The driver at the front of the short line of cabs was sitting with his door open, reading through the paper for perhaps the fourth or fifth time and listening to the local radio station.
Karen gave him the address and climbed into the back. Just time to adjust her seat belt before they pulled out on to Carrington Street and the bridge over the canal. The same journey Lynn Kellogg would have taken the night she died.
Tape was still stretched across in front of the house, preserving the scene. The house itself was dark, the curtains partly drawn across, the faintest of lights showing through from one of the rooms at the rear.
The taxi had disappeared from sight.
There were few signs of life from higher up the street.
The sound of traffic from the main road seemed more distant than it was.
Karen zipped her jacket tighter and started to walk slowly towards the house, then stopped. Someone was standing at one of the upstairs windows, looking down. A man's shape in silhouette, bulking large against the glass. She could just see the outline of the face, the faint pale blur of skin. She stood there for a moment, looking up, then 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.
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."
"Too bloody right," somebody said.
"The answer might be found in the cases she's been involved in, recent or in the past. Someone bearing a grudge. Which brings us—I know, I know—to the death of Kelly Brent, whose father, apparently, made various wild threats and accused DI Kellogg of being instrumental in his daughter's death. Obviously we need to talk to him as soon as possible, and the fact that he's dropped out of sight makes that all the more urgent still. So let's redouble our efforts to bring him in. Check all his contacts, relations, whatever you can. But ... but ... while that's going on, let's not get carried away into thinking if we find him, we get a result. Let's look at those other cases DI Kellogg had been working, dig around, find out what we can."
There was a palpable rise in sound, as some of the team took that as a signal to move away.
"Another thing, important. Could be vital. DI Kellogg's movements the evening she was killed. She'd been returning from London. Why? What was she doing there? Was it work or personal? Who did she see? Who knew she was travelling back when she did? Anil, that's up to you. I'm hoping to speak to DI
Resnick later today, and anything useful I learn, I'll pass along. Okay?"
"Yes, boss."
"And the rest of you, there's another question: Why did the murder take place where it did? Why elect to kill her outside her own home?"
She gave them a few moments to think before carrying on.
"That short walk from the far side of the street to the front door, that's the only point in the journey that evening when Lynn Kellogg would have been alone and not surrounded by other people. Not only that, but the street itself is quiet, it's narrow, rarely used except for access, and there are no buildings at all to the rear, so the killer could have waited unobserved." She looked up, looked around the room. "Reasons enough? What do you think?"
Coughing, low-level murmuring, uncertain glances. Catherine Njoroge took a hesitant step forward.
"Yes, Catherine?"
"I'm not sure how relevant this is, boss, but I was just thinking, whoever it was shot Lynn, they would probably have known that DI Resnick was there, in the house. If they knew that, then they must have known that he'd be the first to find her."
"Go on."
"Well, maybe what happened, it was meant for him as well. To hurt him. And maybe—I don't know, this might be taking things too far—but couldn't it, at the same time, have been some kind of warning? 'Nowhere's safe, we can reach you anywhere, even at home, where you feel safest.'"
"'We,' Catherine," Karen said. "Who's the 'we'?"
Catherine shook her head. "I don't know, boss. It could be Howard Brent, after what he said, but I don't know."
"All right. And thank you, Catherine, good point. So we might have to look back through DI Resnick's cases as well, beyond the most recent, I mean. Villains he's put away—"
"Hundreds," someone said.
"Anyone recently released from prison who might be bearing a grudge. Let's check. And good luck, okay? Sharp eyes, hard work, and good luck, we'll get it sorted."
With the team dismissed, Karen went off into a huddle with Mike Ramsden, Anil Khan and the office manager to firm up schedules and make sure that procedures were in place to prioritise and process information as it came in.
Once that was settled, she had to retrace her steps from the night before.
Resnick had been awake since a quarter past five, when he had first stirred, shivering, in his bed. Both the pillow and bottom sheet were soaked through with sweat and his hair was matted to his scalp. The youngest of the cats had been sleeping on the bed, just as it had before Lynn had moved in, and when Resnick straightened slowly and swung his legs round towards the floor, it shrilled a protest and jumped down reluctantly.
Lynn's reading glasses, the ones she had had prescribed but rarely used, were on the cabinet at her side of the bed, along with several hair bands in different colours, an empty water glass, the hand lotion she applied each night last thing, and the book she had been reading but would never finish.
This Book Will Save Your Life.
Not now it wouldn't.
Resnick swept it away with one hand and sent it skittering across the floor.
It was still dark outside, and for a moment he had to ask himself how much time had passed since Lynn had died. How many hours? How many days?
Through the window he could see shadows from a distant streetlight and the shapes of trees and, below, the stone wall
and gravelled path and the stubbled grass of the front garden all marked off with tape.
Let her go.
The young paramedic with his earnest, freckled face, kneeling beside him, Resnick's hands still interlocked across Lynn's chest.
You have to let her go now. Let her go.
In the bathroom, he stood beneath the shower and turned it to full, letting the water beat over him; he stood there until it began to run cold, then stepped out and towelled himself down, grateful for the steam that hid his reflection in the mirror.
Back in the bedroom, he dressed slowly, the same clothes as the day before. When Lynn had first moved in, he had teased her about the quantity of clothing she had brought with her, enough, he had said, to fill the wardrobe on her own and demand her own chest of drawers.
"What on earth are you going to do with all this lot?" he had asked. "Start a shop?"
And then, later, after she had been living there for a while—"Why don't you sort through this stuff and chuck some out? It's not as if you ever wear most of it, anyway. Give it to Oxfam or something. It's just taking up space."