'How d'you mean?'
'Alexander Bucur and Andreea Florescu. They seem to have been missing since the day after the murder.'
'You think there's a connection?'
Karen smiled. 'Depends how much faith you put in coincidence.'
'The reason Lynn went down, Andreea was frightened. I know from what Lynn told me, she'd been threatened before.'
'This was over the Zoukas case?'
'Yes. They warned her with what might happen if she agreed to give evidence.'
'Which she did.'
Resnick nodded.
'There's every sign she and Alexander have both disappeared,' Karen said.
'Together?'
'Not as far as we know.'
Karen's phone rang suddenly. 'I'll be right down,' she said, and then, to Resnick: 'Howard Brent's just walked into the station under his own steam.'
The reception area was busy: a couple of youths sitting morosely, one nursing a bloodied nose; a man in camouflage trousers and a Forest shirt, half his hair shaven away where a wound had been stitched; another man, older, with greying dreadlocks, reciting from the Bible, and a young woman, skinny and pale, holding a four- or five-month-old baby against her chest, while another child, barely a year older, alternately wailed and whimpered from the buggy by her side.
In the midst of all this stood Howard Brent. Black leather jacket, white T-shirt, dark wide-legged trousers, black-and-white leather shoes; diamond stud in his left ear, gold chain round his neck. Handsome. Tall. As Karen entered, Resnick close behind her, he stood taller still.
Seeing Resnick, his eyes gleamed.
'I hear your woman died,' he said. 'Shot dead, ain't it? Shot through the head. An' you know how that make me feel?' His face broke into a smile. 'That makes me feel good, you know? Good inside. 'Cause now you know. You know what it's like. To have someone you love-'
Resnick charged at him, head down, fists raised.
At the last moment, Brent sidestepped and stuck out a leg, tripping Resnick so that he went headlong, all balance gone, one arm twisting beneath him, his face slamming into the wall where it met the floor.
Two uniformed officers seized Brent by the arms and pulled him back.
Karen went to where Resnick lay, barely moving, on the ground.
Brent still smiling, shaking his head.
'Ambulance!' Karen shouted. 'Now!'
When she and another officer helped Resnick to sit up, there was a cut above his right eye which was closing fast. Blood from his broken nose had splattered all down the front of his shirt.
Thirty-two
One of the paramedics reset Resnick's nose before leading him to the ambulance. 'There,' he said, as Resnick screamed. 'Better than new.' At the hospital, seven stitches were inserted over his cut eye, and an X-ray determined that his left elbow, though extremely painful, was badly bruised and not broken; a precautionary CT scan revealed no intracranial haemorrhaging. Patched up and armed with a healthy dose of ibuprofen, he was sent on his way. Medical expertise could do nothing for his injured pride, the overwhelming sense of his own stupidity.
With unwonted speed, the Force's Professional Standards Unit rolled into action. At a little after ten the following morning, the Police Surgeon deemed Resnick, somewhat conveniently, to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and registered him as officially unfit for duty.
'Fine welcome,' Brent had said, when Resnick was being led off towards the waiting ambulance. 'Come in of my own volition, hear you wantin' to speak to me, and what happen? This feller come chargin' at me like a wild bull, no cause, no reason.'
'There was cause,' Karen said sharply.
'You think?'
'You deliberately provoked him, wound him up on purpose.'
'What I did,' Brent said, a smile playing in his eyes, 'express my sympathy. For his loss, you know?'
'His injuries are as bad as they might be, you could be facing some serious charges.'
Brent scoffed. 'Anyone bring charges here, it's me. Assault, yeah? Actual bodily harm.' He pronounced each syllable lovingly. 'Like I say, he the one come chargin' at me, all I did, step out the way. Ask anyone.' He swept his arm in a circle. 'Go ahead. Ask these people here. Take witness statements, yeah? Ask these people what they see.'
Karen knew Brent was right. Provoked or not, Resnick had lost it completely. In many ways, it was fortunate that Brent had swerved out of Resnick's path as adroitly as he did. Had he sustained anything approaching a serious injury, then not only Resnick but the Force itself could be facing charges of misconduct and a battery of claims for compensation.
She asked one of the uniformed officers to fetch Brent a glass of water, asked Brent if he would like to take a seat while she found out which Interview Room was most readily available. Ramsden could sit in with her during the questioning, but Ramsden on a short leash.
'You've been out of the country,' Karen started.
There were no cameras switched on, no recordings being made, no lawyer present; Brent was there, as he'd said, of his own volition, and could leave, unhindered, at any time. Unless, of course, anything he admitted to gave sufficient cause for him to be restrained.
'A few days, yeah.'
'Jamaica.'
'After what happened, a break, you know?'
'Visiting family?'
Brent made a sound midway between a snort and a laugh. 'My family back home, they fell out with me long time back. We don't speak, don't text, don't telephone.' He shrugged. 'Their loss, okay? Not mine.'
'Then why-?' Karen began.
'Friends. I got friends there.'
'Girlfriends?'
Brent smiled. 'Just friends, let's say.'
'Colleagues? Business acquaintances?'
'Business acquaintances, sure.'
'What business, exactly, might that be?'
' My business.'
'Your catering business or your music business?'
Brent smiled. 'I come back with a few new recipes, some-thin' to try, maybe, at the restaurant, make some changes. Keep the chef on his toes. And some new recordin's, too. Da'Ville. Jovi Rockwell. Business an' pleasure, you know?'
'Your wife, Tina. She claimed not to know where you were.'
'Tina, she know what she need to know, that's all.'
'There was no contact between you while you were away?'
The smile, quick and lascivious, was back on his face. 'I expect she dream of me a bit, you know.'
Ramsden would have liked to knock the smile, cocky bastard, off his face once and for all. 'How did you hear about DI Kellogg's death?' he asked.
'We have newspapers over there, you know. Television. The Internet.'
