Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (31 page)

He
found he couldn’t quite remember what she looked like. He leaned back, his hands behind his head.

Is
that it, then? An amusement? Just another way of wasting time –

The
mobile at his side rang.

‘Phelps,’
he said.

‘Hi.
It’s Helen.’

And
at her voice, there’s a tumble of images, a rush of desire.

‘Oh,’
he breathes. ‘Helen.’

She’s
speaking now, something about Lisa, ‘she’s gone, Liam, she’s just walked out of the door, still wearing my shirt, dog at her heel…’

‘Gone?’

‘I couldn’t stop her. Short of violence.’

‘No.
I can see that.’

‘Liam,
I don’t know what to do. She’s self-harming, too, her arms are in a terrible state.’

‘What
did she say?’

‘She
said I don’t know anything about it. Which is true, of course. I don’t know who to tell. The police – ’

‘Finn
made me promise,’ he said. ‘Last night.’

‘Oh
God.’

His
screen flashed in front of him, luminosity at one nine seven two bunches –

‘Are
you there?’ she said.

‘Yes,’
he said.

‘Well?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Come to the lab,’ he said. ‘Lunchtime. If you can get through the police cordon… We’ll have a think.’

‘Oh.’
There was a silence. ‘OK. See you then.’

He
clicked off his phone.

Jonas
was staring up at him. ‘Don’t you start,’ he said. ‘It’s bad enough with Sinead’s voice in my head.’ He ruffled Jonas’s ears. The dog rolled his eyes in disapproval.

Helen sat at her kitchen table, staring at her phone.

Maternal
feelings? she wondered. Perhaps this ache is just that, a sense of loss at finding that Lisa had gone.

I
don’t know what to do. I can’t let that poor girl go back to whatever she fled from.

I’ll
have to tell Chad, she thought. He knows the police better than I do, he can talk to them.

She
thought about lunchtime. She wondered what to wear.

Iain sat down as if the chair itself were unreliable.

‘Dr
Hendrickson.’ Berenice tried her warm smile. ‘Thanks for coming in.’

‘I
had to.’ He looked around him, as if the walls themselves were hostile in some way. ‘Two deaths….’ He began.

‘Yes,’
she agreed. She gestured to the corner of the room. ‘This is DS Mary Ashcroft. She’s recording our session today. I hope that’s OK with you…’

‘Yes,’
he said. ‘Of course. I just want to help.’

He
was dressed as if he’d made an effort. A well-cut grey suit, his blonde hair neatly brushed.

‘You’ve
brought another threatening note,’ she said.

He
nodded.

‘How
did it get to you?’

He
shrugged. ‘It was pinned to the outer gates of the lab. We’re all tired of it. It was OK before anything bad happened, we all thought it was some random nutter, harmless, you know… and then there was Murdo…’ There was a choke in his voice. ‘And then Moffatt…’

Berenice
tried her warm tone of voice. ‘And what’s made you come in today, Dr. Hendrickson?’

‘It’s
the land dispute. It can’t be anything else. Digby Voake has just died, you see, Neil Parrish was telling me about it. And he owned the old house, old Mr Voake did, the derelict one over the wall, it’s been in their family for years. Anyway, Professor Moffatt had put in an offer on the land, and it had been accepted, and completion had already happened before Digby died. So the land, and the old house, now belong to Moffatt. And none of the Voakes realized this. Neil says it would have pleased Digby no end, to spite the rest of them.’

Berenice
nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Clem
Voake has parked his caravan just across the wall, near the old house. He’s furious with us. With Moffatt, but with the whole lab, really. Anyway, here’s the next note. I’m sure it’s from Clem…’

Berenice
picked it up by one corner. “Don’t think it’s finished,” she read. “The first tunnel brought the curse, and the second one will bring the flood.” ‘It’s like all the others,’ she said.

Iain
nodded.

‘Do
you know anything else about Clem Voake?’ she asked.

‘You
know Hank’s Tower? Well, there’s a rumour that he’s storing weaponry there. For sale, you know.’

Berenice
flashed a quick glance at Mary. ‘Anything else?’

He
glanced around him, again, as if fearful. Then he looked at her. ‘You have the book,’ he said. ‘The van Mielen book.’

A morning of meetings about results. Liam emerged, confused and weary, into sunlight. There was a uniformed officer by the main gate. ‘They said it would rain, Sir. Always wrong, aren’t they?’

‘Um,
yes, well…’ Was that her? Of course. That light step, low heels, navy blue trousers, a loose cardigan-ish thing, God, how could she be so sexy even in that?

‘…
Chap on the wireless this morning saying that it wasn’t that the instruments were too basic, it was that the weather had got more complicated…’

‘Yes,
of course, Officer.’

‘You
agree with that? A clever bloke like you?’

Liam
stared at him, blankly. ‘Um… no. Of course not.’

‘Good
thing too. If you lot in there are talking bollocks too, there’s no hope for the rest of us. Now who’s this? A lady friend of yours?’

Liam
nodded. ‘Yes, officer. A lady friend of mine.’

‘Liam.’
She brushed her finger against his arm. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Ma’am.’
The policeman touched his hat.

Liam
linked his arm in hers with a sense of pride. Sinead would have views, but he’d think about that later.

Chapter Twenty

Iain
turned the pages of the book as if looking for something.

‘I
haven’t seen this for years,’ he said, at last.

‘And
why is it relevant?’ Berenice said.

