Still Waters

Forty-four

“You won’t have any objection, sir, to our taking a quick photograph?”

Resnick had informed Colin Presley, the senior local CID officer, of his impending visit, and now a second call to Cambridge HQ secured an interview room with tape facilities, car parking, use of the canteen. Lynn’s brief stroll around the premises on Front Street had yielded nothing aside from the fact that the Spurgeons’ life would be easier-and tidier-with the services of a good housekeeper or au pair. Even kids who picked up after themselves would help. Now Khan had been sent off to the Dray Horse with a Polaroid of Peter Spurgeon, seeking confirmation that this was the man who consistently called there and from time to time made use of their telephone.

Resnick and Lynn sat in the interview room, high at the rear of the building, watching Spurgeon wipe the lenses of his spectacles over and over with a yellow cloth. After all the backtracking and deception, Resnick believed a change of scene to somewhere more institutional might more quickly loosen Peter Spurgeon’s tongue.

“Your earlier denials,” Resnick said, “of having any continuing relationship with Jane Peterson …”

“We didn’t have a relationship …”

“Or of knowing about her death …”

Spurgeon wrapped his head in his hands.

Oh, God, Lynn thought, he’s going to lose it totally.

“I’m willing to accept,” Resnick said, “all that was due to the immediate stress of the situation. But now I want us to be clear. This is a murder investigation. Any further attempts to throw us off the track, impede that investigation in any way, will be treated very seriously indeed.”

No response other than a vague fluttering of hands.

“Mr. Spurgeon, is that clear?”

“Yes.” Weakly. “Yes, yes, of course.”

“Then tell us in your own time everything you can about yourself and Jane.”

Spurgeon fidgeted his glasses back onto his face, half-removed them again, pushed them back into place; Resnick reached across the desk and lifted them away, the last prop Spurgeon had left.

“It … it was true,” Spurgeon finally began, “what I told you about the card. Coming the way it did, out of the blue.”

Resnick nodded encouragingly, even smiled. “When Jane and I first met, it was the first day of college, the first evening. We just started talking. The next thing we were going out together, going steady. It just seemed, I don’t know, natural, the natural thing to do.”

“And this carried on all the time you were here,” Resnick asked, “at the university?”

Spurgeon nodded. “Yes.”

“No little mishaps,” Lynn said. “No falling-out?”

“Not really, no.”

“The perfect couple.”

“That was what everyone said.”

“So what happened?” Resnick asked.

Spurgeon coughed, fidgeted, cleared his throat. “At the end of the … after graduation, Jane went down to Exeter to do her PGCE year, her teaching certificate, and I stayed on here and started working on some research. At first we saw one another every other weekend, until the Christmas vac. That was when Jane said wouldn’t it be a good idea if we stepped back a little, that was the expression she used, gave ourselves room to think about what was going on.”

“What was going on?” Resnick asked.

“I don’t know. As far as I was concerned, nothing, I still felt the same.”

“She’d met somebody else,” Lynn said.

“No. I mean, yes, maybe. I don’t know.”

“She didn’t say?”

Spurgeon didn’t answer straight away. “She said we should be mature enough to respect one another’s privacy.”

“She’d met somebody else,” Lynn said again.

“Do you think,” Spurgeon said, “I could have a drink? My mouth feels really dry.”

Resnick nodded at Lynn, who slid out of her chair and left the room.

Without his glasses, Spurgeon’s eyes were restless and pale. “After Easter, she stopped writing. Didn’t phone. I went down to Exeter on the train and she refused to see me. I couldn’t understand it, she just wouldn’t listen to reason. As soon as I got back 1 wrote, letter after letter. If I phoned, she wouldn’t take my calls.”

“And she didn’t give you any explanation?”

Spurgeon shook his head again. “She refused. Point blank. I didn’t know what to do.”

“What did you do?”

“I packed in my research, moved away, found a job in publishing. I was lucky. I did well, got on. Fine, I thought, I’ll forget her, I’ll do this.”

“And did you? Forget her?”

“Of course not.”

There was a slight clink from outside, which Resnick registered and maybe Spurgeon did not; Lynn had arrived back and would have listened at the door, hearing enough of a flow in the conversation to know she should stay where she was.

