Still Waters (18 page)

“First things first,” Resnick said. “It's been confirmed Lynn's taking up her promotion as sergeant within the Serious Crime Squad, where she'll be working under DCI Siddons. She starts at the end of the week.”

Vincent and Millington applauded, while Naylor looked on, his pleasure for her tinged with envy. Little more than a year ahead of him in service and he had still to sit for his boards, never mind pass.

“I know we're all pleased, Lynn, a promotion long overdue, but that doesn't mean we won't miss having you around. Right now especially.” At which Lynn, feeling herself beginning to blush, turned away at her desk and sent a set of papers skimming to the floor, causing her to blush more deeply still.

“The second thing,” Resnick went on, no longer looking directly at Lynn, sharing a little of her embarrassment, “is Mark. I don't know how long it is since any of you have seen him, but I spent some time with him the other day and he was in a bad way. It's a good while yet till he's up in court and it's important he holds himself together meantime. So if there's anything you think you can do—drop round, phone, whatever—now's the time. Okay?”

Nods and half-spoken promises; each of them had made some attempt at getting close to Mark Divine in the weeks following his attack and each had been rebuffed.

“Right,” Resnick said, “what's outstanding?”

Millington cleared his throat. “Them post office raids, I've got three names now, likely involved. Best information says they're revving up to try again, Gedling this time out. Must've got sick of Beeston.”

“Don't blame them,” Lynn said acidly. She had spent an uncomfortable six months rooming there before moving into her present flat.

Millington went on, ignoring her. “Liaising through Central. Harry Payne's got half a dozen from Support Department on standby. Any luck, we'll take 'em as they leave.”

Resnick nodded and turned his attention to Kevin Naylor, who was fumbling his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, draped across the back of a nearby chair.

“These incidents of arson,” Naylor said, continuing to flick through pages, “one of the blokes involved … Cryer … that's it, Cryer, John Cryer …”

“Auto theft, isn't it?” Millington interrupted. “His speciality. The Cryer I'm thinking on? Gone down, oh, twice now.”

“Cryer and this other feller,” Naylor continued, “Benny Bailey …”

“I knew a Ben Bailey,” Vincent chipped in. “Leicester. Credit cards, though, that was his thing.”

Resnick had known a Benny Bailey, too, known of him: a bopper whose first job had been trumpet with Jay McShann. He didn't suppose that was the same Bailey either.

“Anyway,” Naylor was saying, “seems Cryer and this Bailey had an arrangement, lifting high-end motors, and shipping them across to the continent.”

“Enough to bring them in, Kevin?” Resnick asked.

“Waiting on a fax from the ferry company. Copy of their manifests.”

“Okay, keep me posted. Lynn, what about these warring parties back of Balfour Street?”

“Pretty much calmed down now. Court injunctions helped and getting the eldest youth from the one family shut away on remand's been no bad thing, either.”

“Good. Have a word with the local uniforms, ask them to keep an eye. Meantime, we'll be getting an official report today,” Resnick said, “woman gone missing. Jane Peterson. Mid-thirties, teacher at that comprehensive by the Forest. Not been seen since late Saturday afternoon. Husband claims no knowledge of her whereabouts, where she might be. I've spoken to him. Relatives, close friends, they've all been checked.”

“Boyfriend?” Lynn asked. “Lover?”

“Not as far as we know.”

“What did she take with her?” Vincent asked.

“Pretty much what she was standing up in.”

“Bank account, credit cards?”

“We're checking that today. There's a list of colleagues at work needs following up on, another of more casual acquaintances, friends. Lynn, I thought while you're still here, you might drop by the school. Phone the head first, usual thing.”

“Okay.”

“Carl, just as long as that business in London's hanging fire, maybe you can pitch in as well?”

“Right.”

“What with that woman we found floating in the Beeston Canal,” Millington said, “and this recent job out Worksop way, you're not reckoning that's what we've got here?”

