Still Waters

Twenty-six

Since Resnick had last been in the building, Mollie Hansen had moved office. No longer squeezed into a shoebox room where her desk was overlooked by a near life-size poster of k.d. lang, Mollie now shared the top floor of the narrow building with her assistant, a large photocopier, and a fax, the assistant at that moment being occupied elsewhere.

“Hello,” she said brightly, as Resnick’s head and shoulders appeared above the top of the stairs, “what are you doing here?”

For answer, Resnick held up two polystyrene cups of cappuccino and a paper bag containing a brace of toasted teacakes.

“Ooh, bribery and corruption,” Mollie grinned, “I thought that usually worked the other way round.”

Setting the cups on the desk and depositing the bag, dark where the butter had leaked, onto an old copy of Screen International, Resnick swung across a chair and sat down.

“It’s too much to hope this is purely a social call,” Mollie said. She was wearing a short slate blue dress and bright blue plimsolls with stars on their heels.

“Not exactly.”

“How about not at all?”

He smiled and levered open his coffee, only spilling a very little onto the top of Mollie’s desk.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “it’ll just merge in with the rest.” Her teacake was excellent, slightly spicy, and generous enough with butter for it to run down the outer edge of her hand, causing her to dip her head and lick it away. All that was left to consider now was the etiquette of using her tongue on the chocolate nestling inside the lid.

“Jane Peterson,” Resnick said.

“What about her?”

“How well d’you know her?”

“Not very. She was helping to organize this day school last weekend, we met quite a few times because of that. But, you know, meetings, agendas, they don’t give you a lot of time to chat. And she wasn’t one to hang around after in the bar.”

“You didn’t know her socially, then? You never talked about anything personal? Husband, family, anything like that?”

“Sorry, not really, no.”

Resnick nodded. “And Saturday, how did she seem?”

Mollie drank some more coffee, thinking back. “She was fine. A bit worked-up, but you’d expect that. I don’t think she’d been involved with anything like this before. But when everything was more or less okay, she was pleased. Lively, like I say.” Mollie set down her cup and looked at Resnick steadily across her desk. “Now I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s going on? Has something happened to her or what?”

“Why d’you say that?”

Mollie angled back her head and laughed out loud. “Come on! You’re up those stairs first thing in the morning-well, first thing for some of us-first time you’ve gone out of your way to see me in ages. And bearing gifts. Which I can hardly get round to, because of all the questions about Jane Peterson you’re firing at me. And you want to know why I think something’s happened?”

“She’s gone missing,” Resnick said. “Since the end of the day school on Saturday.”

“Right,” Mollie said, “I see.” And then: “She wasn’t at the end of the day school on Saturday.”

They were walking along Stoney Street, toward St. Mary’s Church on High Pavement; the Ice Stadium was away to their left. Just as Mollie had been about to continue, her assistant had returned; the fax machine had begun chattering and then the whirr of the photocopier. It was quieter on the streets.

“You’re sure she wasn’t there till the end?” Resnick said. “Positive?”

“I was looking for her when the film came out. Aside from anything else, I had this free Friends membership to give her, a few comps, just a way of saying thanks. When I didn’t see her, I asked around in case she’d come out early or whatever. Everyone I spoke to-I don’t know, half a dozen, maybe-they all swore she’d not been in to the film at all.”

“There’s got to be a possibility they were mistaken, surely? It is dark in there, after all.”

“Yes, but not that dark. And one of the women I spoke to had been at the seminar on fetishism earlier. According to her, Jane had been there and left halfway through.”

“Which would have been when?”

“Half-two, quarter to three.”

“And as far as you know, nobody saw her after that?”

“Not at Broadway, no.”

Resnick’s mind was racing between possibility and wilder speculation; he slowed himself down, making minor adjustments, adding as much as four hours to the time Jane had been missing, the opportunity she had had to get clear. But clear to where?

“If I come back to the office, you can get me a list of everyone who attended?”

“No problem.”

“Good. We’ll need confirmation.”

As they went up the worn steps to the small graveyard that surrounded the church, he asked Mollie if she’d noticed any changes in Jane Peterson’s manner during the weeks they’d been meeting.

Slowing her pace, Mollie thought it over. “She was a bit up and down, that’s all. Positive most of the time, but then any little thing could throw her into a panic.” Mollie smiled a sideways smile. “Not exactly your classic cool.”

Resnick nodded: he couldn’t imagine Mollie panicking over anything.

They passed around by the front of the church, where a lank man in a cassock was arguing with a homeless youth and his spindly dog, who were trying to make their bed in the covered porch.

“We’d best turn around,” Resnick said.

“Yes,” Mollie agreed, “I suppose we should.”

