Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(75)

“Hi-ya!” She dropped her magazine as Grabianski came through the gate and, quickly to her feet, caught hold of his arm and kissed him on the cheek.

“Don’t tell me, Faron,” he said, “you were out for a walk on the Heath, and before you knew it here you were outside my house. You thought you’d stay for tea.”

She peered along her sharp little nose. “You’re sending me up, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. Just a little.”

“That’s all right. Eddie does it all the time. And worse. Downright rude, sometimes. Know what I mean? No respect.”

Grabianski unlocked the front door and led her through what it always delighted him to remember were called “the common parts.” Several flights of stairs and they were standing in the combined living room-kitchen, an elevated skylight drawing in the light from above their heads.

“Have a seat,” Grabianski said, pointing toward the low settee. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any white wine? I should’ve brought some myself, but I didn’t think. Well, sometimes you don’t, do you? Not till it’s too late.”

Out of the mouths of babes and five-thousand-a-show models, thought Grabianski. He took a bottle of Sancerre from the fridge and uncorked it. Faron was back on her feet again, prowling the room.

“It’s nice here. Cozy.”

“Thanks.” He gave her a glass of wine and she gulped the first mouthful as if it were pop. “Only one thing, though, I thought there’d be paintings, you know, all round the walls, like at Eddie’s.”

What Grabianski had were landscape photographs; a few enlarged shots of birds that he’d taken himself. On the glass-topped coffee table in front of the settee, there was a black statuette of a falcon in flight. A few shelves of books, mostly reference, and that was all.

“Where’s your tele, then? In the bedroom, I suppose. Eddie keeps his in there, too. Still, at least you’ve got a few CDs.”

It was difficult not to think Faron would be disappointed with his selection: Bird Calls of Africa and the Near East; Tropical Storms; a recording of Prokofiev and Janá?ek violin sonatas he’d bought because he liked the look of Viktoria Mullova on the cover; Steven Halpern’s Spectrum Suite, recommended by Holly for the way it resonated within specific areas of the body. After the African bird calls, it was the one Grabianski played most.

“You know,” Faron said, turning, “what Eddie don’t trust about you? He thinks you don’t know how to have fun. Too serious, right?”

“Is that why you’re here?” Grabianski said. “To help me have fun? Ask a few questions. See if I don’t talk in my sleep.”

She batted Oxfam eyes at him from across the room. “I don’t like the way that sounds.”

“No. Nor should you.” Just for a moment, he touched the back of his hand to her cheek.

Faron sipped at her wine and then, from the tiny leather rucksack she’d had on her back, shook out a smart red notebook and matching pen. “I was going to nip to the loo and scribble it all down before I forgot.”

“And now?”

Faron shrugged.

Grabianski reached out for the notebook and tore it in two, letting the halves drop to the floor. When he touched her face again she didn’t pull away and he was surprised, despite the makeup she so expertly wore, at the softness of her skin.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you’d consider doing something for me?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grinned. “And what’s that?”

“That man Sloane. The artist. I’d like to meet him.”

It was twenty past five that evening, when Lynn and Khan came into the office and caught Resnick just on the point of leaving.

“Peter Paul Spurgeon,” Lynn said, “thirty-seven years of age. Married with three children, Matthew, nine, Julia, eight, and Luke, five. Wife’s name’s Louise.”

“Currently resident,” Khan said, “27 Front Street, Bottisham. That’s just …”

But Resnick knew where it was. “It’s a village, northeast of Cambridge.”

“Yes, sir. Seems he left the area for a while after getting his degree; came back six or seven years ago.”

“After university, he worked in publishing,” Lynn said. “London and Edinburgh. Set up some kind of firm of his own, apparently, but it didn’t take. Sounds as if he might still be keeping it going in a small way, but what he does to pay the bills, he’s a sales rep for a number of other publishers, mostly academic ones, all over the eastern counties.”

“His wife works, too,” Khan said. “A librarian at one of the colleges.”

“Well,” Resnick said, looking almost as pleased as they were themselves. “Good work. Very. Now what d’you say we break the habit of a lifetime, hike up the road, and beat everyone else to the bar in the Borlace Warren?”





Forty-two

Number 27 was sideways on to the road and deceptively small. The spiraling hedge separating it from the narrow pavement was in need of cutting back, causing passersby to step around it or raise an arm to brush it aside. The green wooden gate could have used a coat of paint. A ten-year-old Ford Fiesta, dingy cream, sat by the curb.