“I borrowed some money and started up in business on my own. A small press, you know, specialist titles. All the forecasts showed there was every chance I could break even after a couple of years, pay back the debt, start forging ahead after that. That wasn’t the way it worked out.” Spurgeon wiped his hand across his mouth. “Some of the money I’d borrowed from Louise, well, from her family, I suppose. We were together by then, engaged, and it only seemed the natural thing. I remember after the wedding, her father making this speech, how his daughter was going to be sitting at the right hand of the next Lord Weidenfeld, the next Alan Lane. A little over four years later I was broke, virtually bankrupt. Louise’s family would scarcely speak to her, except to malign me, tell her what a fool she’d been, throwing herself away on a bigger fool like me.”

He paused and Lynn slipped back into the room with glasses and a jug of cloudy water.

Spurgeon waited until she had sat down. “It was around then that Jane got back in touch with me. She’d seen something in one of the papers about the firm going under, just a paragraph, but it had been enough to help her find me. She phoned one afternoon, a Sunday, it was only luck that I picked up the phone. “Hello,” she said, “this is Jane Peterson,” and for a moment I didn’t know who that was. I hadn’t even recognized her voice.”

He poured himself water from the jug and drank.

“We arranged to meet in Cambridge, Heffers bookshop in the middle of the town. If anyone saw me, saw us, said anything to Louise for any reason, well, I would have had a good reason for being there. There’s this sort of balcony that runs round three sides of the shop and that’s where I was standing, I wanted to be sure of spotting her when she came in. I suppose I was afraid of not recognizing her, but, of course, as soon as she stepped through the door, I knew who she was.

“We drove out to Grantchester and sat in this outdoor, well, tea place, café, right away from everyone else, shaded by the trees. We sat there for ages, drinking tea, apple juice, Jane telling me about her life. About Alex, how paranoid he was, possessive. And-she didn’t tell me this straight away-how he’d been hitting her. Where nobody would see. I could have … If I could have laid my hands on him, I swear I would have killed him.”

Spurgeon rocked back sharply in his chair, eyes closed. Resnick and Lynn exchanged a quick glance.

“I’m wondering what it must have been like,” Resnick said, not wanting the distraction of more tears, “seeing somebody you loved again after all that time.”

Spurgeon opened his eyes. “It was wonderful,” he said simply. “It was as if we’d never been apart; as if she’d never been away.”

“But you were,” Lynn said. “She was married. You were both married.”

“I know. I told her to leave him. After what he’d done …”

“And your wife?” Lynn asked. “Louise?”

“That was over.”

“And the children?”

Spurgeon pushed his fingers through his hair. “I would have left them in a moment, all of them. The kids would hardly notice, Louise would be glad. As for her parents, they’d be delighted, thrilled.”

“What did she say to all this?” Resnick asked. “Jane?”

“She’d been hoping, when she came to see me, hoping that I’d ask her, I could see that. That’s what she wanted to know, if I still felt the same.”

“And did she,” Lynn asked, “feel the same about you?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure she did. But she was frightened. Terrified of Alex. Just terrified of what he would do if he found out we’d as much as seen one another, talked, never mind anything else.”

“So how did you leave it?” Resnick said. “After that first occasion? Would you say there was-what would you say? — an understanding?”

“She was going to think, very seriously, about what we’d said. Of course, nothing was going to be easy, we realized that. She had all these problems with Alex and I had to work hard to pay off all my debts. We agreed we’d keep in touch as best we could, make plans.”

“And you did?”

“It was difficult. Sometimes there wouldn’t be a chance to speak for months on end. He seemed to monitor every minute of her time. And because of all the resentment Louise had built up about Jane, I didn’t dare risk her calling me at home.”

“Which was when you started using the Dray Horse for calls?” Lynn said.

“Yes. I’d try and be there at certain times, sometimes she would call and sometimes not.”

“And this went on,” Resnick said, “not just for months, but years?”

“Yes.”

“And all this time you were waiting for Jane to leave her husband and live with you?”

“Yes.”

