Good Morning, Midnight (31 page)

Pascoe produced the coin and slipped the book into his pocket.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, let’s get on. Can’t be much more.”

“No, there’s not and I can manage,” said Dolly smiling. “I’m sure you haven’t come out to Cothersley just to act as a beast of burden.”

He noted the implied question and saw no reason not to answer it.

“That’s true. In fact, I’d be grateful if you could help me with some directions. I’m on my way to see

Mrs Maciver at Casa Alba. How’s she bearing up, by the way?”

Dolly made a wry face and said, “Not very well, I gather. I haven’t seen her myself. She’s not very keen to have company. Almost chucked David out of the house.”

“Let’s hope I have better luck,” said Pascoe. “Now if you could point me in the right direction…”

She led him outside and gave him his directions with an admirable succinctness, then, as he thanked her and made to leave, she said, “Yesterday you sounded pretty certain Pal shot himself. Is there some doubt now? I mean, with you coming here and asking questions… I only ask because, naturally, there’s all kinds of rumours flying round the village and I know my brother would be grateful if he could scotch the wilder ones with a bit of authority.”

“Yes, I can see that. But my job’s just to get information to pass on to the coroner and to do that I’ve got to ask questions,” Pascoe prevaricated. “Best way to deal with rumours is to ignore them and wait for the inquest.”

“But what do you think, Mr Pascoe? I mean, do locked-room mysteries really happen outside detective novels?”

“Believe me, real life is infinitely more incredible and unpredictable,” said Pascoe. “Good day, Miss Upshott.”

As he drove away, he could see her in his mirror still standing by the church gate, looking after him.

Nice woman, he thought.

And she gave good directions too, he acknowledged as after a pleasant two-mile drive through rolling English countryside, liberally wooded with oak and elm and lightly dotted with properties, some old, some new, all substantial, he spotted what had to be Casa Alba.

The name had conjured up a picture of some version of Costa del Holiday villa, but its style, though distinctly Spanish, was the kind of Spanish that acknowledges winter and rough weather. It was a solid-looking two-storey building, burnt umber in colour, with balconied bedrooms and what looked like serviceable shutters, and a shallow pitched hip-roof of richly ochrous tiles. In front of it was parked a car.

Gotcha! thought Pascoe.

As he drove slowly up the long gravelled drive, it occurred to him that a good socialist should be feeling the odd pang of indignation that such a deal of space and building was squandered on two people, but all he could manage was a twinge of old-fashioned covetousness. Ellie would have done better, but then Ellie wouldn’t have liked the house anyway. Surprisingly for one so determinedly contemporary in outlook, her architectural tastes ran to ivied brick and ancient beams. She would have thought Casa Alba with its green shutters, its curved balconies, its blue tennis court and its kidney-shaped swimming pool, was discordant here and vulgar anywhere.

To Pascoe however it looked just the job. Ivied brick and ancient beams in his experience usually went hand in hand with icy draughts, uneven floors, deficient damp courses, smoking fireplaces, and an ambience more suited to rodent than human life. Happily, unless he won the lottery, this division of taste was unlikely to put much of a strain on his marriage.

The parked car, he saw as he got nearer, was a BMW 3 Series hatchback, and there was someone sitting in it, a woman he didn’t recognize. He drew up behind her, got out and stooped to her window, smiling.

She didn’t smile back. She didn’t do anything.

After a moment he tapped gently on the window.

The woman lowered it an eighth of an inch.

“What?”

“Mrs Maciver’s out, is she?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea when she’ll be getting back?”

“No.”

The window closed.

She was a well-made woman in her thirties, not overweight but with the athletically muscular look of a tennis or hockey player. She was probably quite good looking but unfriendliness didn’t do her any favours, emphasizing the strong jaw and shrinking the full lips to a tight line.

He had a wander round the house, glancing through the windows. It looked cool and comfortable inside, big chairs and sofas in soft white leather, just the job for relaxing in with a chilled San Miguel when your throat felt dry as an old don’s wit. Should have taken his chance with the blue beer at the Dog and Duck.

