Still Waters

Forty-six

Six thirty a.m. Breakfast in the café near the Dunkirk roundabout. Resnick, Lynn Kellogg, and Anil Khan, three members of the Support Group, Steve Neale, Vicki Talbot, and Ben Parchman, along with a weary-looking Kevin Naylor, prevailed upon to set aside a day off in a good cause. Mark Divine, cautious on the edge of the rest, cautious especially with Lynn, but pleased to be there nonetheless, sat tucking into his egg and bacon sandwich with gusto, unable to disguise the grin that kept sliding around his face.

Resnick knew enough to let them finish their meal, order another tea or coffee, light up; his briefing was clear and to the point.

“One thing, boss,” Ben Parchman said. “Are we doing this so Peterson can’t turn round and say his wife was never here that Wednesday, he never saw her? Or because we don’t necessarily believe the boyfriend’s story about her coming here at all?”

“Both,” Resnick said. “It’s both.”

The two most likely trains for Jane Peterson to have arrived on were the five forty-seven and the six fifty-two. When Steve Neale spoke to the guard on the latter, the man thought it a possibility Jane had been on his train, but no way was he certain enough to make a positive identification. The wall-eyed official who had been collecting tickets on the forty-seven took a quick look at the photograph and shook his head. “No, duck, alus remember’t pretty ones.” He tapped his middle finger against his temple. “Keep ’em filed away, like, somethin’ to set against cold nights.”

Lynn, Anil, and Vicki had positioned themselves inside the sliding doors at the back of the busy booking hall, close to the stairs heading down to the Grantham platform. A good number of passengers would be regulars, out in the morning, back on one of those two trains after work. The three officers spoke to people as they passed, handed out hastily printed leaflets, detaining anyone who admitted making the relevant journey and asking them to look at Jane Peterson’s photograph. After the best part of an hour, they had logged three maybes and one fairly definite for the earlier train, a couple of possibles for the latter. But these were commuters whose schedules were cut to a fine line and more hurried past, eyes averted, than stopped.

With the first morning rush more or less over, Khan and Vicki Talbot took the eastbound train themselves; they would question the staff at Grantham station, drop off more leaflets for distribution there.

Kevin Naylor and Ben Parchman had divided the black cabs between them, leaving Divine to have a crack at the freebooters, drivers for mini-cab firms who were not authorized to ply for hire within the station concourse. It was a fact, however, that if one of them drove in to drop off a passenger and there was a fare waiting but no black cabs, well, business was business. They were also known to hang around at busy times outside the station, hoping to catch the eye of any potential customers for whom the regular queue was too slow and too long.

By mid-morning, between them, Naylor and Parchman had spoken to some fifty drivers and come up blank each time.

The first time Resnick spoke to Gill Manners, who ran the flower stall in the station concourse with her husband, Jane’s picture didn’t mean a thing, but later, when Resnick was walking past after talking to the station manager, she called him over and asked to look again.

“I’ve seen her, I know I have, I just can’t fit it in with what you said. Times and that.”

“Her picture would have been in the Post. On TV. You don’t think you’re remembering it from there?”

She shook her head. “You, now, Mr. Resnick, I’ve seen you on the local news a time or two. But this one, no, I’ve seen her I know, but where or when? It’s wedged in this poor head of mine somewhere, but I can’t shake it down.”

Resnick gave her one of his cards. “You’ll let me know, if you do remember? It could be important.”

“’Course. I’ll have a word with my Harry when he gets here, see if he can’t come up with something. Hanging’s too good for him, Mr. Resnick, whoever done this.”

Nodding noncommittally, he hurried across to WH Smith. It wasn’t inconceivable that Jane would have stopped in to buy a newspaper, tissues, something of the kind, or that one of the assistants might have noticed her walking by.

It was past noon before anything definite broke. Kevin Naylor had just wandered across the street from the cab rank south of Slab Square and called Debbie from outside the Bell, Debbie sounding remarkably cheerful and reminding him there was a little errand he had to run for her at the chemist’s on his way home.

