John Harvey: Still Waters

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.

“That you didn’t see your wife at any time between that Saturday and when she died?”

“Yes. How many more times?” He stared at them and they stared back. “Right, I’m sorry …” Peterson on his feet now, fingers automatically buttoning his blazer, “but this is patently absurd.”

“How about Wednesday?” Lynn said, speaking for the first time.

“Wednesday?” He stopped, head angled round, almost at the door.

“Wednesday evening at around quarter past seven?”

“What about it?”

“That was when she came to see you, remember? Your wife. That was when the taxi dropped her off at your door.”

Peterson laughed, or at least he started to.

“She caught the six fifty-two from Grantham, then a cab from the station.”

“Grantham? Whatever would she have been doing in Grantham?”

“She was there with a man called Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said. “The man she was leaving you to go and live with.”

Slowly, mind churning, Peterson moved across and sat back down.

“You know him?” Resnick asked. There was a fly, fat and lazy, hazing around the upper half of the window, and he tried to clear it from his mind.

“No, I don’t know him.”

“You know who he is?”

“Jane went out with him at Cambridge. That was more than ten years ago. Fifteen.”

“You didn’t know she’d seen him since?”

“That’s preposterous.”

“Is it?”

Peterson started to say something and then stopped. Resnick asked him again.

“No. No, I didn’t know.”

“Did she ever talk about him?”

“No, not really. I mean, a few times, possibly, in passing. Maybe once or twice, late at night, you know, those slightly drunken conversations when people start reminiscing. What it was like back then, idyllic summers punting down the Cam.”

“Idyllic?”

Peterson shrugged. “She obviously thought so at the time.”

“She was in love with him.”

“Apparently. Though heaven knows why. Even when she was trying to paint this heroic portrait of him, learned and romantic, he came over as rather pathetic. Not the kind of person who was ever really going to do anything with his life.”

“Does that matter?” Lynn asked.

“Not to me.”

“But what did you think of him?”

“I didn’t. Why should I? He was of no possible relevance to me.”

“So if your wife, if Jane, had wanted to contact him, I don’t know, phone once in a while, see how he was getting on, you wouldn’t have minded?”

“No,” Peterson practically scoffed. “Why should I?”

“I wonder why, then,” Lynn said, “when she did get back in touch with him, after his business failed, she didn’t let you know? Unless she was frightened of how you would react.”

“Jane was never frightened of me. She had no reason.”

“Not even when you were angry?”

“No.”

“Those times you hit her, then,” Lynn said, “you were just hitting her for fun?”

Peterson clenched his fist and then, aware of what he was doing, allowed his fingers slowly to relax.

“If you had known Jane was carrying on some kind of relationship with Peter Spurgeon,” Resnick said, “it’s fair enough to say you wouldn’t exactly have approved?”

“Approved? Of course not, Spurgeon or anyone. She was my wife, you can understand that.”

“Yes,” Resnick said, leaning a little toward him, lowering his voice. “Absolutely. Of course I can. Just as I can understand when she finally got around to telling you, not simply that she’d been seeing him all this time, but that she was going away with him, well, it would be enough to test anyone’s temper. Any man’s. I can see that.”

Peterson laughed and shook his head. “Is that how you do it?” he asked. “Charlie Resnick, Detective Inspector, catcher of thieves and murderers, is that how it works? Push me around enough and then when you’ve got my back up sufficiently, uncork the compassion. Oh, yes, yes, of course I understand. And they sit here, poor innocent bastards, feeding out of your hand. Well, I’m sorry, because even if I wanted to help out, confess, unburden my sins, I’m afraid I can’t. If Jane was running off with her childhood sweetheart or whatever she thought of him, I knew absolutely nothing about it until a few moments ago when you told me. And if she came to the house that Wednesday, if that’s what really happened, well I can assure you she didn’t knock on the door, didn’t ring the bell, didn’t use her key. I was in all evening from a little before six, just as I was every evening that week, sick with worry about what had happened to her, where she might be.

“And if you seriously think, had she come to me and told me this fairy story about herself and Peter Spurgeon, that my response would have been so uncontrolled that I would have taken her life in a fit of jealousy, then, Inspector, you are about as far from understanding me as you will ever be.”

Resnick and Lynn were silent, waiting.

“If you intend to charge me with my wife’s murder, then go ahead, but let me warn you I will pursue you with the biggest wrongful arrest suit this constabulary has ever faced. And whichever course of action you intend, I believe I am within my rights to telephone my solicitor and that is what I wish to do now.”

Peterson gripped the table hard and sat back down; as soon as he reasonably could, he slid his hands from sight, hoping no one would see how they were beginning to shake.

One simple question and answer, repeated, with slight variations, again and again.

Naylor: After you’d dropped her off, did you actually see her go inside the house?

Driver: I saw her go up to the door, yeah, there’s these steps, you know, leading up. And like I say, she’d been in a bit of a state. But then, when I saw her on the step, I thought, like, she’s gonna be fine and I drove away. I never actually, what you’d say, saw her go inside, no. No way.

Peterson’s solicitor, Maxwell Clifford of Clifford, Taylor, and Brown, didn’t even bother talking to Resnick direct; his first call was to the chief constable designate, who referred him to Malachy, who took great delight in chewing out his DCI, getting in a passing shot to the effect that she wasn’t having much luck with her other suspect either and maybe she should consider tossing everything up in the air and starting again. His tone made it clear that tea lady was the kind of thing he had in mind.

Alex Peterson stepped back out onto the pavement of the Ropewalk less than three hours after he had been marched in, turning down the polite offer of a ride home in a police vehicle in favor of a brisk stroll along Park Terrace and Newcastle Drive and then home.

“Now then,” Helen Siddons smiled maliciously, cupping a hand in the direction of Resnick’s balls. “Not so golden after all.”

Resnick was pleasant with Hannah when she called, and although he felt himself sounding cold, pleasant was the best he could do. He felt as flat as water trapped in a rusted sink, flat and stale. Jealous husband, violent man, love spurned: it had been so simple. Perhaps it still was.