Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  He gazed round the sitting room at the long wall of books, the crackling wood fire, the oil of the Victorian prelate above the mantelshelf as if deliberately impressing each item on his mind, then sank into his chair and stretched out his long legs with a small grunt of satisfaction. Dalgliesh remembered that he had always drunk beer; now he accepted whisky, but said he could do with coffee first. One habit at least had changed. He said: “I’m sorry that you won’t be meeting Susie, my wife, while you’re here, Mr. Dalgliesh. She’s having our first baby in a couple of weeks, and she’s gone to stay with her mother in York. Ma-in-law didn’t like the idea of her being in Norfolk with the Whistler on the prowl, not with me working the hours I do.”

  It was said with a kind of embarrassed formality, as if he, not Dalgliesh, were the host and he was apologizing for the unexpected absence of the hostess. He added: “I suppose it’s natural for an only daughter to want to be with her mother at a time like this, particularly with a first baby.”

  Dalgliesh’s wife hadn’t wanted to be with her mother, she had wanted to be with him, had wanted it with such intensity that he had wondered afterwards whether she might have felt a premonition. He could remember that, although he could no longer recall her face. His memory of her, which for years, a traitor to grief and to their love, he had resolutely tried to suppress because the pain had seemed unbearable, had gradually been replaced by a boyish, romantic dream of gentleness and beauty now fixed for ever beyond the depredation of time. His newborn son’s face he could still recall vividly and sometimes did in his dreams, that white, unsullied look of sweet, knowledgeable contentment, as if, in a brief moment of life, he had seen and known all there was to know, seen it and rejected it. Dalgliesh told himself that he was the last man who could reasonably be expected to advise or reassure on the problems of pregnancy, and he sensed that Rickards’s unhappiness at his wife’s absence went deeper than missing her company. He made the usual enquiries about her health and escaped into the kitchen to make the coffee.

  Whatever mysterious spirit had unlocked the verse, it had freed him for other human satisfactions, for love; or was it the other way around? Had love unlocked the verse? It seemed even to have affected his job. Grinding the coffee beans, he pondered life’s smaller ambiguities. When the poetry hadn’t come, the job too had seemed not only irksome but occasionally repellent. Now he was happy enough to let Rickards impose on his solitude to use him as a sounding board. This new benignity and tolerance disconcerted him a little. Success in moderation was no doubt better for the character than failure, but too much of it and he would lose his cutting edge. And five minutes later, carrying in the two mugs and settling back in his chair, he could relish the contrast between Rickards’s preoccupation with psychopathic violence and the peace of the mill. The wood fire, now past its crackling stage, had settled into a comfortable glow, and the wind, seldom absent from the headland, moved like a benign, gently hissing spirit through the still and soaring clappers of the mill. He was glad that it wasn’t his job to catch the Whistler. Of all murders, serial killings were the most frustrating, the most difficult and the chanciest to solve, the investigation carried on under the strain of vociferous public demand that the terrifying unknown devil be caught and exorcised forever. But this wasn’t his case; he could discuss it with the detachment of a man who has a professional interest but no responsibility. And he could understand what Rickards needed: not advice—he knew his job—but someone he could trust, someone who understood the language, someone who would afterwards be gone, who wouldn’t remain as a perpetual reminder of his uncertainties, a fellow professional to whom he could comfortably think aloud. He had his team and he was too punctilious not to share his thinking with them. But he was a man who needed to articulate his theories and here he could put them forward, embroider, reject, explore, without the uncomfortable suspicion that his detective sergeant, deferentially listening, his face carefully expressionless, would be thinking, “For God’s sake, what’s the old man dreaming up now?” Or, “The old man’s getting fanciful.”

  Rickards said: “We’re not using Holmes. The Met say the system is fully committed at present, and anyway we’ve got our own computer. Not that there’s much data to feed in. The press and public know about Holmes, of course. I get that at every press conference. ‘Are you using the Home Office special computer, the one named after Sherlock Holmes?’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘but we’re using our own.’ Unspoken question: ‘Then why the hell haven’t you caught him?’ They think that you’ve only got to feed in your data and out pops an Identikit of sonny complete with prints, collar size and taste in pop music.”

