Resnick nodded. “I understand.”
“I hope so. She’s waiting in one of the quiet rooms, just along here.”
Resnick followed the nurse down the high-ceilinged institutional corridor. From another floor he could hear the music from Neighbours, starting or finishing, he wasn’t sure which. “She is on quite strong medication,” the nurse said, lowering his voice outside the door, “she should understand you correctly, but it might mean that some of her responses are rather slow. Also you might notice some shaking, especially her hands. A side-effect of the drugs.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “Diana, your visitor’s here.”
Resnick hadn’t been sure what to expect, his mental pictures overlaid in advance by the gaunt shock of his ex-wife’s face when finally she had confronted him after years of psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. But Diana Wills looked up at him pleasantly, her smile a little hesitant yet real enough, her face, if anything, fuller than the photos he had seen had suggested.
“I’ll leave you for a while,” the nurse said.
There were three chairs in the room, a low circular table, pictures on the walls, flowers. Resnick pulled one of the chairs closer to Diana and sat down. “I’m a police officer,” he said. “Resnick. Detective Inspector. Charlie.”
Diana looked back at him and gave the same quick, nervous smile.
“We were worried about you.”
She opened a hand and pulled at the tissue that had been squashed there, used it to dab at the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a button-through dress, soft green, a brown ribbed cardigan. “Worried? I don’t understand.”
“When you didn’t come home.”
“Home?”
“At the weekend. The neighbors, they were just a bit concerned. Had a word with the local bobby. We thought you might have had an accident or something.”
“Jackie.”
“Sorry?”
“Jacqueline.”
“Your friend.”
Diana pressed the tissue to her mouth again. “You know Jacqueline?”
“I said, we were worried. We got in touch, in case she knew where you were.”
“I should have gone to see her.”
“Yes.”
“This past weekend.”
“Yes.”
Now both of Diana’s hands were beginning to tremble and she slid them from sight. “Was she angry with me?”
“No, not at all. Just concerned.”
“You’ll tell her where I am?”
Resnick nodded.
“I shouldn’t want her to worry.”
“Of course not.”
“Not Jackie.”
“No.”
“She’ll be so ashamed as it is.”
“Why’s that, Mrs. Wills?”
“Diana, please.”
“Diana.”
“What did you ask me?”
“You said that your friend would be ashamed.”
“Well, of course she would. Anyone would.”
Resnick willed himself to look at her face, not be distracted by the increased agitation of her hands. “Can you tell me why Diana?”
She sat suddenly upright, eyes widening with surprise. “Because of what I did, of course.”
“What you did to whom?”
The sound was faint in the small room, its syllables barely passing her lips. “Emily.”
Resnick could feel the dampness gathering in his palms; he was beginning to smell his own sweat. No way she could have gone back outside? “What about her, Diana?”
She pushed the folded tissue to her lips. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t.”
Resnick’s voice, low, not wishing to startle, almost as quiet as hers. “I know that you didn’t.”
“I knew it was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why I came here.”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t think what else to do, where else … and I thought, I knew … you see, I’d been going there, more and more, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t … couldn’t stay away, I had to be close to her, Emily, all the time. He should never have said it was wrong for me, he never … I’m her mother.”
The hands which had been shaking faster and faster stilled themselves now by grasping Resnick’s arms at the wrist, biting tight.
“I had it all planned, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t know yet when, but I knew. Emily and I, on the train. To Jacqueline. She wanted me to go and live with her after all. She kept saying. She couldn’t have wanted me to go without my little girl, she would never have expected that. She couldn’t, could she? But she kept asking, over and over. It would be better, she said. Nicer. And it would have been, don’t you think, Charlie? Much nicer. The three of us together.”
“Yes.” Resnick nodding as Diana released her grip, “yes, maybe it would.”
“But inside,” Diana said, “I knew that it was wrong. But it was as though I couldn’t stop myself. Which is why I came back here, to the hospital. So that I wouldn’t take Emily away.” She wiped her mouth and smiled. “I’ve been here before, you know. It’s nice here. It’s quiet. They understand you. They make you better.”
For a moment, Resnick hid his face in his hands.
“What is it?” Diana asked. “Whatever’s the matter?”
Not so many minutes later, the nurse returned. In the corridor Resnick offered Diana Wills his hand and as soon as, tentatively, she touched it with her fingers, he stepped forward and took her in his arms, held her tight.
The rain was falling, blackening the building, further blackening the sky. Resnick engaged gear and sat where he was, engine idling. Ahead of him was a long night that would stretch into the small hours of morning. He would drink coffee black and listen again to Billie with Lester Young, to Hodges and to Monk. Why, when he had refused every one of Elaine’s pleas for help, when he had made no attempt to find out where or how she was, even now, did be find it so easy to sympathize with this stranger, to take and hold her in his arms and feel her tears upon his chest, this woman he had never before met?
Thirty-two
When Naylor’s call had cut across the introduction to “No Regrets,” a spare few bars of Dick McDonough’s guitar before Billie’s voice, Resnick had half-rolled, half-slid from the settee and crossed the room, cursing the unwanted interruption. The first chorus of the song barely over, Resnick began to ask questions, steadying the receiver between chin and shoulder as he sought to button his shirt, straighten his tie. Naylor’s voice again, excited, and, across the room, Artie Shaw’s stop-time clarinet phrases were flowing out of the ensemble in the instrumental break. “You’ve got the address?… Good. Who’s there with you?… Tell her to pick me up.” Resnick put down the phone, went back across the room and on to one knee, searching for his other shoe. Billie Holiday stretching into her last chorus, the drummer giving it a few good whumps as the band closed round her for the final bars. Two minutes, thirty-odd seconds. Resnick swallowed cold coffee, headed for the door.
“Stephen Shepperd, sir. Fifty-two. His wife, Joan, teaches part-time at Emily Morrison’s school. Kevin interviewed her there this afternoon; that was when he saw Stephen. They live off Derby Road, on the right going up the hill.”
“Near the flats?”
“Three streets away.”
Resnick could picture them, thirties’ semis with watered-down art deco features, privet hedges to the front and small, neat gardens behind; concrete bollards set across the center of long cross-streets to stop the traffic racing through.
As they passed Canning Circus there were still lights burning in the police station, but not so many. Five pubs within spitting distance, customers jostling by now at the bar, getting in another round before the call for last orders. A few students, hands in pockets, beginning the trudge back out to the university campus. Lynn Kellogg slowed as she indicated left, turning into the Shepperds’ road.
It was a third of the way along, facing west down the hill. A view over Queens Medical Center, the university beyond that; much closer, a hop, skip and a jump and little more, the high-rise blocks that had been Gloria Summers’s home. Naylor had parked fifty yards further on, the opposite side of the street and now he walked towards them, eyes on the Shepperd house.