Fascinating, Mollie thought, walking on at Resnick’s side, how going out with Hannah had changed him. Not simply that Hannah had dragged him along, more or less willingly, to see movies quite a few times, and foreign art movies at that. It was something about the way he was with women that had altered, the way he was with her. Before, whatever the reason, he had always seemed on edge, as if never knowing quite how to respond. But the few times she’d run across him in the Café Bar lately-and now-he seemed more at ease, able to relax in her company. Which was true for her too.

Odd, wasn’t it, Mollie thought, this big, slightly shambolic man with whom she had practically nothing in common, how she could feel drawn to him as much as she did.

By late that afternoon, Lynn and Carl between them had spoken to most of those members of staff who had any close connection with Jane. There was almost unanimous agreement that she was a good teacher, a little scatterbrained occasionally perhaps, not always totally on top of things where her preparation was concerned, and she had been known to be late; but she cared about what she was doing and, most important, had a good relationship with the children in her care. Most knew that she was married to a dental surgeon, quite a few knew his name was Alex, but not many had actually laid eyes on him. Alex Peterson was not one for attending school functions. Come to that, neither was his wife. Not unless her presence was mandatory. It was the one other area in which she had come in for a little mild criticism. But then, as Jane had apparently said not a few times, her husband worked hard, long hours, and when he did get home he liked her to be there. Old-fashioned, maybe, hardly likely to endear her to the school’s few remaining militant feminists, but by and large people respected what she said and did. It was her life, after all.

The few friends and acquaintances Alex had listed who were not from the school had been more widely dispersed and hence more difficult to track down. Those Lynn or Carl were able to speak to only confirmed the prevailing picture of a rather highly strung woman with a bright mind who was happily, closely married to an articulate, intelligent, caring man. The kind of man, it was suggested, you didn’t let go of easily.

Only one person, an osteopath whom Jane had consulted some eighteen months before, and whom she and Alex had met socially a few times since, suggested anything different. His automatic response, when questioned by Lynn, was to assume that Jane had left her husband, and gave her decision a seal of approval by adding, “Not before time.”

When Lynn asked if he would care to explain what he meant, he first declined, then agreed to speak to her in person at eight forty-five the following morning. His first appointment, he explained, was at nine.

Resnick had noticed Sister Marguerite’s name on the list of people who had attended the seminar on fetishism and fashion, and he made the short journey down to the sisters’ house in Hyson Green himself.

When he arrived, a red-faced Sister Bonaventura was hauling great loads of washing out of the machine and sorting it for hanging from the crisscross of lines they had set up in the small back yard.

“Every dozen things we peg out,” she complained, “two get swiped by the kids from the youth club next door.”

Sister Marguerite was sitting in the front room, calculator in one hand and pencil in the other, figuring out that month’s accounts on the backs of several envelopes before transferring the figures into the triple-entry ledger that lay nearby.

“Wouldn’t you think, Inspector, people in holy orders should be exempt from paying VAT?”

Resnick waited until she had double-checked the household expenses column, before asking her about the day school.

“I was only present for the one seminar,” she explained. “Fashion, dress, the meanings we attach to them; it’s always been a subject that’s interested me greatly.”

“Isn’t it true,” Sister Bonaventura called from the other room, “you’d have been a model if you weren’t a nun?”

“It’s true,” Sister Marguerite agreed, “it is a calling I felt very responsive to.”

“You and Naomi Campbell on the catwalk at the same time, no one would know where to look.” Sister Bonaventura set a mug of strong-looking tea in Resnick’s hand. “PG Tips, it’s all we can afford. Biscuits are out of the question.”

Resnick thanked her and asked Sister Marguerite whether she had realized who Jane Peterson was and if she had seen her at the seminar.

“Sister Teresa pointed her out to me when I arrived, as one of the organizers, you see. And yes, she was with us, but not for long. Until the questions started, I think that’s when it was.”

“Roughly how long would this be after the session had started?” Resnick asked.

“Oh, forty minutes, no more. Certainly not as much as an hour. I assumed she had popped into the other seminar to see how they were getting on.”

But Resnick had already checked that this was not so, and he did so again when Sister Teresa arrived, back from visiting a residential home for the elderly and infirm. “No,” she stated confidently, “the lunch break was the last time I saw her, I’m positive about that. She certainly didn’t come in to us.”

Teresa walked with Resnick along the side passage and out onto the street. Traffic was heavy in both directions, backed up from the lights, and youths with squeegees and tattered ends of chamois leather darted in and out between the cars, prizing back windscreen wipers and furiously polishing at the glass, hands thrust out for small change.

“Our mutual friend,” she said, “have you seen any more of him?”

“We paid a visit,” Resnick said.

“We?”

“A colleague and myself.”

“He’s in trouble again, then, is he? He’ll go to prison?”

“That’s very much up to him.”

Teresa glanced up at him, narrowing her eyes against the fading sun. “Repent, is that what he has to do? Confess his sins and be cleansed?”

