Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (24 page)

He
twitched his nose at the smell. Animal, fox, perhaps. Wood smoke too, though the grate when he touched it was cold and damp. Rain dripped through gaps in the ceiling, edged through the broken windows.

He
tried to remember how it was, all those years ago, when his mother had brought him here. He was six, seven, perhaps. A visit to her Uncle Voake, she’d said. An old man, sitting by this very fire. He remembered warmth, and light. He remembered the pattern on the carpet, dark red with curled green leaves, long since rotten under foot. Uncle Voake had been vague and kind and whiskery. ‘Are you looking after your Mother, boy?’ he’d asked him.

Clem
hadn’t known what to reply.

How?
he’d wanted to say. My father is so much bigger than me. When he goes for her, there’s nothing I can do.

‘I
did try once – ’ he’d begun to say, but his mother had flashed him a warning glance. She knew how that had turned out, and she didn’t want him telling anyone.

And
then there’d been a woman bringing in cake and lemonade, not his mother’s aunt, a paid woman. And they’d sat by the fire and eaten, and he’d wondered, is this how life is for other boys? This feeling, of warmth, and safety and kindness.

He
put his finger through a hole in the glass window. I wouldn’t have called it those words, but those are what I meant. And those are what I mean now, now that Digby’s gone and this house can be mine, and I can make a home for Lisa and me and it will be warm and safe like it was when it was just Mum and me…

A
clap of thunder broke overhead. A gust of wind threw raindrops down the chimney.

Three
years later, Mum was dead. Cancer. And I was left with Dad. Not that I stayed around much after that.

He
stepped across the kitchen into the hall. There was the cellar entrance, its door swinging half off its hinges. He put one foot on the wooden steps, then another.

What
do you hope to find? Manny had asked him. Poking around in the old house? Then Voakes would have left nothing behind.

At
the last step he tripped. His foot twisted, and he found himself sitting on the cellar floor in two inches of rainwater. He bashed his fists on the ground either side of him. He wanted to howl with rage, at the step, at the rain, at the doubters, the ones who said nothing would come to him, he didn’t deserve any of it, he didn’t deserve to raise his own child, the ones like his dad who said he’d brought it on himself, the ones like his Mum…

Not
that memory. Not that one. He’d remember her as she’d been here, in a pink dress, floating in the sunlight, sipping tea with her whiskery uncle. Not how she was later, when they got home, and he was trying to say but I didn’t say nothing, Mum, I didn’t tell him nothing, and then later, curled into the corner, his hands over his ears, and her screaming at him, like she always did, about him heading for a beating again, ‘you never learn do you, you stupid or something, am I going to have to learn you all over again?…’

He
could remember the smell of the wall, the bare plaster damp and cold against his cheek.

He
sat in the puddles of the cellar and looked around him. Then he got up and began to search.

Chapter Fifteen

Helen
placed the breakfast things in the dishwasher. She sat at the kitchen table with a second cup of tea.

Tobias.
It seemed too terrible to think of, that that boy could be accused of such an awful thing.

At
least Chad has gone with them, she thought. He’ll make everything OK. He’ll be there, quiet but forceful, good in a crisis.

Virginia
will be glad he’s there with her.

There was a flurry of birdsong from the eaves outside, next-door’s cat aggressing the house martins, again. It had rained overnight and the garden was green and damp in the morning sunlight.

The
book was on the table in front of her. She opened it at random.

“…
of Water does each Thing have its Beginning,” she read. “It is Prime Matter, the Abyss of Darkness, the Residence of Behemoth…”

She
thought about Liam’s hands on these pages.

She
wondered what Chad was doing now.

At
breakfast, they’d hardly spoken. He’d been packing papers into a briefcase, murmured something about notes for his sermon. Should I have asked him, she wondered now. Is that what a vicar’s wife should do, express interest in what her husband wants to tell the faithful on a Sunday morning?

She
stared into her cold tea. It was her mother who’d put it into words, all those years ago, and of course she’d ignored her. ‘But surely, darling, if you can’t even share his beliefs…?’

There
was no point even trying to tell my mother. There was the time we’d talked, me and Chad, about the rare moment in a dance when one simply
is
the dance, when one’s self merges into the role, into the physical being of the role… and Chad had said, ‘that’s what I mean by God.’ She’d never forgotten it, the way he took her hand, the deep undertow of shared belief.

She
got up, poured her cold tea down the sink. She stood at the window, watching the flickering sunlight.

It
had gone, that shared delight. And now all I can think is that perhaps Chad should have married someone who was capable of believing in the same God as his.

Chad stared up at the window, which was high in the gloss-painted wall, and grimy with neglect. He looked back to Virginia. She was standing by the coffee machine, prodding hopelessly at its buttons.

‘I
think it needs money,’ he said.

They
had been ushered into this room, ‘relatives’ room,’ the desk sergeant had said, and were now left alone. There was a sporadic loud hum from further down the corridor, a vacuum cleaner, perhaps.

‘You’d
think they’d let me in there with him,’ she said. ‘What does that solicitor know about any of it?’

Chad
fiddled with the machine. ‘Fifty pence,’ he said. ‘Do you want any?’

She
shook her head. She met his eyes, briefly, looked back to the carpet, which, like the chair she now settled on, was a faded orangey-brown.

