The Yeare's Midnight (43 page)

‘Poets plan and fantasize, Alison. Donne is a very good example. He would plan and build a logical argument, then dream up a fantasy or an image that came to represent and extend that argument, and he would perform his work for the gratification and education of a selected audience.’

‘Like Crowan Frayne,’ said Dexter.

‘We live in uncertain times too, Alison. Donne said, “The new philosophy calls all into question.” That, in a nutshell, is the paradox of the modern world. Science has done an effective job of destroying our confidence in established religion without creating anything to replace it. We are drowned in information and starved of knowledge. We live in a free society but our freedom is dependent upon the forces that value it least. Maybe Crowan Frayne saw some of these inconsistencies and uncertainties and thought he could hammer them into a new mode of expression.’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ said Dexter.

Dexter stayed for another half an hour and although Stussman was worn out she appreciated the company. Southwell College had given her a term’s sabbatical to recover from her injuries. She wondered what McKensie and his henchmen would make of her new-found celebrity. There’d probably be a series of bad jokes followed by an overwhelming vote not to renew her research fellowship. Stussman wasn’t looking forward to her first night alone back in her rooms, though, or to the first time her phone rang. Staying in Cambridge at all might be difficult for her now. Suddenly the open spaces and quietness of Wisconsin didn’t seem as dull to her as they once had.

Fortunately, her mother was coming over the following week and the two of them were planning to take a holiday in Europe together. Thank God for family. Isolation from her family had been hard. She thought for a second of Crowan Frayne, trying to give his dead grandmother back the beauty that had been torn from her. Heather Stussman felt a sudden flash of emotion. Perhaps it was Pity.

Inspector Alison Dexter stepped out of the hospital foyer and paused for a second in the cold sunlight. She felt curiously empty. She should be happy; at least she should feel relieved. She paused for a moment. The wind hissed and rippled through the delicate branches of the newly planted saplings that lined the hospital car park. Out of the blue, she suddenly remembered a question she had been asked at college, years previously: ‘If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound if nobody is there to hear it?’ She pushed the thought aside.

Ambition had driven her this far. Ambition had earned her the respect of others. Respect had earned her promotion. She was an inspector; she had achieved her dream. Why, then, did she feel so hollow? So utterly numbed by the whole experience?

Dexter walked across the empty car park, hunting for an answer. If she had fallen, there would have been no sound.

She was alone.

The garden was already overgrown. The dead cannot be contained.

Violet Frayne’s laburnum tree was awash with beautiful yellow flowers. They fluttered and danced for the sun under the benevolent sky.

Tangled roots divided and stretched down into the crowded soil, pushing aside stones, sucking in water and nutrients, drawing
in the elemental goodness that would fuel the tree’s blind reaching for the heavens. Oxygen, water, carbon dioxide: salts and sugars and memories.

They drove around the edge of the town centre. New Bolden became impenetrably clogged with shoppers on a Saturday morning. Dexter was wise to this and swung her Mondeo around the ring road as if she was some mad comet circling the sun. She spoke continuously: she found the silences trying. She spoke and John Underwood listened. Dexter talked about Crowan Frayne, about how she had made the connections that led her to the computer terminal and about how she had been a few seconds from becoming a barbecued sausage – or an angel.

Underwood was only half-interested. He found himself drifting in and out of focus. Sometimes he was absorbing the details of Dexter’s recital, sometimes he was walking in the Yorkshire Dales with Julia and sometimes he was at the bottom of the blackest hole his mind could conjure. The sunlight glanced brightly off the car windows as Dexter turned off the ring road and headed towards the cemetery. His mind was cluttered with images.

Take
a
glass
of
water.
That
is
a
symbiosis
that
neither
party
understands
because
neither
party
has
the
capacity
to
under
stand.
Squint,
limit
your
field
of
perception
and
the
glass
of
water
appears
as
a
single
entity.
A
dog
will
just
see
a
hole
in
its
field
of
vision.
Take
the
glass
and
pour
out
the
water.
Its
molecules
never
mix
with
the
glass
but
some
cling
to
it:
thick
viscous
blobs
that
hang
like
barnacles.

Why
do
some
linger
like
memories
and
others
fall
away?
All
matter
exploded
from
an
infinitesimally
small
particle.
All
the
atoms
in
our
flesh,
in
the
ground
we
walk
on,
in
gas
giants
a
billion
light
years
away,
in
comets
and
the
red-hot
centres
of
planets,
once
coexisted
in
a
single
whole.
Perhaps
the
atoms
in
the
water
recognize
atoms
in
the
glass
that
they
were
once
bound
to,
once
torn
apart
from.
Perhaps
they
don’t
want
to
let
go
again.

Underwood didn’t want to let go.

Dexter parked at the entrance to the cemetery and they both got out.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind, sir?’ she asked.

Underwood shook his head. ‘No, it’s a nice day. The exercise will do me good.’ He placed his mobile phone on the passenger seat and slammed the car door shut behind him. ‘I’m not sure I understand why you want to do this, though.’

Dexter walked alongside him, more slowly than usual. ‘I want to make absolutely sure the bastard’s in the ground.’ It was half true. She also wanted to scare Underwood into looking after himself. She hoped the grim finality of the headstones might help.

Birds swooped and cut the sky above them as walked. It didn’t bleed, as he thought it might.

‘Magpies?’ asked Underwood.

