"Meaning what? What difference would it make if I did?"
As soon as the words were out, he read the answer in Resnick's face.
"You think I killed her." Daines was incredulous. "That's what you're saying? It is, isn't it? You think I killed her."
"No, you'd be too careful for that. But you could finger her to somebody else who would."
"You're crazy."
Daines pushed past him and pressed the button, and the lift slipped into motion.
"Someone," Resnick said, "who'd feel safer if she were out of the picture and not starting to dig around. Someone, maybe, who was bearing a grudge."
The lift stopped on the fourth floor and as the door slid open, Daines stepped out.
"You are crazy," he said. "Absolutely off your fucking head."
The door began to close, and as Resnick jammed his foot in its path, he had a sudden urge, a near-blind impulse to throw himself at Daines, seize him by the shoulders and slam him back against the wall, then beat him with his fists.
"We'll see." Resnick pulled his foot away so that the lift door closed and Daines was lost to sight.
Forty-three
Instead of reading about it first in the papers, as Resnick had suggested might be the case, Karen heard about it on the radio when she stepped out of the shower, and then, pulling on her robe, a towel wrapped round her hair, she switched on the television to catch what was still being billed as breaking news. In the early hours of the morning, officers from SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, assisted by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central Task Force and the Operational Support Department of the Nottinghamshire Police, had carried out raids on a number of addresses in north London and Nottingham. It was understood that firearms officers from the Nottinghamshire Force and from CO19, the Met's Specialist Firearms Command, had also been deployed.
Pictures of armed police in all their gear, cars accelerating along city streets, and flashing lights were screened behind the newsreader's head-all stock footage, Karen was sure.
By the time she had dressed, more details had been released. Raids had been carried out on several shops and homes in the Wood Green and South Tottenham areas of London, in addition to warehouses in Paddington and Finsbury Park. In Nottingham, police and SOCA teams had targeted buildings on an industrial estate in Colwick, east of the city, as well as in the Lace Market area of the city centre itself. A number of arrests had been made, and items seized were believed to include a considerable quantity of weapons and ammunition. There were reports, as yet unconfirmed, of shots being fired.
The pictures this time were real.
Video quickly released by the Met's public-relations team were mixed on screen with poorly focussed images e-mailed in by members of the public who had been awake enough to capture some of what had happened on their mobile phones. For a few unclear moments, the building housing the sauna where Nina Simic had been killed came into view, the front door hanging off its hinges, a police officer standing guard.
Karen rang Dixon and then Daines, but, perhaps not surprisingly, neither was answering his phone. When she rang Chris Butcher, he spoke through a mouthful of toast.
"You watching this?"
"You bet," Karen said.
"Any idea what's going on up there?" Butcher asked.
"Only what you see on screen. How 'bout you?"
"Give me an hour."
"Will do."
Wandering into the kitchen area, she made coffee, switching from national news to local and back again as she waited for it to brew. Firearms officers in Nottingham had fired eleven rounds, and in London an unconfirmed number. It was not yet known if any of that gunfire had been returned. Estimates as to the items taken varied, but sources close to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency were suggesting that as many as six hundred illegal weapons had been seized, together with several thousand rounds of ammunition. The weapons, in the main, were Baikal IZH-79 pistols, which were believed to have originated in Lithuania. According to the Reuters News Agency, the Lithuanian Police Bureau, in a carefully coordinated operation, had carried out a number of arrests in different parts of the country, including Rauba and Vilnius, the capital.
Karen finished her coffee while she was fixing her makeup.
She was on the point of leaving the apartment when Chris Butcher phoned. A total of fourteen individuals had been arrested in London, seven more, he thought, in Nottingham. She could check that herself. No Viktor Zoukas, no Valdemar. The police had gone to the house where Viktor was thought to be residing, but he wasn't there.
"Somebody tipped them off," Karen said.
"Looks like."
"How about Lazic?"
"No sign."
"Jesus Christ!"
"My thoughts exactly."
"I'll be in touch."
"Do that."
A brush through her hair, and Karen was on her way.
At Central Police Station, rumours were ripe as flies fastening on a dead dog. The number of firearms officers who had discharged their weapons varied from seven to two; shots on target from four to none. That a brief exchange of fire had taken place seemed certain, only the scale was so far open to question. One man who had taken a flesh wound to the back of the thigh was currently under police guard at Queen's Medical Centre; claims that a second man had been hit when he himself had opened fire on the police were so far unsubstantiated; none of the accident and emergency departments in the area had reported anyone else suffering from gunshot wounds. No officer had been hit.
As far as Karen could tell, the SOCA office in the city had failed to open that day, and calls to its London HQ were put on hold. Graeme Dixon's line at the Central Task Force was per manently busy; whoever he was talking to, Karen thought, it wasn't her.
She and Euan Guest shared some minutes of mutual regret that Ivan Lazic had so far avoided capture.
After that, Karen tried to occupy herself with the small mountain of paperwork she'd been studiously avoiding, but it proved no antidote to her sense of annoyance and frustration. She was about to go and prowl the corridors in search of someone to berate when her phone sounded. Resnick at home.
"I'd like you to tell me," he said, "if Lazic was involved, that he's in an Interrogation Room somewhere right now spilling his guts."
"Not quite as much as I would myself," Karen said.
"Got away?"
"We don't even know if he was around."
Resnick was silent for several seconds. "You've talked to London?"
"I'd talk to the devil if I thought it would help."
Certainly did a lot for Robert Johnson, Resnick thought, but he kept it to himself; however keen she might be on Bessie Smith, he didn't think Karen would be up to exchanging small talk about blues singers right now.
"Could do worse," he said.
"So they say."
After Resnick had rung off, Karen had another brief conversation with Chris Butcher, but he had little to add to what he had told her before. She fought with a few forms, checked in with Mike Ramsden, and told him to hell with it, she was going out to get some lunch.
"As long as you're buying, I'll string along."
"Not this time, Mike, okay?"
If he was disappointed, he hid it well.
Karen walked down past the Victoria Centre, along Bridle-smith Gate and turned left towards the site of the new Centre for Contemporary Art on Weekday Cross. Just along High Pavement, there was a large converted church which was now a Pitcher and Piano and, on the opposite side, farther down, a pub called the Cock and Hoop-not too crowded, not too large and with a menu that looked promising. She was two bites into her rib-eye steak, and enjoying it, when Frank Michaelson called on her mobile. She even hesitated a moment before taking the call.