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
