Still Waters (16 page)

Sister Teresa had brought sandwiches and a thermos of tea and sat on one of the low walls outside the media center, talking to a lecturer from Trent University and an earnest young man with a disturbing look of Anthony Perkins about him, who was in his first year of studying video and film. The person she really wanted to talk to was the bald woman with the wonderful tattoos.

“Aren't you the one who does that radio program?” the lecturer asked suddenly, her eyes brightening. “Sister something-or-other, is that you?”

Teresa smiled apologetically and did her best to deflect the question.

Why was it, she thought, people were always so fascinated with nuns? Especially today, when there was all that sex and repression up there on the screen? At least they weren't showing
Black Narcissus
, that was something to be grateful for. Although in a rash moment a year or so back, Sister Bonaventura had confessed that it was Kathleen Byron's portrayal of a nun in that film which had persuaded her into holy orders, the messianic look of jubilation in her face before throwing herself to her death.

Sister Teresa's other colleague from their order, Sister Marguerite, would be attending that afternoon, specifically to go to the seminar on fetishism and fashion; after prayers that morning, she had threatened to break with protocol and go along wearing her traditional habit. See what they have to say about that!

Hannah and Jane were sitting just inside the Café Bar, sharing a crowded table with Mollie Hansen and several other members of the Broadway staff.

“So what do you think?” Mollie asked, spooning chocolatey froth from her cappuccino toward her mouth. “The turnout. You pleased?”

“Why, yes,” Jane said, excited. “Aren't you? I mean, I never thought … I suppose fifty, you know, that would have been terrific. Saturday, people away. But this, well, there must be getting on for eighty, don't you think?”

“Sixty-nine.” Mollie matter-of-fact, chocolate or no chocolate.

“Are you sure? I would have thought … But, well, it's still good; it is, isn't it? Okay? I mean, you are pleased?

“Oh, yes. Yes, it's fine.”

“I thought it got us off to a good start,” Hannah said. “The first session. She had some really interesting things to say. Don't you think that's right?”

“I thought she was great,” enthused Jane. “Really, really good.”

“She was all right,” said Mollie, who had heard it all before and was wondering if she would bother going back after the break.

Jane had decided to go to the session on fashion, and since Hannah had done all of the reading for the fiction seminar, she would go there. Arriving slightly late, Hannah found herself sitting next to Sister Teresa, who had positioned herself midway along the back row, and immediately behind the young woman with the shaven head.

The group leader, a journalist and published writer herself, kicked things off with some observations about writer and reader, killer and victim, male and female, the weapon and the wound. She referred to an article on slasher movies which talked about the Final Girl, the one woman strong and resourceful enough to defeat the serial attacker, rather than becoming his victim. “The same,” she said, “in books. Books by men. Think about
The Silence of the Lambs
. But here, in these books we've been reading by women, this doesn't happen. There is no escape.”

She paused and looked out at her audience.

“Now is this because these women writers are more bloodthirsty than their male counterparts, want to scare us, chill us more? Or are they simply being more realistic, more serious, more concerned with the truth? If we become, as some of the female characters in these novels do, fascinated by violence, especially by a combination of violence and sexuality, then there is a price to pay. If you stick us—as someone, as far as we know not a woman, once famously said—do we not bleed?”

She sat down to the sound of coughing, furious scribbling, and some generous applause.

The questions were not all as productive as they might have been; as was often the case, too many people were concerned to state their given positions instead of opening out the discussion. But Sister Teresa asked a quiet, well-formed question about the absence of any wider spiritual morality within which to contain a more individual, sexual one, to which the shaven-haired young woman, who turned out to have a soft, Southern Irish accent, responded by comparing the sexual wounds received by women, the often ritual nature of their bleeding, with the Christian tradition of the piercing of the body of Christ.

At the end of the hour, Hannah's own question, about women asserting their right to explore the nature of their own fascination with violence and domination, remained unasked.

