by James Runcie
‘Do you find me disconcerting?’ she asked.
‘Not at all.’
‘You can trust me, you know.’
‘I’m sure I can.’
‘I suppose you don’t want to run any risks.’
‘I think I just need to get home and clear my mind.’
‘I hope I haven’t contributed to the muddle.’
‘Not at all,’ said Sidney before a voice in his head told him that Barbara hadn’t contributed as much as been the cause of the whole damned thing. How on earth had he fallen for the charms of a woman who was clearly trying to manipulate him? It was ridiculous.
‘I’ll make it up to you one day,’ she promised.
‘That won’t be necessary. I’m only doing my job.’
‘I may insist . . .’ Barbara pulled over in front of the station, and gave Sidney a goodnight kiss on the cheek, holding on to him for just a little too long. ‘You’re such a comfort,’ she said.
It was after midnight when Sidney got home. All he wanted to do was pour himself a whisky, put his feet up and listen to a bit of jazz. He might even have time to read a bit of the Bechet autobiography Hildegard had given him for his birthday. Treat It Gentle. Some hope.
He assumed that his wife and daughter were asleep but he found that they were both awake and in their nightgowns. Anna had woken up and was unable to settle, so Hildegard was reading her yet another bedtime story: the tale of ‘Sweetheart Roland’.
‘Heavens above – is that a good idea? Isn’t that the one that begins with the witch cutting her daughter’s head off?’ Sidney asked.
‘It’s just a coincidence and it’s a fairy story. Anna loves it.’
‘I don’t want her growing up and thinking these things are normal.’
‘But in your world,’ his wife replied, ‘they are.’
On Saturday 4th March Sidney went to see Danny Wilkinson in hospital. It was a bleak day that did nothing to improve his spirits as he took in the winter landscape from the train down to Cambridge: the bare hedges, the skeletal trees with their abandoned birds’ nests, the wheat cut short, the last stacks of hay bales, the sheen of green still fragile across the fields.
On arrival the chaplain gave him what he took to be a rather insincere wave, calling out, ‘Here comes trouble.’
‘I think you’ve already got plenty.’
‘Which is why we don’t need any more, Mr Archdeacon. Your reputation precedes you.’
‘I am helping a former parishioner, that is all.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’
‘I am only going where the Lord takes me.’
Danny had almost recovered. He claimed that he could not remember a thing but that he definitely had not taken an overdose and had not meant to kill himself. What was going on and who could he trust? He didn’t want to spend any time with his mother or father but he could hardly go back to the farm if one of the members was out to get him.
‘Do you have other friends? Relations?’ Sidney asked.
‘There’s Tom’s family. They have a house in London. His dad’s rich and never there.’
‘And you don’t think Tom might have poisoned you?’
‘He’s my best friend.’
‘And he wouldn’t have killed Pascoe either?’
‘No. He was in London at the time. I think he was seeing his dad.’
‘Can you think of anyone who could be behind all this?’ Sidney pressed, wishing he could get past this blank state of denial.
‘The farm was a refuge. We were all happy there. It can’t be any of us.’
‘I know you’ve already told me, but we need to be clear. Can you confirm that you didn’t take the overdose yourself?’
‘I did not.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you let your mother see you, Danny? She’s very worried about you.’
The young man closed his eyes and turned his face away.
Henry Richmond responded surprisingly speedily to Sidney’s request for a little financial investigation. He confirmed that the Family of Love operated as a company called Lucis International, and that there were two directors, Fraser Pascoe and Giles Raven, the London accountant who was Tom’s father.
‘And if Pascoe’s dead?’
‘All the money would go to the Raven family. They are the nominated beneficiaries.’
‘And so Tom could be working for his father?’
‘He could indeed. In fact, it seems highly likely. But I think that’s your territory.’
‘And he could be in cahoots with Danny Wilkinson,’ Sidney thought aloud. ‘Although I wonder if they really are best friends: if not, then what is their game?’
