Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(83)

Resnick wondered what it was about her that made that sound almost like an insult. “I was going to ask you …” he began.

“What I’m doing here half-pissed? Triumph or adversity?” She ducked her head forward till he couldn’t avoid the nicotine and whisky on her breath. “That little sniveling little shortshanks the computer spewed up for us, David Winston Aloysius James, five years for attempted rape, except of course he’s out after serving not much more than three, not only has he got two other priors for assault, one more charge of indecent exposure which got thrown out of court, guess what he had tucked snug underneath the mattress of his bed, along with more porn than the average newsagent’s top shelf and a score of semen-stinking handkerchiefs?”

Resnick couldn’t guess.

“Miranda Conway’s Euro Railcard, complete with photograph attached.”

“You’ve brought him in?”

“What do you think?”

“Charged?”

“Not yet.”

“What does he say about the card?”

“Says he found it, what do you think?”

“Is there anything else linking him with the girl?”

“Come on, Charlie, what do you want? Love letters? A length of rope?”

Resnick shrugged. “Someone who saw them together earlier that evening. She’d not been in Worksop that long, but she hadn’t exactly kept her head down. There’s folk knew who she was.”

Siddons lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last, tipped back her head, and released smoke into the air. “Charlie, he fits the profile, he’s got the photo ID, and we can put him here in the city four nights before that one you claimed who was fished out of the canal.”

Instead of responding directly, Resnick told her what they had discovered about Jane Peterson and Peter Spurgeon. She listened with interest, went thoughtful, and asked for a large coffee, black, two sugars.

“Fronted him with it yet? The husband?”

Resnick shook his head. “Up to now, he’s always denied seeing her or hearing from her after that Saturday she disappeared. I’d like something else to hit him with aside from Spurgeon’s accusation, which as things stand we’ve no way of proving. We’ve only his word for it, she went to see Peterson from Grantham.”

“She went somewhere.”

“Agreed. We’d already canvassed the neighbors, in case they’d seen anything of her during the week, but came up short. Now, though, we’ve got a good idea, if she did come here, which train it would have been. I’d like everyone on duty at the station that afternoon and evening talked to, shown photographs, taxi-drivers the same. Regular passengers, too.”

“That’s a major operation, Charlie.”

“I thought this was a major case.”

“And we’ve got someone a few hours from being charged.”

“All right,” Resnick conceded, “but even if he’s responsible for the others, all or some, he doesn’t have to have done this.”

Helen Siddons gave him a look pitched somewhere between contempt and disgust. “I didn’t think this was you, pedaling your own corner no matter what.”

“What evidence is there says Jane Peterson was killed by the same person as the others?”

“Aside from an identical MO?”

“Naked, not molested, dumped in water, what else?”

“What else?” Incredulous.

“Helen, that’s all circumstantial, flimsy at best. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you’ve got nothing links Jane Peterson directly to your suspect, no physical evidence, no DNA.”

“Oh, and what have you got, Charlie, aside from a selection of lovers’ lies?”

“Then lend me some bodies, authorize the overtime.”

“I can’t.”

“Helen …”

Her mobile phone jumped to life and she fumbled it from her bag. “Right,” she said, after listening. “Right, I’ll be there.” She had a grin that would have challenged a Cheshire Cat. “He’s owned up to talking to her, Miranda, buying her a drink, taking her for a walk along the canal. We’ve got him, Charlie. He’ll have his hands up for it this side of supper-time.”

Resnick followed her across the room. “If you’re right, you’ll have officers, time on their hands. Twenty-four hours, that’s all I’m asking.”

She stopped at the head of the stairs. “Talk with Support Department. If they can spare a few bodies, fair enough. But like you said, twenty-four hours and that’s your lot.”

Resnick was on his way back to where his drink sat unfinished on the bar when he changed his mind.

Jackie Ferris was wearing an unbuttoned denim shirt with a snug white T-shirt underneath, blue jeans; in the comparative heat of the car, she had kicked off her shoes. Carl Vincent, beside her, was smart and cool in a fashionable stone-colored suit and a collarless white shirt.

“You always dress this way?” she asked. “It doesn’t bring you any grief?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Get you noticed? Draw the wrong kind of attention?”

“Aside from being black and queer?”

Jackie Ferris leaned back along the seat. “Down here in the sophisticated South, we call it gay.”