"You lived here long?" she asked.
"Too bloody long," Resnick said, but he said it with a smile.
Some women, Karen thought, would find that attractive, that quick self-deprecating smile, and would feel drawn to him, sympathetically. Would go over and rebutton his cardigan correctly. Pat him on the arm.
Not me.
"I can make coffee," Resnick offered. "Just no milk."
"Black's fine."
While he was out of the room, she glanced at the books on his shelves- Looking for Chet Baker, The Sound of the Trumpet, Straight Life, several books about Thelonious Monk; clustered together, a batch of paperback novels by Alice Hoffman and Helen Dunmore, which she assumed had been Lynn's; a couple of books she'd read herself, Beloved and The Lovely Bones. Beloved she'd read twice.
Alongside the books were several rows of CDs, jazz for the most part, with a leavening of Prince and Madonna and Magazine, which had come into the house with Lynn, she guessed. Part of her dowry. Amongst several box sets, she noticed one of Bessie Smith, and she was looking at this, just trying and failing to free the little booklet with her fingernail and thumb, when Resnick returned, coffee mugs in hand.
"Four CDs," she said. "You must be keen."
"Tell the truth, I bought it a couple of months back, and I don't think I've listened to it more than once. And then not all the way through." He handed one of the mugs to Karen and set down his own. "It's a bad habit of mine. I see something like that-ninety tracks for twelve pounds or whatever-and it seems too much of a bargain to resist. Lynn reckons"-he caught himself and stopped-"Lynn used to say, where jazz was concerned, I had more money than sense."
He lowered himself heavily into his usual chair and Karen sat in another, her back to the window.
"What happened to Lynn," Karen said, "I'm really sorry. I should have said right off, but… I don't know, words, they seem so… inadequate." She inhaled sharply through her nose. "We'll catch him, you know. Whoever was responsible."
"I know."
The coffee was strong and slightly bitter, too hot to drink quickly.
"My mother loved Bessie Smith," Karen said. "Other singers, too. Dinah Washington. Aretha. But it was Bessie she loved best." She smiled. "I must have known the words to 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' before I could recite 'Humpty Dumpty' or 'Little Bo-Peep.' Not that it ever did me a lot of good. As advice, I mean."
"Take it," Resnick said. "Borrow it. Let me have it back whenever."
"I might. Thanks. I just might." If this new apartment she was moving into had an up-to-date TV, it would surely have a CD player, too.
"You'll be wanting to know how far we've got, unless someone's brought you up to speed already."
Resnick shook his head.
She gave him a summary of what little they knew so far, and the main areas the investigation would be moving into. "Is there anything that you think we might be missing?"
"Not that I can think of."
"You know we'll be running an eye over old cases of yours?"
"Someone after payback? Getting at me through Lynn?"
"It's possible, isn't it?"
"Stretching it a little, I'd have thought. And besides, why go after her? Why not me instead?"
"Maybe whoever it was wanted to see you suffer. Cause you pain."
"Like Howard Brent?"
"You think that's where we should be looking first?"
"Him or someone close to him, yes. Aside from whatever grudge he holds against me, he felt Lynn was responsible for his daughter's death."
"This call he was alleged to have made."
"'Watch your back, bitch.'"
"That's what was said?"
"Yes."
"As I understand it, Lynn didn't recognise the voice. She couldn't say definitely it was Brent."
"Not definitely, no."
"And we still don't have proof. We don't know for a fact it was him."
Resnick leaned forward abruptly. "Look, he was convinced Lynn had used his daughter as a shield. He's on record as saying so. One way or another, she's gonna pay for what she's done. His words. 'One way or another, she's going to pay.'"
"When they're angry, people say a lot of things. You know that. More often than not, it's just hot air, letting off steam."
"Lynn's dead. That's not just words. That's fact."
"And you think Howard Brent was responsible? Directly? I just want to be clear."
"Directly? Personally responsible?" Resnick shook his head. "It's not impossible, but no, I doubt if he actually stood there and squeezed the trigger himself."
"You think he set her up, then? Paid someone to have her killed."
"Paid, bribed, cajoled. Then put some distance between himself and what he knew was going to happen. Gave himself an alibi."
Karen leaned back in her chair. Howard Brent was how old? Late forties? Fifty? He had a record for violence, she knew. Drugs, also, though only possession, not supply, and that in '89. Right when the first serious spate of crack cocaine in the UK was at its height and gangs were moving in from Jamaica in large numbers. No matter how straight he might be now, if he had commissioned the shooting of Lynn Kellogg, it was likely he'd used whatever contacts he'd made in the past. And there were instances she knew, well documented, where a gunman had been brought into the country on a false passport, carried out two shootings, and been back on the plane twenty-four hours later.
"More coffee?" Resnick asked.
"No, thanks. I'm fine."
"You're sure?" Resnick was half out of his chair.
"All right, then, go on. But if I start climbing walls later, you're to blame."
The moment Karen, following Resnick, walked into the kitchen, both of the cats, who'd been waiting hopefully by their bowls, turned and fled.
"A clear case of colour prejudice if ever I saw one," Karen said, amused.
"Tall, authoritarian women, they're not used to it."
She laughed. "Authoritarian, is that what I am?"
"You've got an air about you."
"God knows, some days I need it. There's still enough men out there who don't like taking orders from a woman. And a black woman, especially. Though some of them might not admit it."
Resnick nodded, rinsing the coffeepot under the tap.
"How about Lynn?" Karen said. "How did she cope, being a woman in charge?"
"Okay, I think. People liked her, she earned their respect."
"She'd got her promotion quickly."
"It was deserved."
"There wasn't any tension between the two of you? Professionally?"
Resnick put the base of the coffeepot aside. "Was I jealous, do you mean?"
"I suppose so, yes. I mean-and correct me if I'm wrong-but you were already a DI when she started out."
"And here I am, still a DI, and she's…" The words stuck in his throat. "She was the same rank and likely to have been promoted higher."
"Yes."
"And you want to know how that made me feel?"
"Yes."
"It made me feel proud. It didn't make me jealous, or angry. It didn't even make me feel bad about myself, as if somehow I was washed up or left behind. Okay? It didn't make me feel as if my masculinity was threatened, and it didn't mean I couldn't any longer get it up."
He stared at her hard, just this side of losing his temper.
"That's what you wanted to know, isn't it? One of the things you've come to ask? How things were between us? Had I been taking the Viagra? Keeping her satisfied? Or had she been going over the side, having an affair? Had I? Maybe she was going to leave me, walk out? The second time in my life. How would that make me feel? Enough to push me over the edge? Enough to take her life?"
The blood had risen to his face, and his voice was loud and unsteady. His fists were still clenched, but down by his side.