'I've been trying to think about the funeral,' she said abruptly. 'I just don't know what's for the best.'
Resnick nodded, noncommittally. He knew it would be a while, at best, before the body would be released. Having opened the inquest and established the cause of death, the coroner would adjourn it again while the investigation continued. If there were an arrest reasonably soon, the accused's defence team would have the option of a second postmortem; failing that, and with no arrest in sight, the coroner could arrange for a second, independent post-mortem himself and then release the body, but with a burial certificate only, barring cremation.
'I'd like her to be lain next to her dad,' Lynn's mother said. 'I think she'd have wanted that, don't you?'
'I'm sure that would be fine,' Resnick said.
'Please,' she said, reaching towards the table, 'have a piece more cake. I bought it specially for you.'
It tasted like ashes in his mouth.
On the way home, he dozed fitfully, the dark coming in to meet him across the fields. Crossing from the station, he walked into the nearest pub, an old travellers' hotel, ordered a large Scotch, and carried it to a table, delaying the moment when he would turn the key in the lock and step back through the door.
'You ought to sell that place of yours,' Lynn's mother had said as he was leaving. 'Get yourself somewhere like this. It'll be easier to manage, now you're on your own.' Her kiss, dry and quick on his cheek.
He bought a second whisky and stood drinking it at the bar. A large television screen, high in one corner, was showing a soccer match from the Spanish Liga, with a commentary running across the bottom of the screen in Arabic. Seated at a table immediately below it, but not watching, unconcerned, a grey-haired man in an ageing three-piece suit sat nursing a pint of Guinness and speaking, at intervals, to someone opposite who was no longer there.
The bank of slot machines on the far wall was going full swing.
Farther along the bar, two coach drivers, still in their uniforms, were conducting an earnest conversation in Polish, not close enough for Resnick to understand every word, but it seemed to revolve around the poor facilities on the autobahn east of Hanover.
'Another?' the barman asked.
Resnick shook his head. 'Best not.'
He walked past the bus station and along the underpass that would take him on to Lister Gate and from there up towards the Old Market Square.
A Big Issue seller Resnick had once arrested for breaking and entering accosted him as he was crossing Upper Parliament Street, close by the restaurant where he and Lynn were to have celebrated Valentine's Day. In a city this size, she was everywhere.
' Big Issue? ' The man smiled broadly through broken teeth. 'Help the homeless. Just these left.'
Resnick bought all three.
A dozen young women in varying stages of undress came cavorting down the street towards him, blowing kisses and shrieking loudly, someone's girls' night off to an early start.
'I don't fancy yours much,' one of them shouted with a laugh, as a blonde in a silk top and skintight pants collided with Resnick and caught hold of his arm so as not to lose her balance altogether and go sprawling.
When she'd gone, stumbling after her mates, there was powder on his sleeve.
As he turned off the main road and into the narrow, poorly paved road that led to his house, a chill settled over his bones. When he was no more than thirty metres off, he thought he saw something move in the shadow at the side of the building, just a few paces from the front door, exactly where Lynn's killer would have stood. Resnick stopped, the backs of his legs and arms like ice, his breath caught in his throat. Imagination, he thought, like so much else? Two, three steps, and then he quickened his pace, breaking almost into a run, slowing again when he reached the gate.
'Charlie-'
He recognised Graham Millington's voice before he saw him, his former sergeant stepping forward to greet him, hand outstretched. 'Charlie. Thought I'd best come by, see how you were getting on.'
Twenty-nine
That Friday morning, the day Resnick was making his reluctant journey east to visit Lynn's mother, Karen had an appointment to see Stuart Daines.
It was an easy walk from her apartment, down towards Wellington Circus, the building anonymous, only the number to identify it. Daines had assured Karen he would be at his desk by eight thirty, nine at the latest, and he was true to his word, busy at his laptop when she arrived and begging a moment before saving whatever was on the screen. He was quick then to shake her hand, pull out a chair and make her welcome, Karen briefly returning his smile, noting the crisp pink shirt with the cuffs turned back, the TAG Heuer watch, the fleck of green in the corner of one eye.
'DI Kellogg's murder,' Daines said pleasantly, 'there was something you wanted to ask.'
'Just one or two things,' Karen said, almost casually. 'Background, really.'
'Of course, anything I can do you think might help. What happened, it was terrible. I mean, I didn't know her that well, but she seemed committed to what she was doing. Efficient. A good officer.' He leaned forward a little in his chair. 'Like I say, I didn't really know her well at all.'
'You didn't send her flowers?'
'I'm sorry?'
'Flowers. You sent her flowers.'
'Oh, yes, of course. I'd forgotten. There was this incident, not so many weeks back, a girl was killed.'
'Kelly Brent?'
'Yes. Kellogg had somehow got involved, ended up stopping a bullet herself, but, thank God, she'd been wearing a vest. Nothing too serious in the end.'
'You said you didn't know her well,' Karen persisted.
'That's right.'
'Then…?'
Daines smiled. 'We'd met on a SOCA course I'd helped to organise. I'd been kidding her about jumping ship, throwing in with us. A new challenge, I suppose. She hadn't been keen. The flowers, they were just a way of-I don't know-building bridges. Then we met again over this Zoukas business, the trial-you know about that?'
Karen nodded. 'After the trial was adjourned, you went down with her to London, I understand? To talk to one of the witnesses?'
'Andreea Florescu, yes. I thought she might have been able to identify one or two people we're interested in.'
'In what connection?'
'A long-term investigation. Ongoing. Just looking for confirmation, really.' Another smile, there and then gone.
'And could she help?'
'She said not.'
'Which sounds as if you didn't believe her.'
'She was frightened. She might have thought keeping quiet the best policy.'
'But you didn't take it any further?'
Daines crossed his legs, one ankle over the other. 'Like I said, it wasn't crucial, more a case of dotting i's, crossing the t's.'
'Did you know about this last visit DI Kellogg made, the evening she was killed?'
Daines looked puzzled. 'Visit where?'
'To London. To where this Andreea had been staying. The man whose flat she'd been living in was worried about her. Seems to have thought she might take off, disappear.'
'These people,' Daines said, 'they do.'
'These people?'
