Midnight Fugue

Synopsis:

The short time frame of British author Hill’s strong 24th Dalziel and Pascoe procedural (after 2008’s
The Price of Butcher's Meat
) maximizes suspense without sacrificing either characterization or humor.

Andy Dalziel, an irascible dinosaur of a police officer who’s only just returned to the Mid-Yorkshire force after recovering from a serious injury, is tracked down by Gina Wolfe, whose policeman husband, Alex, has been missing for seven years. Alex disappeared while under investigation by internal affairs, who suspected him of leaking information to a major criminal target. Gina was on the verge of having Alex declared legally dead, until she received a recent magazine photo clearly showing Alex or his double. Dalziel’s decision to assist Gina unofficially in finding out what became of Alex leads to his placing a colleague in jeopardy. Numerous subplots don’t slow the pace, a testament to Hill’s skill in putting all the pieces together.

The raindrops play their midnight fugue
Against my window pane.
Could I once more fold you in my arms
You should not leave again.

Richard Morland:
Night Music

accelerando

Midnight.

Splintered woodwork, bedroom door flung open, feet pounding across the floor, duvet ripped off, grim faces looking down at him, his wife screaming as she’s dragged naked from his side…

He sits upright and cries, ‘NO!’

The duvet is in place, the room empty, the door closed. And through the thin curtains seeps the grey light of dawn.

As for Gina, she hasn’t been by his side for… days?… weeks?… could be months.

The digital bedside clock reads 5.55. He’s not surprised.

Always some form of Nelson whenever he wakes these days: 1.112.22 3.33…

Meaning something bad.

Things go on like this, one morning soon he’s going to wake and the clock will read 6.66…

He is still shaking, his body soaked with sweat, his heart pounding.

He gets out of bed and goes on to the landing.

Even the sight of the front door securely in place can’t slow his pulse, even the shower jets cooling and cleaning his flesh can’t wash away his fear.

He tries to analyse his dream, to get it under control by working out its meaning.

He conjures up the men. Some in uniform, some masked; some familiar, some strangers; some wielding police batons, some swinging hammers…

He gives it up, not because the meaning is too elusive but because it’s too clear.

There is no one to turn to, nowhere to hide.

He looks out of the window into the quiet street, familiar from childhood, whenever that was. Now it seems strange, the houses skewed, the perspectives warped, all colour washed out, like a sepia still from some old horror movie.

He realizes he no longer knows where it leads.

Maybe that’s where salvation lies.

If he doesn’t know, how can they know?

All he has to do is walk away down that street. Once round the corner he’ll be somewhere nobody knows about. He will be free.

Part of his mind is asking, Does this make sense? Are you thinking straight? Is this the only way?

He makes one last effort at coherent thought, trying to find an answer by looking at the past, the trail that has brought him here, but the view is blocked by a small white box. For some reason it’s got a silver ribbon around it, making it look like a wedding present.

Maybe it was.

He tries to look beyond it, but it’s like staring into fog rolling off the ocean at dusk. The harder you look, the darker it gets.

Time to turn his back on that box, that fog, that darkness.

Time to walk away.

08.10–08.12

‘Shit,’ said Andy Dalziel as the phone rang.

In twenty minutes the CID’s monthly case review meeting was due to start, the first since his return. In the old days this wasn’t a problem. He’d have rolled in late and watched them bolt their bacon butties and sit up straight. But if he was late now they’d probably think he’d forgotten the way to the Station. So time was short and Monday-morning traffic was always a pain. Nowt that using his siren and jumping a few red lights couldn’t compensate for, but if he wasn’t on his way in the next couple of minutes, he might have to run over a few pedestrians too.

He grabbed his car keys and headed for the front door.

Behind him the answer machine clicked in and a voice he didn’t recognize faded behind him down the narrow hallway.

‘Andy, hi. Mick Purdy, remember me? We met at Bramshill a few years back. Happy days, eh? So how’re you doing, mate? Still shagging the sheep up there in the frozen north? Listen, if you could give me a bell, I’d really appreciate it. My number’s…’

As the Fat Man slid into his car he dug into his memory bank. These days, especially with recent stuff, it sometimes seemed that the harder he looked, the darker it got. Curiously, deeper often meant clearer, and his Mick Purdy memories were pretty deep.

It wasn’t a few years since he’d been on that Bramshill course; more like eight or nine. Even then, he’d been the oldest officer there by a long way, the reason being that for a decade or more he’d managed to find a way of wriggling out of attendance whenever his name came up. But finally his concentration had lapsed.

