Still Waters

Forty-one

“Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said, holding out the blow-up reproduction of the photograph. “I don’t have to tell you it was taken a while ago.”

“Childhood sweethearts,” said Lynn, not quite able to keep the dismissiveness out of her tone.

“College, anyway,” said Khan.

“And we’re assuming they’ve kept in touch?” Lynn asked.

Resnick lowered the photograph onto the desk. “We’re assuming nothing. What we’re doing is checking as thoroughly as we can. Let’s see if we can track him down through vehicle registration; otherwise, it’s voting registers, directories, you know the kind of thing. And let’s check his college while we’re about it; there’s bound to be some kind of organization for former students and he just might belong.”

When the phone went some little while later, Khan identified himself, listened for a moment, then passed the receiver across to Resnick. “For you, sir. Something about a nun.”

Sister Teresa was waiting for Resnick outside the main doors, a dark gray shawl draped over a light gray dress, gray tights, and black laced ankle boots.

“You’re busy,” she said, reading some concern in Resnick’s face.

“No more than usual. Time for a cup of coffee, at least.”

“Ah, I’d best not. There’s two people to call on still, and then another of those meetings Sister Bonaventura’s forever hauling me off to. Christian Interface and the Diocese, something along those lines.”

Still smiling, she drew an envelope from her bag and from that lifted out a postcard. “It arrived yesterday. I thought you might want to see.”

Resnick glanced quickly at a picture of a young woman sitting among a lot of hats, before turning it over to read the reverse:

Your favorite, I think. Almost mine too. Entrance to exit it was a perfect afternoon. Thank you.

I thought you’d like to know, after your lecture, I’ve decided to be active in the cause of righteousness.

Till St. Ives,

Jerzy

“St. Ives?” Resnick said.

“Oh, that’s nothing. Just some foolishness.” She was, Resnick thought, perilously close to blushing.

“The rest of it, then …”

“I did as you asked, tried to show him that in helping you, he could only be helping himself.” She waited until she had Resnick’s eye. “That is right, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Resnick said. “I think so.”

Teresa reached her hand toward the card. “You’ll not be needing this?” As he relinquished his grip of it, she replaced the card inside the envelope, the envelope safely inside her bag.

“Thanks for making the time,” Resnick said.

She slipped her hand for a moment into his and smiled.

Helen Siddons was shouting instructions down the corridor, a plethora of younger officers stumbling in her wake. Midway down the stairs, she paused to light another cigarette and that was when she spotted Resnick, on his way back into the building. “Charlie, how’s it going?”

As they walked, he filled her in on the progress of his end of the inquiry, letting her know just enough to see they hadn’t been wasting their time.

“Well,” Siddons had stopped outside the main computer room, hand to the door, “not that I want to knock you off your stride, but it looks like we’ve got a live one just crawled out of the woodwork. Went down for attempted rape six months after the Irene Wilson murder; released three weeks before that girl turned up in the Beeston Canal. Oh, and Charlie, we may have got a line on her, too. Dental records. Should have confirmation in a day or two.”

And with a wave of cigarette smoke she disappeared.

Carl Vincent finally got through to the Arts and Antiques Unit at the Yard after a solid fifteen minutes of trying. Tracking down Jackie Ferris took five minutes more.

On the line she sounded brisk and businesslike, prepared to give him exactly as much of her time as importance warranted, but no more.

“My DI,” Vincent said, “in a roundabout sort of way, he’s had a message from Grabianski. Seems as if he’s ready to push ahead. Could be soon.”

“Right. Maybe you should get yourself down here sharpish. Any problem with that?”

“None that I can think of.”

“Fine. Ring me as soon as you arrive.” Jackie Ferris hung up.

Holly had told Grabianski he should buy root ginger and lemons and make ginger tea; it would help to clear away a lot of the toxins that were troubling him. He was almost back from a trip to the fruit and vegetable stall, purchases in a small plastic bag, when he noticed someone sitting on the steps outside his building. It was Faron.

She was wearing a shiny silver dress and there were new gold highlights in her hair. Between the bottom of the dress and the expected clumpy shoes, her legs, thin in spangled tights, seemed to go on forever.

