Cold in Hand Read Online Free PDF Page A

statement," Lynn said.
    "Not me. Bill Berry'll get it sorted first thing." He smiled. "You're a key witness, after all."
    "He'll want me to go into the station?"
    "I shouldn't think so. No sense you rushing back before you have to."
    Lynn nodded and sipped her tea. "As long as I'm okay by the trial."
    "Your Albanian."
    "Not exactly
my
Albanian."
    "You know what I mean."
    Nine months before, Lynn had been largely instrumental in the arrest of an Albanian national, accused of murdering an eighteen-year-old Croatian girl at the massage parlour where she worked.
    Resnick took a knife to the cheese. "The enquiry, I was thinking of taking someone from Robbery across with me."
    "A bagman."
    "Sort of."
    "Someone to watch your back."
    "Something like that."
    "Mark Shepherd? He's steady."
    Resnick shook his head. "Catherine Njoroge."
    "Really?"
    "You don't think it's a good idea?"
    "I don't know. You think she's ready?"
    "Yes, I think so."
    Lynn went back to her tea.
    Catherine Njoroge was twenty-seven and had been on the Force since leaving university; it was only a matter of time before she made the move up from Detective Constable to Detective Sergeant. Her family had left Kenya in 1988, during the disturbances following the reelection of Daniel arap Moi to the presidency. Her father was a lawyer, her mother a doctor, and they had hoped she would follow in one set of footsteps or the other. Now they did their best to hide their disappointment and understand the choice their daughter had made.
    "She's very lovely, I'll say that for her."
    "Is she? Can't say I'd really noticed."
    "Charlie, you're a terrible liar." Lynn smiled.

    The press conference was more than usually crowded, national interest as well as local, more sleek digital cameras and state-of-the-art recorders than the average car-boot sale on a Sunday morning. The Assistant Chief Constable sat polishing his glasses, papers on the desk in front of him, Bill Berry to one side and a reluctant Charlie Resnick to the other.
    When the Press Officer had got wind of Catherine Njoroge's involvement in the enquiry, she'd done her utmost to get her up on the platform.
    "A young black girl murdered and we're going on national television with three middle-aged white men. How do you think that looks?"
    "It looks," the ACC told her, "as if we're taking it seriously. Not playing to the fucking gallery."
    Sometimes, she felt like saying, that's not such a bad idea.
But this time she bit her tongue and got ready to deflect the fallout as best she could.
    Though they were present, no one from the Brent family would agree to join the officers on the platform, no matter the urging: Her mother was too distraught, her father too angry. Instead, they sat together at the back of the room, indignation mixed with sorrow on their faces.
    "Our sympathies," the ACC was saying, reading from his prepared statement, "are with Kelly's family, as they struggle to come to terms with the loss of their daughter. As a Force, we share their abhorrence at this thoughtless crime, and their anger. The anger, indeed, of the whole community. And we would ask all members of that community to assist us in bringing Kelly's killer to justice. Someone out there knows who did this, and we would urge them, for the sake of Kelly's family, to contact the police."
    A low rumble of voices from amongst the crowd.
    A few more cameras flashing.
    The inevitable questions about gun crime from Sky News, Channel 4, ITV.
    The ACC slid several pages of bar graphs from the folder in front of him.
    "It is important," he said, "to see this tragic event in context and to set it against the wider picture. In the operational year to date, the figures for all recorded crime in the city are down, and although there has been a slight, but nonetheless regrettable increase in recorded crimes against the person, there has also been a significant increase in the number of such crimes detected.
    "Much of this is due to our joint initiatives with the