Still Waters

Thirty-one

Helen Siddons thought about Peterson on the walk back to her office, the way he had held it together until one of the officers had bent low and exposed his wife’s body, that was when he had lost it, catching hold of Lynn’s arm and crying open-mouthed into her shoulder, Jane, Jane, the name, muffled, repeated again and again. After that, black coffee, aspirin, he had answered their questions cogently enough, told them nothing new.

Door closed, she brought the details of the other cases up on the screen. That Tasmanian girl out at Worksop, the still-unidentified body fished out of the Beeston canal; a woman with the tattoo of a spider’s web on her left breast who had been dumped on the banks of the River Anker, where the M42 crossed it east of Tamworth; Irene Wilson, a known prostitute, whose partly decomposed body had been found in an allotment shed near the Trent and Mersey canal, south of Derby. Females aged between seventeen and twenty-five; all discovered in or near water with serious injuries to the head or upper body.

Don’t get dragged too far down that track, Malachy had warned. Well, what the fuck did he expect her to do? Ignore it?

There was a knock on the door, deferential, and there was Anil Khan, blue plastic folder in his hand, studied concern marring his handsome face. “Post-mortem report, ma’am. I thought you should see.”

“Of course I should bloody see.” She slid the stapled pages from the folder, flicking them through without really looking. “Tell me.”

“Evidence of bruising …”

“Of course …”

“To the body, ma’am. Chest and abdomen. Some of it fairly recent, some quite old. Looks as if maybe she was being beaten fairly regularly.”

“Christ!”

“Of course, it doesn’t invalidate what we’ve said, I suppose there needn’t be any connection at all.”

“I know, I know.” Helen’s mind was spinning. “Listen, get hold of Peterson, bring him in. There’s been a development, tell him. That’s all. No details, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Anil?”

“Ma’am?”

“This report … for now, no one else need know about it, understood?”

Khan nodded and hurried off.

In her office, Helen pushed open the window and let in a raft of warm air. Cigarette on the go, she settled down to read the report. The clearest signs of bruising were at the back of the abdominal cavity on the right side, the presumed cause one or more heavy blows with a blunt instrument, possibly a fist. From the extent to which the bruises had faded, it was reasonable to suggest that the incident in which they had occurred had taken place not more than four, not less than two weeks ago. There were some faint signs, difficult to date, of residual bruising in a similar area but on the opposite side, as well as to the lower chest wall. What was certain was that at some point in the past year, one of the vertebrocostal ribs, the second from the top on the left side, had been broken and allowed to heal of its own accord.

What had Alex Peterson replied when she’d asked if he and his wife had ever argued? Sometimes, doesn’t everyone? Well, yes, she thought, but there was argue and argue. She wondered what he would say now.

“We may have come up with something,” Helen said, soft-pedaling. Peterson was alone with Khan and herself in the room. “It may be nothing, at this stage it’s difficult to tell …” She broke off to light a cigarette.

“You can tell me, though,” Peterson said, “what it is?”

“There is evidence of bruising, quite severe, on your wife’s body.”

“Of course, the fall into the water, the …”

“This is different.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t …”

“Some of this bruising is quite old, stretching back over as much as eighteen months, two years.” She stared at him through cigarette smoke. “Some is more recent, inside the last month.”

“What … what kind of bruising?”

“Oh, the kind that might result from being struck. Being punched. In, say, an argument. An argument that had got out of hand.”

Peterson stared back at her, expressionless now.

“You wouldn’t be able to offer any kind of explanation as to how these bruises came to be caused?”

Peterson’s blue eyes slowly blinked. “Perhaps she had a fall.”

“A number of falls.”

“Possibly.”

“Went riding, did she?” Siddons asked. “Climbing? Winter skiing?”

Peterson shook his head.

“Then perhaps,” Helen said, “you could offer some other explanation?”

He held her gaze. “None. I’m sorry, none at all.”

Stubbing out her cigarette, Siddons leaned back. “If you do think of anything,” she said, almost carelessly, “you’ll be sure to let us know.”