Time for tea, a quick cigarette or two for some, a degree of female bonding, and then back in for the main feature. Teresa barely had time to catch up with Sister Marguerite, her face aglow from good strong argument; for Hannah, a few moments in which to observe Jane's continuing elation that the project on which she had worked so hard was proving such a success.

As she was slipping back in through the front doors, Hannah passed Mollie Hansen, slipping out.

“Not staying for the film, then?”

Mollie shook her head. “I've seen it already.”

“And?”

Mollie smiled her oddly invigorating smile. “It's bollocks. If you want an informed opinion.” And, sports bag slung over her shoulder, hurried off to her workout in the gym.

Some hundred and thirty-nine minutes later, stumbling somewhat numbed out into daylight, Hannah wondered if Mollie might not have been right. For all those around her who spoke with admiration of the director's control of the big action sequences, or Ralph Fiennes' beauty, there were others who were appalled by the inclusion of a lengthy rape sequence, shot almost entirely from the point of view of the male aggressor.

“Talk about ending the day where you started off,” said one of the group, hollering her exasperation. “You expect that kind of thing from someone like Hitchcock, but this is a woman, for fuck's sake!”

“Well, I'm sorry,” said another. “But I loved it. Every minute.”

Sister Teresa had remained in the cinema some sixty seconds into the scene in question before leaving.

Hannah looked around for Jane, to give her a final hug of congratulation, but failed to pick her out in the crowd that was milling around the service area in the Café Bar. Tired, stimulated, Hannah headed along Goose Gate in the opposite direction to that taken by Lynn Kellogg the night before. She would phone Jane later.

When she rang Jane's number at twenty-five past seven, Alex answered abruptly that she hadn't yet arrived home; at half past nine, there was no answer, and Hannah left a brief message on the machine. It was past one in the morning, Hannah alone in her bed and not quite able to sleep, when Alex phoned her: Jane had still not returned, nor been in touch; he had seen nothing of her, neither hide nor hair.

Twenty-three

Narrow, 1960s modern, the blip of gray-bricked houses presented their backs to the tightly curved sweep of road and the fenced circle of grass on which a rough-coated pony improbably grazed. Trees hung green across broad pavements in need of some repair, and in the gardens of neighboring, older properties, shrubs sat fat and prosperous on swathes of lawn. Sunday morning, less than fifteen minutes brisk walk from the center of the city, still too early for the milkman or the paper boy or the first church bell. The background hum of traffic vied with the sweet, intermittent racket of birds.

The interior of the Peterson house was less parsimonious than its exterior suggested, the rooms surprisingly broad and light, a central stairway opening onto glass. Save for a grandfather clock, clumsy and tall in the space opposite the front door, the furnishings were quite contemporary, blacks and whites and grays in wood and chrome. The walls were cream, a roughish matte finish at one with those places where the exposed brick had been allowed to show through. Paintings hung sparingly, vivid abstracts whose colors seemed to move.

Kitchen and dining room led off the entrance hall on the raised ground floor, spare room, laundry room, and bathroom below; the living room spanned the second floor, opening onto a wide balcony, the main bedroom and en-suite bathroom above.

Alex Peterson unfastened the sliding glass doors that led onto the balcony and stepped outside. For a moment, his body shivered deeply and he reached forward to steady himself, and Resnick, watching from the comfort of a brown leather chair, saw it as a pose and wondered why he felt the need to impress.

Normally a matter that would have been looked into by a junior officer, at this stage at least, Resnick had come out to the house in response to Hannah's mounting distress about her friend, and from a sneaking interest of his own. There had still been no call from Jane, no explanation; the routine inquiries to hospitals and the like had come up blank.

Peterson was wearing mid-blue trousers and a beige V-neck sweater, deck shoes, sockless, on his feet. His hair was suitably awry and he hadn't shaved. Blue eyes, pale, pale blue, showed their concern.

