Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (7 page)

“
What
is
there
in
places
almost
empty
of
matter
,
’
she
read
. ‘
And
whence
is
it
that
the
sun
and
planets
gravitate
towards
one
another
without
dense
matter
between
them
?”

‘
Gravitate
towards
one
another
…
’
She
spoke
aloud
,
holding
the
page
in
her
hand
,
hearing
footsteps
,
hearing
a
gentle
rattle
at
the
door
,
as
the
light
from
the
beam
faded
and
a
shaft
of
sunlight
crossed
the
windows
.
She
remembered
it
was
Thursday
,
breathed
with
relief
,
putting
down
the
page
,
hearing
her
own
daughter’s
voice
, ‘
I
wondered
where
you
were
,
Mama
,
’
and
as
the
child
came
,
laughing
,
into
the
room
,
she
laughed
too
and
said
, ‘
It’s
Thursday
.
Papa
has
gone
to
collect
the
logs
,
darling
.
’
She
gathered
her
child
into
her
arms
,
and
they
left
,
because
‘
Papa
doesn’t
like
people
being
in
the
laboratarry
,
does
he
,
Mama
…
’

She
felt
her
daughter’s
soft
arms
around
her
neck
.
As
they
crossed
the
kitchen
garden
in
the
sunlight
she
noticed
the
lettuces
were
ready
for
eating
.

The click of her heels echoed along the corridor. Berenice glanced down at her new black boots. Investigating Officer’s boots, she thought. Much too warm, of course, Mary warned me that Maidstone always has the heating on, but stilettos aren’t going to work in a Major Incident Room, and my old shoes are too dowdy…

She
pushed the door open in front of her. ‘Morning everyone.’

‘Ma’am,’
came the murmured answer from the assembled team.

‘For
those of you who haven’t met me,’ she began, surveying the room – paper coffee cups, open notepads, lap-tops, phone-things, several pairs of eyes fixed on her – ‘I’m DI Berenice Killick. Thanks for being here. Shall we start?’

Dutiful
nods of heads in front of her. She glanced at DC Mary Ashcroft, who flashed her a quick grin.

‘OK.
You know the background. You’ve got the SOC team reports there?’ More dutiful nods. ‘Murdo Maguire. Physicist. Worked at the lab on the edge of town. The East Kent Lepton Research Institute. Initial reports suggest drowning subsequent to a fall from the old lighthouse. However…’ She paused, scanned the faces. ‘Forensics are showing injuries prior to the fall into the sea. Bruising to the skull, brain bleeding too. Brian?’

A
middle-aged man with thin silvery hair nodded behind his thin silvery spectacles. ‘We’re waiting for the final X rays,’ he said. ‘But everything we’ve seen so far suggests he was struck, perhaps with a fist. He either fell or was thrown. Cause of death was drowning, there’s significant water in the lungs.’

There
was a scratch of pens on notepads, a flurry of typing onto keyboards.

Berenice
had been standing, but now she perched on a chair. ‘Other things you need to know. There’d been threats to the lab. Couple of incidents of broken windows. Nothing stolen. And hate-mail. The odd note delivered, and a spate of e-mails too, accusing them of interfering with the order of the universe, that kind of thing. As you know, they’ve got a particle collider down there, smashing things… The chaps that work there take this for granted, apparently, that the lunatic fringe get upset about black holes and stuff, the universe imploding, the end of the world and it’s all their fault…’ She smoothed her jacket, waited for the note-takers to catch up. She noticed that Mary wasn’t taking any notes at all, sitting there all cool, sipping from her paper cup.

‘The
threats might be connected to a family of low-lifes who are parked on the edge of the site. Caravan dwellers, though not travellers as such. DC Ashcroft, do you want to fill us in?’

Mary
put down her cup. ‘A family called Voake. When I say family, it’s one kid, a daughter of about fifteen, and a father. No apparent mother. The father, Clem Voake, may be connected to a warehouse raid last week at the docks at Dover, but we’re drawing blanks at the moment. And why he’s living rough when that kind of villainy seems to be worth a bob or two, we don’t know. It’s probably unconnected, but it seems odd he’s on the edge of the lab when they’ve had all this trouble. He’s got previous, too, did a stretch for robbery over in Herne Bay six years ago.’

‘Murdo
Maguire,’ Berenice began again. ‘He was forty-three. Very well thought of in his field. He’s published papers on these meson things. Muons, neutrinos...’ She avoided Mary’s gaze. ‘He’d been with this lab for years. Family – one wife, she lives locally. According to one of his colleagues, it wasn’t a happy marriage. Estranged, he said, but still sharing the same house. No siblings. He grew up in Aberdeen. Parents deceased. The wife – ’ she scanned the room. ‘Who did the visit?’

