by John Harvey
He could still remember the carelessness of Elaine’s infidelity, like a child who can’t say no to sweets.
A vague geography of the town coming back to him, he turned left in front of the small municipal park, right again at the top of the street, and parked. Walking down past still impressive Georgian houses set well back from the road, he cut through onto Back St. Hilda’s Terrace, then down again into one of the narrow yards, snug there, almost hidden above the outer harbor.
The house he was looking for had flowers spilling from hung baskets and window boxes, the already small windows cloistered behind pink and white petals.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected of Diane Harker from their sparse conversations on the phone, but possibly not this trim woman in cut-off blue jeans, a lemon top knotted above the waist, and violently bleached blonde hair that sprang wildly from around her head. If there was a resemblance to her elder sister, Resnick could not see it yet.
A small child-a boy he thought, though he was less than certain-sat on Diane’s right hip, supported by her arm, and a second child, a girl of three or four, clung to her other hand.
“You found it all right, then?” she said, glancing at his warrant card.
“Yes.”
“People get lost.”
“I can imagine.”
“You’d best come inside. But mind your head.”
Resnick negotiated the first beam but not the second, the hard edge grazing away a good square inch of skin. He had the grace not to cry out or complain. The room was small yet somehow bright, every surface above four-year-old height crammed with ornaments and photographs, postcards rearranged into surreal collages, pieces of weathered driftwood in the shapes of fish or birds. A one-eared cat, the color of pale marmalade, sat, sphinx-like, on the arm of the one easy chair. The elder of the two children sat on the bottom tread of the curving stairs, jiggling a faceless doll in her lap.
Diane pushed a mug of herbal tea into Resnick’s hands. The younger child was nuzzling her breast. “We’ll go out,” she said. “In a minute. It’ll be easier to talk.”
They walked toward the West Pier, slow progress between the fish dock and the tat and glitter of amusement arcades and shops selling Whitby rock or doughnuts, six for a pound. Outside the Magpie Café, where he and Elaine had eaten gargantuan plaice and chips, followed by hazelnut meringue, Resnick bent low to retie the little girl’s shoe, for all the world, in his loose dark suit and flowered tie, like a flustered uncle come to visit.
Diane stood jiggling the small boy-it was a boy-on her hip and talking to him in a low voice: seagull, fisherman, boat.
At the lifeboat station, they crossed the street and walked past the wooden bandstand, out onto the pier, Resnick asking Diane about her family and hearing a familiar tale of jealousies and jumbled expectations. The oldest child, the brother, who did well at school and university, leaving three sisters uncertain in his wake. While James was successfully pursuing wife and career, the oldest daughter was poised to bury herself beneath the hard work and constant grind of being a farmer’s wife, and the next, Jane, had a secure job and was respectably married, even if she had failed to provide the necessary grandchildren by the expected time.
“And you?” Resnick asked.
“I was the one who bunked off from school, started going out with boys when I was thirteen, got drunk on Southern Comfort and cider, smoked, sniffed glue. It’s a wonder, as my dear mother never tired of telling me, I didn’t get into more serious trouble than I did.” She glanced across at him. “I didn’t even get pregnant till I was seventeen.”
“But …” Resnick was looking at the four-year-old, skipping up ahead.
“Oh, I had an abortion. More than one. Funny, really, Mum being a midwife and all. A miscarriage at twenty-one.” She laughed, the sound silvering away, brittle, on the wind. “I was beginning to think I’d be like Jane, never have kids at all. That was before I met their father. He painted some Pentecostal sign on my belly and played Jimi Hendrix at full volume. Oh, of course, he had to stick it in as well. Worked first time, just about.”
“He’s not still around?” Resnick asked.
“I think he heard voices telling him to move on. The last we heard he was living in a bothy on the Isle of Mull and practicing white magic. Presumably on the sheep.”
“And you stayed here.”
“I like it. Besides, I was pregnant again at the time. Making up for Jane.” She stopped and there were tears in her eyes. “God, poor Jane!” She shifted the child across to her other hip, tugging a tissue from the pocket of her jeans. “If anything awful was going to happen to anyone, you’d have thought it was going to be me. All the stupid things I used to get up to, the risks I took. And Jane, I doubt she took a serious risk in her life-you can’t even include Alex, he wasn’t a risk, he was just a bloody mistake. So how, how does she end up the way she did? How does she end up bloody dead?”
Distressed by her mother’s tears, the girl clung to her leg while the younger one pressed his face against her chest. Resnick hovered on the verge of putting an arm around her, putting an arm around them all, but then Diane was wiping her face and smiling and promising ice cream on the way home and the moment had passed.
They stopped again near the end of the pier and leaned against the rail, the ruins of the abbey and the weather-beaten church high behind them on the East Cliff, below them the tide dragging the sea back along the Upgang Shore. Dogs and children ran and chased balls and a few intrepid souls swam in the nearer edges of the water. With a stick in the sand, someone had scratched the words I think and nothing more, having thought, presumably, better of it.
“Were you close, you and Jane?” Resnick asked.
