The Yeare's Midnight (41 page)

Himself, perhaps. Or someone he knew, someone he was close to.
The
people
around
us
define
us
and
bind
us
together,
Underwood thought again.
When
they
fall
away
we
pick
our
selves
apart.
The
killer
values
the
wit
of
strange
connections.
He
connected
Lucy
Harrington
with
something
else
he
was
looking
for.
Underwood looked at the rain thumping on the window; he thought of Julia, of his parents.
When
they
fall
away
we
pick
ourselves
apart.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered to himself. He turned to page seventeen of the
New
Bolden
Echo
: the page that contained birth, marriage and death announcements. His tired eyes scanned the page quickly. He discounted births and marriages, concentrating instead on the death announcements. The first two obituaries didn’t seem appropriate: they were written in the clipped middle-class prose that announced deaths as if they were changes in a cast list at an amateur-dramatics evening. The third obituary in the column grabbed his attention, though:

Underwood knew he had him. He recognized the dedication. It was from Donne’s ‘The First Anniversary’: the poem that the killer had written on Elizabeth Drury’s ceiling. This woman, whoever she had been – mother, grandmother – had died a year before this edition of the newspaper had been produced. So that was it. The killer had been commemorating the first anniversary of the death when, by chance, Lucy Harrington’s beautiful round eyes had illumined his grief.

Underwood reached over for his mobile phone and dialled the Incident Room. A woman answered.

‘Dexter?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said a weary voice. ‘This is Jensen.’

‘Jensen, it’s Inspector Underwood.’

‘Hello, sir.’ She sounded surprised. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Listen to me, Jensen. I think I have the killer’s name. His surname, at least. I won’t bother you with the details but tell Dexter that I think his name is Frayne, F-R-A-Y-N-E.’

‘We think so too, sir. We lifted the prints of a Crowan Frayne from the computer terminal at New Bolden Library. Harrison went to his flat with a team about twenty minutes ago. There’s no one there. Harrison reckons the flat’s been deserted for some time. I was just trying to dig up some more information on Frayne. Job records, relatives and so on.’

‘Look for a Violet Frayne. I think it’s his mother or grandmother. She died a year ago but I think she lived locally.’ Underwood paused for a second. ‘Did you say Harrison had gone after the killer?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Where’s Dexter?’

Jensen bit her lip.
He
didn’t
know
…
how
could
he
know?
She took a deep breath and briefly told the inspector the story of Dexter’s abduction, of Dr Stussman’s meeting with the killer and subsequent disappearance and of how she, DC Jensen, had been knocking on doors all day and had missed virtually all the excitement. By the end of the story Underwood had stopped listening. He knew that Dexter and Stussman were dead. And
he was truly alone. He hung up before Jensen had finished speaking.

Annoyed by Underwood’s hanging up on her but focused on the task in hand, DC Jensen tried to call up the name of Violet Frayne on the New Bolden electoral roll. The database was two years old so if the woman had died twelve months ago she should still appear on record. It only took a couple of minutes to find her: Violet Frayne, 12 Willow Road, Hawstead, New Bolden. Jensen called Harrison’s mobile on her way out of the Incident Room.

The candles smoothed shadows across Crowan Frayne’s face as he read from memory. Heather Stussman’s eyes were open now and her gaze was fixed upon Dexter in fear and expectation. Dexter watched Frayne and worked at her bindings as he spoke. Frayne had been reciting ‘A Nocturnall upon St Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day’. His dry, rasping voice rose and fell like a boat on an ocean as he drifted through the last verse.

The candle flames bent and sparked slightly as Frayne’s breath cut across them. Dexter looked around the room. There were great piles of books everywhere, some ancient and expensive, some falling apart at the bindings. She tried to piece together the jigsaw. The oil drum concerned her. It seemed incongruous, an ugliness. What was he trying to achieve?

Frayne paused for a second and then turned to face Heather Stussman, wild-eyed, gagged and seated at the table. Frayne opened his box of medical equipment and stared at the glittering rows of scalpels and scissors. His hand hovered over the box like a sparrow hawk until he selected one of the heavier-looking scalpels. He stood and walked around the table to Heather Stussman.

‘Dr Stussman, I am going to remove your gag now. If you scream or attempt to scream I will insert this instrument into Sergeant Dexter’s left eye. Do you understand?’

Terrified and shaking, Heather Stussman nodded her agreement. In a swift movement, Frayne sliced the masking tape gag from her mouth and returned to his chair.

‘So, Dr Stussman, lecturer in English at Cambridge University, tell me about “A Nocturnall upon St Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day”.’

Stussman frowned. Sweat streamed from her brow into her eyes. She tried to blink it away. ‘What can I tell you that you don’t already know?’

‘It’s what
you
don’t know that I am interested in,’ said Crowan Frayne as he replaced his scalpel into its holder and ran a gentle finger across his other instruments.

Stussman breathed deeply. ‘It’s a poem about bereavement. St Lucy’s Day was regarded as the longest, darkest night of the year.’ She looked over at Dexter, ‘December the thirteenth. Today.’