Naylor fancied something from the barrow close alongside and treated himself to a couple of bananas, one for now, one for later. It gave the drivers a laugh anyway, everything from, “Okay, punk, make my day,” to the inevitable, “Is that a banana in your pocket, officer, or are you just here to arrest me?”

He dropped his peel in the nearest ornately decorated, black-painted bin and, photograph in hand, continued working down the line. Second was a young Asian who scarcely seemed old enough to be in charge of a cab without a minder. Naylor had even half a mind to check his license, but the thought went away the moment the driver tapped his finger twice against Jane Peterson’s face and said, in a strong local accent, “Yes, I had her in my cab not so long back. Remember her, right. Picked her up, yeah, at the station, and took her to an address in the Park. Those newish places up near Derby Road. Flats, are they? Houses? I don’t know. But you know where I mean, right?”

“You’re sure it was her?” Naylor asked.

“Yeah, she was-I don’t know-she was all worked up about something, right? Dead nervous. Dropped her money all over the inside of the cab when she was fixing to pay me. I jumped round and helped her, like, pick it up.” He looked at Naylor, open faced.

Feeling the adrenaline starting to kick in, but keeping it all nice and simple, nonetheless, Naylor noted the driver’s name and address, then asked him, not putting too much into it, the other things he needed to know. Yes. The date and time checked and so did the address.

“Here,” the driver said, “this is important, yeah? All this stuff you’re asking. I bet there’s got to be some reward, right? Or else maybe I’ll get to be in one of them programs on tele, yeah? True crime.”

But Naylor was no longer listening.

Just Resnick, Lynn, and Naylor in the office on the Ropewalk: close to old times.

“You think he’s got his details right, Kevin?” Resnick said.

“Didn’t seem to be in any doubt, sir.”

“Which means,” said Lynn, “she caught the later train, the six fifty-two. And according to the guard Steve spoke to, it was in on time. Two or three minutes at most to get to the cab rank; allowing for traffic, what, another ten minutes to the Park? Fifteen tops. She’d have been home by quarter past seven.”

“Quick bath, change, mash tea, and settle down to EastEnders,” Naylor grinned.

“Likely, Kevin,” Resnick said, “she had more pressing things on her mind.”

The receptionist in Alex Peterson’s surgery was half out of her seat in protest when she recognized Resnick and held her tongue. Lynn was standing close behind him, Naylor at the door.

“This patient,” Resnick said, “how much longer will he be?” Flustered, she looked from her desk to the clock behind Resnick’s head, then back to her desk again. The telephone sounded and she let it ring. “I don’t know, it should have been over, let me see, at quarter past. But his next appointment’s waiting and there’s somebody else Mr. Peterson’s promised to try and fit in. I’m sorry but I really don’t think he’ll have time to talk to you till the very end of the afternoon.”

Resnick leaned toward her, close across the desk. “Explain to these people there’s an emergency. Apologize. Don’t make a fuss.”

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t really see how I can.”

“Do it. And don’t bother telling Mr. Peterson, we’ll do that for ourselves.”

“Oh, but you can’t …”

The Muslim nurse was holding out a metal cup at the end of a tube for the patient to spit into; Peterson was making notes in small, precise writing on the man’s chart. When Resnick appeared in the doorway, the dentist hesitated a little before finishing what he had begun.

Since his wife’s death, he had used his work more than ever as a way of exerting control; not only over those around him, those he came into regular contact with, but over himself, his emotions. He had accepted condolences from colleagues politely and they had not sought to intrude; the letters from Jane’s family he had acknowledged with a cold, formal hand. Mourning was something to be held at bay for as long as possible, allowed only privately and then in small doses, like a glass of strong Scotch sampled alone and late, just himself and the moon. Grief frightened him: it threatened to undo him.

“If you’ll give this in at reception, Mr. Perry,” Peterson said. “Make another appointment for, oh, two weeks’ time. We’ll see how that’s settling down.”

Lynn stepped aside in the doorway to allow him past.

