raised a hand, as if in salute, and turned away.
She picked up another taxi easily enough on its way back into the city. In her room up on the fifth floor, she sat on the bed, slowly drinking a vodka and tonic from the minibar, and thought about the man in that house alone, trying and failing to feel her way into his mind, what he must be thinking, going through.
When her head finally touched the pillow, she fell, almost immediately, asleep.
Twenty-five
Mike Ramsden's train was on time. He arrived at the Central Police Station with anger still buzzing inside him after reading the newspaper account of the fatal stabbing of a young PC, who had been called to an incident early the previous morning and attempted to restrain a man who had already attacked two members of the public with a knife. Stabbed in the neck and the shoulder, his protective vest had been to no avail; less than three years in the service, he left a young widow and baby behind. All this at seven in the morning, a nondescript shopping centre in a nondescript town. What the fuck, Ramsden thought, was this fucking world coming to? His bit of the world. It was enough to make you weep.
Not that Ramsden was the weeping kind.
Dark-eyed, full-mouthed, the bridge of his nose angled sharply and tilted to one side from having been broken too many times.
Today, as most days, he was wearing jeans and rarely polished black shoes, a scuffed leather jacket over a grey T-shirt, iron-grey hair in need of a comb. With Karen standing alongside him, smart if slightly dressed down in a plain navy trouser suit and blue cotton top, they looked like a strange combination of Beauty and the Beast.
Karen had been up since before six, going over the notes she had made the day before, making sure the details of the murder scene, the known facts, were clear in her mind. Later that morning she would have to set up the Policy Log for the investigation, meticulously recording all the lines of enquiry and what she hoped they would achieve. But before that she had to address the team and get them on her side. One of Ramsden's main tasks would be to make sure they stayed there; and if there were any rumblings of discontent, to let Karen know so they could be dealt with before they got out of hand.
'Right.' She stepped forward once everyone was gathered and introduced herself. 'Let's get down to business. I think I've got a pretty good grasp of the basic situation now, but if I'm missing anything, if I get something not quite right, I'm relying on one of you to put me straight. Okay? Preferably in such a way it seems I knew it all along.'
A few smiles, no laughter.
'So-Detective Inspector Kellogg returned from London on the 20:55 train, which arrived here on time at thirty-nine minutes past ten. She took a taxi from the station to the house where she lived with Detective Inspector Resnick, arriving there between ten and fifteen minutes later, which puts it at ten fifty, ten fifty-five. She pays the driver and crosses towards the house, goes through the front gate, and starts along the path towards the front door, and that's when she's hit twice from close range, both shots almost certainly fired by someone who had been waiting at the side of the house.
'Alerted by the sounds of gunfire, Resnick runs out, calls emergency services, administers CPR. DI Kellogg is taken to hospital by ambulance and pronounced dead, without regaining consciousness, soon after arrival.'
There was silence in the room.
'All right,' Karen said, 'Anil, you've been liaising with Scene of Crime.'
A little self-consciously, Khan got to his feet. 'There's not a great deal, ma'am, I'm afraid. Not so far. Two cartridge cases were recovered from close to the corner of the building. One of the bullets, presumably the one which struck DI Kellogg in the head, was found on the grassed area at the front of the house. It seems to have ricocheted back from the low brick wall between the front garden and pavement. They've all been passed on to the Forensic Science Lab at Huntingdon.'
'Any idea when we might get anything back?'
'No, ma'am.'
'Okay, chase it down, will you?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'And Anil-'
'Ma'am?'
'Less of the 'ma'am,' if you don't mind. It makes me feel like your granny. 'Boss' will do.'
Khan nodded, his blush evident, no matter the natural shade of his skin.
'Anyone have anything else?' Karen asked, looking round the room.
'Cigarette ends,' Pike said, 'three of them. Farther back down the side entry. There's no way of knowing if they were left there by the gunman or not.'
'They've not been left by either Resnick or Kellogg?'
Pike shook his head. 'Neither of them smoked, boss.'
'How about footprints?' Ramsden asked. 'Anything there?'
'One partial, that's all. The entry's gravelled over, and anyway there'd been hardly any rain that day, just a shower, so the soil was pretty dry. Scientific support said not to hold our breath.'
Karen glanced down at her notes. 'What's this about an abandoned car?'
'Peugeot 307 hatchback, boss,' Khan said. 'Stolen from a car park out at Arnold earlier that evening. By the Leisure Centre. The tax disc missing when it was found, plus there were a lot of scratches down the near side, as if it'd taken a turn too sharp and maybe run up against a wall. It could have been used as a getaway car, exchanged for another that had been stashed in advance. Quick out of the city from there, Mi's not so far away.'
'And this was where?'
'Old Basford. A little less than a mile away from where the shooting took place. The whole place is a regular warren. Narrow streets, back entries, old works and warehouses, factories, some in use, some not. The car's being checked for prints, DNA.'
'Any chance it was caught on CCTV?' Karen asked.
'Out by the Leisure Centre, where it was stolen, yes, pretty good, I'd say. But at Basford, less likely. Patchy at best.'
'How about closer to the scene?'
'That's better,' Khan said. 'In the road leading directly to the house there's nothing. But back on the main road, traffic have got quite a few cameras.'
'Okay, let's check what we can. I know it's a slow business. Like watching some too-clever-by-half foreign movie without the subtitles. But it has to be done.'
'Who spoke to the taxi driver?' Ramsden asked. 'The one who dropped Kellogg off?'
Michaelson raised a hand.
'Anything useful?'
'Not really, no. Some suggestion that he saw a car parked farther along from where he dropped DI Kellogg off, but he was unclear. All over the place, really.'
'Then let's have him in again. See if we can't straighten him out. Jog his memory.'
'Right.'
'And let me know when it's happening. I might sit in.'
Michaelson didn't know whether to be pleased or concerned.
'The same with the neighbours,' Karen said. 'Let's double back, take a second crack. It's not as if, as I understand it, there are that many along that particular stretch of road, and they can't all be tucked up in bed early. Someone must have heard or seen something.'
Murmurs of agreement, the small sounds of officers restlessly shifting position; they were tired of just sitting, anxious to be getting on.
'All right,' Karen said. 'One thing seems clear. This was no random shooting, no robbery. This was cold- blooded murder. Assassination, if you will. Lynn Kellogg was deliberately targeted, and what we have to find out is why.'