“Let's hope not, Graham.”

“'Cause if it is, it'll be out of our hands. Just the kind of thing Serious Crimes'll want to cut their teeth on.”

Everyone looked across at Lynn, who was busy searching inside her desk for a new notebook, any old biro.

Twenty-six

Since Resnick had last been in the building, Mollie Hansen had moved office. No longer squeezed into a shoebox room where her desk was overlooked by a near life-size poster of k.d. lang, Mollie now shared the top floor of the narrow building with her assistant, a large photocopier, and a fax, the assistant at that moment being occupied elsewhere.

“Hello,” she said brightly, as Resnick's head and shoulders appeared above the top of the stairs, “what are you doing here?”

For answer, Resnick held up two polystyrene cups of cappuccino and a paper bag containing a brace of toasted teacakes.

“Ooh, bribery and corruption,” Mollie grinned, “I thought that usually worked the other way round.”

Setting the cups on the desk and depositing the bag, dark where the butter had leaked, onto an old copy of
Screen International
, Resnick swung across a chair and sat down.

“It's too much to hope this is purely a social call,” Mollie said. She was wearing a short slate blue dress and bright blue plimsolls with stars on their heels.

“Not exactly.”

“How about not at all?”

He smiled and levered open his coffee, only spilling a very little onto the top of Mollie's desk.

“Don't worry,” she said, “it'll just merge in with the rest.” Her teacake was excellent, slightly spicy, and generous enough with butter for it to run down the outer edge of her hand, causing her to dip her head and lick it away. All that was left to consider now was the etiquette of using her tongue on the chocolate nestling inside the lid.

“Jane Peterson,” Resnick said.

“What about her?”

“How well d'you know her?”

“Not very. She was helping to organize this day school last weekend, we met quite a few times because of that. But, you know, meetings, agendas, they don't give you a lot of time to chat. And she wasn't one to hang around after in the bar.”

“You didn't know her socially, then? You never talked about anything personal? Husband, family, anything like that?”

“Sorry, not really, no.”

Resnick nodded. “And Saturday, how did she seem?”

Mollie drank some more coffee, thinking back. “She was fine. A bit worked-up, but you'd expect that. I don't think she'd been involved with anything like this before. But when everything was more or less okay, she was pleased. Lively, like I say.” Mollie set down her cup and looked at Resnick steadily across her desk. “Now I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what's going on? Has something happened to her or what?”

“Why d'you say that?”

Mollie angled back her head and laughed out loud. “Come on! You're up those stairs first thing in the morning—well, first thing for some of us—first time you've gone out of your way to see me in ages. And bearing gifts. Which I can hardly get round to, because of all the questions about Jane Peterson you're firing at me. And you want to know why I think something's happened?”

“She's gone missing,” Resnick said. “Since the end of the day school on Saturday.”

“Right,” Mollie said, “I see.” And then: “She wasn't at the end of the day school on Saturday.”

They were walking along Stoney Street, toward St. Mary's Church on High Pavement; the Ice Stadium was away to their left. Just as Mollie had been about to continue, her assistant had returned; the fax machine had begun chattering and then the whirr of the photocopier. It was quieter on the streets.

“You're sure she wasn't there till the end?” Resnick said. “Positive?”

“I was looking for her when the film came out. Aside from anything else, I had this free Friends membership to give her, a few comps, just a way of saying thanks. When I didn't see her, I asked around in case she'd come out early or whatever. Everyone I spoke to—I don't know, half a dozen, maybe—they all swore she'd not been in to the film at all.”

“There's got to be a possibility they were mistaken, surely? It is dark in there, after all.”

“Yes, but not that dark. And one of the women I spoke to had been at the seminar on fetishism earlier. According to her, Jane had been there and left halfway through.”

“Which would have been when?”

“Half-two, quarter to three.”

“And as far as you know, nobody saw her after that?”

“Not at Broadway, no.”

