Still Waters cr-9

by John Harvey

  Grabianski waited. The box was playing Ricky Nelson. “Poor Little Fool.” Who’s to say, Grabianski thought, him or me?

  Snow lowered his voice but only a little. “This talent you’ve got for getting in and out of places unannounced. There’s a few things I could do with being deposited, safe and secure, where nobody would ever think of looking for them until they were told.”

  “What kind of things?” asked Grabianski.

  “Bona fides. Documents. Nothing difficult.”

  “And these places you’d be wanting me to gain access to …”

  “Museum offices, archives. For the most part, low security.”

  Grabianski slid the menu out from between the ketchup and the mustard.

  “What d’you say?” Eddie Snow asked.

  “You mean aside from how much?” Grabianski thought he might order the pie after all. Why not à la mode?

  Resnick found Helen Siddons in the first-floor bar of the Forte Crest, sitting in a gray lounge chair across a low table from Jack Skelton, who was looking chastened even before Resnick appeared, and when he did, assumed the aspect of someone who’s been caught pissing down his own leg.

  Resnick raised a hand in greeting and moved on toward the long bar, shifting a stool down to the far end and, when the barman noticed him, ordering a large vodka with lots of ice. He thought he might be in for quite a fight.

  Siddons was leaning toward Skelton now, voice low, before suddenly throwing herself backward in the chair and pointing at him with the red-tipped cigarette in her right hand. “Fuck d’you think you are, Jack?” Resnick heard, and “miserable bitch of a wife.” Not so long after, and without a wave or a word in Resnick’s direction, Skelton got up and left.

  Resnick wondered whether he should go over to where Helen Siddons was sitting, or if she would come to him; he was still considering when she stubbed out her cigarette and, grim-faced, headed his way.

  She lit up again as soon as she sat down. “Scotch,” she said, not bothering to look at the barman. “Large. No water, no ice.”

  “So, Charlie,” she said, “how’s it all going?” And before he could answer, “What is it, Charlie? What is it with just about every man in the fucking world? The minute you lose interest is the minute they become convinced you’ve got a cunt of gold.”

  She drank the first half of the scotch fast, the rest at even speed, and called for another. Resnick wondered how long she had been there, whether this particular session had started at lunchtime and simply flowed.

  “This woman of yours, Charlie, what’s she called?”

  “Hannah.”

  “Hmm, well, promise me this; promise me this about you and darling Hannah …”

  Resnick waited while she dragged deep on her cigarette.

  “Promise me if ever she wants to leave, if ever the day comes when she wants to walk away and call it quits, promise you’ll let her go. God’s blessings, Charlie. Godspeed and goodbye. None of this sniveling and whining, you’re-the-most-important-thing-in-my-life crap. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m serious, Charlie.”

  “I know.”

  Her hand was on his knee. “You and me, Charlie, you never fancied that?”

  “No.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Christ, Charlie! The last honest man.”

  Resnick wondered what it was about her that made that sound almost like an insult. “I was going to ask you …” he began.

  “What I’m doing here half-pissed? Triumph or adversity?” She ducked her head forward till he couldn’t avoid the nicotine and whisky on her breath. “That little sniveling little shortshanks the computer spewed up for us, David Winston Aloysius James, five years for attempted rape, except of course he’s out after serving not much more than three, not only has he got two other priors for assault, one more charge of indecent exposure which got thrown out of court, guess what he had tucked snug underneath the mattress of his bed, along with more porn than the average newsagent’s top shelf and a score of semen-stinking handkerchiefs?”

  Resnick couldn’t guess.

  “Miranda Conway’s Euro Railcard, complete with photograph attached.”

  “You’ve brought him in?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Charged?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What does he say about the card?”

  “Says he found it, what do you think?”

  “Is there anything else linking him with the girl?”

  “Come on, Charlie, what do you want? Love letters? A length of rope?”

  Resnick shrugged. “Someone who saw them together earlier that evening. She’d not been in Worksop that long, but she hadn’t exactly kept her head down. There’s folk knew who she was.”

  Siddons lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last, tipped back her head, and released smoke into the air. “Charlie, he fits the profile, he’s got the photo ID, and we can put him here in the city four nights before that one you claimed who was fished out of the canal.”

  Instead of responding directly, Resnick told her what they had discovered about Jane Peterson and Peter Spurgeon. She listened with interest, went thoughtful, and asked for a large coffee, black, two sugars.

  “Fronted him with it yet? The husband?”

  Resnick shook his head. “Up to now, he’s always denied seeing her or hearing from her after that Saturday she disappeared. I’d like something else to hit him with aside from Spurgeon’s accusation, which as things stand we’ve no way of proving. We’ve only his word for it, she went to see Peterson from Grantham.”

  “She went somewhere.”

