sleep. Not even through these long silences. Petra Carey, Dr Petra Carey, sitting near to the window, seemingly relaxed. There was a desk, but the doctor ignored it, except sometimes at the beginning of the session when Lynn arrived, she would be there, finishing writing up her notes, glancing, perhaps, at Lyim's file.
'Lynn, it's good to see you. How are we today?' Petra Carey, today in a short jacket and loose, long skirt, white blouse with a slight frill, wedding ring wide on her hand. Scrubbed face and careful hair, attentive eyes.
'What would you like to talk about today?' Lynn supposed she might be five years older than herself.
Quiet, she could hear the ticking of the clock.
There were seven wounds in all: four to the chest, one between the ribs to the left-hand side, two low in the stomach, approximately two inches above the line of pubic hair. All but one of the chest wounds were scarcely more than superficial; the deepest seeming the one which had passed between the ribs, close, Resnick guessed, to where the heart had been still beating.
After the scene-of-the-crime team had finished shooting off several rolls of film and videoing Farleigh's body in situ, it had been removed from the bath and laid on thick, opaque plastic sheeting.
'What time are we looking at?' Resnick asked.
Parkinson wiped the thermometer with care and returned it to its case.
'Ten hours, give or take.'
'Midnight, then?'
'Round about.'
Resnick grunted. At midnight, he had been leaving Sonny's restaurant, exchanging handshakes and goodbyes with David Tyrell, hoping that the heated words being exchanged between youths outside the pub opposite would not escalate into blows, causing him to intervene.
'Any chance you'll get to my panel tomorrow?' Cathy Jordan had asked.
Resnick had replied noncommittally uncertain; now it was clear that he would not.
He had picked up a cab across the street from Ritzy's and, home, had poured himself a half-inch of bison grass vodka and read a little more of Cathy Jordan's book. So far, the most likely culprits behind April's murder seemed to be a former ex-criminal client of her father, a rejected would-be lover, or -just out of the woodwork April's half-brother by one of her father's previous liaisons.
Resnick's money was on the brother. In the book, it was easier; in the book it didn't matter if he were wrong.
'Nothing else for me here now,' Parkinson said.
'You'll be at the post?'
Resnick nodded.
In a room along the corridor, Kevin Naylor was patiently questioning Mane-Elisabeth Fourier, having to remind her almost every other sentence to speak in English, not French. Earlier, he had tried a few remembered phrases from his school days and she had looked at him blankly, as if he were speaking another language. Then finally she told him everything she knew.
Divine had found two of the guests with rooms on the same floor, still lingering over their breakfast in the dining room, but they claimed neither to have seen nor to have heard anything. Names and addresses of the other guests he obtained from the hotel register.
Computer records showed that Farleigh had stayed at the hotel on three occasions in the past eighteen months, the first time for a single night, the others of which this was the last for two.
Always a single room, always on his own.
'Visitors?' Millington asked.
'You know the kind I mean.'
'We try not to encourage it, but…' The manager shrugged.
'People do what they do.'
'And Farleigh, you don't know if…'
'I've no idea.'
'No gossip amongst the staff? No…'
'You'll have to ask them yourself.'
We will. '
The first of the night staff to respond to urgent requests that they make themselves available for questioning, was one of the waiters from the restaurant. Yes, he recognised the man's photo and, no, he had eaten alone, but after he had finished his meal he had sat down again with somebody else. The description the waiter gave was backed up by the barman when he arrived some forty minutes later. Late thirties, early forties, dark hair, black dress. On the game? Could be, nowadays it was increasingly difficult to tell.
Had either of them seen the woman there in the hotel before? No, they didn't think they had. If they were to be shown some photographs?
Oh, surely, they'd be happy to oblige. Tickled pink. Couldn't let the likes of her be running around free, now, could they? Was it true, as they'd heard, she'd stabbed him fifteen times or was it just the twelve?
'Sure you're up for this?' Resnick asked.
Lynn was looking through the car window at alternations of hedgerow, sunlight catching silver along arable fields.
'I'll be fine,' she said.
At the outskirts of the village, Resnick slowed behind a dozen sheep, a lad no older than fourteen herding them slowly through a farm gate.
When Resnick glanced across at Lynn, the skin around her eyes was drawn. He knew he shouldn't have asked her to come with him; knew also that in situations such as this, she was irreplaceable.
The house was well back from the road, a small Flat parked in the drive.
'Mrs Farleigh,' Resnick said to the middle-aged woman who came to the door.
'I'm Detective Inspector Resnick and this is Detective Constable Kellogg. I wonder if we might come inside?'
Twenty-two Sarah Farleigh had gone through all the normal reactions to her husband's death: disbelief, shock, anger, finally tears. Lynn had moved to hold her and the older woman had shrugged her off, stumbling from the kitchen in which they had been talking, through the French windows of the living room into the garden, which was where Resnick found her, squatting in the middle of half an acre of lawn, face in her hands.
For several minutes he hunched there beside her, while a blackbird noisily disputed their presence from the branch of a nearby apple tree. When the worst of the crying, the kind that scrapes against the chest, tears the back of the throat, had stopped, to be replaced by intermittent, stuttering sobs, Resnick reached for her hand, the one in which a sodden Kleenex was tightly balled, and she clutched at his fingers as if they were all that could prevent her from falling.
Clung to them until they hurt.
'Do you know,' she said a little later, letting go of Resnick's hand, accepting the handkerchief that he offered her, wiping her face and blowing her nose.
'Do you know, he would never lift a finger in this garden? Not as much as mow the lawn. These trees, the flower beds, all of the shrubbery down along the south wall, that was all me. My work. I even used of course, he used to get it at a discount, he would do that1 even used the fertiliser the company made, you know, the one where he worked. Whose goods he sold. It could have been anything, you see. Kitchenware, clothing, anything, just as long as it was something he could sell. It didn't matter that… it didn't matter that… it was used to make things grow.'
Resnick was ready; he shifted his weight and caught her as she half-turned, her body, stiff and thickening into middle age, falling across him, his arms supporting her, her brown hair harsh and soft against his neck.
Over the top of her head, he could see Lynn standing in the doorway, watching; after a while she turned back into the house.
The telephone rang and then was still.
Sarah Farleigh straightened and, shakily, got to her feet. 'I'm sorry. Thank you. I shall be all right.'
Resnick smiled a wan smile.
'I shouldn't be surprised if Lynn hasn't made some tea.'
She looked at him.
