Still Waters

Forty-two

Number 27 was sideways on to the road and deceptively small. The spiraling hedge separating it from the narrow pavement was in need of cutting back, causing passersby to step around it or raise an arm to brush it aside. The green wooden gate could have used a coat of paint. A ten-year-old Ford Fiesta, dingy cream, sat by the curb.

“Doubt he does his repping in that,” Khan remarked.

“Let’s hope not,” Resnick replied.

“According to records, he owns a Vauxhall estate, L reg.”

“Left early,” Resnick suggested.

“Maybe never got home last night.”

The two of them had stayed in the vehicle, sixty yards back down the road, while Lynn took a slow wander past the house.

“Someone’s home anyway,” she said, returning. “Caught a glimpse. A woman, I think. Back door’s open and there’s a radio playing.”

“Houses like this,” Khan said, “how d’you tell which is the front and which is the back?”

“It’s like one of those tests they give you,” Lynn grinned. “You know, intelligence.”

“Likely the front door then, after all.”

“If it is the wife,” Resnick said, “no call getting her alarmed without reason. Lynn, why don’t you go and have a word? Anil and I’ll hang on here.”

Before she was halfway there, a maroon estate came slowly around the far curve and signaled that it was going to stop. The driver eased across and parked close behind the Fiesta. By now, Lynn had stopped in her tracks and Resnick and Khan were out of the car and beginning to walk toward her.

The man who emerged from the Vauxhall was tall enough to have the slightly stooped posture of someone who habitually dips his head in conversation. He wore heavy-framed glasses and though his dark hair was still quite full, the crown of his head was bald.

“Spurgeon?” Lynn said quietly, once he’d clicked through the gate.

“Unless he’s got a brother.”

They moved on toward the house.

“Louise!” Spurgeon called, pausing at the open door. “Louise?”

But by then Resnick had pushed the gate back open and was walking toward him along the path, the two other officers close behind.

“Mr. Spurgeon?”

“Yes, I …”

“Peter Spurgeon?”

“Yes.”

“Peter, what is it?” Louise Spurgeon was short to medium height, a couple of inches shorter than Lynn. She was wearing a smart suit skirt, but with an apron still fastened over the front of her white blouse.

“I don’t know, I …”

“We’re police,” Resnick said. “Detective Inspector Resnick.” He held out his card. “This is Detective Sergeant Kellogg, Detective Constable Khan.”

“Whatever’s the matter?” Louise Spurgeon said. “Is it one of the children? Peter, Peter, it can’t be the children, you’ve only just taken them to school.”

“We believe you know a Jane Peterson,” Resnick said.

Spurgeon blinked. “No, I don’t think …” He half-turned toward his wife.

“Peterson,” said Louise. “No. Unless it’s someone, Peter, from work. A buyer, perhaps? Someone from the University Press?”

Spurgeon removed his glasses and rubbed them against his trouser leg.

“Sir?” Resnick asked again. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“She used to be called Harker. Jane Harker.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.” Spurgeon took a step back, fumbling his glasses back onto his face. “Louise, it’s Jane, you remember …”

“Yes, I know who she is.” Louise turned abruptly and went back into the house.

“Louise, please …” Shaking his head, Spurgeon gave an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry.”

“You did know her, then, Mr. Spurgeon?” Resnick persevered. “Jane Harker? Peterson as she became.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But a long time ago.”

“And you haven’t kept in touch?”

“No. No, not at all.”

“In which case,” Resnick said, “likely you wouldn’t have heard?”

“Heard what?”

“I’m afraid she died, sir.”

“Jane … Oh, my God, how …”

“She was murdered.”

A shiver ran through Spurgeon’s body; his face was the color of fine ash.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to break the news,” Resnick said.

Spurgeon removed his glasses, put them back into place. “Tell me what happened. Please.”

Levelly, evenly, not goading him, Resnick told him the facts. Tears fidgeted in the corners of Spurgeon’s eyes, his hands knotted and pressed against his thighs. Then, silently at first, he began to cry. After several moments, Resnick touched Spurgeon gently on the arm and led him inside the house.

His wife was sitting at a plain kitchen table, still crowded with breakfast things, cold anger the only expression on her face.

“She’s dead,” Spurgeon said, voice cracking. “Jane’s dead.”

Louise tilted up her head. “Good,” she said. “Not before time.”

Some minutes later, Louise Spurgeon reappeared in the kitchen with her suit jacket and makeup in place. Switching on the ready-loaded washing machine as she passed, she lifted her car keys down from the hook alongside the door and stepped briskly out without uttering another word.

Her husband leaned against the table, then sat, head pitched forward into his hands, alternately sobbing and reaching for breath. Khan fetched a length of kitchen roll and placed it near at hand, where it stayed unused. Resnick waited until the edgy sound of the Fiesta’s engine had faded before touching Peter Spurgeon lightly on the shoulder. “Perhaps there’s another room where we can sit quietly, have a chat?”