  “Agreed. We’d already canvassed the neighbors, in case they’d seen anything of her during the week, but came up short. Now, though, we’ve got a good idea, if she did come here, which train it would have been. I’d like everyone on duty at the station that afternoon and evening talked to, shown photographs, taxi-drivers the same. Regular passengers, too.”

  “That’s a major operation, Charlie.”

  “I thought this was a major case.”

  “And we’ve got someone a few hours from being charged.”

  “All right,” Resnick conceded, “but even if he’s responsible for the others, all or some, he doesn’t have to have done this.”

  Helen Siddons gave him a look pitched somewhere between contempt and disgust. “I didn’t think this was you, pedaling your own corner no matter what.”

  “What evidence is there says Jane Peterson was killed by the same person as the others?”

  “Aside from an identical MO?”

  “Naked, not molested, dumped in water, what else?”

  “What else?” Incredulous.

  “Helen, that’s all circumstantial, flimsy at best. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you’ve got nothing links Jane Peterson directly to your suspect, no physical evidence, no DNA.”

  “Oh, and what have you got, Charlie, aside from a selection of lovers’ lies?”

  “Then lend me some bodies, authorize the overtime.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Helen …”

  Her mobile phone jumped to life and she fumbled it from her bag. “Right,” she said, after listening. “Right, I’ll be there.” She had a grin that would have challenged a Cheshire Cat. “He’s owned up to talking to her, Miranda, buying her a drink, taking her for a walk along the canal. We’ve got him, Charlie. He’ll have his hands up for it this side of supper-time.”

  Resnick followed her across the room. “If you’re right, you’ll have officers, time on their hands. Twenty-four hours, that’s all I’m asking.”

  She stopped at the head of the stairs. “Talk with Support Department. If they can spare a few bodies, fair enough. But like you said, twenty-four hours and that’s your lot.”

  Resnick was on his way back to where his drink sat unfinished on the bar when he changed his mind.

  Jackie Ferris was wearing an unbuttone
d denim shirt with a snug white T-shirt underneath, blue jeans; in the comparative heat of the car, she had kicked off her shoes. Carl Vincent, beside her, was smart and cool in a fashionable stone-colored suit and a collarless white shirt.

  “You always dress this way?” she asked. “It doesn’t bring you any grief?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Get you noticed? Draw the wrong kind of attention?”

  “Aside from being black and queer?”

  Jackie Ferris leaned back along the seat. “Down here in the sophisticated South, we call it gay.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s what I’d heard.”

  She hesitated only a moment before asking, “Are you out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Long?”

  Carl shook his head. “Year, more or less.”

  “How’s it been?”

  He looked out through the car window at the slow stream of people taking the exit from the underground station, automatically checking every face. “You know, like a lot of stuff, worse before it gets better.”

  Jackie nodded and wondered again about a cigarette.

  “How about you?” Carl said, keeping it light, not quite looking at her direct. She was a detective inspector, whatever else.

  She took out and lit the cigarette, winding the window low. “There was this woman I was living with, well, more or less. She was a singer, one of those little indie bands. Did session work once in a while. But that was the kind of life she led.”

  “She must have been young.”

  “She was. She said she couldn’t keep seeing me if I was living this secret life. That’s what she called it, this secret life. So the next time I went for a drink with the lads from the squad, I took her along.”

  “How did they react?”

  “You mean, aside from the ones that wanted to fuck her? Oh, they were fine. People confuse you sometimes, straight people, by being a lot less prejudiced than you expect. Mostly they were fine. Six weeks later, she dumped me anyway. I think she came home early and caught me listening to Doris Day.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jackie Ferris shrugged. “What did Oscar Wilde say, never give your heart to a child or a fairy? I’d done both.”

  But Carl was no longer really listening. He was watching Grabi-anski approaching along the opposite side of the street, starting to cross toward them now. Jackie pushed her feet back into her shoes and turned the key in the ignition.

  As soon as Grabianski was in the rear seat, she pulled away, careful through the traffic turning west into Victoria Street.

  “How did we do?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “As long as you don’t mind a little indigestion, and rather too much of Ricky Nelson, I think it went fine.” And, taking the cassette from his pocket, he passed it forward into Carl Vincent’s waiting hand.

  Resnick had thrown four or five stones up at Divine’s flat, before the window was pushed awkwardly open and Divine’s head leaned out. He was about to give whoever it was a piece of his mind but then grinned when he realized who it was.

  “Hey up, boss! What’s up?”

  “Come to see you.”

  “Hang about, I’ll be down.”

  “You sober?”

  “Yes, I was just having a kip.”

  “Eaten?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Good. I’ll treat you to a curry. There’s a bit of work, unofficial, I might be able to put your way.”

  Divine beamed like someone had brought back the sun.

  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 f
or 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.”