“He must be nearly walking by now.”
“What’s it to you?”
Sharon smiled. “Just trying to be pleasant, that’s all.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Wondering what would happen to him, the baby, if you went to jail.”
“I i’n’t goin’ to no fuckin’ jail.”
“Diane,” the solicitor said half-heartedly, “it won’t help if you allow yourself to get excited.”
“Look, Diane,” Sharon said, “that amount of drugs in your possession …”
“They wasn’t in my possession …”
“As good as. And no court’s going to believe that was all for personal use. Which means dealing, you understand that, Diane. That’s serious. You’d be in breach of your conditional discharge. This time, you could go to prison, you really could. Which might mean Melvin being taken into care.”
“That’s not right,” Diane said. “They’re not taking no kid of mine into care.” She looked at them defiantly, biting her bottom lip.
Sharon offered her another cigarette, and this time Diane got it lit without a problem. “Okay,” she said, “start at the beginning and tell us as much as you can about what happened. From when you drove on to the Forest to when Jason was shot. There’s no rush. Take your own time.”
The story, when it came, was not so very different from the one Millington dragged slowly, faltering syllable by faltering syllable, from the mouth of Sheena Snape.
After an evening that had begun in the pub and moved on to a club, they had fetched up, the three of them, in Jason’s flat, smoking hashish and drinking vodka and Pepsi Cola. Around one in the morning, Jason had decided to call on some mates who lived north of Gregory Boulevard, but when they’d arrived there was nobody home. So they’d driven up on to the Forest instead.
“What for?”
“A bit of a laugh.”
After smoking a few spliffs, Diane had curled up on the back seat and pretty much fallen asleep; Sheena and Jason had fooled around a little, nothing too heavy; all of them pretty much out of it when someone started hammering on the car window.
Whoever it was shot Jason in the face, neither girl had the least idea. It had been sudden and dark. One thing they were careful not to do was point the finger at Drew Valentine. If Jason had stuck a knife into him, and neither of them was saying that he had, then it had to be because he was confused, mistaken. Of any argument between the two men, any exchange of words, neither Sheena nor Diane remembered a thing.
Perhaps Norman Mann had been right, Resnick thought after listening to the reports, maybe the best thing was to chuck it all at Helen Siddons and let her make of it what she could. But the thought of stepping aside still stuck in his craw and what he didn’t understand was the ease with which Mann was prepared to do the same. Was there less, then, Resnick thought, than met the eye, or was there more?
He dialed the number for Major Crime Unit and asked to speak to Sergeant Lynn Kellogg.
Nineteen
The ice-cream van just inside the Castle grounds was doing a brisk trade and the teachers steering a ragged crocodile of primary school kids through the turnstile were going to have trouble containing them until after their visit to the museum. Thirty or so nine-year-olds, some of the boys wearing baseball caps, some turbans, the girls-half of them at least-kitted out in their junior Spice Girls gear, all carrying cans of pop, packed lunches, and patchily copied worksheets.
Resnick was sitting on one of the benches lining the avenue of trees that stretched toward the bandstand. Now that the sun had broken through the cloud cover, it was warm enough for him to have removed his jacket and draped it across the bench, tugged his tie toward half-mast. Half turned toward the entrance, he shielded his eyes from the sun and watched Lynn Kellogg walk toward him; Lynn with her dark hair cut short and shaped to her head, wearing a deep-red cotton top tucked down into black denims, boots with a low heel. A soft leather bag hung from one shoulder.
“Sorry I’m so late.”
“Not to worry.”
“So much going on, it was difficult to get away.”
Resnick nodded to show he understood and shifted back along the bench. “Chance to soak up some sun. Bit of a change from earlier.”
Lynn dropped her bag between them and sat down. Close to, she looked tired; dark, purplish shadows around her eyes. She seemed to have lost weight also; her face was less full, cheekbones hard against the skin.
“Are you okay?” Resnick asked.
“Fine.”
“You look a bit … well …”
“It’s that woman. Siddons. Slave-driver isn’t in it.”
“Not like me, then?” Resnick grinned.
“Expects everybody to work a thirteen-hour day and keep pace with her afterward in the bar. Glad it’s her liver and not mine.”
“As long as it gets results.”
Lynn sighed. “I suppose.”
“You’re not regretting it?”
“Transferring to Major Crimes?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
The gates at the far end of the drive swung open and a single-decker bus chartered by one of the local day centers nosed slowly in. On the bench opposite where Resnick and Lynn were sitting, a couple in his-and-hers pin-stripe suits were opening Tupperware containers and settling into an early lunch.
“I talked to Norman Mann earlier,” Resnick said, “about your boss’s involvement in this firearms business out on the Forest. He’s a sight less fussed about it than I thought he’d be.”
Lynn didn’t answer for some little time. “Maybe that’s not too wise. From his point of view, at least.”
Resnick looked at her questioningly.
“There’s rumors going round someone in his squad’s dirty …”
“Norman … that’s daft. Whatever he is, he’s not crooked.” He looked at Lynn and she looked away. Behind her, a phalanx of half a dozen wheelchairs were being pushed in slow formation past the ornate flower municipal beds, up toward the Castle.
Lynn drew a deep breath. “All the reports we’ve seen-Open Doors, people on the Crack Awareness team, the APA-they all say drug use in the city is up. Eighteen months to a year. Heroin. Crack cocaine. During the same period, even though arrests for possession have risen in roughly the same proportion, arrests for dealing have stayed pretty much the same. And convictions have actually fallen.”
“Maybe the dealers are getting better organized?”
Lynn pushed her fingers up through her hair, then brushed it down flat. “Siddons has got Anil going back through cases where there’s been an acquittal, or where the bench has just thrown it out of court, no case to answer. Seems there’s a handful of instances where blame could be laid at the door of the officers concerned-poor preparation, evidence mislaid, you can imagine the kind of thing.”
“But a pattern?”
“Not so far. If it was just one or two, the same names cropping up again and again, that would be easy.” Lynn shifted position, leaning back against the bench. “What’s interesting is who’s getting pulled in, who isn’t. You go through the interviews with users, low-level dealers, and the same suppliers get mentioned over and over again. Valentine. Planer. But look for those names on the arrest reports and what do you find? No mention of them. Hardly at all.”
“That couldn’t be because they’re keeping it all at arm’s length, not getting themselves involved?”
Lynn nodded. “They all use runners, sure. And what the runners do, in turn, is dilute it down, get the stuff rebagged, send it out on the street with runners of their own. Kids, for the most part. Same as it’s always been. But that doesn’t mean nobody knows who’s back of it all, bringing the stuff in; they’re just not touching them, that’s all.”
“And your boss thinks it’s her business to know why?”
“Somebody must. There’s people under thirty-five, no visible means of support, driving round the clubs in brand-new scarlet Porsches, Mercedes convertibles. They’re wearing Versace gear and more gold than you’d see in Samuels’s shop window. They didn’t all win the Lottery. And if they’re dealing, getting away scot-free, they’ve got to be buying protection. What else can it be?”