Free Cold in Hand by John Harvey Page A

as if he's standing still."
    "And that's me," Gregan said, "the white guy, that's what you're saying?"
    "It was today."
    "And you, you and your mate here, you're the Kenyans?"
    "In a manner of speaking."
    What the holy fuck, Gregan thought, is all this about? Some kind of young offenders' inclusion project? Community outreach? Some eager-eyed bloke in shorts, wanting him to sign up for midnight hikes through the Lake District, drama workshops in some scabby church hall. He'd fended off a few of them in his time.
    "Bit racist, isn't it?" Gregan played along. "What you were saying, Kenyans and that."
    Michaelson appeared to give it some thought. "Racial stereotyping," he said, "I know what you mean. Like saying the Irish are all thieves and tinkers. Plain wrong, wouldn't you say?"
    Gregan didn't say anything at all.
    "Not above a bit of thieving yourself, though. By all accounts."
    "Nobbin' off stuff from Woolies," Gregan said, "that the kind of thing you mean? Coin or two from my gran's purse?"
    "That could be the start of it."
    "Kids," Gregan said. "Part of growing up. Rite of passage, isn't that what it's called?"
    Enough, Resnick thought, watching, of the preamble, although he could see what Michaelson was doing, encouraging Gregan to feel relaxed at the same time as keeping him just that little bit disorientated, not knowing from which direction the next question was coming.
    It wasn't coming from Michaelson at all.
    "February 14th," Pike said, his voice more jagged, harsh. "Valentine's Day. Where were you that afternoon?"
    Gregan didn't even have to think.
    "Skeggy," he said.
    "What?"
    "You know, Skegness."
    "I know what it is," Pike said. "What I want to know, what were you doing there, middle of February?"
    The last time Pike had been to Skegness, three years back, it had been the middle of summer, and still the wind had cut off the North Sea like a knife to your throat.
    "Girlfriend, she'd asked me," Gregan said. "Soft cow. Instead of the usual."
    "The usual?"
    "Chocolates, whatever."
    "Name?"
    "What?"
    "This girl's name."
    "Karen. Karen Evans."
    "Those'll be her knickers we found in your place, then, will they? 'Less they're yours, of course. Bit of cross-dressing."
    "Fuck off!"
    "This Karen Evans," Michaelson said, "does she have an address?"
    No, Gregan thought, she lives up a tree in Clumber Park. He gave them the address, mobile number, too. "Text her, why don't you? Where she works. See if she don't say she was with me that afternoon."
    "And not in St. Ann's," Pike said.
    "What?"
    "Corner of St. Ann's Hill Road and Cranmer Street, four-thirty, thereabouts."
    "I told you where I was."
    "There was a shooting," Pike said. "Police officer injured, a young girl killed."
    "I told you—"
    "Because somebody told us you were there."
    "Fuck off."
    "You said that before."
    "I'm saying it a-fucking-gain. I was about a hundred fucking miles from there, in Skeggy with Karen, eating fish and chips and shagging her on the dunes while she got sand in her crack. Fucking ask her!"
    "We will, we will. But meantime we have a witness—"
    "What witness?"
    "That doesn't matter."
    "'Course it fuckin' matters!"
    "You know someone named Billy Alston?"
    "That scrote! You're relying on him? I'd have to be standing up to me knees in fucking water before I'd believe Alston telling me it was fucking raining."
    "Have you any idea why Alston might have mentioned your name?" Michaelson asked.
    "Because he's a stupid twat?"
    "Besides that."
    Gregan could think of at least one, possibly two, neither of which he wanted to divulge. "No," he said. "I can't."
    "I really think," the duty solicitor said, speaking for the first time, "that to take, as it seems, the uncorroborated assertion of one individual, as against an alibi which my client has provided and which he assures us—"
    "Well," Michaelson interrupted, "there is always the other thing."
    "The other thing?"
    "The matter of a handgun and some 750 rounds of ammunition, found in a holdall in Mr.