“It never occurred to you,” Lynn said, “that she might have been stringing you along?”

“Of course not. She was in love with me, we were in love. It was the same as before.”

It was Resnick’s turn to pour and drink a little water. “Tell us about this last few months,” he said.

“Jane was almost at breaking point with Alex. There was no way she could carry on like that forever, something had to happen. And I think helping to organize this day school helped, gave her an impetus. But she was still scared of telling him to his face. So what we arranged was she would write to him, post it that day, and just go. I’d drive up and collect her in the middle of the day school and we’d simply leave. Stay in a hotel. Anywhere. As far as Louise was concerned, I was off on business, East Anglia, Hull, it’s a trip I make every few months. She wasn’t expecting me back till the end of the week.” He folded his hands, one over the other. “That would be that.”

“Except,” Resnick said, “that it wasn’t.”

Spurgeon sighed. “She hadn’t written the letter. That was what we argued about that day. She promised she’d do it once we were away, but every letter she wrote, she’d tear up. She even dialed his number, but then didn’t go through with the call. By Wednesday, she was saying she had to go back and face him. She thought she could do that now, after being with me. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’d made up her mind. She would go and see him, tell him she was leaving him and why, and then come back to me.”

“This was Wednesday, you say?”

“Wednesday morning, yes.”

“And she went back that day?”

“Yes.”

“You drove her?”

“Only as far as Grantham. She wanted to make the rest of the journey on the train. She said it would be best, give her a chance to think over exactly what she was going to say, clear her mind.”

“You didn’t think you should be with her?” Lynn asked. “That maybe you should face him together?”

“Well, of course. But it wasn’t what Jane wanted. She wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted me to stay in Grantham and wait for her there. I booked a room in a hotel; she was going to catch the train back that evening. She never came.”

“So what did you do?” Lynn asked.

“What could I do? I waited and waited. Went to the station and met every train the next day.”

“What did you think had happened?” Resnick asked.

“At first, I thought Alex must be keeping her there by force, against her will. But then, when I still didn’t hear, I thought, one way or another, he’s persuaded her to change her mind. So I went home. I couldn’t think what else to do. Then when I switched on the TV and it was all over the news, I didn’t know … there was no one I could talk to, I didn’t even have any way of knowing whether anyone-whether you, the police, would ever connect her back to me. And then when I saw you coming down the path …”

Resnick nodded, paused. “What do you think happened?” he asked. “What do you think happened to Jane?”

Spurgeon didn’t hesitate. “He killed her, didn’t he? Alex. Killed her and threw … threw her into the canal.”

No way to stop the tears returning now and neither did they try.

A uniformed officer was keeping an eye on the interview room while Resnick and Lynn bustled off to the canteen.

“After the best part of an hour with him,” Lynn said, “I can understand the attractions of a bloke like Peterson. Something about him, at least.”

“Even if it means taking yourself off to Accident and Emergency once in a while?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No, not that. But Spurgeon … It’s all too easy, telling yourself you’re in love with some fantasy. Especially one you almost never see. A sight simpler than knuckling down to what you’ve got, a difficult wife and a bunch of mardy kids in need of a good sorting. No, he’s nothing. A failure, through and through.”

“You don’t fancy him for it, then?”

“’Less I saw it, I’d not fancy him for tying his own shoe.”

Resnick was still laughing as Khan came hurrying toward them, photograph of Spurgeon in his hand. “Him, sir, without a doubt.”

Resnick nodded. “He’s not denying that part of it, at least. But there’s a sight more to do, so don’t waste the effort sitting down. There’s a hotel reservation to check in Grantham, we need to know how many days Jane Peterson was there with Spurgeon. Anything else you can dig up. Lynn and I’ll drop Spurgeon off to his wife’s tender mercies, nothing we can really hold him on and I doubt he’ll do a runner anyway. Then we’ll get back and see what Peterson’s got to say for himself.”

“Right, sir.” Khan was already wondering when he’d next get the chance to phone Jill, get a bite to eat; thinking also that for all the talk there’d been about Lynn applying for a transfer because she was up to here working with Resnick, he couldn’t say these past days it had showed.