A
young DS raised his hand. ‘With DC Cowling,’ he said. ‘We told her we were waiting for more tests.’

‘So
she thinks he flung himself into the sea. Listen, Ben, as soon as the results come through, you need to see her again. The rest of you, the schedule is up on the wall. The car’s secured, but it can be towed now. The tower site is secured. I want an assessment of the tower, I want CCTV of the seafront, and there’s a team on the victimology. It’s all up here. Any questions?’

The
room was hot and airless. She clicked off the power point, told them, once again, that she’d be in her office – ‘And if anything – Anything – comes to light, anything you want to say, however small… I’m here. Got it?’

And
then the room was empty. She went over to the windows, reached up and opened a tiny, high-up pane. The door clicked behind her.

‘Thought
you’d need a coffee, Boss.’

‘Mary
– ’

‘Thanks
aren’t needed.’

‘Thanks
anyway.’

DC
Mary Ashcroft gave a smile.

Berenice
went back to her seat and sipped at the paper cup. ‘The seaside’s not for wimps, is it?’

Mary
laughed. ‘You never took this job for an easy life. Though, it’s true, you don’t get drownings in inner city Leeds.’

Berenice
dabbed white foam from her upper lip with a finger. ‘There was always the canal.’

They
sat in silence. Outside there was birdsong and the occasional rev of an engine.

‘Estranged,’
Berenice said.

‘You
what?’

‘I
was thinking about that word. This dude washed up on the beach – they were estranged, someone said. But still sharing a house.’

‘And?’

‘It’s kind of weird. What do we know about the wife?’

Mary
shrugged. ‘Ben said you can never tell when you’re bringing that kind of news. She was very quiet, he said.’

‘He’s
right. You can never tell.’

‘Biscuit?
There are two in here and I should only eat one.’ Mary passed her a chocolate digestive. ‘Well, I shouldn’t be eating any really.’

‘You’re
not dieting again?’

Mary
nodded. She pulled at her sweater, which was fluffy and turquoise. ‘We’re like a comedy double-act. DI Killick and DS Ashcroft, the thin black one and the fat white one…’

Berenice
laughed. ‘You’re not fat.’

‘It’s
all right for you. You don’t eat. I’d say it was heart-break, but you didn’t eat in Leeds either.’

Berenice
looked at her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not heart-break. Not over him.’

‘You don’t even drink.’

‘Apart
from alcohol,’ Berenice said.

‘And
you wonder why you get cystitis.’

Berenice
shook her head. ‘That’s just stress, that is.’

‘You
don’t need to prove yourself.’ Mary got to her feet. ‘Remember that. You were a great copper in Leeds, and you’ll be a great copper here.’

A
brief squeeze of her shoulder, then the door closed behind her.

Alone,
Berenice picked up her phone. ‘Hi, yes, it’s DI Killick. DIO on the Hythe drowning. Can we get those fibres over to the lab asap? Thank you.’

She
rang off. She stared at her computer screen. A great copper, she thought. One day, maybe, I’ll believe it.

‘And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken…’

Chadwick
looked out across a sea of heads to the thick wooden beams above them. The morning sun shone through the stained glass of the East window behind him, throwing patches of colour on to the plain white walls.

‘This
is the word of the Lord,’ he finished.

The
congregation murmured the response. The organ played the opening notes of the Psalm, the choir began to sing. Chad took his seat again.

“The
voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of Glory thunders…”

In
his mind he began to rehearse his Sunday sermon. He had prepared a homily about Adam and Eve, about exile from the Garden of Eden, and how we must remember that, even if we have left God, he hasn’t left us, and that in our suffering he is by our side.

From
his seat he could see Virginia, sitting in the shadows at the back of the church, her head bowed. As he looked at her, the words in his head seemed to lose all their meaning. That God is by our side, he thought. An empty hope.

The
reader was now reaching the ending of the Epistle. It would be time to read the Gospel and then to give the sermon. Chadwick stood up. In his mind he heard the words, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to live forever…’

He
stuttered through the Gospel, Matthew, Chapter Four, Jesus tempted by the Devil. There was an expectant hush in the church. He glanced at his notes, saw nothing there of any help, and began to speak.

‘We
are the fallen,’ he said. ‘It is a necessary part of our humanity that we have fallen from Grace. To be human, we cannot be otherwise…’