When he got back into his car, he was still undecided what to do.

He would like to talk to Sue-Lynn, but he didn’t want to waste any more time hanging around waiting. The day Dalziel had given him to check things out was running away fast and he was still as far as ever from having any coherent reason for keeping this investigation going. All he’d discovered was that Maciver relationships were marked by divisions, disloyalties, dislikes and distrusts. Bit like the Balkans. Stretches of fragile peace beneath which the old hostilities and hatreds gently simmered, waiting to burst out. But was there anything unusual in this? What family didn’t have its scar tissue? His certainly did.

With the Macivers, however, there was a focal point. Kay Kafka. You were either with her or against her. You either worshipped or reviled.

No question which camp the Fat Man was in. The woman seemed to have him, in Pal Junior’s phrase on the tape, deeply magicked. Ten years ago it was clear he’d taken over the case of her husband’s suicide to make sure she was protected. And somehow he’d made all the venomous accusations contained in the son’s tape go away.

But so what? Did any of this raking over of ten-year-old ashes have anything to do with today’s case? Pascoe couldn’t yet see how, hoped he never would. Perhaps the answer was in the cassette that Dalziel had given him, but he still felt reluctant to listen to it. All he wanted now, he told himself, was to be able to say, Yes, it was definitely suicide, and get back to his statistical analysis without having to follow the trail any deeper into the caverns measureless to man of Dalziel’s psyche.

But he couldn’t deny the denizens of his own caverns, particularly that insatiable curiosity about human motives and make-up which had led him into the police force in the first place. Who really was the abuser here and who the abused? Which was the more important spoor to follow-that mesmeric quality which Kay seemed to bring to bear on most men, or the obsessional element clearly present in Pal Junior’s statement?

Only one way to find out, and after all he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

He ejected Charles Trenet’s Greatest Hits from the car tape deck, took Dalziel’s cassette from his pocket, inserted it, and sat back to listen.

I was born Katherine Dickenson but I always got Kay.

I was an only child, I think. I seem to recall a baby when I was still very small, but it went away and nothing was ever said about it .

Maybe it was just some neighbour’s child my mother looked after for a while.

I never dared ask in case I found myself disappearing the same way .

My birth certificate says I was born in Milwaukee but we must have left there long before I started registering places. We seemed to move around a lot. Going where the work was, my mother told me when I was old enough to ask. But it always felt like we were leaving some place fast rather than going some place else we wanted to be.

My father was a sudden man; not bad tempered so’s you’d notice, and not violent, at least never to me. But sudden. And unchangeable. No debating. He’d make up his mind and that was it. I think this happened at work a lot. He’d do his job well enough till one day someone would ask him to do something he didn’t care to do, and he’d say no. No reason given. And if his boss said do it or leave, he’d leave. Then he’d come home and say, “Pack your bags, we’re moving on.”

I got to hate it if ever Pa showed up early. Ma and I would hear the door and whatever we were doing, we’d freeze.

Place we stayed longest was Springfield, Massachusetts. We were living in a trailer park. “Just temporary,” Pa said, “till we find something better.” That was Pa. First place he called temporary was where we got closest to being permanent.

I was fourteen when we moved to Springfield. I did well at school but always thought I’d be out of there soon as I was able and getting a job. Then one day Pa told me I was staying on and going to college. No explanation, no argument. Like I said, sudden.

That’s the way he died, too. And my mother. I was seventeen, going on eighteen, all fixed to start college in the fall, down in Hartford. That’s in Connecticut, next state south. Pa’s choice. He said there was plenty of work in Hartford and he was planning to move us there anyway. Planning! Maybe after a life of suddenness he’d decided to try forethought. Maybe that was what distracted him, starting to think ahead at last, and he stopped paying attention to what was close up, like the truck he pulled in front of, joining the interstate.