“Hi-ya!” She dropped her magazine as Grabianski came through the gate and, quickly to her feet, caught hold of his arm and kissed him on the cheek.

“Don’t tell me, Faron,” he said, “you were out for a walk on the Heath, and before you knew it here you were outside my house. You thought you’d stay for tea.”

She peered along her sharp little nose. “You’re sending me up, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. Just a little.”

“That’s all right. Eddie does it all the time. And worse. Downright rude, sometimes. Know what I mean? No respect.”

Grabianski unlocked the front door and led her through what it always delighted him to remember were called “the common parts.” Several flights of stairs and they were standing in the combined living room-kitchen, an elevated skylight drawing in the light from above their heads.

“Have a seat,” Grabianski said, pointing toward the low settee. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any white wine? I should’ve brought some myself, but I didn’t think. Well, sometimes you don’t, do you? Not till it’s too late.”

Out of the mouths of babes and five-thousand-a-show models, thought Grabianski. He took a bottle of Sancerre from the fridge and uncorked it. Faron was back on her feet again, prowling the room.

“It’s nice here. Cozy.”

“Thanks.” He gave her a glass of wine and she gulped the first mouthful as if it were pop. “Only one thing, though, I thought there’d be paintings, you know, all round the walls, like at Eddie’s.”

What Grabianski had were landscape photographs; a few enlarged shots of birds that he’d taken himself. On the glass-topped coffee table in front of the settee, there was a black statuette of a falcon in flight. A few shelves of books, mostly reference, and that was all.

“Where’s your tele, then? In the bedroom, I suppose. Eddie keeps his in there, too. Still, at least you’ve got a few CDs.”

It was difficult not to think Faron would be disappointed with his selection: Bird Calls of Africa and the Near East; Tropical Storms; a recording of Prokofiev and Janáãek violin sonatas he’d bought because he liked the look of Viktoria Mullova on the cover; Steven Halpern’s Spectrum Suite, recommended by Holly for the way it resonated within specific areas of the body. After the African bird calls, it was the one Grabianski played most.

“You know,” Faron said, turning, “what Eddie don’t trust about you? He thinks you don’t know how to have fun. Too serious, right?”

“Is that why you’re here?” Grabianski said. “To help me have fun? Ask a few questions. See if I don’t talk in my sleep.”

She batted Oxfam eyes at him from across the room. “I don’t like the way that sounds.”

“No. Nor should you.” Just for a moment, he touched the back of his hand to her cheek.

Faron sipped at her wine and then, from the tiny leather rucksack she’d had on her back, shook out a smart red notebook and matching pen. “I was going to nip to the loo and scribble it all down before I forgot.”

“And now?”

Faron shrugged.

Grabianski reached out for the notebook and tore it in two, letting the halves drop to the floor. When he touched her face again she didn’t pull away and he was surprised, despite the makeup she so expertly wore, at the softness of her skin.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you’d consider doing something for me?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grinned. “And what’s that?”

“That man Sloane. The artist. I’d like to meet him.”

It was twenty past five that evening, when Lynn and Khan came into the office and caught Resnick just on the point of leaving.

“Peter Paul Spurgeon,” Lynn said, “thirty-seven years of age. Married with three children, Matthew, nine, Julia, eight, and Luke, five. Wife’s name’s Louise.”

“Currently resident,” Khan said, “27 Front Street, Bottisham. That’s just …”

But Resnick knew where it was. “It’s a village, northeast of Cambridge.”

“Yes, sir. Seems he left the area for a while after getting his degree; came back six or seven years ago.”

“After university, he worked in publishing,” Lynn said. “London and Edinburgh. Set up some kind of firm of his own, apparently, but it didn’t take. Sounds as if he might still be keeping it going in a small way, but what he does to pay the bills, he’s a sales rep for a number of other publishers, mostly academic ones, all over the eastern counties.”

“His wife works, too,” Khan said. “A librarian at one of the colleges.”

“Well,” Resnick said, looking almost as pleased as they were themselves. “Good work. Very. Now what d’you say we break the habit of a lifetime, hike up the road, and beat everyone else to the bar in the Borlace Warren?”