“Govinda,” Peterson said, “let us have a minute, will you?”

With a slight uncertainty, the nurse left the room. There was a smell of mint and analgesic; a distinct but faint background hum.

“Inspector …” Peterson began, offering his hand. When Resnick made no move to accept it, he took a step back, one hand resting on the head of the chair. “Somehow I don’t get the impression you’ve come simply to give me news.”

“There has been a development,” Resnick said.

“You’ve made an arrest?”

“Not yet,” Resnick said. The pause before he spoke alerted Peterson to his meaning.

“We’d like you to come with us and answer some questions,” Resnick said.

“Now?”

“Now.”

Methodically, Peterson fastened the cap on his pen and clipped it inside the breast pocket of his jacket. “Is that merely a request or am I the one about to find myself under arrest?”

“Whichever you want,” Resnick said flatly. “Whichever it needs.”

Peterson stared at him, then slowly shook his head; taking off his jacket, he slipped on a navy blazer in its place. Outside on the pavement, just before getting into the back of the waiting car, Peterson turned to Resnick and said quietly, “What is it, sheer spite? Or have you simply run out of other ideas?”

They sat him in the same room as before and made him wait. In search of Helen Siddons, Resnick found her in the squad office, tearing a strip off a group of officers whose background checking she’d found to be less than diligent. The details of Aloysius James’s story were beginning to look particularly frayed, and, emboldened by his solicitor, James was proving a less tractable suspect than they had imagined.

Resnick waited till the air had cleared a little, then filled her in quickly on the day’s discoveries. “You’ve got him in now?” Siddons asked, frowning.

Resnick nodded.

“Fancy him for it, don’t you? Have all along. Topping his wife. That anger getting out of control.”

“It’s possible.”

“If you’re right …” She shook her head. “Christ, Charlie, they don’t call you Golden Bollocks for nothing.”

Almost before Resnick had closed the door, Alex Peterson was out of his seat. If leaving him there dangling had been intended to make him nervous, break down his resistance, it hadn’t worked; what it had done was steady his mind, steady his nerve.

“I thought this was urgent; I thought this was something that couldn’t wait. You drag me down here in the middle of the afternoon, prevent me from treating my patients, and for what? So I can sit here for half an hour with a cup of stewed tea and, presumably, somebody outside the door to make sure I don’t run off.”

“You’re at liberty,” Resnick said, “to leave whenever you wish.” Pulling out a chair, he sat down, Lynn to his left. “You’ve been kind enough to agree to answer our questions, assist with our inquiries. You are not under arrest.”

From the look in Peterson’s eyes, it was clear he was deliberating what to do: make to go and see what happened, force the issue and become embroiled in a farrago of blundering officialese, solicitors, even handcuffs for all he knew; or stay and see it through, debate, defend. As much as anything, it was the latter which appealed. He sat back down and even smiled. “How can I help?” he said.

They took him through everything from the moment Jane walked out through the door on that Saturday morning, excited, apprehensive, setting off for Broadway, to the night, a week later, when her body was lifted from the canal. Step by slow step. At no point had Jane been in touch with him, not by letter, not by phone; they had not met, she had not called. The last thing he had said to her, a remark called over his shoulder from the breakfast table where he sat reading the international section of The Times, “Bye. Hope it goes well.”

“You are certain?” Resnick said.

“Oh, God. Of what? Can’t we be done with this?” Peterson was bored. This wasn’t a debate, this was a boring litany of the obvious, square pegs into square holes.

“That you didn’t see your wife at any time between that Saturday and when she died?”

“Yes. How many more times?” He stared at them and they stared back. “Right, I’m sorry …” Peterson on his feet now, fingers automatically buttoning his blazer, “but this is patently absurd.”

“How about Wednesday?” Lynn said, speaking for the first time.

“Wednesday?” He stopped, head angled round, almost at the door.

“Wednesday evening at around quarter past seven?”

“What about it?”

“That was when she came to see you, remember? Your wife. That was when the taxi dropped her off at your door.”

Peterson laughed, or at least he started to.

