Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(57)

Now she was sitting at the first-floor bar, talking to her office manager and two other detectives Resnick could have put a name to if he were pushed. He went on past them to the far end of the bar, ordered a Budvar, and took it over to an easy chair by the window. A copy of the Telegraph lay open on the low table and Resnick turned to the sports pages and glanced from column to column as Siddons’ voice rose above the rest. “Pressure,” Resnick heard, and “thirty-six hours,” “waiting for us to fall flat on our faces,” and “nail this bastard to the floor.” Bored by sport, Resnick scuffled through international news, business, obituaries. Helen Siddons picked up her drink, lit a fresh cigarette, and walked over to where he was sitting.

“Join you?”

“Please.”

She was drinking whisky, a double; aside from a certain reddening around the eyes, she could probably drink it without visible effect until it drained down to her toes.

“So how’s it going?” Resnick asked.

“Checking up on me, that what this is?”

“Why ever would I do that?”

“Jack Skelton’s boy, sniffing out the land?”

The bottom of Resnick’s glass hit the table with a smack that made faces turn.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Sit yourself back down.” Reluctantly, he did.

“Bastard of a day! Everyone from the chief constable designate to the Sun. And Malachy behaving like I was his little windup doll.” She breathed smoke out through her nose. “Well, he’ll learn.”

It’s what you wanted, Resnick said to himself, what you bought into. Maybe you’ll learn something, too.

“How was the press conference?”

“A zoo. You know what they’re like when they sniff serial killer on the air.”

Resnick swallowed another mouthful of his beer. “Is that what this is?”

The DCI stubbed out her cigarette half-smoked and lit another. “Three murders, no more than months apart, radius of thirty miles, what would you say?”

What Resnick said was, “Alex Peterson, you’ve had him in?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

Siddons turned her face aside and lofted smoke toward the ceiling, a perfect ring. “His wife was just found with her head bashed in. He was a mess, what d’you expect?”

Somehow, Resnick thought, not that. “He’s clean, though?”

“What?”

“The bruising to the body …”

“He’s not a f*cking suspect. Charlie, get that into your head. Forget it.”

“But surely …”

“And this isn’t your f*cking case!” Back on her feet, she stared at him angrily, left the cigarette, took the drink.

Resnick watched her walk, tense, back toward the bar. Terse words and sullen laughter, heads turned momentarily in his direction. Resnick drained his glass, stubbed the smoldering cigarette out in the ashtray, and crossed toward the stairs. He was well on his way to Hannah’s before he remembered she had left town.





Thirty-one

Helen Siddons thought about Peterson on the walk back to her office, the way he had held it together until one of the officers had bent low and exposed his wife’s body, that was when he had lost it, catching hold of Lynn’s arm and crying open-mouthed into her shoulder, Jane, Jane, the name, muffled, repeated again and again. After that, black coffee, aspirin, he had answered their questions cogently enough, told them nothing new.

Door closed, she brought the details of the other cases up on the screen. That Tasmanian girl out at Worksop, the still-unidentified body fished out of the Beeston canal; a woman with the tattoo of a spider’s web on her left breast who had been dumped on the banks of the River Anker, where the M42 crossed it east of Tamworth; Irene Wilson, a known prostitute, whose partly decomposed body had been found in an allotment shed near the Trent and Mersey canal, south of Derby. Females aged between seventeen and twenty-five; all discovered in or near water with serious injuries to the head or upper body.

Don’t get dragged too far down that track, Malachy had warned. Well, what the f*ck did he expect her to do? Ignore it?

There was a knock on the door, deferential, and there was Anil Khan, blue plastic folder in his hand, studied concern marring his handsome face. “Post-mortem report, ma’am. I thought you should see.”

“Of course I should bloody see.” She slid the stapled pages from the folder, flicking them through without really looking. “Tell me.”

“Evidence of bruising …”

“Of course …”

“To the body, ma’am. Chest and abdomen. Some of it fairly recent, some quite old. Looks as if maybe she was being beaten fairly regularly.”

“Christ!”

“Of course, it doesn’t invalidate what we’ve said, I suppose there needn’t be any connection at all.”

“I know, I know.” Helen’s mind was spinning. “Listen, get hold of Peterson, bring him in. There’s been a development, tell him. That’s all. No details, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Anil?”

“Ma’am?”

“This report … for now, no one else need know about it, understood?”