‘Perhaps they fell out? They both killed Pascoe to get the money but then Tom tried to poison Danny to get the cash and hoped everyone would think that it was a guilt-ridden suicide attempt?’
Sidney was surprised by Henry’s ability to think through the implications after he had been given so little information about the crime. Perhaps Barbara Wilkinson was right after all?
He took a bus into Soho and found Johnny Johnson at the bar of his club. He seemed unusually mellow, even for him, and after he had revealed that Blossom Dearie was playing once more, Sidney wondered, uncharitably perhaps, if Johnny had been lying all along and the couple had spent the afternoon together.
‘You do seem to have a soft spot for her.’
‘You’re one to talk. How is the lady Barbara?’
‘She is at the heart of a murder investigation.’
‘Well, Blossom Dearie is my main act. I have to look after the talent and she’s quite a handful, believe me. Don’t be nosy, Sidney.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Why are you here then?’
‘I wondered if you had ever come across a young man called Tom Raven?’
‘And how on earth would I know him?’
‘Because his father used to be your dad’s accountant. Giles Raven.’
‘Oh,’ said Johnny, ‘He sails close to the wind, I’ll tell you that. They call him “The Magician”.’
‘I think I can guess why.’
‘He makes money disappear. I wouldn’t mess with him.’
‘Do you think he could make people disappear too?’ Sidney asked.
‘More than likely.’
‘And could you introduce me to him?’
‘I could, Sidney. But I’m not sure I want to.’
‘You’re trying to protect him?’
‘No, Sidney, I’m trying to protect you, you clown. That man’s so rich he doesn’t have to worry about the law. If he’s anything to do with your investigation you won’t be able to pin anything on him; and if he finds out you’re meddling then there’ll be trouble.’
‘I’m used to that.’
‘Not his kind of trouble, I can assure you. Let’s have a drink and listen to some music.’
Blossom Dearie had a light pixie voice with husky undertones of barbed romanticism and she was determined to put down anyone who might make the mistake of patronising her. She opened with ‘Let’s Go Where the Grass is Greener’, continued with ‘You Turn Me On Baby’, sashayed into ‘Peel Me a Grape’ and ended her first set with the satirical cabaret song ‘I’m Hip’, which had the audience laughing at their own pretentious modernity.
Once the first set was over, Sidney told Johnny he really should be going home. ‘Do you stay until the end every night?’ he asked.
‘That’s my job.’
‘Hard on Jen.’
‘She’s pretty cool about it all.’
‘Are you sure?’
Johnny hesitated and then told Sidney that he should go backstage and check Blossom had everything she needed. His brother-in-law could meet her if he wanted. Sidney shook his hand and grinned. ‘Rather you than me. She seems a volatile lady.’
‘That’s nothing unusual round here.’
They were just about to make their final farewel
l when Johnny suddenly opened up. ‘Jen’s afraid the love’s run out. It hasn’t. I just don’t want to have to force things or pretend. Distractions keep me happy.’
‘As long as it’s not more than a “distraction”. There are limits to my tolerance – and Jen’s.’
‘And I’m not going to test them, Sidney. Please. Don’t worry. I love your sister. She loves me. Marriage is what it is. We can’t all be like you and Hildegard. We’re different. It’s not about passion all the time. Sometimes you just have to let things drift.’
‘“Treat it gentle”, as Sidney Bechet advises.’
‘Yes, although the great saxophonist had his women troubles and spent plenty of time in the nick. I wouldn’t follow his example too closely if I were you.’
Back at Cambridge police station Keating was annoyed. He just couldn’t get anything out of Tom Raven, a boy whose effortless southern English confidence had got under the detective’s Northumbrian working-class skin. ‘We’ve always suspected that cult’s a scam, but it’s proving impossible to nail the bastards.’