Stussman paused. What did he want her to say? She decided to keep it simple and apply her own basic critical model. ‘The poem is probably about his wife Ann. She died in childbirth. There are five stanzas, each with nine lines. The rhyme scheme is fairly standard and straightforward: ABBACCCDD. The repetition of rhymes at the end of each stanza is deliberate.’ She dared to look in Frayne’s direction. He nodded encouragement. ‘It is calculated to enforce the sense of despair: the rhymes are
heavy and ponderous, like “drunk” and “shrunk”, “laugh” and “epitaph”, “absences” and “carcasses”.’

‘What about the conceit?’ Frayne took another blade from the box and held it to the light.

‘Donne says that by the woman’s death he has become a quintessential nothing. The nothing that predated Creation. An absolute nothingness. He says that even stones and rocks have some kind of spirituality.’

Frayne smiled at Dexter. ‘Aristotle.’

‘Yes, it’s an Aristotelian idea.’ Stussman started speaking more rapidly as Frayne stood and began to walk around the table. ‘Then he resolves to join with the dead woman, he yearns for annihilation, to become nothingness on the darkest, longest night of the year.’

Frayne walked around the table to Dexter and stood next to her, blade in hand. Stussman desperately groped for something else to say. ‘It’s an interesting theological point explored by Augustine and Aquinas: can a man wish to become nothing? If being nothing is better than his present state then surely it must be
something.
Now, in my opinion—’

Frayne cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘Suddenly a man may wish himself nothing, because that seems to deliver him from the sense of his present misery.’ His eyes rolled in his head, like a shark biting down on its prey, as he remembered the remainder of the quotation. ‘But deliberately he cannot; because whatsoever a man wishes, must be something better than he hath yet; and whatsoever is better is not nothing.’ He reached down and cut away Dexter’s gag. ‘Donne’s
Sermons,
yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Heather Stussman.

Dexter gulped air into her dry mouth. ‘Listen to me,’ she said to Crowan Frayne. ‘This is madness. Let us go. There are people who can help you. I can arrange that.’

Frayne frowned at her, curious. ‘You think I need help, sergeant? Do you think I am a monster? Or a madman like the tramps who drink lighter fuel by the bus station and think they can fly?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ She struggled to find neutral language, ‘I don’t think that you’re mad but I
do
think that you need help. I
am prepared to help you.’ The tape was loosening slightly on her wrists. If she could stay alive for a couple more minutes …

‘You make an interesting point, Alison.’ Frayne moved away from her. ‘You have the ability to make strange connections about people. What is the essence of that, do you think?’

‘I don’t understand the question,’ Dexter replied.
Keep
him
talking
…

‘Let me rephrase, it then. What do you think that Dr Stussman here missed in her analysis of the poem?’

‘I am not an expert,’ said Dexter. ‘I don’t understand poetry.’

‘I think you understand people, though.’ Frayne picked up a roll of black masking tape from the floor. He tore off a long strip and wrapped it around Stussman’s mouth. ‘Let me help you. The poem is a man’s response to bereavement, to the loss of his wife and daughter. Dr Stussman talked very lucidly about the structure of the poem, of the devices employed by the poet to attain his ends. She even entertained us with a snapshot of the theological tensions that underpin man’s desire for annihilation.’

He moved his left hand across Stussman’s face, feeling the smooth ridges of her cheekbones, the elastic perfection of her eyeballs. ‘What’s missing?’

Dexter saw where he was driving her. ‘She didn’t talk about the pain. The man’s emotions.’

‘Correct!’ Frayne seemed pleased as he drew the hair back from Stussman’s face. ‘The word is “pity”. It is a concept that I am sure Dr Stussman understands but she is afraid to apply. You see, sergeant, “pity” is a literary term. Tragedy is meaningless unless you pity the protagonist.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Unless his condition arouses pity in the audience, feelings of compassion that arise from empathizing with his desperate condition, his redemption has no more meaning than his suffering. Dr Stussman is a literary electrician. She understands circuitry and technique in language. In many respects she is original. However, unless one has the honesty and the courage to embrace one’s own agonies, how can we understand the pain of others? Dr Stussman’s ivory tower is in her head. Poetry is not mathematics, you see, Alison: it grows from the agonies of the soul.
It bleeds. If Dr Stussman had the capacity to feel pity, her logical structures would be beautiful.’

‘Did you pity Lucy Harrington and Elizabeth Drury, then?’ said Dexter angrily, despite her fear. ‘Or those two kids that you beat to death and pushed into a stream?’

‘No,’ said Crowan Frayne. ‘But I pity
you,
Alison. Your cleverness has made you lonely like me.’ He pulled back Stussman’s chair so he could get around in front of her. ‘And I pity you, Dr Stussman. So I am going to help you both. I am going to show you that beauty can come from ugliness – and once we have each attained beauty we will become angels together.’

With his left hand Crowan Frayne held Heather Stussman by the neck. With his right hand he sliced the four letters that spelled ‘PITY’ into her forehead with his scalpel. Stussman screamed noiselessly into her gag as blood streamed down her face. Crowan Frayne stepped back to admire his handiwork.

‘Now, Heather, you are beautiful,’ he said happily. ‘You are complete. Pity should arouse pain.’ He wiped the scalpel against his trousers and replaced it in his equipment box.

‘You bastard!’ Dexter shouted at him. ‘What kind of sick fucker are you?’

Crowan Frayne held a finger to his mouth and shushed her. He walked over to a bookcase and picked up a small wooden box. He placed it on the table between Dexter and the sobbing Stussman.

‘Guess who?’ he asked as he opened the box.