Living Proof (29 page)

You were . my dad. " She shook her head, low towards her hands, which were folded over one another now, beside her cup.

"It isn't even that simple. There are things, other things, I can't, I don't want to say."

Resnick put one hand over hers, ready to retract it if she pulled away.

"I haven't been able to talk to you," Lynn said, not looking at him, looking away.

"Not really talk, not since it happened."

"I know."

"I just haven't felt comfortable, being with you."

"No."

"And it's difficult. So bloody difficult!" With surprise, the assistant looked round at her raised voice.

"And I hate it."

"Yes," Resnick said, taking away his hand. And then, "So this is why you want to go; this rather than your mother, anything at home."

"Oh, they want me back there, of course. My dad doesn't say so, but my mum, she'd love it. But if it wasn't for this other business, no, I don't think I'd go."

"And you don't think we could work it out. Somehow, between us, I mean. Maybe, now you've started talking about it?"

"That's what Petra says."

"That you, we, should talk it over?"

Lynn nodded, still not looking at him.

"Yes." And when Resnick was silent, she asked him what he was thinking.

"I was wondering why you hadn't felt able to come to me before?"

"You're hurt, aren't you?"

"By that? Yes, I suppose I am."

"She said you would be. But, I don't know, I just couldn't' " You were afraid of what I'd say? "

"No. What I would."

Resnick's intention, that evening, had been to go along to the refurbished Old Vie and listen to the new Stan Tracey Duo. But by the time he'd fed the cats, fiddled around with a smoked ham and stilton sandwich, he didn't seem to feel like going out. Sitting on the back step with a bottle of Czech Budweiser, he found out how Annie Q. Jones was getting on, embroiled in plot and counter-plot in the last fifty pages of Dead Weight. Poor Annie, sapped on the head from behind, going down a narrow side street in pitch darkness at least she had her lover to provide a little comfort in the small hours.

His neighbours, also enjoying the light, pleasantly warm evening, had thrown open their windows and were treating him to muffled television laughter and the smell of chicken frying. Resnick finished his beer, took the book back inside, page at the start of the final chapter folded down, and set off to walk down into the city.

He arrived at the pub in time for the last two numbers. Stan Tracey, bunched over the keyboard, angularly maneuvering his way through "Sophisticated Lady', taking-the tune into seemingly impossible blind alleys and then escaping through a mixture of finesse and sheer power. Finally, Tracey and an absurdly young-looking Gerard Presencer on trumpet had elided their way along a John Coltrane blues, the audacity ofPresencer's imagination more than matched by his technique.

Just once, in the middle of the trumpeter's solo, eyes closed, Resnick had seen a perfect vision of Lynn, her face, round and open and close to his. And then it had gone. While the applause was still trickling away, he lifted his empty glass and set it down by the end of the bar, nodded towards the landlord, and made his way towards the door.

Back home again. Bud nestled in beside his feet, Resnick finished the book: / know that Reigler has suffered another stroke, but still I'm not prepared for what I find. One side of his body seems totally paralysed, the same side of his face sunken and lined, one dark eye staring out. His speech is slurred, but I get thejist. As confessions go this one's pretty simple and to the point. He nods when he's finished and I switch off the tape that's been resting on one arm of his wheelchair.

Seems he's got one more request.

I don't know why I should raise a finger for him and then I find out what it is.

The gun is in the drawer and I'm careful only to handle it with the gloves I conveniently have in the pocket of my coat. There's a wind got up from the ocean and the temperature has plummeted. There's one shell in the chamber and just a moment of doubt when I think it might be intended for me, but one more look at his wrecked body and I know that's not the case.

The trigger mechanism seems light, though even so, I'm not convinced, the state that he's in, he's going to be able to find enough pressure, but I figure that's his problem, not mine.

I hear the gunshot as I'm climbing into my car, and I guess it's worked out all right. I don't go back. There'll be a call box on my way home and I can pull over and perform my anonymous civic duty. I risk the last ten miles way above the limit. I know Diane's going to have something ready, maybe even something we can eat in bed. and I don't want to keep her waiting.

Well, no longer than she finds enjoyable.

So that was how it ended, he thought, clear-cut and happy, no loose ends. With a wry smile, Resnick closed the book and reached across to switch off the light.

Forty-eight The church was small and most of the pews were filled with the Farleigh family and neighbours, Peter Farleigh's colleagues from work and a few representatives of organisations he had regularly supplied.

After several hymns, carefully chosen but randomly sung, the vicar spoke with a pious briskness of Peter's devotion as husband and father, his dedication and selflessness as a breadwinner, the admiration and respect with which he was held within the community.

The managing director of Farleigh's firm, who turned out to be Japanese, talked briefly and in perfect, Oxford-accented English of his late- lamented model employee. Then the youngest Farleigh daughter, wearing a long, loose-skirted floral dress, sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone', accompanying herself on the guitar.

People cried.

Resnick stood in line to grasp Sarah's hand and kiss her on the cheek, express his condolences to her children, strung out awkwardly beside her.

"You will come back to the house afterwards?" He looked into her red-rimmed eyes and agreed.

There were scarcely more than a dozen there when Resnick arrived: immediate family, and the vicar, exchanging pieties with Peter's mother, who had the good fortune to be profoundly deaf.

Resnick ate several skimpy sandwiches, making them more palatable by taking separate triangles of tongue and cheese and pressing them together. He chatted in a desultory manner with Peter and Sarah's son, who replied in monotones and couldn't wait to get away.

"I don't know what she's looking so sad about," the older daughter spat out towards Resnick, glancing over to where her mother was standing.

"It wasn't as if she loved him anyway."

Overhearing this, her younger sister burst into tears.

