'You'll have another?' he asked.
'Thanks, but no.' Glass empty, she got to her feet.
'Back home to get the old man's supper?'
'Something like that.'
Seeing her moving, Resnick held up his own glass, recently refreshed, signalling he'd be a short while yet. Lynn raised a hand to show she understood and pushed her way through the door and out onto the street.
As soon as she was outside, she sensed someone at her back.
'Leaving early?' Daines moved closer as she turned.
'What's it to you?' Lynn could feel his breath on her face.
'Thought I might join you. But then I thought, no, relaxing with her mates, friends, her-what would you call him? — common-law husband.'
'You've been following me?' Lynn asked.
'Maybe.' The streetlight picking out the fleck of green in his eye when he smiled. 'Though I thought it was more a case of you following me.'
'I don't think so.'
'Really? Asking questions behind my back. Checking up on me. Amounts to more or less the same thing.'
Lynn took a step back. 'Is that what I've been doing?'
'So I hear.'
Lynn said nothing.
'Anything you wanted to ask, why not come out and ask it yourself. Straight out. Or maybe that's not your way.'
'I already did,' Lynn said.
'Sorry?'
'You know her,' Lynn said.
'Her?'
'Andreea Florescu, you know her. You'd seen her before.'
'No.'
'You're sure?'