‘It seems a very odd way of making money, doesn’t it?’ Sidney observed. ‘You pretend you don’t believe in worldly goods and then cash in.’
‘The Church has been doing it for years.’
Sidney gave his friend enough of a look to force an instant apology.
‘Sorry, that was ungenerous of me. I didn’t mean it.’
‘I think you did. Working in a cathedral like Ely, one can’t deny that the Church has wealth. Fraser Pascoe did have a point. It might be better if we conducted ourselves more monastically.’
‘But the monks were just as bad, Sidney. Isn’t that why their monasteries were all dissolved? People had had enough of them, and went round hacking away at all that wealth and corruption, cutting the heads off the statues in the Lady Chapel and then decapitating human beings as well. They were filled with the passion of the Lord, I seem to remember.’
Sidney tried to concentrate on the motive behind the murder. ‘The Raven family do seem pretty suspect.’
‘Giles Raven, “The Magician”, has already got his lawyers on to us. His son has a very strong alibi. Father and son were both in London at the time of Pascoe’s death. Loads of people saw them. They were at the greyhounds.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’
‘I don’t know, Sidney. When I started out in this job, a senior officer told me that crime was nearly always about sex or money. You just had to follow one or the other. In this case it’s probably both.’
‘Do you think the Wilkinson family are wealthy?’
‘Not any more. Divorce soon sorts that out. And if you start handing out cash to a dodgy cult then you’re asking for trouble.’
‘Which brings us back to Danny Wilkinson.’
Sidney had a little walk around the room to help order his thoughts. ‘You don’t think that in some strange way he’s been trying to save his parents’ marriage? If his mother did have an affair with Pascoe, he then kills her lover, pins the blame on Tom Raven and attempts suicide in the hope that his parents will be so shocked by his unhappiness that they reunite?’
Geordie thought things through. ‘And Danny could have stolen the sedatives from his father. When’s your next appointment? You will have to make it sharpish, Sidney. Unless you want another session with the boy’s mother?’
‘I’d rather leave Barbara Wilkinson to you, if you don’t mind.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t fancy her.’
‘Geordie, I don’t fancy her either. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t stand her.’
‘Oh dear,’ his friend replied. ‘It’s as bad as that, is it?’
* * *
Sidney’s prayers to St Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, to relieve his toothache had gone unanswered. He therefore made further arrangements to see Mike Wilkinson, both to sort out the vexed matter of his teeth and to ask a few more questions about Mike’s wife, his son, and his recent whereabouts. It was not going to be easy, not least because his mouth would be open and anaesthetised, there would be padded wool along his gums and both the sound and no doubt discomfort of continual drilling. There would not be long to ask questions, but as he had deliberately booked the last appointment of the day, he hoped there would be no emergency patients and that the receptionist might have left, giving Sidney the time and privacy for an unofficial interrogation.
Mike Wilkinson saw through the ruse. And although his attitude was curt (a quality often wrongly attributed to his Scottishness) the information post-surgery was revealing. He was sure his son had taken an overdose in a bid to attract his mother’s sympathy and contrition. It turned out that, despite Barbara Wilkinson’s protestations, Danny had been all too aware of her infidelity.
‘Did you tell him?’ Sidney asked.
‘I didn’t need to. He witnessed how his mother behaved.’
‘Children often find their parents embarrassing.’
Mike Wilkinson gave Sidney a weary look, as if he was too tired to spell the whole thing out. ‘It wasn’t just that.’
‘What was it then?’
‘He walked in on Babs and Pascoe. Came home early from school. Wasn’t feeling well. They were in flagrante; too busy to notice him. He ran away and came straight to me. I already knew what Barbara was up to and tried to calm Danny down, but it wasn’t much use. He said he was never going home again, which was complicated, as he was supposed to be at school and we had hopes that he was clever enough to go up to Oxford. That’s all gone now.’
‘So he stayed with you?’
