Still Waters Read Free Page B

with a nasty piece of work called Grice. Stolen jewelry, other valuables, cash, half a kilo of cocaine …”
    Vincent whistled. “They weren’t dealing?”
    Resnick shook his head. “Came on it more or less by chance and tried to get rid.”
    â€œStill, must’ve drawn some heavy time.”
    â€œGrice, certainly. Still away somewhere for all I know. Lincoln. The Scrubs.”
    â€œNot Grabianski?”
    â€œHe helped us nail somebody we’d been after a long time. Big supplier. We did a deal.”
    â€œAnd he got off? Nothing?”
    â€œA few months. By the time it came to trial …” Resnick shrugged. “Get yourself out to the house first call. If nothing else has been disturbed, clean entry, place looking more like it’s had a visit from an overnight cleaner than a burglar, Grabianski might be in the frame.”
    â€œRight, boss.”
    From the shrill version of “This is My Song” that came whistling up the stairs, Resnick knew DS Graham Millington was about to make an appearance.
    Hannah had said little more about Alex and Jane Peterson. She and Resnick had soon fallen asleep—the consequence of good food and good wine—and their morning had been too rushed and sleepy for much in the way of conversation.
    Sitting in his office now, shuffling papers, Resnick thought back to the previous night’s dinner, trying to recall any signs that would support Hannah’s accusation. Alex had been the more dominant, it was true; domineering even. He clearly felt his opinions counted for a great deal and was not used to having them contradicted: a consequence perhaps, Resnick thought, of talking to people whose mouths were usually stretched wide and crammed with metal implements.
    But while Jane had been quiet, she had scarcely seemed cowed. And when she had stood up to him about the Broadway event she was organizing, he seemed to take it well enough. Hadn’t he kissed her as if to say he didn’t mind, well done? While Resnick was aware that Hannah would probably regard that as patronizing, he wasn’t sure he altogether agreed.
    How long, Resnick wondered, had they been married, Alex and Jane? And whatever patterns their relationship had formed or fallen into, who was to say they were necessarily wrong? What best suited some, Resnick thought, sent others scurrying for solace elsewhere—his own ex-wife, Elaine, for one.
    He was mulling over this and wondering if it wasn’t time to wander across to the deli for a little something to see him through till lunchtime, when Millington knocked on his door.
    â€œOur Carl, called in from that place in the Park you were talking about earlier. Wondered if you might spare the time to go down there. Reckons how it’d be worth your while.”
    The photographs showed the paintings clearly. One was a perfectly ordinary landscape, nothing especially interesting about it that Resnick could see: sheep, fields, trees, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, a shepherd with white shirt and tousled hair. The other was different. Was it the photograph or the painting that had slipped out of focus? As Resnick continued to look, he realized it was the latter. A large yellow sun hung low over a plowed field patched with stubble; undefined, purplish shadows bunched on the horizon. And everything within the painting blurred with the tremor of evening light.
    â€œWhat do you think of them, Inspector?” Miriam Johnson asked. “Are they worth stealing, do you think?”
    Resnick looked down at her, a small keen-faced woman with almost white hair and an arthritic stoop, voice and mind still sharp and clear in her eighty-first year.
    â€œIt seems somebody thought so.”
    â€œYou don’t like them, then? Not to your taste?”
    When it came to art, Resnick wasn’t sure what his taste was. Which probably meant he didn’t have any at all. Though there were reproductions here and there in