Still Waters

Seven

Lynn Kellogg was waiting for him in the corridor. Since passing her sergeant’s board, she had taken to wearing more severe colors, this morning an austere mid-calf skirt and matching jacket, flat black shoes, and a blouse like sour milk. She had let her hair grow out a little, but it was still short. A little makeup around the eyes, a touch on the lips.

“My transfer, sir …”

“I thought you might have been waiting for news about Mark. Or maybe you didn’t know.”

“Yes, Graham said.”

“And you didn’t care.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No? Probably not.” He started walking and Lynn followed, hurrying into step beside him.

“I know there wasn’t any love lost between us, but that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about what’s happened.”

Just not high on your list of priorities, Resnick thought. He was surprised to be accusing her of anything less than compassion.

“He is all right?” Lynn said.

“No. No, he’s not.”

They were almost at the stairs, a dogleg that would take them into a second corridor, the entrance to the CID room immediately ahead.

“It is three weeks now,” Lynn said, “since my transfer was supposed to have gone through.”

“These things take time.”

“I know, only …”

“You can’t wait to be away.”

She found a thread, loose on the sleeve of her jacket, and snapped it free. A uniformed officer came along the lower corridor, taking his time of it, and they stood back to let him pass.

“Now I’ve made up my mind, I think it will be easier, that’s all.” She was not looking at him as she spoke, looking everywhere but at his face. “For both of us perhaps.”

The daughter he had never had, the lover she would never be. It hung between them, largely unspoken, unresolved, so tangible that if either of them had reached out they could have touched it, grasped it with both hands.

“The Family Support Unit,” Resnick said. “I’ll give them a call. See what’s holding things up.”

“Thanks.” Lynn standing there, arms folded tight across her chest.

There was a message from his friend Norman Mann of the Drugs Squad to contact him whenever he got his head above water, nothing urgent; another from Reg Cossall-a drink some time, Charlie, bend your ear. Set this bastard job to rights. Someone, Naylor’s handwriting it looked like, had fielded a call from Sister Teresa, the time and a number and a promise to call again. Two routine faxes requesting information about young people gone missing: a fifteen-year-old girl from Rotterdam, last seen on the Dover ferry, a thirteen-year-old boy from Aberdeen.

The phone rang and, picking up, he identified himself. Miriam Johnson’s clear but genteel voice was easy to recognize.

“It was your associate, Inspector, that I was hoping to speak with. I remembered something, you see, regarding the paintings.”

“DC Vincent’s not here at the moment,” Resnick said. “Will I do?”

He could nip across to Canning Circus, pick up a double espresso, and take his time strolling down through the Park, breathe some air, stretch his legs.

She had rich tea biscuits waiting for him, symmetrically arranged on a floral plate, Earl Grey tea freshly brewed. “Milk or lemon, Inspector?”

“As it comes will be fine.”

They were sitting in the conservatory at the back of the house, looking out over a hundred feet of tiered garden, mostly lawn. Near the bottom was a large magnolia tree, which had long lost its blossom. Inside the conservatory, shades of geranium pressed up against the glass, herbs, inch-high cuttings in small brown pots.

“I can’t be certain this is relevant, of course, but I thought, well, if it were and I neglected to bring it to your attention …”

Resnick looked at her encouragingly and decided to dunk his biscuit after all.

“It would be some time ago now, more than a year. Yes. I was trying to get it clear in my mind before. You’re busy, of course, all of you, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste your time, but the nearest I could pin it down would be the early summer of last year.” Her gaze shifted off along the garden. “The magnolia was still in flower. He made specific mention of it, which is why I can remember.”

She smiled and lifted her teacup from its saucer; yes, the little finger crooked away.

Resnick waited. He could smell basil, over the scent of the Earl Grey. “Who, Miss Johnson?” he finally asked. “Who mentioned the magnolia?”

“I didn’t say?”

Resnick shook his head.

“I could have sworn …” She frowned as she issued herself an internal reprimand. “Vernon Thackray, that was his name. At least, that was what he claimed.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“Mr. Resnick, if he had told me it was Wednesday, I should have looked at both my calendar and the daily newspaper before believing it to be so. Though it was …” Her face brightened and her voice rose higher. “Isn’t that interesting, it was a Wednesday. Maurice was here, tending the garden. I should never have let this Thackray into the house otherwise, not if I had been on my own.”

“You didn’t trust him? He frightened you?”

“My fears, Mr. Resnick, would not have been for myself, rather for the family silver. As it were. A metaphor. All the good things, unfortunately, had to be sold long ago.”

“Then it was the paintings, that’s why he was here?”

“Absolutely. From somewhere, obviously, he had heard about the Dalzeils and presented himself on my doorstep as a serious collector, imagining that I would be this dotty old maid, bereft of her senses thanks to Alzheimer’s disease and happy to let him take them off me for a pittance.”