  “Yes,” said Dalgliesh, “we’re so sated now with scientific wonders that it’s a bit disconcerting when we find that technology can do everything except what we want it to.”

  “Four women so far, and Valerie Mitchell won’t be the last if we don’t catch him soon. He started fifteen months ago. The first victim was found just after midnight in a shelter at the end of the Easthaven promenade—the local tart, incidentally, although he may not have known or cared. It was eight months before he struck again. Struck lucky, I suppose he’d say. This time a thirty-year-old schoolteacher cycling home to Hunstanton who had a puncture on a lonely stretch of road. Then another gap, just six months, before he got a barmaid from Ipswich who’d been visiting her granny and was daft enough to wait alone for the late bus. When it arrived there was no one at the stop. A couple of local youths got off. They’d had a skinful so weren’t in a particularly noticing mood, but they saw and heard nothing, nothing except what they described as a kind of mournful whistling coming from deep in the wood.”

  He took a gulp of his coffee, then went on: “We’ve got a personality assessment from the trick cyclist. I don’t know why we bother. I could have written it myself. He tells us to look for a loner, probably from a disturbed family background, may have a dominant mother, doesn’t relate easily to people, particularly women, could be impotent, unmarried, separated or divorced, with a resentment and hatred of the opposite sex. Well, we hardly expect him to be a successful, happily married bank manager with four lovely kids just coming up to GCSE or whatever they call it now. They’re the devil, these serial murderers. No motive—no motive that a sane man can understand anyway—and he could come from anywhere, Norwich, Ipswich, even London. It’s dangerous to assume that he’s necessarily working in his own territory. Looks like it, though. He obviously knows the locality well. And he seems to be sticking now to the same MO. He chooses a road intersection, drives the car or van into the side of one road, cuts across and waits at the other. Then he drags his victim into the bushes or the trees, kills and cuts back to the other road and the car and makes his getaway. With the last three murders it seems to have been pure chance that a suitable victim did, in fact, come along.”

  Dalgliesh felt that it was time he contributed something to the speculation. He said: “If he doesn’t select and stalk his victim, and obviously he didn’t in the last three cases, he’d normally have to expect a long wait. That suggests he’s routinely out after dark, a night worker, mole-catcher, woodman, gamekeeper, that kind of job. And he goes prepared: on the watch for a quick kill, in more ways than one.”

  Rickards said: “That’s how I see it. Four victims so far and three fortuitous, but he’s probably been on the prowl for three years or more. That could be part of the thrill. ‘Tonight I could make a strike, tonight I could be lucky.’ And, by God, he is getting lucky. Two victims in the last six weeks.”

  “And what about his trademark, the whistle?”

  “That was heard by the three people who came quickly on the scene after the Easthaven murder. One just heard a whistle, one said it sounded like a hymn and the third, who was a churchwoman, claimed she could identify it precisely, ‘Now the Day Is Over.’ We kept quiet about that. It could be useful when we get the usual clutch of nutters claiming they’re the Whistler. But there seems no doubt that he does whistle.”

&nb
sp; Dalgliesh said: “‘Now the day is over / Night is drawing nigh / Shadows of the evening / Fall across the sky.’ It’s a Sunday-school hymn, hardly the kind that gets requested on Songs of Praise, I should have thought.”