“She caught the six fifty-two from Grantham, then a cab from the station.”

“Grantham? Whatever would she have been doing in Grantham?”

“She was there with a man called Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said. “The man she was leaving you to go and live with.”

Slowly, mind churning, Peterson moved across and sat back down.

“You know him?” Resnick asked. There was a fly, fat and lazy, hazing around the upper half of the window, and he tried to clear it from his mind.

“No, I don’t know him.”

“You know who he is?”

“Jane went out with him at Cambridge. That was more than ten years ago. Fifteen.”

“You didn’t know she’d seen him since?”

“That’s preposterous.”

“Is it?”

Peterson started to say something and then stopped. Resnick asked him again.

“No. No, I didn’t know.”

“Did she ever talk about him?”

“No, not really. I mean, a few times, possibly, in passing. Maybe once or twice, late at night, you know, those slightly drunken conversations when people start reminiscing. What it was like back then, idyllic summers punting down the Cam.”

“Idyllic?”

Peterson shrugged. “She obviously thought so at the time.”

“She was in love with him.”

“Apparently. Though heaven knows why. Even when she was trying to paint this heroic portrait of him, learned and romantic, he came over as rather pathetic. Not the kind of person who was ever really going to do anything with his life.”

“Does that matter?” Lynn asked.

“Not to me.”

“But what did you think of him?”

“I didn’t. Why should I? He was of no possible relevance to me.”

“So if your wife, if Jane, had wanted to contact him, I don’t know, phone once in a while, see how he was getting on, you wouldn’t have minded?”

“No,” Peterson practically scoffed. “Why should I?”

“I wonder why, then,” Lynn said, “when she did get back in touch with him, after his business failed, she didn’t let you know? Unless she was frightened of how you would react.”

“Jane was never frightened of me. She had no reason.”

“Not even when you were angry?”

“No.”

“Those times you hit her, then,” Lynn said, “you were just hitting her for fun?”

Peterson clenched his fist and then, aware of what he was doing, allowed his fingers slowly to relax.

“If you had known Jane was carrying on some kind of relationship with Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said, “it’s fair enough to say you wouldn’t exactly have approved?”

“Approved? Of course not, Spurgeon or anyone. She was my wife, you can understand that.”

“Yes,” Resnick said, leaning a little toward him, lowering his voice. “Absolutely. Of course I can. Just as I can understand when she finally got around to telling you, not simply that she’d been seeing him all this time, but that she was going away with him, well, it would be enough to test anyone’s temper. Any man’s. I can see that.”

Peterson laughed and shook his head. “Is that how you do it?” he asked. “Charlie Resnick, Detective Inspector, catcher of thieves and murderers, is that how it works? Push me around enough and then when you’ve got my back up sufficiently, uncork the compassion. Oh, yes, yes, of course I understand. And they sit here, poor innocent bastards, feeding out of your hand. Well, I’m sorry, because even if I wanted to help out, confess, unburden my sins, I’m afraid I can’t. If Jane was running off with her childhood sweetheart or whatever she thought of him, I knew absolutely nothing about it until a few moments ago when you told me. And if she came to the house that Wednesday, if that’s what really happened, well I can assure you she didn’t knock on the door, didn’t ring the bell, didn’t use her key. I was in all evening from a little before six, just as I was every evening that week, sick with worry about what had happened to her, where she might be.

“And if you seriously think, had she come to me and told me this fairy story about herself and Peter Spurgeon, that my response would have been so uncontrolled that I would have taken her life in a fit of jealousy, then, Inspector, you are about as far from understanding me as you will ever be.”

Resnick and Lynn were silent, waiting.

“If you intend to charge me with my wife’s murder, then go ahead, but let me warn you I will pursue you with the biggest wrongful arrest suit this constabulary has ever faced. And whichever course of action you intend, I believe I am within my rights to telephone my solicitor and that is what I wish to do now.”

Peterson gripped the table hard and sat back down; as soon as he reasonably could, he slid his hands from sight, hoping no one would see how they were beginning to shake.