Outside
the hum seemed to draw near, then faded away again. Chad sat opposite her. ‘Murdo,’ he said. ‘And the Professor. And the Book…’

She
gazed at him. ‘What about them?’ she said.

‘What
has brought them to this?’ he said. ‘What is the connection that has proved so dangerous?’

She
shook her head, but he went on, ‘It was you who said it. About secrets. When I mentioned Elizabeth – ’

She
gave a harsh laugh. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘There’s secrets enough where that one’s concerned.’

‘Well?’
He sat upright, his gaze fixed on hers. Confessional mode, Helen always called it. She reckoned he could get anyone to divulge anything when he took up his Confessor’s pose. She claimed he’d try it with her, he never knew what she meant, but it used to make her laugh.

Used
to.

He
wondered when he’d last heard that laugh of hers, so bright and full of life, her eyes dark with joy, with desire…

Weeks.
Months. She has been absent from me all this time.

He
felt a sudden, overwhelming, wave of loss.

‘Are
you all right?’ Virginia’s voice sounded loud in the sparse room.

He
blinked, tried to smile.

‘It’s
not your fault we’re here,’ she said.

‘No,’
he agreed.

‘You
asked me about secrets,’ she said. ‘The big secret, the one I can’t fathom, is what he saw in her.’

‘Elizabeth?’

‘Who else? Who else came prancing and smirking into my life like that?’

‘Did
– Did they have an affair…?’

‘An
affair?’ Virginia gave a harsh laugh, her eyes fixed on his. Then she said, ‘Murdo always denied it. Always. The fact that Iain was after her, everyone knew that. But the rumours about my husband… they wouldn’t go away. It was demeaning – ’ she spat the last word. ‘Every time I walked into the lab, the glances, the women exchanging looks…’ Her words faded away. ‘Still, now she can be happy with Hendrickson after all.’

‘Both
of them, you’re saying?’ Chad stared at her. ‘Iain and Murdo, both of them involved with her?’

She
seemed to wilt in the chair opposite him. ‘I’ll never know. Not now. He always denied it. But there was something…’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘You can tell when someone’s lying, can’t you?’

‘Me?’

‘I mean, generally. When someone’s holding something back, it always betrays itself somehow.’

Chad
considered this. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

The
hum outside started up again, now much nearer.

‘So
– what happened?’ Chad asked.

She
sighed. ‘It was so long ago. I’ll never know really. I would see her from time to time, flaunting herself with Iain. And then Murdo was so odd at home. They were very good friends, Iain and Murdo,’ she said. ‘Iain must be suffering too.’ She gathered herself, went on, ‘And then suddenly, it was all over. She took the job in Italy. Next thing we heard she was married. Murdo never mentioned her again. Life went on. Until…’ She sat straight-backed, drumming her fingers on the seat beside her.

‘Until
your child died…?’

She
nodded.

‘And
what brought her back now, do you think?’

She
looked so weary, he began to regret his questioning. ‘Who knows? Her marriage seems to be over. And a job came up here. She’s ruthless, you know? Whatever she wants, she gets…’

‘And
Professor Moffatt?’

She
blinked at him. ‘What about him?’

‘I
just wondered if he, too, was anything to do with…’

‘With
Elizabeth? Why would he be?’

‘I
just mean, as he’s now dead too…’

‘Oh.
Yes.’ She gazed at him, blank-eyed. ‘I can’t understand… it makes no sense,’ she said.

‘No,’
he agreed.

She
sighed. ‘Well, Iain’s welcome to her now.’

‘Her
maiden name,’ he said. ‘Van Mielen.’

‘What
about it?’ She was looking at him sharply.

‘It’s
in that book. The book you gave me, the physics one – ’

‘She
gave it to my husband. It’s from her family.’

‘How
is it from her family?’

She
shrugged. ‘A long story, and a dull one, actually. One of her ancestors was a cousin of the author. It ended up with the American side. Murdo’s friend Neil Parrish at the lab, he told me. There was a local branch of the family, but her lot went to America before the Great War. That’s what he said. Anyway, it amused her that Murdo was so interested in it. That’s all.’ She shifted on her chair. ‘Now you can see why I was glad to give it to you.’

‘Yes,’
he said.

He
felt she was about to say more, but instead she looked down at her lap, at her hands clasped tight together there. A thin shaft of sunlight caught the edge of her hair, her face, her clear, freckled skin. She raised her eyes to his, and he saw their pale clarity, and thought how odd it was, that beauty could shine through pain.

In
the distance a door slammed. There were footsteps along the corridor. A uniformed officer put her head around the door. ‘D.I. Killick will see you now,’ she said.

“My work has been a quest for the smallest, the purest, the most true particle of all, and my methods have been honed through the trials of the laboratory…’

Helen
turned the page.

‘
…and the test of my own soul. It has come the time to set these words to the page, for darkness hovers above the surface of the world, and I fear for my dear wife and children…

She
put the book down.

Darkness,
she thought. Was Johann seeing the signs of war?

She
went over to the window. Outside clouds had gathered, and the sea was flecked with white.

I
wonder if Chad thinks that way. ‘My dear wife…’

If
he does think that way, he doesn’t show it. ‘My dear wife and children…’