Unsteadily, Spurgeon got to his feet, wiping his face with his sleeve. “We can go through here.”

Following him, Resnick turned his head. “Tea?” he said to Lynn.

“Tea, Anil,” Lynn said, once they were alone. “I’m going to take the chance for a quick look round.”

The room Spurgeon led Resnick into overlooked a muddled garden in which swings and a climbing frame rose above some rather desultory rose bushes, a lawn that was threadbare in patches, overgrown in others, and cabbages that had gone to seed. A fruit tree, pear, Resnick thought, though he could never be sure, straggled up alongside the far wall. A pair of child’s trainers sat in the center of the room, stray items of clothing vied for space with comics and magazines. A small computer was set up on a table near the window, the cursor rhythmically blinking its green eye.

“I’m sorry,” Spurgeon said, “about the mess.”

Resnick negotiated space on an old Parker Knoll armchair, bought secondhand or someone’s hand-me-down. How seriously had they suffered financially when Spurgeon’s publishing venture had gone bust, he wondered, and were they still suffering from that? Financially and perhaps in other ways. Was this simply the house of two busy people with three children, never time to keep up? Or was this what it was like when things had unraveled beyond the point of care?

Spurgeon pushed a pile of publishers’ catalogs to one side and slumped onto a sagging two-seater settee. Resnick waited until he had looked at him and looked away, looked at him and then away.

Resnick wondered if Spurgeon could hear as well as he could those footsteps he assumed were Khan’s or Lynn’s upon the upstairs boards? No, Resnick almost allowed himself a smile, they would be Lynn’s; she would have been sure to have told Khan to make the tea.

And, yes, when the tea arrived, along with milk and sugar on an improvised tray, it was Khan who handed it round and, catching Resnick’s eye to see if he should go or stay, carried his own mug to the side of the room and sat on a straight-backed chair near the door.

“I … I don’t know,” Spurgeon said at last, “what it is you want me to say.”

“The truth,” Resnick replied.

“But about what?”

“Everything.”

Spurgeon tasted his tea, stirred in more sugar, left it alone.

“Mr. Spurgeon …”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“About Jane? You didn’t know what had happened to her?”

“Of course not.”

“And you haven’t seen her in a long time?”

Spurgeon shook his head.

“How long? Fifteen years? Ten?”

“Ten, something like that. Ten. I can’t remember exactly.”

“What happened,” Resnick asked, “for you to stop seeing her?”

“I suppose we just drifted apart, you know how it is. And then, of course, I married Louise.”

“Your wife knew her, then?”

“No. They never met.”

“Strange then,” Resnick said mildly, “that she should react the way she did.”

For an instant, Spurgeon closed his eyes. “Louise used to say I talked about Jane all the time. She said I made comparisons, between the two of them. It preyed on her mind. I suppose that’s why, when she heard what had happened …”

Leaning forward, Resnick set his mug of tea aside. “There was no other reason for your wife to be jealous in this way?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen Jane …”

“In ten years.”

“That’s right.”

“Nor spoken to her.”

“No.”

“Mr. Spurgeon,” Resnick raised his voice a touch, shifting his weight back in the chair, “don’t you think it’s time we stopped all this?”

When Spurgeon spoke again, his voice was so quiet that both Resnick and Khan had to strain to hear. “When I first met Louise, I was still getting over Jane. I don’t think I even realized it at the time, but it was true. First love, I suppose that’s what you’d say. But I hadn’t kept in touch with her at all, didn’t know where she was, I never expected to as much as hear from her again. And then a couple of months after the wedding a card came. From Jane. I don’t know how she’d found out, but she had, and she sent this card, wishing me good luck. Congratulations. Of course, I should have shown it to Louise straight away, but I didn’t. Perhaps there was some kind of guilt, embarrassment, whatever.” Spurgeon was twisting his wedding ring round and round on his hand. “It’s so easy to get caught up in a lie.” He looked Resnick in the eye. “Louise found the card, almost a year later; I hadn’t thrown it away. She … the way she behaved was out of all proportion. And she hasn’t forgotten. Not even now.”

“Tell me,” Resnick said, “what was written on the card.”

Spurgeon looked away. “Congratulations and good luck, with all my fondest love, Jane.” He hesitated. “Then underneath she’d written, I wish it was me.”

“You didn’t reply?” Resnick asked.

Spurgeon shook his head. “I’d made my bed. And besides, there was no return address.”

“Until later.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jane’s address, you found out later what it was.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying, Mr. Spurgeon, is that if you hadn’t got back in contact with Jane Peterson in some way, she would never have phoned you at the Dray Horse on the Newmarket Road, just ten minutes’ drive from here, on the day that she disappeared. Exactly one week before she was found dead.”