Still Waters Read Free Page A

could cup one of Hannah’s breasts.
    â€œSeriously,” she said, “what did you think of them?”
    â€œThey were okay. I liked her. Quiet, but she seemed nice enough. She’s fond of you. Alex, I’m not so sure. Small doses, maybe.”
    â€œAnd together, as a couple?”
    â€œI don’t know … they seemed to get on well enough, I suppose.”
    Hannah turned over to face him, dislodging his hand from her breast. “He’s a bully, Charlie. He bullies her. It upsets me to see it, it really does.”
    Slowly, she rolled away from him and when Resnick reached out for her he felt her tense against his hand.

Three
    At a quarter to six that morning, the air was raw; mist silvered across the flat expanse of the park and the Asian taxi-driver waiting for Resnick at the corner of Gloucester Avenue sat rubbing gloved hands.
    â€œWhy don’t you leave some of your things here?” Hannah had suggested once. “There’s plenty of room. Then you could go straight to work without having to get us both up at the crack of dawn. You could walk it in ten minutes.”
    But there had been the cats—there were always, for the foreseeable future, the cats. So whenever Resnick stayed over the alarm was set for five thirty and, one of his older jackets he’d forgotten aside, Hannah’s wardrobe remained her own. Despite his assurances that she didn’t need to get up with him, she persisted in doing so, making coffee for him and tea for herself; once Resnick left, taking a second cup back to bed and reading and dozing her way through the next hour.
    Resnick’s return was always greeted with preening disdain by the largest of his four cats, Dizzy presenting him with a proud backside and running ahead of him along the length of stone wall that skirted the drive, jumping down and waiting with studied impatience by the front door.
    By the time Resnick had showered, changed, fed the cats, made toast and more coffee for himself, and driven the short distance across town to the Canning Circus station, it was close to half past eight. Carl Vincent had more or less finished getting the night’s files ready for Resnick’s inspection and was wolfing down a bacon and egg sandwich he’d fetched from the canteen. In the corner of the CID room, on the cabinets alongside Resnick’s partitioned office, the kettle was simmering, ready to make tea for the assembling officers.
    â€œMuch activity?” Resnick asked.
    Vincent swallowed too hastily and came close to choking. “Not really,” he finally managed. “Quiet. One thing, though. Those paintings we thought someone was trying to lift a few months back. One of those big houses in the Park. April, was it? May?” He opened the file and pointed. “Here. Someone broke into the place last night. Had them both away.”
    Resnick recalled the occasion clearly; he even remembered the paintings. Landscapes, both of them, quite small. Around the turn of the century? Somebody called … Dalzeil? Dalzeil. He didn’t think it was pronounced the way it looked.
    He remembered waiting outside the house for the intruder to leave, others keeping watch over the side fire escape and the rear. Except that when Jerzy Grabianski let himself out of the house it was by the front door and the holdall he was carrying proved to contain nothing but a Polaroid camera, a torch, and a pair of gloves.
    â€œKnew him, didn’t you?” Vincent asked. “Some connection?”
    Aside from the fact we’re both Polish, Resnick thought, ancestry anyway? And, he might have added, that we both top six foot and are heavy with it. The first time he had seen Grabianski, it had been a little like walking into a room and coming face to face with your double. Save that he was a copper and Jerzy Grabianski was a professional criminal, a thief.
    â€œWe pulled him in a few years back,” Resnick said, “along