A Darker Shade of Blue (24 page)

Fifteen years and seven months. Shana Ann Faye. She had lived with her mother, two younger sisters and an older brother in Radford. A bright and popular student, a lovely girl. She had been to an eighteenth birthday party with her brother, Jahmall, and his girlfriend, Marlee. Jahmall driving.

They had been on their way home when the incident occurred, less than half a mile from where Shana and Jahmall lived. A blue BMW drew up alongside them at the lights before the turn into Ilkeston Road, revving its engine as if intent on racing. Anticipating the green, Jahmall, responding to the challenge, accelerated downhill, the BMW in close pursuit; between the first set of lights and the old Radford Mill building, the BMW drew alongside, someone lowered the rear window, pushed a handgun through and fired four times. One shot ricocheted off the roof, another embedded itself in the rear of the front seat; one entered the fleshy part of Jahmall's shoulder, causing him to swerve; the fourth and fatal shot struck Shana low in the side of the neck and exited close to her windpipe.

An impulse shooting, is that what this was? Or a case of mistaken identity?

In the October of the previous year a gunman had opened fire from a passing car, seemingly at random, into a group of young people on their way home from Goose Fair, and a fourteen-year-old girl had died. There were stories of gun gangs and blood feuds in the media, of areas of the inner city running out of control, turf wars over drugs. Flowers and sermons, blame and recriminations and in the heart of the city a minute's silence, many people wearing the dead girl's favourite colours; thousands lined the streets for the funeral, heads bowed in respect.

Now this.

Understaffed as they were, low on morale and resources, policing the city, Resnick knew, was becoming harder and harder. In the past eighteen months, violent crime had risen to double the national average; shootings had increased fourfold. In Radford, Jamaican Yardies controlled the trade in heroin and crack cocaine, while on the Bestwood estate, to the north, the mainly white criminal fraternity was forging an uneasy alliance with the Yardies, all the while fighting amongst themselves; at either side of the city centre, multiracial gangs from St Ann's and the Meadows, Asian and Afro-Caribbean, fought out a constant battle for trade and respect.

So was Shana simply another victim in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or something more? The search for the car was on: best chance it would be found on waste land, torched; ballistics were analysing the bullets from the scene; Jahmall Faye and his family were being checked through records; friends would be questioned, neighbours. The public-relations department had prepared a statement for the media, another for the Assistant Chief Constable. Resnick sat in the CID office in Canning Circus station with Anil Khan and Detective Inspector Maureen Prior from Serious Crime. His patch, their concern. Their case more than his.

Outsides, the sky had lightened a little, but still their reflections as they sat were sharp against the window's plate glass.

Maureen Prior was in her early forties, no nonsense, matter-of-fact, wearing loose-fitting grey trousers, a zip-up jacket, hair tied back. ‘So what do we think? We think they were targeted or what?'

‘The girl?'

‘No, not the girl.'

‘The brother, then?'

‘That's what I'm thinking.' The computer printout was in her hand. ‘He was put under a supervision order a little over two years back, offering to supply a class A drug.'

‘That's when he'd be what?' Khan asked ‘Fifteen?'

‘Sixteen. Just.'

‘Anything since?'

‘Not according to this.'

‘You think he could still be involved?' Resnick said.

‘I think it's possible, don't you?'

‘And this was what? Some kind of payback?

‘Payback, warning, who knows? Maybe he was trying to step up into a different league, change his supplier, hold back his share of the cut, anything.'

‘We've checked with the Drug Squad that he's a player?' Resnick asked.

Maureen Prior looked over at Khan, who shook his head. ‘Haven't been able to raise anyone so far.'

The detective inspector looked at her watch. ‘Try again. Keep trying.'

Freeing his mobile from his pocket, Khan walked towards the far side of the room.

‘How soon can we talk to Jahmall, I wonder?' Resnick said.

‘He's most likely still in surgery. Mid-morning, I'd say. The earliest.'

‘You want me to do that?'

