'That's how you heard about it, on the Internet?'
Brent sat straighter. 'My son Michael, he told me. Called me on his mobile as soon as he heard.'
'And what did you do?' Karen asked. 'What went through your mind?'
'Be honest, I feel sorry for her, that my first thought. Sorry she lose her life in such a violent act. Still a young woman, eh? Then I go out and buy champagne. Drink a toast with my friends.'
'You were glad.'
Brent inclined his head, not answering.
'You wished her dead.'
'What I wish, my daughter's life back. But that I cannot have. But now that Resnick, he knows what it is to lose the one person you love in the world most of all. An' yes, that make me feel glad. Here.'
He laid his fist over his heart.
'How much?' Mike Ramsden said suddenly, leaning close towards him.
Karen looked at him sharply, but he carried on.
'Enough to arrange for it to be done?' Ramsden continued, bearing down. 'Bought and paid for, while you're sunning yourself a few thousand miles away, drinking rum and Coke with your friends?'
'That's what you think?' Brent's voice rose. 'That's what you want me to come here for, to accuse me of that?' He stared at Ramsden, hard. 'What you gonna do now? Get out the handcuffs? Make me confess? Or you gonna let me go an' follow me? Stop me in the street an' throw me up against the wall, huh? Search my clothes? Harass my family, harass my friends? Each time I go out in the car, someone pull me over, something wrong with your brake light, mister, or book me for speedin', thirty-two mile an hour in a thirty-mile zone? Maybe I find my letters opened? My telephone tapped?' He snorted dismissively and rose to his feet. 'Do what you want till doomsday, try all you can, I'm tellin' you, you never gonna lay this at my door.'
Karen took a breath. 'Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Brent. If we want to talk to you again, we'll let you know.'
Ten minutes later, Brent escorted from the building, they were standing in Karen's temporary office.
'Nice going, Mike.'
'What?'
'Subtle, the way you went about finessing information out of him.'
'Got under my skin, didn't he?'
'Really? I'd never have noticed.'
'Bollocks,' Ramsden said.
'What did you think?' Karen asked. 'That you could shake it out of him? Ruffle his feathers and he'd fall to pieces at your feet?'
'He's a prick.'
'Doubtless. Two pricks going at it together. Mine's bigger than yours.'
Ramsden put up a hand as if to ward her off. 'Okay, okay.'
Karen turned towards the window and saw her reflection, featureless against a greying sky.
'So,' Karen said, 'what did you think?'
'Seriously?'
'Seriously.'
'I wish Resnick had hit him where it hurts and done some serious damage, instead of wallowing in like some overfed water buffalo and letting Brent take the piss. But that's not what you want to know.'
'No.'
'You want to know, do I think he was responsible for Kellogg's death.'
'Yes.'
Ramsden gave himself a moment. 'Did he want her dead? Yes, I think so, beyond a fragment of doubt. Longed for it. With every bone of his jumped-up, miserable body. But did he have the balls, the common sense, the wherewithal to set it up, then give himself a nice alibi by being out of the country, I don't know.' He ran his hand down across his mouth. 'There's doers and talkers, you know what I mean? And up to now, I'm not too sure which Brent is.'
'He could be both.'
'He could. And he's some talker, I'll give him that. Gift of the fucking gab. But the rest-' Ramsden shook his head, uncertain.
'What's the feeling amongst the troops?'
'Before today? They'd like to pin it on him, all the stuff he's been coming out with especially. And, yes, I'd say some of them like him for it, but that might just be lazy thinking, you know?'
'So we should forget about him? Cross him off the list?'
'In a pig's ear!'
'What then?'
'We keep chasing down all the other lines of enquiry. By the book. You know that better than me. But, meantime, let's doublecheck Brent's contacts, ask around. Have the troops keep their ears to the ground, get every informant working overtime.'
Karen nodded. 'I can chase up that guy I know from Trident, see if we can't find out a little more about who Brent was seeing when he was in Jamaica.'
Ramsden's face broke into a grin. 'And then, of course, there's always stopping him in the street and throwing him up against the wall.'
Karen phoned the hospital later that evening to be told that Resnick had been treated and allowed home. When she phoned his house, there was no answer. She rang him at nine the following morning and then again at ten: still no reply. She could understand, she thought, why he might not want to be speaking to anyone, least of all her.
Thirty-three
'My God!' Jackie Ferris exclaimed. 'What happened to you?'
'Don't ask.' The skin around Resnick's swollen right eye was a dramatic purple tinged with yellow and green; the centre of his face, all around the nose, was blue shading into black. An artist's palette run amok.
They were in the Assembly House, Kentish Town, Ferris's pub of choice. Monday lunchtime, quiet, only a few tables occupied. A lone drinker at the bar. The sound of traffic accelerating away from the lights outside enough to muffle what conversation there was. Among the cards and letters Resnick had received after Lynn's death, expressing sympathy, Jackie Ferris's had been one of the most heartfelt and to the point.
'I take it you didn't fall off your bike?'
'Not exactly.'
'The other feller, then? How does he look?'
'Not a scratch.'
Jackie lifted her glass. Coke with ice and lemon, still hours to go till the end of her day. 'How've you been, Charlie?' she asked.
'You know, okay.'
'Don't fob me off, Charlie.'
'All right. At first I could hardly sleep, a few hours at most. I wandered round as if I were in some kind of daze. Didn't know where I was, when it was. And cold, a lot of the time I was cold. Shivering cold. And Lynn, she was everywhere.'
'Oh, Charlie!'
'Everywhere I looked. Not just at home, but out in the city. I'd see her on the bus or just across the street, the back of her head just turning a corner. I still do. Once today, coming here. And I can't'-he shook his head-'I keep bursting into tears, no warning, no reason.'
'You've got reason.'
'Standing at the counter waiting to buy a loaf of bread, and suddenly these tears were running down my face.
