The Price of Love and Other Stories (5 page)

After the Toronto concert, I developed an annoying ringing in my ears – tinnitus, I believe it’s called – and it drove me up the wall with its sheer relentlessness. But worse than that, one night, when I went to bed, I heard as clear as a bell, louder than the ringing, the opening chords of “The Magic of Your Touch,” as if someone were playing a piano inside my head. It went on until the entire song was finished, then started again at the beginning. It was only after swallowing twice my regular nightly dose of Nembutal that I managed to drift into a coma-like stupor – and, more important, into something approaching blessed silence. But even then, I could still hear faint strains in the distance, like ripples in still water, and when I awoke, the ringing and the music were still there, louder than ever.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the song out of my head. Every minute of every day and every night, it played, over and over again, in a continuous loop tape. The pills helped up to a point, but I found my night’s sleep shrinking from four hours to three to two, then one
if I was lucky. Only with great difficulty could I concentrate on anything. No amount of external noise could overcome the music in my head. I couldn’t hold intelligent conversations. People shunned me, crossed the street when they saw me coming. I started muttering to myself, putting my hands over my ears, but that only served to trap the sound inside and make it louder.

One day, in my wanderings, I found myself back in the part of the city where it all began, and I retraced my steps as best I could remember them. I don’t know what I had in mind, only that this was where the whole thing had started, so perhaps it would end here too. I don’t know what I expected to find. I suppose I was beyond rational thought.

Soon, the landscape became a familiar one of decaying warehouses, oily river, and factories venting steam and belching fire. I saw the junkyard looming ahead, beyond the crossroads, and followed the path through the towers of scrap metal, rusty cars, engine blocks, tires, axles, and chrome fenders.

Then I heard it again. Uncertain at first, hardly willing to believe my ears, I paused. But sure enough, there it was: “The Magic of Your Touch,” played on an out-of-tune honky-tonk piano, the music outside perfectly matching the loop tape in my head.

I could see the brazier now, a patch of light at the end of the narrow path between the columns, and when I approached, the wizened old black man looked up from his keyboard with fire dancing in his eyes. Then I saw what I should have seen in the first place: the flames weren’t reflections of the brazier’s glow; they were
inside
his head, the way the music was inside mine.

He didn’t stop playing, didn’t miss a note.

“I thought I’d killed you,” I said.

“Lots of folk make that mistake,” he replied.

“Who are you?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“You took my song.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“No matter. Now it’s taken you.”

“I can’t get it out of my head. It’s driving me insane. What can I do?”

“Only one thing you can do, and you know what that is. Then your soul come home to me, where it belong.”

I shook my head and backed away. “No!” I cried. “I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming. This can’t be real.”

But I heard his laughter echoing among the towers of scrap as I ran, hands over my ears, the insufferable melody I had come to detest as much as I had once loved it now going around and around for the millionth time in my head, gaining in volume, just a fraction of a decibel each time, and I knew he was right.

When I got back to my hotel room, I took out paper and pen. You have no idea what a struggle it was to write this brief account with the music loud, relentless, precise, and eternal inside my head, what an effort it cost me just to wring out these few words. But I must leave some kind of record. I can’t bear the thought of everyone believing I was mad. I may be desperate. I may be beyond reason. But I am not mad. It happened exactly the way I told it.

Now, like a man who can’t get rid of hiccups might contemplate slitting his throat, I have only one thought in mind. The pills are on the table and I’m drinking whisky, waiting for the end. He said my soul would go home to him, where it belongs – a bargain I now know I made when I stole his song – and that scares the hell out of me. But it can’t be worse than this eternal repetition, driving out all human thought and feeling. It can’t be. I’ll have another slug of whisky and another handful of pills, then I’m sure, soon, the blessed silence will come.
Amen.

T
he man was very dead. Even Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, who hesitated to pronounce death even when a victim was chopped into little pieces, admitted that the man was very dead. He also speculated as to time of death – another rarity – which he placed at between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. that same evening.