‘Not for long. He was sixteen and his friend Tom had already left to make money in London. I confronted Barbara, told her that Danny wasn’t coming back and that everyone knew about her carrying on. I didn’t say that Danny had walked in on them because I didn’t want her making everything worse with a scene. I didn’t tell her where he was, either. She went mad and denied it all but I think that’s when she ended the relationship. I heard that Pascoe went to India and we all thought that was that, but then he returned and set up his cult.’
‘Which Danny eventually joined . . .’
‘It was either Tom Raven’s idea or his father’s. He probably offered a cut of the money. I think both boys knew the whole thing was a scam.’
‘But it involved living with his mother’s former lover.’
‘That was also his way of getting back at her.’
‘I think there may have been more to it than that,’ said Sidney.
‘I’m not sure if I understand the psychology of it all or even if I want to,’ the dentist replied.
‘Is there anything more?’
‘I don’t think so. There comes a time when you just have to let your boy find his way in life. He turned away from us both, his mum and me, just as we had rejected each other. Barbara was impossible to live with, as I am sure you can imagine. Then she got it into her head that I was having an affair with my assistant – something that was plainly untrue – and I just couldn’t stand it any more. I let her believe it and I left them both. Selfish, I know. But you don’t want to hear about all this. I should get on. Don’t leave it so long next time. There’s enough pain in the world without your teeth adding to the sum of human misery.’
‘I’m sorry to have asked so many questions, Mr Wilkinson. Actually I can feel the sedative wearing off. Do you keep a supply of it at home?’
‘Yes, but it’s strictly controlled, as I am sure you know.’
‘And none of it has gone missing recently?’
‘Not as far as I am aware. If you are suggesting that I’ve either given some to my son or he has stolen from me then you are mistaken. It’s more likely to be his mother’s sleeping tablets.’
‘That would involve going back home and getting them.’
‘It wouldn’t be hard to do that without her noticing.’
‘And if any had disappeared then your wife should have told us.’
‘She may have decided tha
t you didn’t need to know. Babs likes her little games. She can be quite cunning. I think that’s where Danny gets it from.’
‘You mean that both mother and son are capable of deception?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Archdeacon. There are times when I don’t know who anyone is any more. So many people spend their lives trying to become someone they were never intended to be. I try to concentrate on my job and earning enough money for a roof over my head, a car that works and a decent holiday twice a year. It’s simpler that way and it leads to less trouble.’
‘Have you seen your son in hospital?’
‘Of course. I do care about him. It’s been a difficult time.’
‘It has. I’m sorry.’
The dentist stretched out a hand in farewell. ‘I’m hopeful that Danny will be all right in the end. He just needs to find out who he is and get on with his life.’
Sidney shook the man’s hand and tried to find reassuring words but felt, in his heart of hearts, that it was almost certainly too late. The rest of Danny’s life was likely to be entirely different from anything either of his parents had ever hoped for.
Sidney checked with the doctors that their patient was now recovered sufficiently to go home and then alerted Keating. He went to see Danny Wilkinson in his hospital room and told him that the police were convinced he had killed Pascoe in an act of revenge and had then taken an overdose that was intended to look like a murder attempt. Danny, still pale, and propped up on his pillows, seemed shocked. Sidney got to the point straight away: ‘Is there anything I can do to explain your story or stop you going to jail?’
Danny wondered whether to maintain his denial. ‘I don’t think you have any actual witnesses to the murder.’
‘There is plenty of circumstantial evidence. And it was your shirt.’
‘I don’t see how you can know that.’
‘There are your fingerprints on the scythe.’
‘Don’t you think that, if I had done it, on a cold winter day I would have worn gloves?’
‘Not if you wanted to get caught.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Perhaps you wanted to send a message to your mother?’
‘My mother?’ Danny’s voice was filled with contempt.
Sidney had had enough. ‘Danny, we all know you did it. The evidence is there. You have no alibi.’
