Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(86)
“Well, I don’t know, I don’t really see how I can.”
“Do it. And don’t bother telling Mr. Peterson, we’ll do that for ourselves.”
“Oh, but you can’t …”
The Muslim nurse was holding out a metal cup at the end of a tube for the patient to spit into; Peterson was making notes in small, precise writing on the man’s chart. When Resnick appeared in the doorway, the dentist hesitated a little before finishing what he had begun.
Since his wife’s death, he had used his work more than ever as a way of exerting control; not only over those around him, those he came into regular contact with, but over himself, his emotions. He had accepted condolences from colleagues politely and they had not sought to intrude; the letters from Jane’s family he had acknowledged with a cold, formal hand. Mourning was something to be held at bay for as long as possible, allowed only privately and then in small doses, like a glass of strong Scotch sampled alone and late, just himself and the moon. Grief frightened him: it threatened to undo him.
“If you’ll give this in at reception, Mr. Perry,” Peterson said. “Make another appointment for, oh, two weeks’ time. We’ll see how that’s settling down.”
Lynn stepped aside in the doorway to allow him past.
“Govinda,” Peterson said, “let us have a minute, will you?”
With a slight uncertainty, the nurse left the room. There was a smell of mint and analgesic; a distinct but faint background hum.
“Inspector …” Peterson began, offering his hand. When Resnick made no move to accept it, he took a step back, one hand resting on the head of the chair. “Somehow I don’t get the impression you’ve come simply to give me news.”
“There has been a development,” Resnick said.
“You’ve made an arrest?”
“Not yet,” Resnick said. The pause before he spoke alerted Peterson to his meaning.
“We’d like you to come with us and answer some questions,” Resnick said.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Methodically, Peterson fastened the cap on his pen and clipped it inside the breast pocket of his jacket. “Is that merely a request or am I the one about to find myself under arrest?”
“Whichever you want,” Resnick said flatly. “Whichever it needs.”
Peterson stared at him, then slowly shook his head; taking off his jacket, he slipped on a navy blazer in its place. Outside on the pavement, just before getting into the back of the waiting car, Peterson turned to Resnick and said quietly, “What is it, sheer spite? Or have you simply run out of other ideas?”
They sat him in the same room as before and made him wait. In search of Helen Siddons, Resnick found her in the squad office, tearing a strip off a group of officers whose background checking she’d found to be less than diligent. The details of Aloysius James’s story were beginning to look particularly frayed, and, emboldened by his solicitor, James was proving a less tractable suspect than they had imagined.
Resnick waited till the air had cleared a little, then filled her in quickly on the day’s discoveries. “You’ve got him in now?” Siddons asked, frowning.
Resnick nodded.
“Fancy him for it, don’t you? Have all along. Topping his wife. That anger getting out of control.”
“It’s possible.”
“If you’re right …” She shook her head. “Christ, Charlie, they don’t call you Golden Bollocks for nothing.”
Almost before Resnick had closed the door, Alex Peterson was out of his seat. If leaving him there dangling had been intended to make him nervous, break down his resistance, it hadn’t worked; what it had done was steady his mind, steady his nerve.
“I thought this was urgent; I thought this was something that couldn’t wait. You drag me down here in the middle of the afternoon, prevent me from treating my patients, and for what? So I can sit here for half an hour with a cup of stewed tea and, presumably, somebody outside the door to make sure I don’t run off.”
“You’re at liberty,” Resnick said, “to leave whenever you wish.” Pulling out a chair, he sat down, Lynn to his left. “You’ve been kind enough to agree to answer our questions, assist with our inquiries. You are not under arrest.”
From the look in Peterson’s eyes, it was clear he was deliberating what to do: make to go and see what happened, force the issue and become embroiled in a farrago of blundering officialese, solicitors, even handcuffs for all he knew; or stay and see it through, debate, defend. As much as anything, it was the latter which appealed. He sat back down and even smiled. “How can I help?” he said.
They took him through everything from the moment Jane walked out through the door on that Saturday morning, excited, apprehensive, setting off for Broadway, to the night, a week later, when her body was lifted from the canal. Step by slow step. At no point had Jane been in touch with him, not by letter, not by phone; they had not met, she had not called. The last thing he had said to her, a remark called over his shoulder from the breakfast table where he sat reading the international section of The Times, “Bye. Hope it goes well.”
“You are certain?” Resnick said.
“Oh, God. Of what? Can’t we be done with this?” Peterson was bored. This wasn’t a debate, this was a boring litany of the obvious, square pegs into square holes.