“And is there?”
As Resnick turned to face her, a middle-aged man coming out of the newsagent stopped and stared at the car, only slowly starting to walk away, Post rolled inside his hand. Resnick saw him and wondered what they looked like, himself and Lynn, another mismatched couple, caught in the middle of an affair, one of them married, most likely him.
He had observed couples often enough himself, had leaped, sometimes inappropriately, to the same conclusions. Most usually, though, he had been right: lovers caught in their own cold, sticky web.
“You think it’s the woman? Peck?”
“How d’you mean?” Resnick asked.
“Well, you know …”
“That he was having an affair? Bill?”
“That is what you were thinking, isn’t it? The path you’re going down.”
“But with Peck?”
“Why not?”
Resnick shook his head, came close to a smile. “He’d only known her less than a week.”
Lynn’s turn to smile. “Come on,” she said. “How long does it take?”
Instead of answering, Resnick turned towards the windscreen and stared out. What he was thinking of, what he was seeing, was Hannah that first time, walking across the front of the school towards her slightly battered red VW, pausing to speak to those two kids, firm enough, not without understanding; the way, after they had spoken, she had placed her briefcase on the roof of the car and then turned back to face him, that flash of red, visible in the swirl of her hair. Her smile.
How long does it take?
For a brief period-what was it? Four years ago now, slightly more? — he would have thought of Rachel Chaplin at that moment, after that question. For a long while, before and since, it would have been Elaine.
“Even so,” he said, “it’s doubtful Bill would have had the chance during the inquiry to speak to her alone.”
“The interview?”
Resnick shook his head. “Khan was there all the time.”
“Then it was to do with the inquiry, maybe something she felt she couldn’t say at her interview.”
“Because she was afraid?”
“Possibly, yes. Or maybe it was something she didn’t know at the time, that she only learned later.”
“Then why on earth did Bill break the habit of a lifetime and not note it down?”
They looked at one another along the front seat of the car. Three kids, one not much more than seven or eight, went past on roller blades, heads bent forward, arms swinging professionally out.
“You think it’s something personal, don’t you?” Lynn said.
“I don’t know. I suppose I do, but I still don’t see how that could have worked. Time, access …”
“Maybe,” Lynn said, “it wasn’t, you know, an affair. At least, not yet. What if there was just a connection, somehow, between them? Something they were just starting to-I don’t know what you’d call it-explore.”
“What? In his own house in the middle of the weekend with his wife in another room?”
“Wouldn’t some people find that exciting? The possibility of being found out.”
Resnick gestured with open hands. “I wouldn’t know.”
“And you’d know Bill Aston? Well enough to be sure?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No.”
“Him and his wife, they’ve got separate rooms, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Separate beds.”
“Uh-hum.”
“Do you know for how long?”
“Quite a while, I think. I’m not exactly sure. But that in itself doesn’t mean anything.”
Lynn smiled. “Surely it means something.”
Resnick knew: there were times after he had found out Elaine was having an affair that he had lain in their shared bed, unable to sleep, terrified that by accident or habit they might touch, impossible to erase the images his imagination had conjured up so vividly from his mind.
What had happened, Resnick wondered, in the Astons’ lives however many years it was ago?
“It is sex, then, isn’t it?” Lynn said. “If it’s not to do with the inquiry, it is sex.” She smiled ruefully. “One way or another, it usually is.” And then, a sudden catch in her voice. “It nearly got me killed.”
“That was different. He was some kind of psychopath.”
Lynn’s head was angled away but he heard her well enough. “Don’t forget, at first I wanted him.”
He drove then without speaking, back towards the center of town. He would call in at the Partridge, find out if the staff remembered how long Aston had stayed in the bar that night. Lynn sat with her hands clenched, mind churning, overbite of her teeth nervously worrying at the inside of her lip.
“You got business back at the station, or should I drop you near home, it’s not far out of my way?”
For the first time since they had moved off, she dared to look into his face. “Stop here,” she said.
“I can’t, not here. I’ll just go up to …”
“Charlie, stop here!” How long-if ever-since she had called him that?
No mistaking the urgency in her voice, Resnick made a left and a right and came to a halt on one of the narrow cobbled roads that run through the wholesale flower and vegetable market. One glance and he switched off the engine and waited.
Lynn not quite looking at him again, not yet; she was having a little difficulty breathing evenly. “This isn’t-I don’t suppose there’s ever a right time.”
Not knowing, partly knowing afraid of what was to come, Resnick’s stomach ran cold; for just a moment he closed his eyes.
“You remember,” Lynn said, “after the kidnapping, the rescue, all of that, something I said to you one day, we were having coffee, I …”
“Yes, I think so, go on.” When what he wanted to say was stop.
“I told you I’d been having these-I don’t know what you’d call them-nightmares, dreams, fantasies. You, my father, him, the kidnapper. All mixed up together. It was all because of what happened, of course, what might have happened. Would have done if you …”
“It wasn’t just me.”
“If you hadn’t saved me. It sounds melodramatic, I know, but that’s what you did.”
“Lynn.” Leaning a shade closer towards her now, though she was still keeping her body, her face angled away. “It could have been any one of a dozen officers. It just happened to be me.”
She laughed, suddenly and loud.
“What?” Leaning back again, taken by surprise.
“That’s what I say to my therapist.”
“And she says?”
“What might have happened doesn’t matter. What does is that it was you.”
He looked at her serious, still somewhat round face, though she had never put back the weight she had lost; short brown hair, wide brown eyes.
“I’m glad,” he said quietly. “Glad that you were safe. Glad that it was me.”
“Yes. Yes, I know.” Her voice so quiet it was almost lost under the noise of cars passing at either end of the street. “At least, I think I know.”
He had an instinct to take her hand and another which prevented him; instead she took his. “Charlie, I’ve got to get this sorted. I mean it’s stupid, I can’t go on like this. The way I’ve been lately, walking round you on, I don’t know, eggshells; at least that’s the way it seems.”
“All right.” Resnick nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“Nothing. I don’t think you understand. I don’t want to do anything. There’s nothing to do.”
“But, then …”
She squeezed his hand once, then let go. “I just needed to say, tell you what’s been going on in my mind, not all of it, the stupid details, but that I have been having these thoughts about you …”
“That doesn’t matter …”
“Charlie, I’ve thought about making love to you, but I know that’s not going to happen. Only in my mind.”
“Lynn …”
“I don’t think I even want it to happen. Not really. I know I don’t. But I had to say it, had to tell you. Because if I keep it all inside any longer, it’s going to explode.” Slowly, she lowered her face into her hand. “I’m sorry.”