‘No, it's okay. I've asked them to call me from Queen's the minute he's out of recovery. There's an officer standing by.' She moved from the desk where she'd been sitting, stretching out her arms and breathing in stale air. ‘Maybe you could talk to the family?' She smiled. ‘They're on your patch, Charlie, after all.'

There were bunches of flowers already tied to the post into which the car had crashed, some anonymous, some bearing hastily written words of sympathy. More flowers rested up against the low wall outside the house.

The victim support officer met Resnick at the door.

‘How they holding up?' he asked.

‘Good as can be expected, sir.'

Resnick nodded and followed the officer into a narrow hall.

They're in back.'

Clarice Faye sat on a green high-backed settee, her youngest daughter cuddled up against her, face pressed to her mother's chest. The middle daughter, Jade, twelve or thirteen, sat close but not touching, head turned away. Clarice was slender, light-skinned, lighter than her daughters, shadows scored deep beneath her eyes. Resnick was reminded of a woman at sea, stubbornly holding on against the pitch and swell of the tide.

The room itself was neat and small, knick-knacks and framed photographs of the children, uniform smiles; a crucifix, metal on a wooden base, hung above the fireplace. The curtains, a heavy stripe, were still pulled partway across.

Resnick introduced himself and expressed his sympathy; accepted the chair that was offered, narrow with wooden arms, almost too narrow for his size.

‘Jahmall – have you heard from the hospital?'

‘I saw my son this morning. He was sleeping. They told me to come home and get some rest.' She shook her head and squeezed her daughter's hand tight. ‘As if I could.'

‘He'll be all right?'

‘He will live.'

The youngest child began to cry.

‘He is a good boy, Jahmall. Not wild.… Not like some. Not any more. Why would anyone …?' She stopped to sniff away a tear. ‘He is going to join the army, you know that? Has been for an interview already, filled in the forms.' She pulled a tissue, screwed and damp, from her sleeve. ‘A man now, you know? He makes me proud.'

Resnick's eyes ran round the photographs in the room. ‘Shana's father,' he ventured, ‘is he …?'

‘He doesn't live with us any more.'

‘But he's been told?'

‘You think he cares?'

The older girl sprang to her feet and half-ran across the room.

‘Jade, come back here.'

The door slammed hard against the frame.

Resnick leaned forward, drew his breath. ‘Jahmall and Shana, last night, you know where they'd been?'

‘The Meadows. A friend of Jahmall's, his eighteenth.'

‘Did they often go around together like that, Jahmall and Shana?'

‘Sometimes, yes.'

‘They were close then?'

‘Of course.' An insult if it were otherwise, a slight.

‘And his girlfriend, she didn't mind?'

‘Marlee, no. She and Shana, they were like mates. Pals.'

‘Mum,' the younger girl said, raising her head. ‘Shana didn't like her. Marlee. She didn't.'

‘That's not so.'

‘It is. She told me. She said she smelled.'

‘Nonsense, child.' Clarice smiled indulgently and shook her head.

‘How about Shana?' Resnick asked. ‘Did she have any boyfriends? Anyone special?'

The hesitation was perhaps a second too long. ‘No. She was a serious girl. Serious about her studies. She didn't have time for that sort of thing. Besides, she was too young.'

‘She was sixteen.'

‘Too young for anything serious, that's what I mean.'

‘But parties, like yesterday, that was okay?'

‘Young people together, having fun. Besides, she had her brother to look after her…' Tears rushed to her face and she brushed them aside.

The phone rang and the victim support officer answered it in the hall. ‘It's Jahmall,' he said from the doorway. ‘They'll be taking him back up to the ward any time.'

‘Quickly,' Clarice said to her daughter, bustling her off the settee. ‘Coat and shoes.'

Resnick followed them out into the hall. Door open, Jade was sitting on one of the beds in the room she and Shana had obviously shared. Aware that Resnick was looking at her, she swung her head sharply towards him, staring hard until he moved away.

Outside, clouds slid past in shades of grey; on the opposite side of the narrow street, a couple slowed as they walked by. Resnick waited while the family climbed into the support officer's car and drove away.…
a good boy, Jahmall. Not wild.… Not any more.
The crucifix. The mother's words. Amazing, he thought, how we believe what we want to believe, all evidence aside.

