Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(51)

“No more contact.”

“That’s right.”

“Not socially.”

“No.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“To be honest, I was relieved. We’d never really hit it off, not all together.”

Lynn began to write something in her book and thought better of it. “But you liked her, Jane?”

“Felt sorry for her might be closer to the mark.”

“Sorry, why was that?”

“You’ve met Alex Peterson?”

Lynn shook her head.

“You should and then you’d know. Oh, he’s charming—I suppose he’s charming—good-looking, in the kind of way some women think of as good-looking—undoubtedly intelligent. But arrogant, of course, intellectually. Always spoiling for a fight.”

“A fight? What kind of a fight?”

“One that he can win.”

Footsteps hesitated outside and Lynn hoped it wasn’t Prentiss’ nine o’clock come early. She noticed him glancing at his watch.

“Why did she consult you in the first place?” Lynn asked.

“She was having pain here …” Stretching, he illustrated the back of the neck at the left side, where it runs into the shoulder. “She’d been to her GP, had pills. No good. She wondered if there was anything I could do to help.”

“And was there?”

“A little. Very little. After one or two sessions, some of the soreness had gone, there was more freedom of movement. If she’d carried on attending regularly, I might have been able to do more.”

“She stopped, then?”

Prentiss checked some calculation behind partly closed eyes. “Offhand I would say she came to me six or seven times; if it’s important, I could look it up.”

Lynn raised a hand, gesturing for him to sit back down. “What did you think,” she said, “was the source of the problem?”

Prentiss drew in breath sharply through his nose. “Him.”

“Her husband?”

“I shouldn’t say that, I suppose. It’s probably unfair, but after meeting them, seeing them together, yes, that’s what I think.”

Lynn was leaning forward in her chair, elbows on her knees. “What was it,” she said, “about him?”

“I’ve said. He was a bully. Always shooting her down. If she sat saying nothing, he’d taunt her, tease her. And when she did open her mouth, in his mocking, superior way, he’d tear her to shreds.”

“And this was causing the problems with her back?”

“Her neck, yes. I think so. Stress. It affects us, you know, the way we are physically. It isn’t always a case of overstraining, of bad posture.”

Lynn sat straight, leaning her spine against the back of the hard chair. “Did you say any of this to her?”

Prentiss was slow to reply. There were steps now, approaching the door. “Not quite directly, no. But I think I implied the answer might be, well, elsewhere.”

“How did she respond?”

“She stopped coming. Cancelled one or two appointments at first, always with good reason, but then I realized she wasn’t coming back at all.”

“And were you still seeing her and her husband together at this time?”

He shook his head. “No, that was after Patricia and I …” He let the sentence hang.

Even though both of them had been anticipating it, each jumped at the sound of the bell. Standing, Lynn closed her notebook. “I’d just like to be certain. The problems Jane was having, it is your professional opinion that her husband was to blame?”

“Professional, I don’t know. Perhaps I should never have said it so strongly. I’m sorry. It was indiscreet.”

A smile edged its way around Lynn’s lips. From this one meeting, the look of his house, everything plain and proper and in its proper place, indiscreet wasn’t a word she would have readily associated with Alan Prentiss. “Perhaps it was just an honest reaction; you said what you felt. There’s nothing wrong in that.”

“Some people wouldn’t necessarily agree.”

Lynn hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and thanked him for his time.

At twelve thirty that day, Resnick received a phone call from Suzanne Olds’ secretary: Mark Divine had missed his noon appointment, the second time this had happened. Ms. Olds had thought the inspector might like to know.

Resnick caught up on some paperwork, grabbed himself a sandwich from across the street, and finally snagged Millington in a slack moment, the sergeant just back from a lunch-time pint and a pie with the boss of the Support Group, and they drove out to Divine’s together.

Ragged and ill-matched, the curtains were drawn across the windows of the first-floor flat, but in Divine’s current state of mind, that didn’t have to mean a thing. Neither the butcher nor his assistant could remember seeing Divine leave that morning, though for that matter, they couldn’t swear to having clapped eyes on him since before the weekend.

On the landing, first Millington, then Resnick tried the door. The sound of the TV could be heard distinctly from inside. That didn’t have to mean anything either. One, then another, then both together called Divine’s name.

“Maybe sloped off for a few days,” Millington suggested. “Change of scene.”