‘“And
how should it be, that a particle of light is at the same time subject to the forces of gravity?”’ he read. He tapped the page. ‘This is what they were working on, over the wall from our lab now.’ He passed it back to Berenice. ‘Gabriel Voake.’

Berenice
touched the leather cover. ‘And Clem?’

‘Clem’s
from a different branch. Gabriel’s lot moved away. Gabriel’s wife Amelia was the daughter of Johann van Mielen who wrote this.’

‘What
happened to Gabriel, then?’

‘That’s
the whole dispute. About the old house over the wall from the lab. It was the van Mielen’s house, Amelia lived in it, Gabriel married her. But then she disappeared, no one knows why. And he left too, people say he went to Germany, but this was the late twenties, early thirties, it would be an odd thing to do. And the house was empty for a while. Digby was some kind of great-nephew and he took it over, but he had no money. You’ve seen the state of it. So, I guess, when Alan put in an offer, Digby jumped at it. The Voakes might have thought they’d inherit it, but it seems he’d already sold it to Alan without telling them. You should also know that I put in an offer, but it was declined. I didn’t care that much, Moffatt was welcome to it.’

‘Why
did Professor Moffatt want it?’

Iain
stared at his hands. Berenice noticed the neat, clean cuffs of his shirt. He looked up at her. ‘The first, obvious reason, is that the lab needs more space. If he bought that plot of land, with the old house, we could expand into it.’

‘And
the next reason?’

He
chewed at his lip. ‘I’m a scientist,’ he began. ‘I’m a rational person. But…’

Berenice
waited.

‘There’s
something weird going on. Our results are off the scale…’ His hands were twisted together in his lap. ‘There’s a ghost, even…’ He threw her a smile, but it was thin, empty. ‘That book – ’ He pointed at it. ‘It’s connected to all this.’

Berenice
drew a breath, collected her thoughts. ‘This book belonged to Elizabeth Merletti.’

He
flinched at the name. Even Mary noticed it, Berenice sensed.

‘She
inherited it,’ he said.

‘She
gave it to Murdo,’ Berenice went on.

‘Of
course she would,’ he said. ‘She loved him.’

Berenice
waited.

‘We
all knew that,’ he said. ‘Of course she’d give it to him. But I imagine his wife has had enough of it. Which is why she gave it away.’

‘Tell
me,’ Berenice said. ‘Do you know when it stopped being the Scallop Tower?’

He
gave a thin smile. ‘Hank’s Tower? No one knows. Not even Neil and he knows everything. It must have just changed. No one even knows who Hank was.’ He seemed cold, wrapping his arms across his chest. ‘There were rumours of another tunnel, an older one, from the time of the book, you see, some kind of experiment. That was supposed to be near Hank’s Tower, but no one has found anything.’

‘Rumours
from where?’ Berenice glanced at Mary, who was still writing.

‘People
in the village. You’ve seen the hate mail. That’s what it means, about ours being the second tunnel, and how the first one came to no good, bringing curses on the land itself.’

There
was a silence in the room. Mary stopped writing, looked up.

‘You
ask me why I came here today.’ He looked at Mary, then back at Berenice. ‘It’s about all of it. The book, the Voakes, Elizabeth… There’s been so much pain. I want it to stop.’ He breathed, then said, ‘I became a physicist because I was drawn to all that order, explanation, rationality. Some kind of truth that you can rely on. But then, if you have hatred, and rage, a child who dies, like Amelia in the book, all that terrible loss… And her brother, of course, walking the landings in the old house and now – ’ He stopped, abruptly. He stared at his fingers in his lap.

‘And
now with you?’ she finished.

He
met her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not making any kind of sense… I’m really speaking out of turn. I should go.’

‘Hank’s
Tower - ’

‘We
used to go there. Murdo, Virginia and me. In the old days. We were friends, good friends, all of us… The sunsets from there… we saw the green ray once, you know, a kind of flash when the sun sets across the sea?’ He smiled to himself.

‘And
then, Elizabeth…’ Berenice prompted.

‘Ah.’
He seemed to wince. ‘Elizabeth.’

‘She
told me. About Murdo. And about you.’

He
stared at her. ‘She told you?’

Berenice
smiled. ‘We’re more broadminded than you’d think. If one woman falls in love with two men…’

He
smiled too. ‘Yes. Of course.’ His arms unwrapped themselves. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘And
now there’s just you. And her.’ Berenice wondered if she’d said too much.

He
flashed her a look. ‘I can’t imagine she said that.’

‘No,’
Berenice conceded.

‘She
loved Murdo more than anyone. More than anything.’ His gaze drifted towards the window, unseeing. ‘There are no winners. Not now. We’re all the poorer. All three of us. Four of us. The question is, how to carry on at all?’ He had grown pale, and his fingers began to drum against the table’s edge. ‘How to keep going, in this chaos, where there is only uncertainty. And ghosts…’

Berenice
wondered what to say.

His
gaze turned to Mary, as if surprised to see her there. ‘Well…’ He looked at Berenice. ‘I ought to go. I don’t want to waste your time. I thought I could make things better, but I’m no help, really, just going on about the past like this…’ He got to his feet. ‘I suppose I just thought the answer lay in the past, that somehow it all made sense, the book and the strange results and the old tunnel and the land dispute…’ He gave an empty smile. ‘But of course, it’s not like that in your world, is it. You’re looking for evidence. For straightforward examples of human behaviour. And you’re probably right.’