“Are you sure there's nothing you could have forgotten?” Resnick said. “Someone she was going to visit? A friend where she might have stayed?”

“And never phoned?”

“Isn't it possible she forgot? Simply didn't think?”

“Inspector—Charlie—you've got to understand. Jane and I, we make a point of staying in touch.” He sat on the settee, angled away from the side wall. “We're very close.”

“The day school,” Resnick said, “you didn't go?”

Peterson allowed himself a smile. “It's no secret—we talked about it that night at dinner—I don't think time spent on that kind of thing's particularly worthwhile. Dress it up whichever way you like, they weren't exactly going to be discussing
Othello
or
Madame Bovary
. But, no, it was Jane's day. She'd worked hard to see it succeed. I didn't want to intrude.”

“You think that's how she would have seen it, if you'd gone along, an intrusion?”

Peterson touched fingertips to the nape of his neck, below the neat line of hair. “Sometimes, and quite wrongly, Jane felt as if her work wasn't really important. She'd seen me build up a successful practice, become, I think it's fair to say, something of an authority, whereas she …” He leaned forward, earnest in his stare. “No matter how much I encouraged her to think otherwise, Jane always undervalued what she did.”

“Does,” Resnick said quietly. “What she does.”

“Of course. And yesterday, I wanted her to have all the glory. Prove to herself what she could achieve on her own.” With a swing of his legs, Peterson was back on his feet. “More coffee?”

Resnick shook his head. “This list of friends,” he said, “family. People Jane might have been in contact with. If you could check through it once more, there might be someone who didn't occur to you first time round.” He looked at his watch. “I dare say you'll be making some more calls yourself. The next hour or so, you'll hear something, I'm sure.”

At the door, Peterson shook Resnick's hand. “Thanks for coming. Handling things yourself. I appreciate that, I really do.”

Jane's parents, Tim and Eileen Harker, lived in Wetherby, her father the head teacher of a local primary school, her mother an ex-midwife who baked cakes for the Women's Institute and Mothers' Union, took her turn staffing the Citizens' Advice Bureau, and wrote impassioned letters at the behest of Amnesty International. There was an elder brother, James, who worked as a systems analyst and lived with his wife and three children in Portsmouth, and two sisters. One older, Margaret, married to a sheep farmer in the Dales; the youngest, Diane, unmarried, lived with her two young children in Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast.

By noon, Resnick had spoken to all save Diane, whose number rang and rang unanswered. They were perturbed, confused, unable to supply a satisfactory explanation. The most recent to have spoken to Jane was her mother, who had talked to her on Thursday evening and done her best to allay her daughter's fears about the event she was organizing.

“She was distressed, then?” Resnick said.

“Worried about what might happen, yes. Oh, you know, the usual things—what if one of the speakers didn't arrive, or the film broke down, or … well, you would have to know Jane to understand she could work herself into a lather about any little thing. Usually, without good reason.”

“And you think it was this day school that was upsetting her, rather than anything else?”

“Why, yes.”

“She didn't seem concerned about anything more personal, Mrs. Harker?”

“I don't understand.”

“Nothing between herself and Alex? No big rows, disagreements, something she might have confided to you as her mother?”

Eileen Harker's voice stiffened. “Had my daughter felt the need to confide in me, Inspector, I doubt that I would betray that confidence unless I thought it truly necessary. But let me assure you, nothing of the kind passed between us.”

Resnick held the next question for a moment longer on his tongue. “Your relationship with your daughter, Mrs. Harker, would you characterize it as close?”

“I am her mother, Inspector.”

“And her marriage, you'd say, for the most part it was happy?”

“It is a marriage, Inspector, like many another.”

Resnick understood that for the present that was all the answer he was going to get.

Sections of the
Independent on Sunday
and the
Observer
lay, barely ruffled, in various rooms. Dar Williams' soft, slightly mocking voice drifted out along the hallway.

“Have you get any news?” Hannah called, the moment Resnick set foot in the hail.

“No, nothing.”