“I think,” Resnick smiled, “something in the way of restitution might be involved.”

“A little penance, too?”

“Rather more than ten Hail Marys, the Stations of the Cross.”

Sister Teresa took a step back toward the house. “I have it in mind to travel down to London shortly; there’s an exhibition I very much want to see. Degas.”

“And you were thinking you might ask Jerzy to join you?”

“It’s so much more pleasurable, looking at paintings with someone who knows more than you do.”

“I’m sure.”

“And you’d have no objection?”

Again Resnick smiled. “You might want to let me know when it is you’re going. Just in case there’s a message it might be advantageous for you to pass along.”

“Advantageous,” Teresa asked, “to whom?”

When Resnick got back to the station, Alex Peterson was waiting for him, the expression on his face making it clear he had heard nothing from his wife. “Come on up to my office,” Resnick said, “we can talk there.”

A message from Hannah lay on his desk: called four thirty-five, ring back. He would as soon as he got the chance.

“Have a seat,” Resnick said pleasantly enough, but for now Peterson preferred to stand.

“I’d like to know,” Peterson said, “precisely what it is you’ve been doing.”

Resnick waited, allowing the anger in the man’s tone to fade out on the air. “Following the usual procedures.”

“Which are?”

“Making contact, asking questions, establishing when and where the missing person was last seen.”

“Christ, we know all that. We’ve known it since Saturday night. Seven o’clock that evening. Six thirty or seven.”

“Half past two,” Resnick said.

“What?”

“As best we can tell, she left the building at half past two. There’s no report of anyone seeing her since then.”

Alex Peterson sat down. Resnick waited for him to put his face in his hands and he did. When he looked up, it was to say, “There’s got to be something else you could be doing.”

“Not at this stage.”

“At this stage? What do you have to do, wait until someone finds her in a bloody ditch?”

“Is that what you think’s happened?”

“Of course not.”

“Then there’s little more we can do besides wait for her to get in touch.”

“Surely you can ask at the station, the airport, wherever? She had to leave somehow. Maybe she hired a car.”

Resnick leaned forward in his chair. “Mr. Peterson-Alex-I’m afraid in a way you’re right. Unless we have reasonable cause for suspecting foul play, I simply can’t commit more personnel.”

“Jesus!”

“What you might consider doing is taking a photograph to one of those quick print places, getting some fliers made. There’s nothing to stop you asking questions of your own accord.”

“Aside from time.”

I thought this was important, Resnick thought, more important than a few lost fillings and the odd wisdom tooth. It worried him that he felt this bristling animosity toward the man, made him wonder for a moment if he would do more if he felt otherwise. But, no, at this stage he was doing all that was possible.

“Look,” Resnick said, “Jane’s a grown woman, an adult person, perfectly responsible for her own decisions. There’s not a single thing, at present, to suggest that wherever she’s gone, wherever she is, she’s not there of her own accord.”

“I could go to the paper,” Peterson said, “offer a reward.”

“You could. Though in my experience you might be buying yourself more trouble than it’s worth.”

“At least it would be doing something.”

“Yes.” He wanted Peterson to leave so that he could phone Hannah; it wasn’t beyond question that Jane might have contacted her. But there Peterson continued to sit, staring at Resnick through resentful, accusing eyes. Resnick remembered the bruises on Hannah’s wrist.

“I have to ask you again,” Resnick said, “you’ve no inkling where she might have gone?”

“Of course not.”

“No special place, special friend …”

“No.”

“And there was nothing between the two of you, nothing that happened prior to Saturday that might have led to her leaving?”

Peterson was half out of his chair. “That would just suit you, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Making it my fault. Then you could wash your hands of the whole bloody affair.”

“You were the one, wanted me to do more. What I’m looking for is motive.”

“What you’re looking for is to lay blame.”

Peterson was leaning forward across Resnick’s desk, hands gripping the sides. Sweat was blotched across his face and a vein was standing out, blue and strong, to one side of his temple.

“Do you always,” Resnick asked, “lose your temper this easily?

“Only when I lose my fucking wife!”

“Or ask questions that people can’t answer.”

Peterson blinked and blinked again. At first, he didn’t know what Resnick was alluding to.

“It’s not a good idea,” Resnick said, “to lay your hands on anyone. Certainly not in anger. Do I make myself clear?”

Peterson straightened, the color drained out of his face. “I was worked up, anxious. I’d scarcely slept. Waiting round all that time for Jane to call. Maybe I wasn’t quite in control.”

“Exactly.”

Peterson hated having to back down, but he did. Awkwardly, he brushed the sweat away from his eyes, wriggled inside his clothes. “I don’t normally lose my temper, Inspector. It’s not how I am.”

Resnick stared back at him and didn’t say a thing.