"It's not sudden."
"Now, suddenly, you've changed your tune."
Resnick sighed and swivelled towards her on his stool. "It looks like that, I know, but-"
"What it looks like, you're so desperate to find Lynn's killer that you're lurching around all over the place, first one suspect, then another. And all this about Daines being somehow involved, too much of it is conjecture. Supposition. Even his threatening Lynn, it's just hearsay."
"She didn't make it up."
"Charlie, come on, that's not the point. The point is proof, evidence, something that might stand up in court."
Karen's eyes were bright and alert, her voice urgent without being loud. Probably the last thing she needed was another large espresso, but she ordered one anyway.
"We've talked to Howard Brent again," Karen said, once the coffee had arrived. "And we've spoken with one or two of his associates. Not that any of that's got us anywhere. I've had a few feelers out back in Jamaica, but so far they've come back empty. And there's still nothing coming back off the street. Anil's been talking to the people at the hotel where Andreea Florescu was working, but aside from some vague mention of her heading down to Cornwall, there's nothing. Same with the staff at the place where Bucur's studying."
"Nothing else?"
Karen shrugged. "We're still chasing down the Sierras, but so far, apart from inadvertently stepping on someone with a nice packet of heroin in his wheelbase, there's nothing. Nothing useful."
"How many still outstanding?"
"A dozen? And we're still trawling back through yours and Lynn's old cases without too much luck. Except for one of yours, maybe. I was going to ask you. Barry Fitzpatrick. Ring any bells?"
Resnick smiled, remembering. Not that it was all that pleasant a memory. Barry Edward Fitzpatrick was a doper and a part-time drunk who trawled the back streets looking for a front door that had been left unwisely open-someone who'd nipped down to the corner shop and left it on the latch, or who was just across the street, nattering with one of the neighbours. Fitzpatrick would duck in and lay his hands on whatever he could. Anyone saw him, it'd be, "Sorry, missus, thought it was my pal's place, lives round here somewhere," and he'd be off before they realised he'd nabbed their purse or pension book or the cash for the tallyman from under one of the ornaments on the mantelpiece.
"It was nine or ten years back," Resnick said. "The case you're referring to. Fitzpatrick was up to his tricks one day-Sherwood, I think it was. Lady of the house comes back in from the yard at the rear, she's been seeing to her window boxes, front and back, and there's Fitzpatrick, china candlestick in one hand, two ten-pound notes that had been resting underneath it in the other. She's well the wrong side of seventy, an inch or two maybe over five foot. Sprightly, though. Grabs ahold of Fitzpatrick and starts to lay about him with the trowel she's got in her hand. He panics and hits back with the candlestick. Breaks it over her head and keeps on hitting. Old skulls are brittle. Thin. He kills her. Doesn't mean to, but there it is. I brought him in, I remember. Went down, if my memory serves me, for fourteen years."
Karen nodded. "He was released early February."
"And you think-"
"Convicted murderer, possibly bearing a grudge."
Resnick shook his head. "Barry Fitzpatrick was a coward who wouldn't say boo to the proverbial goose unless he was drunk, and even then he was never really violent. Doubt if he's ever held a gun in his life, never mind fired one. What happened to that old lady, that was out of fear, nothing else. And to think of him going after Lynn to get at me, well, prison might have changed him, sharpened him up, even, but not that much. Not ever."
"Tick that one off, then."
"I think so."
Karen looked at her watch.
"What are you going to do about Daines?" Resnick asked.
"Am I going to do something?"
"I don't know."
"Let me think about it, Charlie."
"Okay."
She reached for her bag, but he raised a hand. "Coffee's on me."
"Thanks." She took a step away. "Words of advice?"
"Yes?"
"Go home. Paint the house, inside and out. Take a holiday. Give yourself time. 'Unfit for duty,' it means what it says."
In the short distance between the Victoria Centre and the police station, the heavens opened, and by the time Karen was safe inside, she was half-drenched, her hair in rats' tails.
"Turned out nice," Ramsden said, amused.
"Fuck off, Mike."
"Now or later?"
"Later."
She gave him the gist of her conversation with Resnick and he listened attentively, nodding here and there, frowning at others.
"What do you think?" she asked when she'd finished.
He jutted his head to one side. "It's not as if we're not following that line already."
"What we've been doing is looking for Bucur and the woman and getting nowhere."
"You've got a better idea?"
Karen nodded. "We might try getting at it from a different angle. Dixon, DCI, ring any bells?"
"Dixon? Dock Green? Bit long in the tooth by now, isn't he?"
"Very funny."
"Used to watch that, you know," Ramsden said. "As a kid. Saturdays, wasn't it? Dixon of Dock Green. Saturday teatime." He laughed. "Now there's a real old-fashioned copper for you."
"Your inspiration, was he, Mike?" Karen sounded amused. "What made you want to join the Force?"
"Get out of it! Sweeney, that's what did it for me. Jump in the motor, chase some villain halfway 'cross London, bang him up against the wall, get a couple of good whacks in when he tries to run. 'Right, son, you're nicked.'"
"I can just see it. But just for now, if you could see your way to doing something more pedestrian, why not get on to Dixon for me. Central Task Force. See if he'll agree to a meeting."
Ramsden whistled. "Playing with the big boys."
"They handle most firearms trafficking. Won't hurt to see what he's got to say, even if it means Daines finding out we're going behind his back. If he has got anything to hide, it even might shake him up a little. Gets panicky, he might always do something foolish, give something away. And if not-well, a few bruised feelings, soon smooth over."
"Okay, I'll get to it." At the door, Ramsden paused. "Resnick," he said, "now he's passed along this latest brainstorm of his, you really think he's going to sit back and let us get on with it?"
Karen didn't answer.
Thirty-five
Resnick met Ryan Gregan at the same spot in the Arboretum as before, but the continuing downpour soon drove them into the bandstand, and then, with the wind whipping the rain almost horizontally against their legs, farther downhill to stand huddled up against the wall, taking what shelter they could from the overhanging trees.
"Some old weather, eh?" Gregan said, something of a gleam in his eye. "Reminds me of Belfast, when I was a kid. Manchester, too. Followin' me round, d'you think?"
Resnick had already asked him if he'd picked up any scuttlebutt about Brent, anything that tied him into Lynn's death, but Gregan had heard nothing. Rumours, sure. There were always those. There was one, for instance, going round that Howard Brent had put a price on Lynn's head-five K according to one, ten another-but all that, Gregan assured him, was nothing more than fanciful talk.
"You're sure of that? Positive?"
Solemnly, Gregan made the sign of the cross over his heart.
Resnick asked him about the gun.
"Baikal, is it? Baltic somewhere. Lithuania? Gas pistols, that's all they are. Till some bright spark does a bit of remodelling. Lethal then."
"Any around on the street?"
"Here? I don't think so. Manchester, before I left, a few on sale there. Not cheap. Six, seven hundred each. Be more now." He grinned. "Natural rise in inflation. Like the bloody rain."