Resnick grinned. “You gave him short shrift.”

“I told him I appreciated his interest but that the paintings were not for sale. That was unconditional.”

“How did he react to that?”

“Oh, by telling me how much safer they would be in someone else’s hands, how fortunate I had been not to have had them stolen. At my advanced years-he actually said that, Inspector, that phrase, my advanced years indeed-wouldn’t I be more sensible, rather than risk losing them altogether and ending up with nothing, to take what I could get for them and enjoy the proceeds while I was still able.”

Indignantly, she rattled her cup and saucer down onto the table.

“When he was saying this, did you get the impression he was threatening you?”

“Oh, no. Never personally, no.”

“But the paintings-was he implying, sell them to me or I’ll get my hands on them some other way?”

Miriam Johnson took her time. “One could place that construction upon what he said, yes.”

“You let him see the paintings?”

“Of course. His admiration for them was genuine, of that I am sure.”

“And you heard from him again?”

“No.”

Resnick uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “Did he leave you an address, a card?”

She had it ready for him, in the side pocket of her Pringle cardigan. Vernon Thackray in a slightly ornate purple font and with only a telephone number underneath. An 01728 code. Suffolk, somewhere, Resnick thought.

“You didn’t contact him?”

“Nor he, me, Inspector. Not to my certain knowledge, at least.” She smiled at him, bright eyed.

“How’d it go with Mark?”

Millington was at his desk, troughing into what looked suspiciously like an M amp; S chicken and mushroom pie.

Resnick was still filling him in when the duty officer phoned up to say that Suzanne Olds had arrived.

“Know more in a minute, Graham.”

“Happen he should’ve stuck with seeing the shrink more’n the couple of sessions he did.” Pausing, Millington eased a piece of something unchewable to one side of his mouth with his tongue. “Mind you, what with Lynn still trotting off for therapy rain or shine, only needs you to crack up and we can run the whole CID room from the psychiatric unit.”

Me, Resnick thought. Why me? But then Millington was so much less likely a candidate. Disregard his avowed intention of happily resettling in Skegness and Resnick doubted a more unimaginatively sane man existed.

Suzanne Olds wrinkled up her nose at the offer of longmashed tea. She and Resnick had been crossing swords for years, Olds capable of raising her well-modulated voice in anger while rarely losing her cool; each respected the other’s integrity, their underlying sense of what was right.

“They’ll be ready to charge him this evening, push him through court tomorrow. Preliminary hearing. There’s nothing I can say will talk them out of keeping him in the cells overnight.”

“Charges?”

“Affray. Causing grievous bodily harm.”

“And the knife?”

“If we’re lucky, possession of an offensive weapon, nothing more.”

“He’ll get bail?”

“Given his police record, yes, I’d be surprised if he didn’t. There’ll be conditions, of course. It’s difficult to know yet how stringent.”

“And then Crown Court.”

“Uh-hum.”

“One month, two.”

“Try two.”

In that time, Resnick thought, who was to say what havoc Divine might wreak upon himself and other people?

“There’s no way,” Resnick said, “when it comes to trial, of defending him without hauling all that happened back out into the open?”

“And keep him out of prison? I doubt it.”

Suzanne Olds shifted her weight from one foot to the other, back perfectly straight. In her teens, Resnick knew, she had been a prize ice-skater, county champion. “Divine’s attitude might well have made him friends in the police canteen, but not many places else. Sexist, racist: just the kind the powers-that-be would love to see being held up as an example. Cleaning the Augean stables before the shit gets too high off the floor.”

Resnick sighed. “You’ll represent him all the same?”

“He needed to be taught a lesson, but not like that. I’ll do what I can.”

The number Vernon Thackray had left with Miriam Johnson was in Aldeburgh and was unobtainable. “Something must be wrong with the line,” the BT official finally told him, having left Resnick to listen to endless repetitions of “Greensleeves.” “We could have it checked.”

Carl Vincent came back from his tour of the local auction houses empty of information, but carrying a nicely framed watercolor to give to his new boyfriend. Lynn’s face showed every sign of an afternoon spent listening to people shouting abuse to and about their neighbors. Kevin Naylor had discovered two empty petrol cans on a piece of waste ground near the torched lock-up and submitted them for analysis. Only Graham Millington seemed due to end the day with optimism lightening his tread: a meeting with his informant arranged at the Royal Children for half-nine and every hope that names would be produced in exchange for a few pints and a nice little backhander.

Resnick was about to jack it all in and head home when Sister Teresa made her return call: another card from Grabianski had arrived, still without a return address-although this one did suggest a place in London where, if she ever traveled down, they might easily meet.