Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(43)

“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.”

“Shit!”

When Resnick moved to kiss her, she turned her face away.

“What about Alex, Charlie? What’s he got to say about all this?”

“He’s no idea where she is.”

Hannah laughed, abrupt and loud.

“You think he’s lying?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, it’s your job to be sure.”

“Hannah, come on, let’s sit down. Have a drink …”

“I don’t want a bloody drink!”

“Then let’s sit anyway.”

“Christ, Charlie!” She glared at him angrily. “Why are you always so f*cking reasonable?”



The recreation ground was a flat, open space bordered by three roads and a railway line. The far end from Hannah’s house was given over to a crown bowling green and a children’s playground, a thick hedge separating them from an expanse of trimmed grass circled by well-set shrubs and trees and the path around which Resnick and Hannah slowly walked.

Raucous across Sunday morning, a group of six-to nine-year-olds, white and Asian, vied to see who could reach highest on the swings.

Parents sat on benches, read newspapers, rocked prams. “You haven’t said anything to Alex about what he did to her?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Why ever not?”

“I’m not sure how far it’s relevant.”

“God, Charlie! A woman disappears, out of the blue, no apparent reason, no warning, you know her husband’s been beating her up and you don’t think it’s relevant.”

“Look.” Resnick stopped walking. “Most people who disappear do so of their own volition. A situation, no longer bearable, they’re running from; another, more desirable, they’re running to. In very few cases is foul play actually involved.”

“Except in this case,” Hannah said, “we know very well that it was. Alex was beating her up.”

“Once.”

“No.”

“That’s all we—you—have proof of, once. And only your word for that.”

“You think I’m making it up.”

“Of course not.”

“Then why won’t you act upon it?”

Resnick resumed walking and, almost reluctantly, she fell in step beside him. “I still reckon, the most likely thing, she’s gone off somewhere. Maybe just to clear the air. You said, that thing at Broadway, she was excited at the way it went. Buoyed up.”

“And that made her run away?”

“Maybe it convinced her that she could.”

Hannah shook her head.

“When we get back,” Resnick said, “you could make a list of people she worked with at school, talked to; anyone other than yourself she might have confided in. You never know, sometimes it’s just a chance remark …”

“Yes,” she said a little stiffly, “of course.”

There were fourteen names, for almost all of which Hannah had been able to supply addresses or telephone numbers or both; those Jane would have spent the most time with, members of her department, had been neatly asterisked in red. Resnick read through the list twice slowly, eight women, six men. The coffee that he’d made while Hannah was making the list sat, almost finished, by his side.

“You don’t think,” he asked, “she could have been having an affair?”

Hannah shifted a little in her seat and smiled a wry smile. “With Alex breathing down her neck the whole time, logging her every move? I don’t see how she could.”

Back at the station, mid-afternoon, Resnick tried Diane Harker’s number again and she picked up on the second ring. It was soon clear that, unlike the others Resnick had contacted, this was the first she had heard of Jane’s disappearance.

“I thought perhaps you’d already spoken to Alex,” Resnick said.

“He’d not phone here. Not if hell were freezing over.”

“You had a row?”

“You could say that.”

“Can I ask what it was about?”

“My lifestyle, that’s what he’d call it, I dare say. Irresponsible. Getting myself pregnant and scrounging off the State.”

In the background, Resnick could hear a small child calling, the voice more and more insistent. “You haven’t heard from Jane, this weekend?”

“I haven’t heard in a good three months.”

“You’ve not seen her?”

“I just said …”

“She’s not there with you now?”

“You don’t take no for an answer easily, do you?”