  He remembered it from childhood, a lugubrious, undistinguished tune which as a ten-year-old he could pick out on the drawing-room piano. Did anyone sing that hymn now? he wondered. It had been a favourite choice of Miss Barnett on those long dark afternoons in winter before the Sunday school was released, when the outside light was fading and the small Adam Dalgliesh was already dreading those last twenty yards of his walk home, where the rectory drive curved and the bushes grew thickest. Night was different from bright day, smelt different, sounded different; ordinary things assumed different shapes; an alien and more sinister power ruled the night. Those twenty yards of crunching gravel, where the lights of the house were momentarily screened, were a weekly horror. Once through the gate to the drive, he would walk fast, but not too fast, since the power that ruled the night could smell out fear as dogs smell out terror. His mother, he knew, would never have expected him to walk those yards alone had she known that he suffered such atavistic panic, but she hadn’t known and he would have died before telling her. And his father? His father would have expected him to be brave, would have told him that God was God of the darkness as He was of the light. There were after all a dozen appropriate texts he could have quoted. “Darkness and light are both alike to Thee.” But they were not alike to a sensitive ten-year-old boy. It was on those lonely walks that he had first had intimations of an essentially adult truth, that it is those who most love us who cause us the most pain. He said: “So you’re looking for a local man, a loner, someone who has a night job, the use of a car or van and a knowledge of Hymns Ancient and Modern. That should make it easier.”

  Rickards said: “You’d think so, wouldn’t you.”

  He sat in silence for a minute, then said: “I think I’d like just a small whisky now, Mr. Dalgliesh, if it’s all the same to you.”

  It was after midnight when he finally left. Dalgliesh walked out with him to the car. Looking out across the headland, Rickards said: “He’s out there somewhere, watching, waiting. There’s hardly a waking moment when I don’t think of him, imagine what he looks like, where he is, what he’s thinking. Susie’s ma is right. I haven’t had much to give her recently. And when he’s caught, that’ll be the end. It’s finished. You move on. He doesn’t, but you do. And by the end you know everything, or think you do. Where, when, who, how. You might even know why if you’re lucky. And yet, essentially, you know nothing. All that wickedness, and you don’t have to explain it or understand it or do a bloody thing about it except put a stop to it. Involvement without responsibility. No responsibility for what he did or for what happens to him afterwards. That’s for the judge and the jury. You’re involved, and yet you’re not involved. Is that what appeals to you about the job, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

  It was not a question Dalgliesh would have expected even from a friend, and Rickards was not a friend. He said: “Can any of us answer that question?”

  “You remember why I left the Met, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

  “The two corruption cases? Yes, I remember why you left the Met.”

  “And you stayed. You didn’t like it any more than I did. You wouldn’t have touched the pitch. But you stayed. You were detached about it all, weren’t you? It interested you.”

  Dalgliesh said: “It’s always interesting when men you thought you knew behave out of character.”

  And Rickards had fled from London. In search of what? Dalgliesh wondered. Some romantic dream of country peace, an England which had vanished, a gentler method of policing, total honesty? He wondered whether Rickards had found it.

  BOOK TWO

  THURSDAY 22 SEPTEMBER TO

  FRIDAY 23 SEPTEMBER

  1

  It was 7.10 and the saloon bar of the Duke of Clarence pub was already smoke-filled, the noise level rising and the crowd at the bar three feet deep. Christine Baldwin, the Whistler’s fifth victim, had exactly twenty minutes to live. She sat on the banquette against the wall, sipping her second medium sherry of the evening, deliberately making it last, knowing that Colin was impatient to order the next round. Catching Norman’s eye, she raised her left wrist and nodded significantly at her watch. Already it was ten minutes past their deadline, and he knew it. Their agreement was that this was to be a pre-supper drink with Colin and Yvonne, the limit both of time and alcohol consumption clearly understood between her and Norman before they left home. The arrangement was typical of their nine-month-old marriage, sustained less by compatible interests than by a carefully negotiated series of concessions. Tonight it had been her turn to give way, but agreeing to spend an hour in the Clarence with Colin and Yvonne didn’t extend to any pretence that she actually enjoyed their company.

