Ash & Bone

'And it's a match?'

'Waiting for confirmation now.'

'How about his place? Anything interesting there?'

'Not a lot. Few borderline videos. Clothes, shoes, usual stuff. I told Mike to go back, try again.'

'Kennet's here?'

'With his lawyer. Deciding strategy.' Karen grinned. 'Kid just out of college. Looks as if he'd need a strategy to tie his laces in the morning.'

At a little after four the call came through from Forensics. The partial print was a match. But partial, nonetheless.

They ushered Kennet into interrogation ten minutes later, the exact time noted scrupulously by Karen at the beginning of the interview. In Ramsden's continued absence Paul Denison, slightly nervous himself, sat alongside her. Elder sat in an adjacent room, listening on headphones.

Kennet leaned forward, forearms resting on the table edge, faint signs of strain beginning to show around his eyes. Beside him, seated a little way off, Iain Murchfield had a notebook open on his knee, pen in hand.

Karen's hair was pulled back, the front of her suit jacket buttoned, her gaze rarely leaving Kennet's face.

'I'd like you to tell me,' she began, 'what happened last night, from the time you met Vanessa Taylor in the Bull and Last pub until you both went back to her flat.'

In a flat monotone, Kennet repeated, with a few additions, the version of events he had given in the hospital.

'You still maintain that PC Taylor hit you with the bottle without cause or reason?'

'Other than that she was pissed out of her head, yes.'

'And the injuries that she sustained…'

'Were on account of me trying to stop her taking my eye out, yes. Going crazy, wasn't she?'

'And that includes the marks to the side of her face?'

'I don't know. What marks?'

'Cut marks.'

'I don't know. Glass from the bottle, I suppose. Glass bloody everywhere.'

'This injury was caused by a knife.'

Kennet leaned away from the table. 'I don't know about that.'

'You didn't attack PC Taylor with a knife?'

'No.'

'Hold it against her throat?'

'No.'

'Hard enough to break the skin.'

'Look, look.' Kennet agitated now. 'I've said. I know nothing about a knife. Okay?'

'No?'

Kennet emphasised each word. 'There was no knife.'

'Really?' Karen said, slightly amused.

Kennet turned towards his solicitor. 'How much longer have I got to put up with this?'

'Detective Chief Inspector,' Murchfield said, dredging up what little gravitas he could find, 'I must complain about the degree to which you are harassing my client.'

Karen looked at him with a mixture of sardonic amusement and contempt. 'The knife I'm referring to, Mr Kennet,' she said, 'is the one you threw away as you were trying to make your escape.'

'That's bullshit. That's untrue. Sheer bloody fabrication.'

A line came to Elder, watching; something about protesting too much.

'In that case,' Karen said, 'I'd like to hear your explanation of how your print came to be on the blade?'

'What blade? What bloody print?' His chair scraped back as he swung round towards Murchfield. 'You. Do something, will you? Sitting there watching them fit me up.'

Murchfield flipped his notebook closed. 'I must object again to the manner in which you are questioning my client.'

'Objection noted.'

'And remind you, should it be necessary, that the time remaining in which you must decide to charge my client or else release him is running down.'

'Fine,' Karen said. 'You're right. Let's get him charged. How about inflicting grievous bodily harm for starters? Offences against the Person Act, 1861. Paul, take him down to the custody sergeant, make sure he's properly charged and cautioned. We'll see if that changes his perspective on things. This interview halted at four twenty-three.' She got to her feet. 'Thank you, Mr Murchfield, for your welcome advice.'

***

'What do you think?' Karen asked.

Elder made a face. 'With all the testimony we can bank on as to Kennet's past behaviour, if it comes down to his word against Vanessa's, most juries are going to take hers. But in terms of hard evidence, one partial print looks pretty sad.'

'Mike'll come up with something, don't worry.'

But by seven that evening, that's exactly what they were doing.

Kennet had been duly charged and was preparing to spend his first night in the cells; on the following morning, Friday, he would appear before the magistrate and bail would be vigorously opposed. But when Ramsden returned it was with a long face and bad news. 'Unless you include a stack of Brentford programmes going back ten years, nothing iffy in sight.'

'You searched the van as well?' Elder said. 'The one he uses for work.'

'What d'you think I am, a fucking amateur?'

'Sorry.'

'No problem.'

But Elder's mind was suddenly elsewhere: the first time he'd seen Kennet, spoken to him, outside the house he was working on in Dartmouth Park, Kennet with a roll-up, wanting a light.

'He's got a car,' Elder said. 'As well as the van.'

'You're sure?'

'Saloon, four-door. Dark blue. Ford, I think, but I couldn't swear.'

'Lee,' Ramsden said, 'check it out. As long as it's registered to him, we're quids in.'

'Well done, Frank,' Karen said. 'Well remembered.'

'We'll see,' Elder said. 'We'll see.'

42

Elder got back to Finchley at about seven. The morning when Karen had first told him of Kennet's arrest seemed a long way off. A couple of aspirin, he thought, and a long soak in the bath.

His mobile rang before he could turn on the taps, adrenalin pulsing at the sound of his daughter's voice.

'Katherine, are you okay?'

'Yes, why?'

'Nothing. Just, you know…'

'You sound worried.'

'Not specially, no. Bit of a headache. Busy day.'

There was a brief silence and then, 'I wanted to ask you, this business, the police, you do know what's going on?'

'I think so, yes.'

'Only Rob… well, what they're asking him to do… he's not sure who he can trust.'

'Who's he been talking to?'

'This woman, policewoman. Maureen. Her mostly.'

'Maureen Prior. You can trust her, believe me.'

'Bland, though, he's one of them.'

'No. No, he's not. Not really. Not any more.'

'I don't know.'

'When's he meeting him, Rob? When's he meeting Bland again?'

'Soon, I think. The next couple of days.'

'As soon as that's done with, maybe you should get away for a bit. Just till things calm down.'

'Rob's got friends up Hull way. Family too.'

'Why don't you go up there then? Just for a week or so.'

'You don't mind?'

'Mind what?'

'Me and Rob, being together like that.'

'It's not what I'd choose.'

'But you don't mind?'

'You're old enough to make your own decisions.'

'Make my own mistakes, that's what you mean.'

A pause. 'Maybe.'

There was a man's voice, just audible in the background, Rob's most probably, Elder thought, and then Katherine saying, 'Look, Dad, I'd better go.'

'All right. Just be careful. The two of you. And keep in touch, okay?'

'Okay.'

'I love you,' he added, but the line was already dead.

Elder took one swallow of whiskey and then another. He remembered how she had been when he had found her, a prisoner in the jerry-built hut sheltering against rock, high on the North York coast. The stench of rotten fish and drying blood. The bruises discolouring her face and back. Was this something else he was helping to draw her into, some new danger? Or had she chosen that herself when she started hanging out with the down-and-outs in Slab Square, going out with someone who, in no matter how small a way, dealt drugs? It was difficult to care and not to judge.