On the Ilkeston Road, he stopped and crossed the street. There were more flowers now, and photographs of Shana, covered in plastic against the coming rain. A large teddy bear with black ribbon in a bow around its neck. A dozen red roses wrapped in cellophane, the kind on sale in garage forecourts. Resnick stooped and looked at the card.
For Shana. Our love will live for ever. Michael.
Kisses, drawn in red biro in the shape of a heart, surrounded the words.

Resnick was putting the last touches of a salad together when he heard Lynn's key in the lock. A sauce of spicy sausage and tomato was simmering on the stove; a pan of gently bubbling water ready to receive the pasta.

‘Hope you're good and hungry.'

‘You know …' Her head appearing round the door. ‘…I'm not sure if I am.'

But she managed a good helping nonetheless, wiping the spare sauce from her plate with bread, washing it down with wine.

‘So – how was it?' Resnick asked between mouthfuls.

‘All right, I suppose.'

‘Not brilliant then.'

No, some of it was okay. Useful even.'

‘Such as?'

‘Oh, ways of avoiding tunnel vision. Stuff like that.'

Resnick poured more wine.

‘I just wish,' Lynn said, ‘they wouldn't get you to play these stupid games.'

‘Games?'

‘You know, if you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be? If you were a car, what car?'

Resnick laughed. ‘And what were you?'

‘Vegetable or car?'

‘Either.'

‘A first-crop potato, fresh out of the ground.'

‘A bit mundane.'

‘Come on, Charlie, born and brought up in Norfolk, what do you expect?'

‘A turnip?'

She waited till he was looking at his plate, then clipped him round the head.

Later, in bed, when he pressed against her back and she turned inside his arms, her face close to his, she said, ‘Better watch out, Charlie, I didn't tell you what kind of car.'

‘Something moderately stylish, compact, not too fast?'

‘A Maserati Coupé 4.2 in Azuro Blue with full cream leather upholstery.'

He was still laughing when she stopped his mouth with hers.

The bullet that had struck Jahmall's shoulder was a 9mm, most likely from a plastic Glock. Patched up, replenished with blood, Jahmall was sore, sullen, and little else. Aside from lucky. His girlfriend, Marlee, had twenty-seven stitches in a gash in her leg, several butterfly stitches to one side of her head and face and bruises galore. The BMW was found on open ground near railway tracks on the far side of Sneinton, burned out. No prints, no ejected shell cases, nothing of use. It took the best part of a week, but thirty-seven of the fifty or so people who had been at the party in the Meadows were traced, tracked down and questioned. For officers, rare and welcome overtime.

The Drug Squad had no recent information to suggest that Jahmall was, again, dealing drugs, but there were several people at the party well known to them indeed. Troy James and Jason Fontaine in particular. Both had long been suspected of playing an active part in the trade in crack cocaine: suspected, arrested, interrogated, charged. James had served eighteen months of a three-year sentence before being released; Fontaine had been charged with possession of three kilos of amphetamine with intent to supply, but due to alleged contamination of evidence, the case against him had been dismissed. More recently, the pair of them had been suspected of breaking into a chemist's shop in Wilford and stealing several cases of cold remedies in order to manufacture crystal meth.

James and Fontaine were questioned in the street, questioned in their homes; brought into the police station and questioned again. Jahmall spent as much as fourteen hours, broken over a number of sessions, talking to Maureen Prior and Anil Khan.

Did he know Troy James and Jason Fontaine?

No.

He didn't know them?

No, not really.

Not really?

Not, you know, to talk to.

But they were at the party.

If you say so.

Well, they were there. James and Fontaine.

Okay, so they were there. So what?

You and Fontaine, you had a conversation.

What conversation?

There are witnesses, claim to have seen you and Fontaine in conversation.

A few words, maybe. I don't remember.

A few words concerning …?

Nothing important. Nothing.

How about an argument … a bit of pushing and shoving?

At the party?

At the party.

No.