Dusty Death (7 page)

She would spend a few minutes in the chapel before she went to the sparsely furnished room she loved so much. Probably she'd say her night prayers there, letting that warm, dark silence envelop her like an insulating cocoon. Then she'd be able to hop straight between the cool, welcoming sheets, without kneeling with her elbows on the sides of the bed. She'd take a hot drink to her bed, and try to read a few pages of her book before she fell asleep and let it crash to the floor.

Sometimes she missed the communal worship the nuns had conducted together in the priory, with the thin, high singing rising to the vaulted stone ceiling, the ritual of the service, the togetherness of the sisterhood, and God looking down upon them from the altar.

But not often. She liked the work here. She knew she was needed, and she knew that she was good at the work, at the combination of nursing and listening and sheer hard, grinding toil, which was so necessary if people were to have dignity and consolation in death. She would sleep deep and easy tonight.

Sister Josephine looked down at the still, wasted face which would be dead by the weekend. He might even die tonight; the doctor had increased his morphine again today. She placed both of her hands on top of his single, pitifully bony one for an instant and said a prayer for him. Then she put the headphones back on their hook above the unconscious man, holding one of them to her ear for a moment to hear the announcer wrapping up the live broadcast.

It was then that she caught the name of the soloist. Matthew Hayward. She told herself that it needn't necessarily be
her
Matthew Hayward, that it was a common enough name, that her Matt surely wouldn't have been good enough to scale pianistic heights like this.

But even as she told herself these things, she knew that she was wrong. And with that knowledge, she was back in a world she thought she had put behind her for ever. An alien, dangerous world, where evil had lurked and she had been a very different person. A world where Sister Josephine, servant of God and comforter of the sick, had not even existed.

And suddenly she knew that she would not sleep soundly after all through this night.

Matthew Hayward took his final bow, held out his arms towards the audience in genuine, astonished appreciation of their reception, and left the platform.

His own part in the evening was finished, but the orchestra had still got Beethoven's seventh symphony to play to conclude the concert. It would take the audience a little while to settle again, after the excitement of his performance in the Emperor concerto. He felt a selfish pleasure in the thought of the whole of the Hallé orchestra having to wait because of the excitement he had caused.

Matthew was beginning to settle into the role of virtuoso.

Whilst he was performing and receiving his applause, he had been borne along effortlessly on wings of adrenalin. He could have played on for hours, could have risen from the stool and beamed and bowed and held out his arms appreciatively towards his listeners indefinitely. Now he was alone in the corridor, with the sounds of an audience settling and the orchestra retuning beyond the double doors through which he had made his final exit. He felt suddenly very tired.

He had been tense all day as he waited for this concert, his first concerto with the Hallé. The Emperor: that was starting at the top all right! And he'd brought it off, there was no use dousing what he had done with false modesty. The reactions of the audience and the musicians had been there to prove it. But he realized now how much his performance had taken out of him. He was still on a high, would need to sit and wind down slowly in his dressing room. He certainly needed a rest. It would be only prudent to take it easy for a while before he drove the forty miles back to his house on the edge of the Ribble Valley.

He was startled to discover two people in his dressing room. He found himself fumbling for the words which would dismiss them. ‘You shouldn't be here, you know. It's not your fault, I'm sure, but you shouldn't have been allowed to get into the dressing rooms. There's a strict—'

‘It's all right, sir. Our presence here is quite in order.' Peach held out his warrant card, saw that the man was still too excited to focus upon it, and said, ‘We're not journalists. I'm Detective Chief Inspector Peach and this is Detective Sergeant Blake. We're here to speak to you about a non-musical matter.'

Matthew's brain reeled. He was in no condition to deal with this. Not now. He needed to savour his triumph, to shut his eyes and think of what he had done, to come back to this dull earth slowly, like a man descending from a light aeroplane after a flight in the clear skies over Everest.