They were killed outright. When I got the news I must have gone into some kind of trance because I don’t remember much else till the funeral was over and suddenly I found I was surrounded by strangers, all concerned for my future. I heard myself telling them it was OK, I’d been going to stay with my aunt in Hartford when I went to college, so now I would just move in with her permanent. Someone asked why she hadn’t been at the funeral and I said she’d been on vacation in Europe and by the time she was contacted it was too late, but I’d spoken with her on the phone and she was expecting me in a couple of days.

What made me do this, I don’t know. Maybe it was Pa in me, not caring to be told what he should do.

They all bought it, everyone thinking someone else knew more of the details, and all of them probably glad to be rid of a problem that wasn’t really theirs.

There was a bit of money, more than I’d expected, enough to get me settled in Hartford but a long way short of enough to get me through college. I’d been going to get some work anyway, but now I really needed it.

That’s how I first got involved with the Ashur-Proffitt Corporation. A-P’s main plant wasn’t too far from the house where I boarded and my landlady told me they were always looking for canteen staff for the night shift, which suited students, long as they didn’t need much sleep. Well, I’ve never been a bed-bug, three hours a night does me and anything extra I can make up by cat-napping.

I started in the kitchen but soon I was waiting on tables. They looked after their people at A-P and that canteen was like a good-class diner, with the execs using it as much as the line workers. Not so many of the suits around at night, of course, but always some.

The man in charge of the whole corporation was Joe Proffitt. His grandfather had started the business way back. Like Maciver’s it had grown, but much faster and further, and the Proffitts had kept a controlling interest through all the development. He moved in pretty rarefied circles so we didn’t see much of him though I got to know him later. His man on the spot was Tony Kafka, still young but definitely the kind of guy stopped you talking when he came into a room. He often dropped into the canteen at night. I was told exactly how he liked his coffee served.

Funny in view of what happened later, but to start with I didn’t care for him much. He was friendly enough, but not really seeing me as anything but a skinny waitress. He used to make jokes about my figure, saying someone ought to feed me up, how did I expect to keep a man if I didn’t give him something to get a hold of?

The one I liked was Frank Phillips. He was a computer whiz in Accounts, so not much cause for him to be around nights, but soon he started showing pretty regular.

He wasn’t much older than me, still in his early twenties, but a real high-flier and he seemed to know everything. The word cocksure was made for him in any and every sense. Gorgeous to look at and I guess he knew it. Never short of admirers so when he started admiring me, I was flattered. He seemed genuinely interested in me the way I was, asking about my family background and what I was doing at college. Deception’s habit-forming and I’d got used to answering family questions vaguely. But when he said, “Dickinson, from Massachusetts… not related to Emily by any chance?”-instead of telling him I wasn’t really from Massachusetts and spelt it with an “e” anyway, I heard myself saying, “Distantly, I think. But we don’t exchange Christmas cards.”

I don’t know why I said that. Yes, I do. I was a skinny no-account waitress and I wanted to make myself interesting.

We’d looked at some of Emily’s poems in the American Literature module on my course, but after that I really started to get into them. Stupid, eh? All because of something some cute guy says.

To cut to the chase, what was always going to happen happened. We went out a couple of times. He said he was crazy about me, I was certainly crazy about him. When we went to bed he produced a skin. I took it off him and threw it aside. He said, “You sure?” I said, “No problem.” I guess he thought I meant I was taking care of things. What naive little me meant was, this is for life, isn’t it? What need to take precautions?

And when I found I was pregnant, I really believed the news would have him lighting cigars and jumping for joy.

Well, the only thing he jumped for was the door and the only thing he lit was out.

I didn’t see him for a week and when he did make contact with me it was to offer to pay for a termination.

I told him, no way. By this time I’d learned he was the company stud, but it made no difference to the way I felt. I just thought that once he got used to the idea of being a father, he’d see it was time to settle down.

Days of complete silence followed, became weeks. Finally after a month I sank my pride and made enquiries. That’s when I learned he’d got a transfer to one of A-P’s overseas subsidiaries.