Rachel listened, sipping her white wine and soda. “When you phoned, I couldn’t think who you were.”
“I know. I make that impression on people.”
“At work sometimes, it’s impossible to think about anything else. I mean, outside.” She lifted her glass but set it down again. “It must be the same for you.”
“With me it’s the opposite.”
She thought about that a little and smiled. “I don’t believe you.”
“Ah,” said Resnick, leaning back in his chair.
Why were they talking like this?
“Anyway,” said Rachel, “I’m sorry you don’t approve of the pub. At least it’s pretty quiet up here. You can usually get a seat if it’s early enough.” She stopped talking abruptly, struck by the thought that she was saying too much, filling the silence. She looked at him, waiting until he looked back at her. “I come here with Chris sometimes.”
“Who’s she?”
“He.”
Resnick was still looking at her; he took a couple of swallows from his glass.
“Who’s he?”
“The man I live with.”
He drained his glass as he stood up. “I’ll get you another.”
“No, I’m okay,” Rachel said.
He brought her one anyway. Typical bloody male, Rachel thought, making sure he saw her pushing the glass away and continuing to sip at the first.
“It’s not against the law,” she said. “Living with somebody.”
“No.”
“You don’t approve.”
“Don’t I?”
“Your face didn’t.”
“I wasn’t being moral.”
“I’m relieved.”
He shrugged his shoulders. He might not be too bad-looking, Rachel was thinking, if only he’d lose a little weight.
“Maybe I was surprised. I didn’t think of you as living with someone, that’s all. It wasn’t the picture I had of you.”
“Not the way I present myself?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to wear purdah, you know. Being in a relationship.”
“No,” said Resnick. “I don’t suppose it does.” More the hair shirt, he thought, sackcloth and ashes. He didn’t say so; he didn’t imagine she’d go for the poor chest-beating male routine.
“What picture did you have of me?” Rachel asked.
There were people standing between the tables now, uncertain whether it was more important to be overheard or overseen.
Resnick was holding his glass against his chest; for a few moments she was afraid he was going to try and balance it there. “I don’t know.”
“But it didn’t include myself and a man…and Chris?”
“No.”
“I give off that sort of aura, do I? I must watch out. Some woman on her own, just about getting along. Home at nights to hot chocolate, a moth-eaten teddy bear, and reruns of Rhoda.” She had started on the second glass of wine without really noticing. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what interests you. You thought I was some woman like the one I read about in today’s paper. The case you’re investigating. Single woman in her thirties found murdered in her own living room. What was her name?”
“Shirley Peters,” Resnick said, leaning forward.
“Right. Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That explains the sudden invitation to a drink. Instant analysis, part five. I thought when I put the phone down in the office, hello, Rachel, you’ve made an impression this time. But, no. What you see in me is a bit of living insight. Sex and the single girl. Well, sorry, Inspector, but I’m not volunteering. I live with a social worker so I take the job home too often as it is. I’ve had stereotypes and syndromes and role-play re-enactments with my Shreddies for so long I just cover them with sugar and they all go down the same way.”
She was close to shouting; a few people were looking round but no one seemed to notice overmuch. Resnick didn’t respond; he sat there looking across at her as she sank back the rest of her wine, swung her bag up from the back of her chair and on to her arm, and pushed her way through the crowd.
One hell of a way to end the day! thought Resnick. One hell of a way to start the evening! And he hadn’t even wanted to talk to her about Shirley Peters: he had hoped she might be able to get him some information about Tony Macliesh. Through the blur of the window he watched her cross the road to her car and wondered what was putting her under so much pressure.
Patel saw the red Porsche at two hundred-plus yards, despite the rain driving in on his face. Seen anywhere else, he might not have given it a second look, but there, in that street, parked in front of that house.
Leave this one alone, Resnick had told him that morning, get back to the break-ins. You know the routine: question and answer. The same numbing procedure that had gone on too long. Houses where all the occupants were at work, no use in calling until way after six. Now there was a pain stretching across between his shoulder blades-all those kitchen tables he had leaned over, filling in the forms. Question and answer. Officially, he’d come off duty at three that afternoon.
“Is it Mrs. Peters you’re looking for?” Patel asked. The woman who turned from the door, sheltering beneath a transparent umbrella, surveyed him with her head held to one side.
“Shirl, yeh. Why, sunshine?”
Patel took out his warrant card, shielding it from the rain as best he could. The woman looked at him with surprise, her glossed mouth forming a soundless, “Oh!”
“You are a friend, perhaps?”
“No perhaps about it.” She nodded towards the Porsche. “Just drove up to see her.”
“I wonder if…”
She beckoned him with a glitter-red fingernail. “Come closer then. No point in getting wet for nothing.”
She was wearing, thought Patel, too much perfume, too much makeup; below her short white fur coat, her legs shone in shiny black plastic trousers. For a young man of simple tastes, she was altogether too much.
“What’s happened then?” And seeing the pain flinching at the back of Patel’s soft brown eyes, she touched his arm lightly with her free hand. “You can tell me, you know. I ain’t about to throw a wobbler or anything.”
Patel sucked in air. “There was a…your friend is dead. She was…”
“Don’t be bloody stupid!”
“I’m afraid she was murdered.”
The umbrella slipped from the woman’s hand and, automatically, Patel caught it and held it close above her head. He looked into her face for tears and all he saw was anger.
“The stupid, stupid bitch! The stupid sodding cow! How many times? How many times did I tell her this would bloody happen?”
She stared at Patel hard, their faces close together, rain springing back from the plastic of the umbrella, the concrete below their feet. He watched her mouth open and for one delirious moment thought she was about to sink her teeth into the soft flesh of his lip.
“All right,” she said. “I’d better follow you up the station.”
She pulled her umbrella away from Patel and he turned full-face into the rain.
Six
Chris Phillips was stretched out on the settee in front of the fire, one leg hooked over its low back. A beige Labrador was spread across the rug between settee and fire, growling lightly into the towel that Phillips had used to dry the dog down after their evening walk. A card-index box balanced on Phillips’s stomach and a brace of pink files was clamped between his knees; pieces of stationery, all bearing the name of the local authority, were scattered within arm’s reach. If he hadn’t been writing on one of the cards when Rachel came into the room he might have looked up and seen the expression on her face, in which case he might not have spoken at all. He certainly would not have called out, “Surprise, surprise!” in his usual tone of affectionate irony.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Rachel.
Phillips looked up at the sharpness in her voice.
The Labrador took its piece of towel and dropped it across Rachel’s feet.