He couldn't direct his mind back to the mundane concerns of a stocky, bald-headed policeman now. Not in this precious hour of his triumph. Matthew Hayward said, ‘Can't this wait until tomorrow? I'm really in no state now to give you accurate information.'

‘I'm afraid it won't wait, no, sir. That's why we've made the journey over here from Brunton at this hour. Had it not been urgent, we would have seen you at your own house in the morning.'

Matthew registered dimly that they were from his own area, that they knew where he lived. The first shiver of apprehension troubled his elation. ‘I – I can't think what you can want with me. I think you must have the wrong person.' He looked round the bare, rectangular room as if seeing it for the first time, trying to convey what he was still too modest to put into words, the idea that the dressing room of a virtuoso was not the context for police activity.

Lucy Blake said patiently, ‘You mentioned information, Mr Hayward. That is why we are here. We think you are very probably in a position to give us certain information. Information that we think might be quite vital to an important investigation.'

Matthew looked wonderingly into the young, attractive face with its frame of rich chestnut hair. She didn't look like a policewoman to him, with that open, unlined face, and the crisp white blouse and straight maroon skirt emphasizing her curves. He realized that he had hoped when he saw her in his dressing room that she was a fan. He said, ‘I think this must be a case of mistaken identity. I can't think that I have any information that can be of any possible use to the police.'

Peach said, ‘Do you drive a silver Vauxhall Vectra saloon, registration number MZ51 CBV?'

‘Yes. I've had it for several months. Look, if this is a motoring offence, there was scarcely any need to come—'

‘No offence, sir. No motoring offence, at any rate.' Peach let the suggestion of something ominous hang in the air, watching the face above the winged collar and the evening suit as if it was of absorbing interest to him.

‘If it isn't motoring, I can't think what on earth it could be. I've been preparing for this concert pretty intensively for the last week or two, as you can perhaps imagine. I can't think that—'

‘It isn't recent, sir, this information we need from you.' Peach managed to make that news sound very sinister indeed.

Matthew Hayward could hear the rhythms of Beethoven beginning to thunder, majestic but muffled, from the concert hall, which seemed suddenly very far away. He said, ‘How – how long ago are we talking about? The period of this information which you keep mentioning, I mean.'

Peach nodded, as if confirming something to himself, choosing a more oblique angle of attack now that he had the man's attention. It was in his nature to conduct most interviews as attacks, even those with perfectly innocent people. And this man might be very guilty indeed, if they were lucky. ‘This silver Vauxhall Vectra, registration number MZ51 CBV. You've now admitted to ownership of the vehicle. Were you driving it last night, sir?'

‘I really can't remember.' Matthew realized as soon as he'd said it that it was a mistake.

‘I see. We'll wait until the recollection returns to you, then, shall we?' Peach looked at his watch. ‘We're talking about twenty-four hours ago. It shouldn't take very long.'

Matthew Hayward fought hard to gather his wits. He had moved from relative unknown to eminent soloist to police suspect in such rapid succession that his emotions were reeling. And his brain seemed to be a victim of those emotions. It wouldn't work as he wanted it to. As he needed it to, indeed: he didn't like the watchful observation of this contrasting pair.

He said. ‘I'm sorry. This has been a stressful evening for me, and for a moment I couldn't cast my mind back, even for a day. But yes, I did go out in the car last night. for an hour or so. I recall it now. Bought an evening paper, I seem to remember.'

He was talking too much in the effort to recover his ground. Percy Peach liked that: people gave away more of themselves than they wished to when they talked too much. He said, making it a statement rather than a question, ‘You drove into the centre of Brunton. Took a very odd route indeed, for a musician going innocently about his business.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘I think you do, Mr Hayward. But I'll refresh your memory for you, since it seems to be working so patchily at the moment. You drove round a redevelopment site. An unlit area. A no-go area for drivers, actually, because of the heaps of rubble and God knows what else which are left after the demolition of buildings. A dangerous area, indeed, in the darkness. Dangerous even for those who were familiar with it in the days when rows of houses stood there.'