Diane didn’t answer right away. “Not really close, no. When we were growing up, it was she and Margaret who were friends, did stuff together. I was … I was just the little one getting under everyone’s feet and getting in the way. Real runt of the litter. But there was a while, it must have been when Margaret had gone off to university and Jane was in the sixth form, I suppose, we became sort of close then.”
“And more recently? Since you’ve been here?”
“Oh, Jane would occasionally persuade Alex to drive up for the day. I mean, he hated it, just hated it. You could see it in everything about him from the minute they arrived-that supercilious manner of his, just the way he stood. It was all I could do to get him to sit down in the house. I think he was always afraid there’d be something organic and squashy beneath the cushions. And, of course, he didn’t know what to do with the kids, didn’t have a clue. Creatures from another planet, as far as he was concerned.” She gave a mock shudder. “No wonder children are afraid of dentists.”
“How about Jane,” Resnick said. “How was she with the kids? Did they get on okay? Did she like them?”
“She loved them. And they loved her. I remember once, it couldn’t have been so long after this one was born, Alex must have been off at some conference or something, anyway, Jane got to come over on her own for the whole day. It was wonderful. We just fooled around on the beach in the morning; made up a picnic and drove up onto the moors.” For a moment, Diane’s voice was breaking up. It must have been the last time she saw her sister; Resnick didn’t need to ask, and she didn’t need to say.
“It wasn’t her decision then, as far as you know, not to have children?”
Diane squeezed her hands around the metal of the rail. “Decision? In that relationship, there wasn’t much question of Jane making decisions. Oh, I dare say mustard or cranberry sauce with the turkey, two pints of milk or three, but that was about as far as it went.”
“Why did she put up with it?”
Diane shrugged, turned around, and leaned the small of her back against the railing. Her daughter was tugging at the uneven hem of her cut-offs, eager for ice cream. “Why does anyone put up with anything? Because we’re too lazy to do anything different? Too frightened.”
“You think she was
frightened of Alex?”
Diane looked at him. “Probably. But that wasn’t what I meant. Frightened of the alternatives, that’s what I meant, all that great unknown.” She cuddled the smaller child to her, and nuzzled her chin down into his hair. “Frightened of being alone.”
“You don’t think,” Resnick said-they were walking now, back along the way they had come-“you don’t think she could have been having an affair?”
“God!” Diane said. “I wish she had. I wish she’d had the gumption, never mind anything else.”
“But you don’t think she was?”
Emphatically, Diane shook her head.
“Would she have said?”
“To me, you mean? I’m not certain. Once I might have said, yes. And maybe that day she was here, if anything had been going on …” A smile brightened Diane’s face. “The only time I can remember her going on about something like that, you know, boys, men, love, she was home from university and we went off into town, shopping for clothes. There was this lad she’d met and she just couldn’t stop talking about him. On and on and on. ‘I’ll never want anyone else,’ she said, ‘not as long as I live.’” They stopped at the curb and waited for a car to ease past. “Well, you say things like that, don’t you? Young and in love. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Back in the house, radio playing, children stalking the cat, Diane blew the top layer of dust away from a cardboard box she had pulled out from under the bed. Inside were photographs, old Christmas cards, torn concert tickets, letters, badges. Diane shuffled and sorted while Resnick watched.
“Here,” she said, finally, separating one small colored photograph from a batch of a dozen or so others. “Jane and Peter. Love’s young dream.”
Resnick looked down at two nineteen-year-olds, arms wound about each other on a white bridge, smiling not at the camera but at each other.
“Where’s this taken?” Resnick asked.
“Cambridge. It’s where they went to university.”
Resnick looked at the young man with a wide face and a shock of dark hair, unable to see anything other than the young woman beside him. Even in that small, slightly battered photograph, it was impossible not to respond to the adoration he was feeling, not to see her beauty through his eyes.
“You’ve no idea where he might be now?” Resnick asked.
“Peter?” She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.”
“And Jane never mentioned him? More recently, I mean.”
“Never, no.”
Careful to avoid cat and child, Resnick got to his feet. “If I could just borrow this, a few days? I’ll make sure it gets back to you in one piece.”
“I suppose so,” Diane said, a little surprised. “Can’t do any harm.”
Forty-one
“Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said, holding out the blow-up reproduction of the photograph. “I don’t have to tell you it was taken a while ago.”
“Childhood sweethearts,” said Lynn, not quite able to keep the dismissiveness out of her tone.
“College, anyway,” said Khan.
“And we’re assuming they’ve kept in touch?” Lynn asked.
Resnick lowered the photograph onto the desk. “We’re assuming nothing. What we’re doing is checking as thoroughly as we can. Let’s see if we can track him down through vehicle registration; otherwise, it’s voting registers, directories, you know the kind of thing. And let’s check his college while we’re about it; there’s bound to be some kind of organization for former students and he just might belong.”
When the phone went some little while later, Khan identified himself, listened for a moment, then passed the receiver across to Resnick. “For you, sir. Something about a nun.”
Sister Teresa was waiting for Resnick outside the main doors, a dark gray shawl draped over a light gray dress, gray tights, and black laced ankle boots.
“You’re busy,” she said, reading some concern in Resnick’s face.
