Jardine only kept them waiting five minutes and then greeted Resnick with a firm handshake, a surprising show of warmth. “Afraid we might have got off on the wrong foot last time, Inspector. Put it down to the strain of what had happened, shall we? But now, come in, come in. Please, sit down. Inspector, um, Constable, what can I get you? Tea? Coffee? Mineral water?”
Both Resnick and Khan declined. Khan took his notebook from his inside pocket as he sat down, uncapped his pen. The veins crisscrossing Jardine’s face were even more pronounced, Resnick thought, than before. He let his eyes slide again along the rows of photographs on the wall, one at least for each year.
“Well, it looks as if unofficially as yet of course, but it looks as if the report will put us in the clear. The staff here.” Jardine treated them to his best PR smile, the one more normally saved for the occasional middle-class parent or visiting minor politicians. “I spoke with Mrs. Parmenter only an hour ago. Fortuitous, really. It seems as if she’ll be giving us a clean bill of health.” Abruptly, he leaned forward, arms resting on the surface of his desk, serious now, smile set aside. “Of course, it does nothing to minimize the awfulness of that boy’s death.”
If he expected agreement, a sharing of sympathy, congratulations even, he got nothing; Resnick let his weight ease back in the chair a little more and crossed his legs, deep creases in the trousers of his suit.
Nervous under Resnick’s gaze, the director flicked at the dandruff on his shoulder, tugged at the lobe of his ear. He looked from Resnick to Khan-and back again. “The, er, officer, DC Khan, explained there would be questions you might wish to put to me …”
“Your staff.”
“Sorry?”
“There are questions I need to put to your staff.”
“Of course, if …”
“Mr. Matthews and Mrs., Miss Peck.”
One of Jardine’s hands swotted the air in Khan’s direction. “As 1 explained to the young man here, unfortunately neither of them is currently available …”
“Unfortunately?”
“I’m sorry, I …”
“You said, unfortunately.”
“Yes, I …”
“Not fortunately?”
Jardine seemed to be suddenly short of breath. “Inspector, I don’t see …”
“Miss Peck, she’s on holiday?”
“Part of her annual leave, yes.”
“Arranged a long time ago?”
Jardine’s head swiveled partway towards the chart attached to the wall behind him, annotations and arrows, neat in colored inks. “Usually such things are arranged, you know, at the beginning of the year.”
“So there was nothing sudden about Miss Peck’s decision to take her leave now?”
“Oh, no.”
The green lettering denoting her absence looked, to Resnick, remarkably new; he raised an eyebrow in Khan’s direction and the DC made a note in his book.
“You’ve no idea, I suppose where she’s decided to take this leave? Abroad, maybe? At home, redecorating the bathroom, something like that?”
Jardine shook his head. “My staff, their private lives …” He shrugged, as though they could be none of his concern.
“And Mr. Matthews,” Resnick said, relaxed still, quite relishing this, Jardine’s discomfort, relishing it in a way that was unusual for him and perhaps not exactly understanding why. “I understand he’s off sick?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Tummy bug? Flu? Something more serious?”
Jardine was giving his ear a little more attention; when his hand brushed, inadvertently, against his hair, another little fall of dandruff showered down.
“What is wrong with him, Mr. Jardine?”
“I believe the doctor’s note mentioned nervous exhaustion.”
“Brought on by what happened here to Nicky Snape?”
“The note gave no indication …”
“But that’s likely the reason, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know if it’s wise to conjecture …”
“A member of your staff, you would have realized if he was unduly upset. He found the body, didn’t he? That morning I spoke to him, he seemed distressed.”
“Naturally. Paul is a very caring man. Dedicated.” For a moment, Jardine’s eyes switched anxiously towards Khan, as if unnerved by the movement of his pen. “Something like that, he would be bound to be affected.”
Resnick was nodding agreement. “Then there’s nothing else, no other reason that you can think of, no other cause for Mr. Matthews to be suffering from-what was the expression? — nervous exhaustion?”
“No.”
“He wasn’t apprehensive, for instance, about the results of the inquiry?”
Jardine shook his head. “He had no need to be. He would have known that. And rightly. As I said, Mrs. Parmenter …”
“I meant the police inquiry. DC Khan here. Inspector Aston.”
“Certainly not.”
“And Miss Peck, as far as you know, she wasn’t unduly concerned about Inspector Aston’s findings?”
“If she was, she certainly never expressed these concerns to me. Quite the reverse, in fact. After her interview, as I remember, she said that she thought it had been less of an ordeal than she had feared.” Jardine was feeling secure enough to try a smile again. “I’m sure in no small way due to your colleague here.”
Resnick nodded. “I see. You’ve no idea, then, why she left messages twice at Inspector Aston’s office, or why, when she finally did get to speak to him at his home on the day that he died, they apparently talked for almost three-quarters of an hour?”
Jardine’s head dipped forward and he closed his eyes. You crafty old bugger, Khan was thinking, looking across at Resnick, you sat on that one well enough.
“Mr. Jardine?” Resnick said.
A vein at the side of Jardine’s head was beginning to throb. “I’m sorry, I know nothing about that at all.” He held Resnick’s stare for several moments. “I don’t even know if it’s true.”
“I’d be obliged,” Resnick said, getting to his feet, “if you would let DC Khan have home addresses and telephone numbers for both Mr. Matthews and Miss Peck. You might as well furnish them for the rest of the staff, while you’re about it. I can’t be sure how many I might need to speak to and it’ll save time later on. Oh, and if you could arrange for a copy of that medical certificate you mentioned?”
Angry but uncertain, Jardine gave it a last try. “I don’t see that you have any right, Inspector …”
“Mr. Jardine.” Resnick leaning towards him, over him, his own anger taking over. “Not only has a boy died while in your care, a police officer, the one looking into that death, has been murdered. Just how much right do you think I need?”
Twenty-eight
The first few times Lynn had seen Petra Carey it had been at the hospital, the psychiatric wing, a forlorn section towards the back, close to the kitchens. After that it had been in the large Victorian house the therapist shared with several others; group sessions were held in the lower rooms, individual consultations on the upper floors.
The room in which they met was arranged so that Lynn sat facing a high window, too high to see anything more than the top branches of trees across the broad street, snatches of roofs, the sky. There was a lot of sky. Lynn’s chair was comfortable, but not too much so, with polished wooden arms and a back that curved away, a decently cushioned seat. Petra Carey sat to one side, a similar chair placed at right angles, a low square table between them, which always held flowers; today they were yellow tulips, already beginning to bend and scoop their swanlike necks. Tulips or not, the room, Lynn thought, smelled of roses just the same. Was it Petra Carey’s perfume or something that she sprayed into the air?
Sometimes Lynn would turn her head and look at the therapist when either of them spoke, but more’ usually she stared ahead, following the slowly shifting kaleidoscope of clouds.