‘Don’t ask me,’ Dexter laughed. ‘My bird knowledge begins with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and ends with turkey on Christmas Day.’

‘When did they bury the body?’

‘Three weeks ago,’ Dexter said. ‘It’s not really a body any more, though.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘He hacked his own eye out.’ The memory still made her uncomfortable. ‘He said “Is this not the triumph of the will” as he did it.’

‘Imagine the will-power it takes to cut your own eye out.’

‘You sound like you’re impressed.’

‘Frightened is closer.’

‘Try being there.’

Underwood smiled thinly. ‘You’ve done well Dex. You’ll be Chief Inspector in a couple of years. You’re an irrepressible force.’

‘What about you?’

‘They might make me a sergeant, I suppose. If they don’t lock me away in some funny farm.’

Dexter frowned. ‘That’s only going to happen if you lose the plot. You’re feeling better, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know. At the moment I feel pretty shitty. It’s like every mistake, horror and bad memory happening at the same time.’

‘Will-power, sir. You have to make yourself better. You have to want to fight.’

Underwood laughed humourlessly. ‘Fight? Why? What for?’

‘For yourself.’

‘I’m not sure I’m worth the effort.’

‘You are.’

Underwood looked at her but Dexter stared straight ahead. She was getting angry with him. She had heard the rumours: that Underwood had lost it, that he was on a diet of happy pills and was seeing the police shrink at Huntingdon, but this was the first time she had seen the evidence at first hand. Her concern just outweighed her irritation.

‘Are you religious, sir?’

‘You don’t have to call me “sir” any more.’

‘Are you religious?’

‘I’m not a Mason, if that’s what you mean.’

His joke fell flat. ‘You know what I mean.’ She was quietly insistent.

‘No. I’m not religious. I do not believe in God. I do not believe in heaven. I believe that this –’ he gestured vaguely around and at himself ‘– whatever the fuck it is, is it.’

‘Then that’s why you have to survive,’ Dexter said simply. ‘Because there isn’t any point in you dying.’

Crowan Frayne’s headstone was plain: black text on granite. ‘C. A. Frayne 1967–2000.’ There was no inscription.

‘Who paid for the headstone?’ Underwood asked, ever suspicious.

‘Some distant relative. A cousin, I think.’

‘Not much of an epitaph,’ said Underwood, looking at the grey stone.

‘Not much of a person.’

‘I guess not. So Heather Stussman thinks he was writing a
kind of poem. A celebration of beauty, an argument that ugliness could be transformed into beauty.’

‘Something like that. It’s mad shit.’

He
had
changed
Julia
into
an
ugliness.
She
had
been
beautiful
in
body
and
spirit.
He
had
made
her
ordinary
and
afraid.
Mad
shit.
Somehow,
Paul
Heyer
had
made
the
ugliness
beautiful.
Underwood
knew
that
he
had
become
a
monstrosity:
half
alive
and
half
sane.
His
mind
bounced
like
a
ball
on
a
piece
of
elastic;
flying
at
impossibly
absurd
trajectories
before
rolling
back
to
stasis.
Your
thoughts
have
no
value.
Do
not
pass
go.
Go
directly
to
jail.
Do
not
collect
two
hundred
pounds.
Mad
shit.
Mad
shit.

‘Look at this, guv.’ Dexter gestured at him to come over. She was kneeling by a headstone a few yards away. It was plain grey marble. The black text read:
William
Eric
Gowers,
1917
–94,
Rest
Eternally.
Underneath the engraving a four-letter obscenity had been aerosoled onto the stone.

‘Gowers was married to Violet Frayne,’ she said. ‘Not much of an epitaph, is it?’

‘I don’t suppose she sprayed it.’ Underwood managed a smile.

They waited for a minute or two and then walked back slowly towards the car. They didn’t say anything.

Underwood felt a sudden rush of anxiety. What if Dexter was right? What if this was it? What if there really was nothing else? What would his epitaph be? They passed a young woman carrying flowers. She looked them over with soft, sad eyes.

The sun seemed exceptionally bright now. Underwood sought order in his thoughts:

Life
is
a
tightrope
of
perception
with
darkness
on
either
side,
darkness
behind
and
darkness
underneath.

He had hacked most of the rope from underneath him. Maybe Dexter was right. Maybe staying on the tightrope was the only point. The darkness had seemed appealing, a relief from the hard light of reality. Sometimes he had wanted to let go, to embrace the peace of annihilation. But maybe his spirit was like the water in the glass. Maybe he couldn’t let go. Suddenly, Underwood was uncertain and afraid.

‘Survive,’
said
the
Magpie.

Dexter unlocked the car and they climbed in. Underwood picked up his mobile phone from the seat before he flopped down.

‘I’m hungry. Do you fancy some lunch?’

He thought for a second, pushing the darkness to one side. He had to take his heart pills with food. ‘That’d be nice.’

‘Fry-up?’

‘I shouldn’t, really.’

‘Neither should I. How about scrambled eggs as a compromise?’ Dexter asked.

‘Good enough.’

Dexter ground through the gears and they accelerated towards the town centre. There was a greasy spoon behind the police station. Scrambled eggs with Alison: the simplicity almost overwhelmed him.

Underwood looked at the LCD display on his mobile phone and saw that there had been a missed call. He pressed a button and the phone displayed the identity of the caller: ‘Julia’.