"The boy who fired the gun," Catherine said, one more try before leaving, "someone said he was wearing Radford colours."
"No," Joanne said. "I don't think so. Don't see how he could be. Ask any of them I was with and they'll tell you. Not one of our lot, no way. You ask 'em. Go on."
Ask they did, and kept on asking.
Stone wall.
Seventeen of the twenty-three shown on CCTV had been identified and all but one of those interviewed, some on two separate occasions. More than half had had run-ins with the police before, a few anti-social behaviour orders, supervision orders, nothing too serious. The missing names were still being chased down. Meantime, Marcus Brent's college had confirmed that on the day of the shooting his group had been visiting a supermarket warehouse in Wellingborough.
Resnick sat at his desk, subdued.
He read reports, listened to officers, shuffled schedules, prowled the corridors like a wounded bear.
When he'd phoned Lynn to check how she was and given her the gist of what had happened, she thought at first he was winding her up, spinning a yarn. "What on earth were you thinking about?" she asked, when she realised it was true.
"I don't know. I wasn't, probably. Not clearly, anyway."
"You're telling me!"
"I just felt-I don't know-angry. Felt I had to say something."
"But then? You shouldn't have gone anywhere near him, especially not then."
"I know, I know."
"And don't you ever let me hear you say you were doing it on account of me."
Resnick rang off.
Five minutes later, he called back to apologise, and then, only partly mollified, went scowling off to the canteen.
He was heading back towards the Incident Room, bacon sandwich and a large tea later, when he met Catherine Njoroge coming from the other direction.
"I never thanked you for the other day," Resnick said.
She looked back at him, uncertain.
"Outside the Brent house. I might have had a go at him. You stopped me from doing something stupid."
Catherine smiled. "Perhaps I should have been there today?"
Resnick grinned, despite himself. "Word gets around."
"We're only human," Catherine said.
"Contrary to rumour."
Catherine smiled again and started to walk on, then stopped. "Have you spoken to Michaelson, boss?"
"Not recently."
"I think perhaps you should."
Frank Michaelson was wiry and quite spectacularly tall, six-seven or — eight, depending on whom you believed. From an early age, when his height had become apparent, his teachers and sports coaches had tried their best to talk him into playing basketball, but running was Michaelson's thing, distance running in particular. Marathons, half-marathons, cross-country, 10K. Show Frank anything with a K at the end of it, the joke went, and he'll be stripped down to his shorts and lacing up his running shoes before you've drawn your next breath. Handy, he liked to point out, when it came to chasing little buggers through the back alleys off the Alfreton Road.
When Resnick found him, he was crouched over one of the computer screens, his body bowed practically in two.
"Got something, Frank?"
"Could be, boss. Not sure. This lad here, Alston." He pointed at the screen. "First off, swore blind he wasn't there. Then, when he saw that wasn't going to work, he tried fobbing us off with someone else's name. Got it out of him in the end. Reason, far as I can make out, he didn't want us looking at him any closer; he's been doing a bit of dealing. Nothing major. Small-time. Bottom feeder, at best. Someone higher up the chain drops him seventy quid to make a delivery, you know the kind of thing."
Resnick nodded.
"What is interesting is the name he gave when he was trying to fob us off."
He manoeuvred the mouse, made a couple of clicks, and a new name appeared on the screen.
Ryan Gregan.
Various bits and pieces as a juvenile: theft, robbery, one instance of aggravated burglary. Arrested in Manchester when he was sixteen, along with a seventeen-year-old youth and a nineteen-year-old man, and charged with possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence. The case against him was dropped for lack of evidence, the other youth and the man found guilty and sentenced to three years and five years, respectively.
"I've asked around," Michaelson said. "Gregan's been questioned about two gun-related incidents since.
"Could be coincidence," Resnick said.
"I don't know. Not exactly a name that rolls off the tongue."
"Unless he's someone you know well."
"Or have got reasons, maybe, for dropping him in the shite."
"Either way, it won't hurt to bring Gregan in for a little chat."
"Right, boss." Michaelson's crooked teeth showed when he smiled.
Seven
Ryan Gregan's father had been born in Belfast, grown up around the Shankill, did little with his life beyond petty thieving and coming down hard on anyone smaller and weaker, which included Ryan's mother and several of his brothers and sisters. When Ryan was twelve years old, his old man smacked him round the back of the head once too often, and Ryan, big for his age, hit him full in the face with a convenient piece of two-by-four which he'd set aside for just such an occasion.
His father never touched him again; never said a word to him either, civil or otherwise. When Ryan, over in England by then and living with an aunt in Salford, just outside Manchester, heard that his father had been kneecapped by the paramilitaries for dipping his hands into the wrong pockets once too often, he bought a large Bushmills to celebrate and followed it with another.
He went dutifully back over each Christmas and Easter to see his mother. In Manchester, he fell in with a gang selling crack cocaine on Moss Side, Ryan one of the youngest, but not letting anyone else push him around; as far as his aunt knew, he was going off to college every afternoon, training to be a chef. When one of the Cheetham Hill gangs tried to take over a stretch of their territory, it didn't take much persuading for Ryan to step up and explain the ethics of the situation. Only instead of a primer on Aristotle or John Stuart Mill, Ryan made use of an obsolete Tokarev TT-33 pistol, a Russian copy that was the dead spit of a 1911 vintage U.S. Colt.
It did the trick. A few shots exchanged late one night, alongside Hulme Market Hall, Ryan discharging all eight rounds and making most of them count; no fatalities, a few flesh wounds, the moral victory theirs. Ryan liked the heft of the gun in his hand. He loved it. He learned everything about guns he could.
After that things got tasty, the feud with Cheetham Hill hotted up, and following a pitched battle running either side of the A57 motorway, a meeting to patch things up was called. Both sides went armed and the police were forewarned. Ryan and two others were arrested and when he was kicked free, he decided it was time to move on.
A few days after his seventeenth birthday, he followed a mate up to Glasgow, but, one way or another, he couldn't settle; too many reminders of home. He drifted for a spell after that, Newcastle, Birmingham, Sheffield and on down to Nottingham, nineteen now and shacking up in a squat in Sneinton, out near the railway line. Just till he could find something better, which turned out to be a two-room flat in Radford, right around the corner from the old Raleigh factory, long since flattened to the ground.
It was midway through the afternoon when Michaelson and Pike hammered on the door and Gregan came grudgingly downstairs, wearing a Manchester City T-shirt and an old pair of jeans, nothing on his feet, looking as if he'd just crawled out of bed.
"Ryan Gregan?"
"Who wants to know?"
"We'd like you to come with us to Central Police Station."
"A party, is it?"
"Depends," Pike said.
"I'll bring my guitar, then, should I?"