  She had disliked Colin since their first meeting; the relationship at a glance had been fixed in the stereotyped antagonism between newly acquired fiancée and slightly disreputable old schoolmate and drinking partner. He had been best man at their wedding—a formidable pre-nuptial agreement had been necessary for that capitulation—and had carried out his duties with a mixture of incompetence, vulgarity and irreverence which, as she occasionally enjoyed telling Norman, had spoilt for her the memory of her big day. It was typical of him to choose this pub. God knew, it was vulgar enough. But at least she could be certain of one thing: it wasn’t a place where there was a risk of meeting anyone from the power station, at least not anyone who mattered. She disliked everything about the Clarence, the rough scrape of the moquette against her legs, the synthetic velvet which covered the walls, the baskets of ivy spiked with artificial flowers above the bar, the gaudiness of the carpet. Twenty years ago, it had been a cosy Victorian hostelry, seldom visited except by its regulars, with an open fire in winter and horse brasses polished to whiteness hung against the black beams. The lugubrious publican had seen it as his job to repel strangers and had employed to that end an impressive armoury of taciturnity, malevolent glances, warm beer and poor service. But the old pub had burnt down in the 1960s and been replaced by a more profitable and thrusting enterprise. Nothing of the old building remained, and the long extension to the bar, dignified by the name Banqueting Hall, provided for the undiscriminating a venue for weddings and local functions and on other nights served a predictable menu of prawns or soup, steak or chicken, and fruit salad with ice cream. Well, at least she had put her foot down over dinner. They had worked out their monthly budget to the last pound, and if Norman thought she was going to eat this overpriced muck with a perfectly good cold supper waiting in the refrigerator at home and a decent programme on the telly, he could forget it. And they had better uses for their money than to sit here drinking with Colin and his latest tart, who had opened her legs to half Norwich if rumour was to be believed. There were the hire-purchase repayments on the sitting-room furniture and the car, not to mention the mortgage. She tried again to meet Norman’s eye, but he was rather desperately keeping his attention on that slut Yvonne. And that wasn’t proving difficult. Colin leaned over to her, his bold treacle-brown eyes half-mocking, half-inviting, Colin Lomas, who thought every woman would swoon when he beckoned.

  “Relax, darling. Your old man’s enjoying himself. It’s your round, Norm.”

  Ignoring Colin, she spoke to Norman: “Look, it’s time we were going. We agreed we’d leave at seven.”

  “Oh, come on, Chrissie, give the lad a break. One more round.”

  Without meeting her eyes, Norman said: “What’ll you have, Yvonne? The same again? Medium sherry?”

  Colin said: “Let’s get on to spirits. I’ll have a Johnnie Walker.”

  He was doing it on purpose. She knew that he didn’t even like whisky. She said: “Look, I’ve had enough of this bloody place. The noise has given me a head.”

  “A headache? Nine months married and she’s started the headaches. No point in hurrying home to
night, Norm.”

  Yvonne giggled.

  Christine said, her face burning, “You were always vulgar, Colin Lomas, but now you’re not even funny with it. You three can do what you like. I’m going home. Give me the car keys.”

  Colin leaned back and smiled. “You heard what your lady wife said. She wants the car keys.”

  Without a word, shame-faced, Norman took them out of his pocket and slid them over the table. She snatched them up, pushed back the table, struggled past Yvonne and rushed to the door. She was almost crying with rage. It took her a minute to unlock the car, and then she sat shaking behind the wheel, waiting until her hands were steady enough to switch on the ignition. She heard her mother’s voice on the day when she had announced her engagement: “Well, you’re thirty-two, and if he’s what you want, I suppose you know your own mind. But you’ll never make anything of him. Weak as water, if you ask me.” But she had thought that she could make something of him, and that small semi-detached house outside Norwich represented nine months of hard work and achievement. Next year he was due for promotion at the insurance office. She would be able to give up her job as secretary in the Medical Physics Department at Larksoken Power Station and start the first of the two children she had planned. She would be thirty-four by then. Everyone knew that you shouldn’t wait too long.

  She had only passed her driving test after her marriage, and this was the first time that she had driven unaccompanied at night. She drove slowly and carefully, her anxious eyes peering ahead, glad that, at least, the route home was familiar. She wondered what Norman would do when he saw that the car had gone. Almost certainly he would expect to find her sitting there, fuming but ready to be driven home. Now he’d have to rely for a lift on Colin, who wouldn’t be so keen on coming out of his way. And if they thought that she was going to invite Colin and Yvonne in for a drink when they arrived, they would get a shock.