It hadn’t been so bad. The official side had been slightly less tedious than anticipated, and there’d been a bunch of convivial colleagues, grateful to find someone they could rely on to get them to bed when their own legs proved less hollow than they’d imagined. DI Mick Purdy had usually been one of the last men standing, and he and Dalziel had struck up a holiday friendship based on shared professional scepticism and divided regional loyalties. They exchanged harmonious anecdotes offering particular instances of the universal truth that most of those in charge of HM Constabulary couldn’t organize a fuck-up in a brothel. Then, when concord got boring, they divided geographically with Purdy claiming to believe that up in Yorkshire in times of dearth they ate their young, and Dalziel countering that down in London they’d produced a younger generation that not even a starving vulture could stomach.

They’d parted with the usual expressions of good will and hope that their paths would cross again. But they never had. And now here was Mick Purdy ringing him at home first thing on a Monday morning, wanting to renew acquaintance.

Meaning, unless he were finally giving way to a long repressed passion, the bugger wanted a favour.

Interesting. But not so interesting it couldn’t wait. Important thing this morning was to be there when his motley crew drifted into the meeting, seated in his chair of state, clearly the monarch of all he surveyed, ready to call them to account for what they’d done with their meagre talents during his absence.

He turned the key in the ignition and heard the familiar ursine growl. The old Rover had much in common with its driver, he thought complacently. Bodywork crap, interior packed with more rubbish than a builder’s skip, but — courtesy of the lads in the police garage — the engine would have graced a vehicle ten times younger and five times more expensive.

He put it into gear and blasted away from the kerb.

08.12–08.20

The speed of Dalziel’s departure took Gina Wolfe by surprise.

She’d been watching the house for signs of life, spotting none till suddenly the front door burst open and a rotund figure emerged. Don’t be put off by his size, she’d been warned, King Henry was fat too, and like the merry monarch Andy Dalziel used his weight to roll over everybody who got in his way. But she wouldn’t have expected anything so fat to move so fast.

He slid into his car like a tarantula going down a drain-hole, the old banger started first time and took off at a speed as surprising as its owner’s. Not that she doubted the ability of her Nissan 350Z to match it, but on unfamiliar streets she needed to keep him in sight.

By the time she belted up, eased out of her parking spot and set off in pursuit, the Rover had reached a T-junction three hundred yards ahead and turned left.

Happily it was still visible when she too turned. A short burst of acceleration closed the distance between them and she settled down three car lengths behind. Her wanderings that morning had given her some sense of the city’s geography and she knew they were heading towards its centre, probably making for the police station.

After seven or eight minutes, he signalled left. She followed him off the main road and found herself in a residential area, old and up-market from the look of it, with occasional glimpses of a massive church tower somewhere at its centre.

Ahead the Rover slowed almost to a stop. Its driver seemed to be talking to a woman walking along the pavement. Gina brought the Nissan to a crawl too. If he noticed, it would just look like a silly female driver terrified to overtake in this rather narrow street. A few seconds later, the Rover drew away once more. She didn’t have far to follow this time. A couple of hundred yards on, he turned into a car park marked
Cathedral Use Only
.

Another surprise. Nothing she’d been told about the man had hinted devotion.

She pulled in after him, parked in the next row, and slid out of her seat. He was slower exiting his car than getting into it. She studied him across the low roof of the Nissan. He looked preoccupied, anxious even. His gaze took her in. She removed her sunglasses and gave him a tentative smile. If he’d responded, she would have started to speak, but he turned away abruptly and strode towards the cathedral.

Once again his speed caught her unawares and she lost distance as she followed him. When he stopped to speak to someone at the door, she almost caught up. Then he vanished into the building.

Inside she looked for him in the main aisle along which most of the other arrivals were moving towards the High Altar. No sign. He surely couldn’t have spotted her and headed here as a diversion to shake her off? No, that didn’t make sense.

Then she saw him. He’d found a seat in the north aisle where the golden October sunlight filtering through the eastern windows did not penetrate. He sat hunched forward with his head in his hands. Despite his size he looked strangely vulnerable. Something very serious must be troubling him to require prayer of this intensity.

She sat down a couple of rows behind and waited.

08.12–08.21

When Gina Wolfe’s Nissan pulled out to follow Andy Dalziel’s Rover, fifty yards back a blue VW Golf slipped into place behind her. There were two people in it; in the front passenger seat a man, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, his skull close-cropped in a gingery stubble; alongside him a woman of similar build and feature, her short fair hair packed tight into curls that could have been sculpted by Praxiteles.

His name was Vincent Delay. The driver was his sister. Her name was Fleur. On first hearing this some people were amused, but rarely for long.

She had no problem keeping the bright red sports car in sight along the relatively straight main road. Not that visual contact mattered. On her brother’s knee was a laptop tuned to a GPS tracker. The bright green spot pulsating across the screen was the Nissan that she could see ahead, signalling left to follow the Rover. Fleur turned off the main road too and half a minute later braked to avoid coming up too close behind the red car. It was the Rover driver causing the hold-up. He’d slowed almost to a halt to exchange words with a female pedestrian. It didn’t take long. Now he was off again.