“No more than usual. Time for a cup of coffee, at least.”
“Ah, I’d best not. There’s two people to call on still, and then another of those meetings Sister Bonaventura’s forever hauling me off to. Christian Interface and the Diocese, something along those lines.”
Still smiling, she drew an envelope from her bag and from that lifted out a postcard. “It arrived yesterday. I thought you might want to see.”
Resnick glanced quickly at a picture of a young woman sitting among a lot of hats, before turning it over to read the reverse:
Your favorite, I think. Almost mine too. Entrance to exit it was a perfect afternoon. Thank you.
I thought you’d like to know, after your lecture, I’ve decided to be active in the cause of righteousness.
Till St. Ives,
Jerzy
“St. Ives?” Resnick said.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Just some foolishness.” She was, Resnick thought, perilously close to blushing.
“The rest of it, then …”
“I did as you asked, tried to show him that in helping you, he could only be helping himself.” She waited until she had Resnick’s eye. “That is right, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Resnick said. “I think so.”
Teresa reached her hand toward the card. “You’ll not be needing this?” As he relinquished his grip of it, she replaced the card inside the envelope, the envelope safely inside her bag.
“Thanks for making the time,” Resnick said.
She slipped her hand for a moment into his and smiled.
Helen Siddons was shouting instructions down the corridor, a plethora of younger officers stumbling in her wake. Midway down the stairs, she paused to light another cigarette and that was when she spotted Resnick, on his way back into the building. “Charlie, how’s it going?”
As they walked, he filled her in on the progress of his end of the inquiry, letting her know just enough to see they hadn’t been wasting their time.
“Well,” Siddons had stopped outside the main computer room, hand to the door, “not that I want to knock you off your stride, but it looks like we’ve got a live one just crawled out of the woodwork. Went down for attempted rape six months after the Irene Wilson murder; released three weeks before that girl turned up in the Beeston Canal. Oh, and Charlie, we may have got a line on her, too. Dental records. Should have confirmation in a day or two.”
And with a wave of cigarette smoke she disappeared.
Carl Vincent finally got through to the Arts and Antiques Unit at the Yard after a solid fifteen minutes of trying. Tracking down Jackie Ferris took five minutes more.
On the line she sounded brisk and businesslike, prepared to give him exactly as much of her time as importance warranted, but no more.
“My DI,” Vincent said, “in a roundabout sort of way, he’s had a message from Grabianski. Seems as if he’s ready to push ahead. Could be soon.”
“Right. Maybe you should get yourself down here sharpish. Any problem with that?”
“None that I can think of.”
“Fine. Ring me as soon as you arrive.” Jackie Ferris hung up.
Holly had told Grabianski he should buy root ginger and lemons and make ginger tea; it would help to clear away a lot of the toxins that were troubling him. He was almost back from a trip to the fruit and vegetable stall, purchases in a small plastic bag, when he noticed someone sitting on the steps outside his building. It was Faron.
She was wearing a shiny silver dress and there were new gold highlights in her hair. Between the bottom of the dress and the expected clumpy shoes, her legs, thin in spangled tights, seemed to go on forever.
“Hi-ya!” She dropped her magazine as Grabianski came through the gate and, quickly to her feet, caught hold of his arm and kissed him on the cheek.
“Don’t tell me, Faron,” he said, “you were out for a walk on the Heath, and before you knew it here you were outside my house. You thought you’d stay for tea.”
She peered along her sharp little
nose. “You’re sending me up, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Just a little.”
“That’s all right. Eddie does it all the time. And worse. Downright rude, sometimes. Know what I mean? No respect.”
Grabianski unlocked the front door and led her through what it always delighted him to remember were called “the common parts.” Several flights of stairs and they were standing in the combined living room-kitchen, an elevated skylight drawing in the light from above their heads.
“Have a seat,” Grabianski said, pointing toward the low settee. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any white wine? I should’ve brought some myself, but I didn’t think. Well, sometimes you don’t, do you? Not till it’s too late.”
Out of the mouths of babes and five-thousand-a-show models, thought Grabianski. He took a bottle of Sancerre from the fridge and uncorked it. Faron was back on her feet again, prowling the room.
“It’s nice here. Cozy.”
“Thanks.” He gave her a glass of wine and she gulped the first mouthful as if it were pop. “Only one thing, though, I thought there’d be paintings, you know, all round the walls, like at Eddie’s.”
What Grabianski had were landscape photographs; a few enlarged shots of birds that he’d taken himself. On the glass-topped coffee table in front of the settee, there was a black statuette of a falcon in flight. A few shelves of books, mostly reference, and that was all.
“Where’s your tele, then? In the bedroom, I suppose. Eddie keeps his in there, too. Still, at least you’ve got a few CDs.”
It was difficult not to think Faron would be disappointed with his selection: Bird Calls of Africa and the Near East; Tropical Storms; a recording of Prokofiev and Janáãek violin sonatas he’d bought because he liked the look of Viktoria Mullova on the cover; Steven Halpern’s Spectrum Suite, recommended by Holly for the way it resonated within specific areas of the body. After the African bird calls, it was the one Grabianski played most.