It was a random arrow, but it struck home. Matthew Hayward looked at him with racing senses, then stupidly said the only thing he could think of. ‘I'm free to drive where I want. This isn't a police state.'

Peach smiled at him; Lucy Blake was reminded of a cat relishing the splayed limbs of a mouse beneath its paw. ‘No. The police are merely pursuing their enquiries. And you're merely helping the police with those enquiries, Mr Hayward. The duty of every good citizen. No one has cautioned you, as yet. No one has placed you under arrest.' He spoke as though that was only a matter of time. ‘But it does excite our interest, when we find someone prowling around in a place like that at dead of night.' It had been just before nine o'clock in the evening, according to the uniformed PC's report, but a DCI was surely allowed a little artistic licence. ‘We have acquired certain experience over the years, you see. And experience teaches us that people who drive into areas like that are usually up to no good.'

An experienced lawbreaker would have told him to piss off, or worse. But this was not an experienced lawbreaker, and Peach knew his man. Hayward was thoroughly discomforted by now. With the conviction draining out of his voice, he said, ‘I didn't do anything wrong last night. There was no reason for you to be following me.'

‘You weren't followed, Mr Hayward. You were observed. By a man patrolling the scene of a serious crime. You would have been questioned on the spot about your presence there, if you hadn't made off so hastily. Suspicious, that, the speed at which you departed.' He looked at DS Blake and they nodded their agreement on that, like stage policemen confirming their suspicions.

Matthew Hayward was in no condition to decide whether their gesture was theatrical or not. He said, ‘I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't intend to do anything wrong. I was – well, I was curious, that's all.'

Suddenly and without any warning, Peach beamed at him, his round face splitting almost from ear to ear beneath the black moustache, revealing teeth that were disconcertingly white. It was much more unnerving to Matthew than his previous frowns. ‘Curious, Mr Hayward? Now what was there to be curious about in a dark, dreary and deserted place like that?' Peach nodded his relish at the alliteration, as if he had discovered hidden depths within his resources, and was pleased by them.

Matthew couldn't recall how he had been brought to this point. At the outset, he had never intended to reveal what he was now going to say. After fifteen minutes with this man, there seemed no alternative. ‘I read about the body which was found there on Monday. It gave the details of the place in the evening paper. I was – was sort of drawn to the place.'

‘And why was that, sir?'

Matthew wanted to say it was just curiosity, to brazen it out, whether they believed it or not. They couldn't do much about it if he did, whatever they thought. But somehow he didn't think he was up to brazening it out. Not here. And not with this man. He turned away from those penetrating dark eyes, but when he looked into the mirror, he could see the two of them behind him, observing him as if he was some specimen under a microscope. It was almost worse than facing them directly. He said very quietly, ‘I thought I might have known that girl. A long time ago.'

The seconds seemed to drag like minutes as he watched for a reaction from those faces in the mirror in front of him. When Peach spoke, he was as quiet as the flustered man in evening dress had been. ‘There was nothing in the press release to say this was a girl, Mr Hayward.'

‘I'm sure there was. I'm sure I heard on the radio that the body of a girl had been found when—'

‘There were no details given, beyond the fact that the body was female. They were deliberately withheld. I did the release for the media myself with the press officer. But the interesting thing for us is that you are quite right, Mr Hayward; this was a young woman. So now you must tell us how you knew that.'

‘I didn't know.' This was worse than he had expected. He couldn't see a way out of it.

Lucy Blake leaned forward on her chair and said gently, ‘You'll have to do better than that, Mr Hayward. You must see that.'

He looked directly at her. She seemed to be trying to help him. It was a relief in any case to look away from those gimlet black eyes beneath the bald dome and into this softer, less aggressive face. ‘I – I thought I might have known her once. A long time ago.' His voice seemed even to him to come from far away, as if someone else were speaking.