“I shall do no such thing.”
Stephen held his wife’s gaze for a moment before stepping past her to open the living-room door, holding it while the others went inside. He and his wife took their usual chairs, leaving Resnick and Naylor to sit, less than comfortably, on the two-seater sofa, side by side.
“Last Sunday afternoon,” Resnick began, “the day that Emily Morrison went missing, someone was seen running close to her home.”
“Stephen …”
“Be quiet,” Stephen said.
“Obviously, one of the things we’re concerned to do is identify anyone who was in the vicinity at the time Emily disappeared …”
“Ste-”
“I said, be quiet.”
“Not because their being there is, in itself, in any way a cause for suspicion, but so that we can remove them from our inquiries. And because they might well have noticed something that could be of importance.”
Joan sat watching her husband, his mouth slightly open, saying nothing.
“You do understand?” Resnick asked.
Stephen nodded quickly. “Yes, I understand.”
“You aren’t that person?”
“The one you were just talking about, the one running?”
“Correct.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure.”
“You do run, though?”
“No.”
Joan’s fingers pressed deeper into the upholstery of the cushion on which she was sitting.
“You’re saying that you never go running, Mr. Shepperd? Jogging?”
Stephen was having difficulty freeing his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I didn’t say never.”
“You do jog, then? To keep fit.”
“Mostly I swim.”
“Mostly?”
“Yes, I prefer it. And it’s better exercise. For me, that is. Running, I never seem to go fast enough, you know, to do any good. Swimming, I suppose it suits me better.”
“Do you mind if I ask where you were last Sunday afternoon?”
Stephen’s eyes sought Joan’s before he answered. “Swimming.”
“You went swimming?”
“Yes.”
“Sunday afternoon?”
“Yes, I said.”
“I heard you, Mr. Shepperd. I just wanted to be sure.” Stephen clasped his hands together, crossed his legs, cradled his knee, loosened his grip, uncrossed his legs, laid both hands flat along his thighs.
“Ask my wife,” Stephen said.
Resnick glanced across at Joan Shepperd, but asked nothing.
“You didn’t see,” asked Naylor, leaning forward, “when you were watching the news, a drawing of a man in a track suit?”
“No. I’m afraid I didn’t. We didn’t, did we, Joan?”
“It must have been when there was all that kerfuffle.”
“Kerfuffle?”
“My drink got knocked over. Look, you can see, on the carpet, there. The stain.”
“A shame,” Resnick said.
“Yes,” Joan Shepperd said, “we’ve not so long had it down.”
“I know it’s only a sketch,” Resnick said, looking straight at Stephen, “a quick impression. But I would have to say, it looked an awful lot like you.”
Thirty-three
Lynn Kellogg had been thinking about what Kevin had said, Debbie walking out and taking the baby. The look on his face in the pub when he had told her, what it had cost him to blurt out the words: how he must be feeling. The front door of the house opened and she saw him, outlined for a moment against the light. Then Resnick was there with him, half-turned back towards the house, saying something she could not catch; the two of them heading back towards the cars.
Lynn went several paces to meet them, asking the question with her eyes.
“Denied it,” Kevin Naylor said. “Out of hand.”
Lynn shifted her gaze to Resnick’s face.
“Says he was swimming,” Resnick said.
“All afternoon?”
Resnick shrugged and smiled.
“What got me,” said Naylor, “reckons they were in there watching News at Ten, never saw the face.”
“Got distracted,” Resnick said.
“Spilt the bedtime drink.”
“At the crucial moment.”
“Convenient.”
Between the two men, Lynn could see the house, porch light still shining, a movement of the front-room curtains, someone peering out, curious to know if they were still there. “What are we going to do, sir?” she asked.
“Have a go at him again in the morning, maybe he’ll remember things differently. Till then, let him stew.”
As they turned Lynn glanced at Naylor, wanting to say, look, come round and have some coffee, it’s not late, we could talk. But there was Resnick, standing by her car, expecting a lift back home. There was still the taint of whisky on his breath and she knew why he hadn’t wanted to drive himself.
“Good night, Kevin,” she said.
“Night. Night, sir.”
Firm closing of doors, firing of engines, acceleration and a changing of gears. The Shepperds’ curtains twitched open, fell closed.
Stephen Shepperd backed away from the window, managed to step back into the room without once, even though she was staring at him intently, looking into his wife’s face.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He was almost at the door, fingers reaching out.
“Up to bed,” not turning. “It’s late.”
“Sit down.”
Stephen unmoving: allowing his hand to swing back to his side, his shoulders to slump.
“Sit down and talk.”
He wanted to ignore her, carry on through the door and not even up to the bed they shared, but out, out into the street, he didn’t know where and didn’t care, as long as he didn’t have to turn and face her.
Once, still a boy, twelve, thirteen, nothing more, he had waited in his room for his mother to confront him. Lying there in the narrowness of his bed, sheet and blankets high above his head, muting the click of the door as it opened and closed and the slight edge of her breathing as she stood there, prepared to be patient, knowing that he could not stay like that for ever.
“Stephen.”
Head down, he turned back into the room and crossed towards his chair.
The two of them sitting there.
“What do you have to tell me, Stephen?”
You can tell me anything, I’m your mother.
“Stephen?”
Anything: and slowly she had drawn the truth from him and as the words fell from his mouth he had seen the muscles of her face tense, her eyes tighten and her color change until she was suffused with shame.
“I’m waiting. Stephen.”
“No.”
“You can’t not tell me.”
“But there’s nothing to tell.”
“Isn’t there?”
“No.”
She was shaking her head, slowly, the twist of her mouth might almost have suggested that she was smiling. “You know you can’t lie to me, Stephen.”
“I’m not lying.”
And she made that little gesture of the hands, like someone brushing away crumbs: what was he doing, imagining he might fool her? Didn’t she know him better than he knew himself?
“I was swimming. Sunday afternoon. You know I was. Whatever it is they’re suggesting, I wasn’t there.”
“And the drawing?”
“We didn’t see any drawing.”
“Other people did. Isn’t that enough?”
“Why is it?” Voice shaking with anger, frustration, getting less than steadily to his feet. “Why is it, whatever happens, I’m the last one you’ll believe?”
“That’s simply not true, Stephen. It isn’t fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“If you were out running that afternoon, why not say so? What’s the crime?”
“Joan, listen, look at me, listen. I was not running, not on Sunday. I was at the leisure center, swimming. I don’t see why you can’t believe me.”
“Stephen, I took your things out of the bag when you got back home. In case anything needed washing. Your costume wasn’t even damp.”
On the drive home across the center of the city, Resnick had said little, but Lynn had felt the tension accumulating inside him. If, as seemed likely, Stephen Shepperd spent some of his spare time in his wife’s classroom, putting his now redundant skills to work, he would have come into contact with Emily; as important, she would have known him. It would have been a simple matter for him to have found her address in the register; an address sufficiently close that even a middle-aged man, not especially fit, could include it in the itinerary of his afternoon run.