Once he noticed people beginning to slip away, Resnick retreated to the kitchen and rolled up his sleeves, stacking and washing up the glasses, cups and plates. The son borrowed his mother's Flat to drive his grandparents to the station and the two sisters, reconciled, went for a walk.

"Thanks for staying, Charlie," Sarah said, when she had seen the last visitor off.

"And for doing all of that."

"It's nothing. Glad to be of help."

"Well, it's sweet of you. And now I need a drink. You?"

"No, thanks."

Driving? "

"That's right."

Sarah smiled, the first he had seen all day.

"You were always that way, Charlie. I remember. Careful to the point of being almost boring. Ben, now, he didn't care. Not that much. I've driven back with him when he probably wasn't safe at all."

"Sarah," Resnick said, more sharply than he had perhaps intended.

What? "

"Stop it. For heaven's sake." He wiped suds and water from his hands with the tea towel and dropped it on the counter beside the sink.

"Charlie. I'm sorry, I don't understand. I was only..."

"I know what you were doing. Bringing up Ben again and again, pretending we were forever doing things together, one big happy trio."

"Elaine, too..."

"Sarah, aside from that time at the lake I doubt if we 274 spent more than a couple of dozen hours together, all told."

"Charlie, I don't know, is that true? It certainly isn't the way I remember it. I... Oh, Charlie, I just keep thinking about him, that's all. All day today, when I should have been thinking about Peter..."

"You had your chance to marry him and you turned him down."

"And I made a mistake."

"I'm sorry."

"God, Charlie, I was wrong. You're not the way you used to be. You've changed. You've become hard, mean."

"Maybe that's the way I have to be."

She drank some of her sherry, barely tasting it, then set the glass back down.

"To do this?"

"Yes."

She walked into the living room and he followed her through; the French windows into the garden had been left open and there was a breeze. A cat, ginger and black, that Resnick had not noticed before, was curled up on one of the armchairs.

"Yours?"

She shook her head.

"Next door's."

For an instant the words caught at the back of Resnick's throat.

"You used his car, didn't you?" he said.

Sarah looked back at him.

"Yes," she said. She seemed smaller already, as if she had shrunken a little inside her smartly tailored suit. Her green eyes had ceased to glow.

"There was a list on the computer, vehicles that had checked into the hotel garage. When I saw the number had been traced through to Peter as owner, I assumed he had been using it himself." Resnick looked across at her, but whatever she had focused on was way down the garden, beyond the shrubbery.

"It took a while for all our routine checks on the car hire returns to go through the computer, but when they did, there was a Ford Granada under Peter's name."

"Two and two then, was it, Charlie?" She had turned to face him now, moved towards him; the shine was back in her eyes but it was of quite a different nature than before.

"Most of the prints we lifted from the hotel room were too smudged to be of any use; there was one inside the rim of the bath, only partial, but enough to get a match off the invitation you sent me..."

"You bastard!"

"Not enough in itself."

"Too bad. Too bloody bad!" She turned her back to him, leaned her head and arm against the mantelpiece and started to cry. Resnick left her to it. After a while, she pulled a small handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

"He phoned me that morning, telling me to take the car to the garage; as if I needed reminding, like a complete child. And would I run around the house after him, picking up his dry cleaning and take that in as well?" She blew her nose.

"He said he'd ring me that evening, but, of course, he didn't. He rarely did, when he was away, and I knew why. I knew what he would be doing, some cheap little tart or other, some whore. And, of course, I was right. I was right."

She started to cry again, really cry this time, and Resnick went over to her and placed his hands, lightly, on her upper arms.

"I was outside, in the corridor, when she left. I can even describe her for you, if you want. Except that her hair was up, she was pretty much like her photograph. In the paper, g When I went in, Peter was on the floor, just past the end of j the bed. He was crawling towards the bathroom, crawling on his hands and belly and leaving these trails, like a snail, : except they were red, all along the floor. I felt sick. I| couldn't stop watching him. It was horrible, disgusting.1 He got himself up on to the side of the bath and then stopped.

Collapsed. Unconscious. The knife, the one she'd stabbed him with, it was still on the bed; I could see the handle sticking out from the sheet. Maybe she'd looked for it and not found it, I don't know.

Anyway, I took it and went into the bathroom. Peter still hadn't moved. I thought I could still hear his breathing, but I couldn't be sure. I remember his buttocks were all flabby and loose, almost white except for these purple spots. And the awful flab of his belly, pushed out on both sides by the bath. " Resnick felt, rather than saw, her shake against his hands.

"I only stabbed him once, in the side. I couldn't believe how easily the blade went in."

Resnick had heard the car pull up a while since, back along the road.

He wondered how long they had been out in the garden, how much they had overheard? He called out and Millington and Lynn Kellogg stepped inside.

"Sarah Farleigh," he said,

"I am arresting you for the murder of Peter Farleigh..." He was glad she was looking away again, not directly up at him; glad to have got the business done before the children returned.

Cathy Jordan

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Annie Q. Jones Mysteries Angels at Rest (1989) Uneasy Prey (1990) Sleeping Fools Lie (1991) Shallow Grave (1993) Dead Weight (1995) Living Proof (scheduled for publication, 1996) Other Fiction Family Affairs (1982) Rimrock (1984) From Shore to Shore (1987) 280 Shots in the Dark Thanks are due to Adrian Wootton, Programme Director of Shots in the Dark, and his committee, for the assistance and cooperation which made it possible to set this novel in and around the festival.

Thanks are also due to those writers and others who have allowed themselves to be cast in the margins of the action, adding verisimilitude and texture.

SHOTS IN THE DARK

Nottingham's International Mystery and Thriller Festival incorporating SHOTS ON THE PAGE Crime Writing Convention is held annually at the Broadway Media Centre 14 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 SAL, England