He continued to sit there, uncertain. “You’ve finished with me? I can go?”

“Yes, I think so. Anil, perhaps you could show Mr. Peterson out.”

When he was on his feet, she said, “You won’t be going anywhere, leaving the country, nothing like that. Not with funeral arrangements to be made.”

Peterson looked back and then walked away. He’s good, Helen thought, guilty or not, he’s very good. And guilty of what? Hitting his wife to end an argument? Join the club.

The phone was ringing as she walked in the door and she knew it would be either Jack Skelton or Maxwell Bowden, the ACC from Derbyshire, whose idea of sweeping her off her feet had been some decidedly tired-looking roses and a bottle of Drambuie in a paper bag.

“Max,” she said, less than enthusiastically. He hated it when anyone called him Max. “What can I do for you?”

Wrong question.

“Actually, Max,” she said, interrupting, “I’ve had a shit of a day. I’m going to take some paracetamol and crawl into bed.”

Setting down the phone, she lit a cigarette and drew in deeply.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, receiver back in her hand. “Appealing as it is. Yes, I’ll call you. Bye.”

Carefully divesting herself of her new best suit and blouse and hanging them inside the ghastly flush-fronted fitted wardrobe, Helen kicked off the rest of what she was wearing and went to do battle with the shower.

She was drying her hair when the doorbell sounded and didn’t hear it at first over the noise of the drier. There was a generous glass of scotch close to hand and a Marks amp; Sparks salmon and something-or-other waiting patiently by the microwave.

When she realized there was somebody persisting at the door, she tightened the belt to her pale green robe and padded her way into the hall. Through the security peephole, Jack Skelton’s face looked more intense, more absurd than ever.

“Five minutes, Jack, all right? And don’t let this thing …” she tugged at the lapels of her robe, “give you any ideas.”

“Halfway there already,” Skelton grinned, but he was only going through the motions. “A drop of scotch’d be nice,” he said, spotting Helen’s glass.

“I dare say.” She made no effort to pour him one and Skelton took a freshly washed glass from beside the sink, the bottle of Famous Grouse from between the salt and the Fairy Liquid.

“Not going to be a habit this, is it, Jack? I thought we had all that settled before I agreed to take the job.”

“It’s the job I’ve come to talk to you about.”

“Not another lecture?”

“You had a run-in with Malachy.”

“Are you asking, Jack, or telling?”

“He told you what to do and you told him to fuck off.”

“Something like that, yes.” She held the packet out toward him and when he shook his head, lit up herself. “Afraid she’ll smell it on your breath, Jack?”

“Like she used to smell you?” His voice was easy and insinuating and for a moment, as his hand ran the length of her thigh, she could remember what she had allowed herself to see in him.

“Something about the job, Jack, I think that’s what you said.” She stared at him until he stepped away.

“Malachy, you know he was never your biggest fan from the off. Now he’s wondering aloud if it’s not the best thing to get shot of you before any real damage is done.”

“How exactly is he proposing to do that?”

“Ride you out of town doggy-fashion, I believe that was his suggestion.”

“Pathetic sexist bastard!”

“Possibly. But your immediate superior, none the less.”

Helen rested her cigarette on the edge of the sink and took a good swallow at her scotch. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ve already figured out how to deal with this. Malachy gets his way and I get mine. And you’ve got two minutes to down that scotch, or you’ll be taking it back to Alice in a paper cup.”

Skelton laughed a sour laugh. “Just about the only way I’d consider it these days.”

Resnick had wandered into the Polish Club midway through the evening, a quiet night, quite a few families with older children, and, after chatting to the secretary for a short while, taken up a position toward the end of the smaller bar. He was there, making his second or third bison grass vodka last and listening with half an ear to Marian Witzcak’s somewhat alarmed recounting of a Glyndebourne production of Berg’s Lulu on Channel Four, when Helen Siddons was ushered in.

“Charlie,” she said, “we’ve got to talk.”