All this took place in the spacious study of the Vancalms’ detached eighteenth century manor house, on the western fringe of Eastvale’s chic Dale Hill area, sometime after midnight. The man lying on the carpet was Victor Vancalm, a wealthy local businessman, and a large bloodstain shaped like the Asian subcontinent had spread from his skull and ruined the cream shag carpet.

The stain came from a massive head wound, which had been inflicted with enough force to splinter the cranium and drive several sharp shards of bone into the soft tissue of Victor Vancalm’s brain. Blood spatter on the flocked wallpaper and on other areas of the carpet testified to the power of the blow. A brass-handled poker lay on the carpet not far from the body, surrounded by a red halo, as if it were giving off heat.

The rest of the study was in just the sort of mess Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks would have expected after someone had been
pulling books from shelves and overturning furniture looking for valuables. From one wall, a gilt-framed painting of the Blessing of the Innocents had been removed and dumped on the floor, exposing a small safe, the door of which hung open. It was empty. Someone had smashed the computer monitor, which sat on a desk by the window, and emptied the contents of the drawers on the floor. The scenes-of-crime officers had cordoned off the study, from which they jealously repelled all comers, even Banks, who stood at the door gazing in, looking rather forlorn, a child not invited to the party.

In the living room across the hall, discreetly out of the sightline of her husband’s body, Denise Vancalm sat on the sofa sniffling into a soggy tissue. Music played faintly in the background, the andante movement from Schubert’s
Rosamunde
quartet, Banks noted as he returned to the room. Chandeliers blazed in the high-ceilinged hall, and outside in the night, police officers were going up and down the street waking up neighbours and questioning them.

The problem was that Hill Crest was one of those expensive streets where the houses were not exactly cheek by jowl as in the poorer neighbourhoods, and some of them had high walls and gates. Hardly conducive to keeping an eye on your neighbour. Hill Crest was aptly named, Banks thought. It stood at the crest of a hill and looked out west over the River Swain, along the meandering valley where the hillsides of the dale rose steeper and steeper as far as the eye could see. On a clear day, you could see the bare limestone outcrops of Crow Scar, like skeleton’s teeth grinning in the distance. The skull beneath the skin.

But this wasn’t a clear day. It was a foggy night in November, not long after Bonfire Night, and the police officers outside blew plumes of mist as they came and went. Even inside the house, it wasn’t that warm, Banks thought, and he hadn’t taken his overcoat off.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Vancalm,” he said, sitting in an armchair opposite her, “but I do have to go over this with you again. I know you talked to the first officer on the scene, but –”

“I quite understand,” said Denise Vancalm, crumpling her tissue and dropping it on top of the copy of
Card Player
that lay on the glass coffee table. The magazine looked out of place to Banks, who had been expecting something more along the lines of
Horse and Hound
or
Country Life
. But each to her own. He knew nothing about Victor and Denise Vancalm; he didn’t move in those kinds of circles.

“You say you arrived home at what time?” Banks asked.

“Half past eleven. Perhaps a few minutes after.”

“And you found your husband … ”

“I found Victor dead on the study floor, just as you saw him when you arrived.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“What did you do first?”

A V formed between her eyes. “I … I slumped against the wall. It was as if all the air had been forced out of me. I might have screamed, cried out – I really can’t remember.” She held out her hand. “I bit my knuckle. See.”

Banks saw. It was a slender, pale hand with tapered fingers. The hand of an artist. She was an attractive woman in her late thirties, with tousled ash blond hair falling over her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face, perfect makeup ravaged by tears and grief. Her clothes were expensive casual, black trousers of some clinging, silky material, a burgundy blouse tucked in at the waist. A waft of delicate and expensive perfume emanated from her whenever she moved.

“And then?”

“I called the police from the hall telephone.”

“Not an ambulance?”

She shook her head impatiently. “I dialed 999. I can’t remember what I said. I might have asked for all of them.”

