John Harvey - Still Waters

“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.”

“Uh-huh, that’s what I’d heard.”

She hesitated only a moment before asking, “Are you out?”

“Yes.”

“Long?”

Carl shook his head. “Year, more or less.”

“How’s it been?”

He looked out through the car window at the slow stream of people taking the exit from the underground station, automatically checking every face. “You know, like a lot of stuff, worse before it gets better.”

Jackie nodded and wondered again about a cigarette.

“How about you?” Carl said, keeping it light, not quite looking at her direct. She was a detective inspector, whatever else.

She took out and lit the cigarette, winding the window low. “There was this woman I was living with, well, more or less. She was a singer, one of those little indie bands. Did session work once in a while. But that was the kind of life she led.”

“She must have been young.”

“She was. She said she couldn’t keep seeing me if I was living this secret life. That’s what she called it, this secret life. So the next time I went for a drink with the lads from the squad, I took her along.”

“How did they react?”

“You mean, aside from the ones that wanted to fuck her? Oh, they were fine. People confuse you sometimes, straight people, by being a lot less prejudiced than you expect. Mostly they were fine. Six weeks later, she dumped me anyway. I think she came home early and caught me listening to Doris Day.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jackie Ferris shrugged. “What did Oscar Wilde say, never give your heart to a child or a fairy? I’d done both.”

But Carl was no longer really listening. He was watching Grabi-anski approaching along the opposite side of the street, starting to cross toward them now. Jackie pushed her feet back into her shoes and turned the key in the ignition.

As soon as Grabianski was in the rear seat, she pulled away, careful through the traffic turning west into Victoria Street.

“How did we do?” she asked over her shoulder.

“As long as you don’t mind a little indigestion, and rather too much of Ricky Nelson, I think it went fine.” And, taking the cassette from his pocket, he passed it forward into Carl Vincent’s waiting hand.

Resnick had thrown four or five stones up at Divine’s flat, before the window was pushed awkwardly open and Divine’s head leaned out. He was about to give whoever it was a piece of his mind but then grinned when he realized who it was.

“Hey up, boss! What’s up?”

“Come to see you.”

“Hang about, I’ll be down.”

“You sober?”

“Yes, I was just having a kip.”

“Eaten?”

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“Good. I’ll treat you to a curry. There’s a bit of work, unofficial, I might be able to put your way.”

Divine beamed like someone had brought back the sun.

Six thirty a.m. Breakfast in the café near the Dunkirk roundabout. Resnick, Lynn Kellogg, and Anil Khan, three members of the Support Group, Steve Neale, Vicki Talbot, and Ben Parchman, along with a weary-looking Kevin Naylor, prevailed upon to set aside a day off in a good cause. Mark Divine, cautious on the edge of the rest, cautious especially with Lynn, but pleased to be there nonetheless, sat tucking into his egg and bacon sandwich with gusto, unable to disguise the grin that kept sliding around his face.

Resnick knew enough to let them finish their meal, order another tea or coffee, light up; his briefing was clear and to the point.

“One thing, boss,” Ben Parchman said. “Are we doing this so Peterson can’t turn round and say his wife was never here that Wednesday, he never saw her? Or because we don’t necessarily believe the boyfriend’s story about her coming here at all?”

“Both,” Resnick said. “It’s both.”

The two most likely trains for Jane Peterson to have arrived on were the five forty-seven and the six fifty-two. When Steve Neale spoke to the guard on the latter, the man thought it a possibility Jane had been on his train, but no way was he certain enough to make a positive identification. The wall-eyed official who had been collecting tickets on the forty-seven took a quick look at the photograph and shook his head. “No, duck, alus remember’t pretty ones.” He tapped his middle finger against his temple. “Keep ’em filed away, like, somethin’ to set against cold nights.”

Lynn, Anil, and Vicki had positioned themselves inside the sliding doors at the back of the busy booking hall, close to the stairs heading down to the Grantham platform. A good number of passengers would be regulars, out in the morning, back on one of those two trains after work. The three officers spoke to people as they passed, handed out hastily printed leaflets, detaining anyone who admitted making the relevant journey and asking them to look at Jane Peterson’s photograph. After the best part of an hour, they had logged three maybes and one fairly definite for the earlier train, a couple of possibles for the latter. But these were commuters whose schedules were cut to a fine line and more hurried past, eyes averted, than stopped.

With the first morning rush more or less over, Khan and Vicki Talbot took the eastbound train themselves; they would question the staff at Grantham station, drop off more leaflets for distribution there.

Kevin Naylor and Ben Parchman had divided the black cabs between them, leaving Divine to have a crack at the freebooters, drivers for mini-cab firms who were not authorized to ply for hire within the station concourse. It was a fact, however, that if one of them drove in to drop off a passenger and there was a fare waiting but no black cabs, well, business was business. They were also known to hang around at busy times outside the station, hoping to catch the eye of any potential customers for whom the regular queue was too slow and too long.

By mid-morning, between them, Naylor and Parchman had spoken to some fifty drivers and come up blank each time.

The first time Resnick spoke to Gill Manners, who ran the flower stall in the station concourse with her husband, Jane’s picture didn’t mean a thing, but later, when Resnick was walking past after talking to the station manager, she called him over and asked to look again.

“I’ve seen her, I know I have, I just can’t fit it in with what you said. Times and that.”

“Her picture would have been in the Post . On TV. You don’t think you’re remembering it from there?”

She shook her head. “You, now, Mr. Resnick, I’ve seen you on the local news a time or two. But this one, no, I’ve seen her I know, but where or when? It’s wedged in this poor head of mine somewhere, but I can’t shake it down.”

Resnick gave her one of his cards. “You’ll let me know, if you do remember? It could be important.”

“’Course. I’ll have a word with my Harry when he gets here, see if he can’t come up with something. Hanging’s too good for him, Mr. Resnick, whoever done this.”

Nodding noncommittally, he hurried across to WH Smith. It wasn’t inconceivable that Jane would have stopped in to buy a newspaper, tissues, something of the kind, or that one of the assistants might have noticed her walking by.

It was past noon before anything definite broke. Kevin Naylor had just wandered across the street from the cab rank south of Slab Square and called Debbie from outside the Bell, Debbie sounding remarkably cheerful and reminding him there was a little errand he had to run for her at the chemist’s on his way home.