Read Online Cold in Hand by John Harvey - Free Book Online

impersonal, as if the Detective Superintendent had merely borrowed it for the afternoon.
    "What the hell got into you? Accusations without a shred of proof. Threats in front of a dozen witnesses. Like some cowboy."
    Resnick shrugged heavy shoulders.
    "Letting your feelings run amok."
    "He needed telling," Resnick said.
    "There are ways."
    "That was my way."
    "Jesus, Charlie! Conflict of interest, remember? You and Lynn." Berry pushed both hands up through his hair and sighed. "Sit down, for Christ's sake."
    "If I'm on the carpet—"
    "And don't be clever. Just sit the fuck down."
    Resnick sat.
    Both men continued to sit, silently, directives and graphs and papers spread across the desk between them, until Berry leaned forward in his chair. "Before seeing you, I spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes with the Assistant Chief, explaining to him why, at the present time, you shouldn't be suspended from duty."
    Resnick said nothing.
    "As the ACC was at pains to remind me, I was the one who argued for you to be pulled out from behind that desk of yours to be number two in this investigation. And then this."
    Resnick still said nothing.
    "I mean, when you went after him like that, the way you did, what did you think was going to happen?"
    "I thought it would make him think twice before doing it again."
    "The phone call?"
    "Yes, the phone call."
    "You don't even know if it was him."
    "It was him."
    "She didn't recognise the voice. She didn't recognise his voice, how could she?"
    "It was him."
    Berry slammed both hands down hard against the desktop, sending papers ballooning. "And if it was.
If
it was. Supposing for a moment, in the absence of any real evidence, you're right, you think that makes it okay for you to confront him in front of the whole sodding community? Threatening him like some vigilante, Steven fucking Seagal on a white horse. Jesus Christ! You know what this man's like, you know how much he loves the sound of his own voice, how much he thrives on publicity."
    Resnick looked away.
    "The first thing Brent did after you left him was contact every radio and TV station in a hundred-mile radius. The
Post
has got a picture of him on the front fucking page, serious and responsible in his best suit, alongside some old one of you they've pulled from the files, showing you on your way into court looking as if you're wearing someone else's clothes."
    "All of that—" Resnick began.
    Berry ignored him, steamrollering on. "The Chief Constable's had the chair of the Police Authority breathing down his neck, the Professional Standards Committee demanding a special meeting. To say nothing of the African Caribbean Family Support Project and the Racial Equality Council practically camping outside his door. Shall I go on?"
    Resnick hoped not.
    "Because this murder investigation is at a crucial stage, and only because of that, you're left clinging onto your job by the skin of your teeth. But if you step out of line once more, you're finished, washed up and hung out to dry. Clear?"
    "Clear."
    "Then get the fuck out of here."
    Resnick did as he was told.

    The investigation moved on slowly. Anil Khan took Catherine Njoroge with him when he went to talk to Joanne Dawson a second time, hoping Joanne would respond more readily to a woman. The house was one of the few in the street that wasn't at least partly boarded up. Joanne's father answered the door, a short, shaven-headed man in Lonsdale sportswear, a gold chain around his neck and carpet slippers on his feet.
    "What's this now?" he said, looking from one officer to the other and back again. "United fucking Nations?"
    Joanne was sitting in a darkened room, curtains drawn, hiding, as best she could, the injuries to her face. Despite Catherine's presence, she didn't tell them a great deal more than she had before. It was Kelly as started it, weren't it? Going mental when she'd heard about her going with Brandon, calling her slag and whore and worse. Meeting up, like, that'd been to sort it