She hadn’t, Banks knew. She had asked for the police, said there’d been a murder, and the emergency operator had dispatched an ambulance. Banks could see what Mrs. Vancalm meant. Even
someone who has never watched
Taggart
or
Lewis
would be hard pushed to miss a murder scene like the one in the study, a body as obviously
dead
as Victor Vancalm’s. But people panic and call an ambulance anyway. Denise Vancalm hadn’t.

“What did you do next?” Banks asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose I just sat down to wait.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. People started to arrive very quickly. The paramedics. A police patrol car. Your assistant. Those crime scene people. You must know how long it took. I’m afraid I lost all sense of time. I was in a daze.”

“That’s understandable,” said Banks. He knew that it had taken seven minutes from the emergency phone call to the arrival of the first patrol car – a good response time, especially given the weather. “How many people knew about the wall safe?” he asked.

Denise Vancalm shrugged. “I don’t know. Victor always kept the key in his pocket, with all his keys. I suppose Colin must have known. Anyone else who visited the house, really.”

“Colin?”

“Colin Whitman. Victor’s business partner.”

Banks paused and made a note. “Where had you been all evening?” he asked.

“Me? Gabriella Mountjoy’s house, on Castle Terrace.”

Banks knew the street. Expensive, in the town centre, it commanded superb views of Eastvale Castle, rumoured, like so many others in the Dales, to have provided a brief home for Mary, Queen of Scots. He estimated it was probably a fifteen-or twenty-minute drive from Hill Crest, depending on the traffic.

“What were you doing there? Book club or something?”

She gave Banks a cool glance. “The Eastvale Ladies’ Poker Circle. It was Gabriella’s
turn
.”

“Poker?”

“Yes. Hadn’t you heard, Chief Inspector? It’s become quite popular these days, especially among women. Texas hold’em.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Banks, not much of a card player himself.

“Four or five of us get together once a month for dinner, drinks and a few games. As I said, it was Gabriella’s turn to host us this time.”

“How many of you were there tonight?”

She raised an eyebrow at the question but said, “Five. Gabriella, me, Natasha Goldwell, Evangeline White and Heather Murchison. I’ll give you their addresses if you like.”

“Please,” said Banks.

Denise Vancalm picked up her handbag and took out a sleek PalmPilot encased in tan leather. She read out the names and addresses. “Is that all?” she asked. “I’m tired. I –”

“Nearly finished,” said Banks. “What time did you arrive at Mrs. Mountjoy’s house?”

“I went there straight from the office. Well, I met Natasha in the Old Oak after work for a drink first, then I drove her over to Gabriella’s. It’s not far, I know, but I had the car with me for work anyway.”

The Old Oak was a trendy pub off the market square. Banks knew it but never drank there. “What kind of car do you drive?” he asked.

“A Mercedes Cabriolet. Red.”

Hardly inconspicuous, Banks thought. “Where was your husband?”

“He’d been away on a business meeting. Berlin. He was due back from the airport about half past seven.”

“Did you see him?”

“I haven’t seen him since last week. Look, Chief Inspector, I’ve had a terrible shock and I’m very tired. Do you think … ?”

“Of course,” said Banks. He had wanted to get as many of the preliminaries out of the way as possible – and whether she knew it or
not, the spouse was usually the first suspect in a domestic murder – but he didn’t want to appear as if he were grilling Denise Vancalm. “Is there someone you can go to, or would you like me to –”

She shook her head. “There are plenty of people I could go to, but believe it or not, I just want to be by myself.”

“You don’t … I mean, are there any children?”

“No.” She paused. “Thank God.”

“Right. Well, you clearly can’t stay here.” It was true. Banks had checked out the house, and whoever had killed Victor Vancalm and ransacked the study had also been through the master bedroom, separating the expensive jewellery from the cheap – not that there was much of the latter – and even going so far as to cut up several of Denise Vancalm’s most elegant dresses and strew them over the bed. It would take most of the night to process the scene.

“I realize that,” she said. “There’s a small hotel just off the market square, the Jedburgh. My husband often suggested it for clients when they happened to be visiting town.”