Resnick's mind was racing between possibility and wilder speculation; he slowed himself down, making minor adjustments, adding as much as four hours to the time Jane had been missing, the opportunity she had had to get clear. But clear to where?

“If I come back to the office, you can get me a list of everyone who attended?”

“No problem.”

“Good. We'll need confirmation.”

As they went up the worn steps to the small graveyard that surrounded the church, he asked Mollie if she'd noticed any changes in Jane Peterson's manner during the weeks they'd been meeting.

Slowing her pace, Mollie thought it over. “She was a bit up and down, that's all. Positive most of the time, but then any little thing could throw her into a panic.” Mollie smiled a sideways smile. “Not exactly your classic cool.”

Resnick nodded: he couldn't imagine Mollie panicking over anything.

They passed around by the front of the church, where a lank man in a cassock was arguing with a homeless youth and his spindly dog, who were trying to make their bed in the covered porch.

“We'd best turn around,” Resnick said.

“Yes,” Mollie agreed, “I suppose we should.”

Fascinating, Mollie thought, walking on at Resnick's side, how going out with Hannah had changed him. Not simply that Hannah had dragged him along, more or less willingly, to see movies quite a few times, and foreign art movies at that. It was something about the way he was with women that had altered, the way he was with her. Before, whatever the reason, he had always seemed on edge, as if never knowing quite how to respond. But the few times she'd run across him in the Café Bar lately—and now—he seemed more at ease, able to relax in her company. Which was true for her too.

Odd, wasn't it, Mollie thought, this big, slightly shambolic man with whom she had practically nothing in common, how she could feel drawn to him as much as she did.

By late that afternoon, Lynn and Carl between them had spoken to most of those members of staff who had any close connection with Jane. There was almost unanimous agreement that she was a good teacher, a little scatterbrained occasionally perhaps, not always totally on top of things where her preparation was concerned, and she had been known to be late; but she cared about what she was doing and, most important, had a good relationship with the children in her care. Most knew that she was married to a dental surgeon, quite a few knew his name was Alex, but not many had actually laid eyes on him. Alex Peterson was not one for attending school functions. Come to that, neither was his wife. Not unless her presence was mandatory. It was the one other area in which she had come in for a little mild criticism. But then, as Jane had apparently said not a few times, her husband worked hard, long hours, and when he did get home he liked her to be there. Old-fashioned, maybe, hardly likely to endear her to the school's few remaining militant feminists, but by and large people respected what she said and did. It was her life, after all.

The few friends and acquaintances Alex had listed who were not from the school had been more widely dispersed and hence more difficult to track down. Those Lynn or Carl were able to speak to only confirmed the prevailing picture of a rather highly strung woman with a bright mind who was happily, closely married to an articulate, intelligent, caring man. The kind of man, it was suggested, you didn't let go of easily.

Only one person, an osteopath whom Jane had consulted some eighteen months before, and whom she and Alex had met socially a few times since, suggested anything different. His automatic response, when questioned by Lynn, was to assume that Jane had left her husband, and gave her decision a seal of approval by adding, “Not before time.”

When Lynn asked if he would care to explain what he meant, he first declined, then agreed to speak to her in person at eight forty-five the following morning. His first appointment, he explained, was at nine.

Resnick had noticed Sister Marguerite's name on the list of people who had attended the seminar on fetishism and fashion, and he made the short journey down to the sisters' house in Hyson Green himself.

When he arrived, a red-faced Sister Bonaventura was hauling great loads of washing out of the machine and sorting it for hanging from the crisscross of lines they had set up in the small back yard.

“Every dozen things we peg out,” she complained, “two get swiped by the kids from the youth club next door.”

Sister Marguerite was sitting in the front room, calculator in one hand and pencil in the other, figuring out that month's accounts on the backs of several envelopes before transferring the figures into the triple-entry ledger that lay nearby.

“Wouldn't you think, Inspector, people in holy orders should be exempt from paying VAT?”