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shooting,” he said, “how much of a chance did you get to look at his face?”

    Either side of Burger King, a section of Upper Parliament Street was cordoned off with yellow tape. Traffic had slowed to a single line, snail-like, in each direction. A small crowd, mostly women and small children, had gathered outside the Disney shop opposite and stood gawking.
    Millington switched off his mobile and went outside to where Resnick was standing on the pavement, talking to Sharon Garnett.
    “Just spoke to the hospital,” Millington said. “In surgery now, Ellis. Stable. That’s all they’ll say.”
    Resnick nodded. “Sharon’s got a witness, woman who was passing, reckons she got a good look at one of them when they ran out to the car. Almost knocked her over. She’s going to take her round to Central, take a look at some pictures.”
    Millington nodded. “Photofit, maybe.”
    “Maybe.”
    They were still standing there when a bulky man, dark-haired, wearing a leather jacket that might have fitted some years before, ducked under the tape and clasped Resnick by the shoulder.
    “Charlie.”
    “Norman.”
    “It’s a bugger.”
    “You could say.”
    “Bastards shooting one another in broad daylight.”
    “Yes.”
    Norman Mann was the head of the city’s Drug Squad, a square-shouldered man with a reputation for calling a spade a fucking spade. He and Resnick were around the same age, had worked their way up through the Force more or less together, and treated each other with more than a little bonhomie and a careful respect.
    “Let’s talk, Charlie.”
    “Right.” Resnick looked round at his sergeant. “Graham?”
    “You get off. I’ll hang on here.”
    They sat in the small bar of the Blue Bell, Mann with a pint of best and Resnick a tomato juice liberally laced with Worcestershire Sauce.
    “This kid, Ellis,” Mann said, “we’ve had our eyes on him for a while. Bits of low-level dealing, Clifton estate mostly. Out at Bulwell. Amphetamines, Es. Once in a while, a little heroin. I thought you should know.”
    Resnick nodded. “You’ve never pulled him in?”
    Mann supped his ale. “A little chat, nothing more. If he’s dealing heroin, any quantity, he’s got to have a line through to Planer, but we haven’t figured out yet what it is.”
    Resnick knew there were two main suppliers in the city, Planer and Valentine. Something else Resnick knew: Planer was white and Valentine was black. With Planer, it was mostly pills and heroin; Valentine’s fancy was more for marijuana, crack cocaine. But there was a lot of leeway in between. The pair of them had been targeted, questioned, arrested, grudgingly allowed back out on to the streets. Several of their minions had been successfully charged and convicted, and were now serving time. But not Planer, not Valentine.
    “You think that’s what this might be about?” Resnick said. “Drugs?”
    Mann shifted his head to one side in a lazy shrug.
    “There was a stabbing out at Jimmy Peters’s place,” Resnick said, “early hours of the morning.”
    “I heard.”
    “Youth as came off worse, Wayne Feraday. He’s come your way too, I think.”
    “Rings a bell.”
    “Ellis, the one you’ve had an interest in—he was involved.”
    “You brought him in?”
    Resnick nodded.
    “And then let him walk?”
    “Nothing to hold him.”
    Mann smiled with his eyes. “That’s all right, Charlie. I know how it goes.”
    Resnick reached up to loosen his tie, but it had worked loose already. “Ellis, he was still under surveillance?”
    “Like I say, Charlie, we had our eye on him, but no more than once in a while. Small potatoes. Nothing worth shelling out serious overtime.”
    “Beyond the obvious, you think there could be a connection between him and Feraday? Something as makes this shooting more than tit for tat.”
    Mann gave it some thought. “I suppose it’s a possibility.”
    “Nothing more?”
    “Like I say, both of them pretty small beer. But, yeh,