Devices & Desires - Dalgleish 08

by P. D. James

  Ten minutes later Rickards got to his feet and said it was time to get home. Dalgliesh walked with him to his car. The cloud level was low, the earth and sky subsumed in the same obliterating darkness in which the cold glitter of the power station seemed to have moved closer, and there lay over the sea a pale blue luminosity, like the faint semblance of a newly discovered Milky Way. Even to feel the ground strike hard beneath their feet was disorientating in this blackness and for a few seconds both men hesitated as if the ten yards to the car, gleaming like some floating spacecraft in the light spilling from the open door, was an odyssey over dangerous and insubstantial ground. Above them the sails of the mill gleamed white and silent, potent with latent power. For a moment Dalgliesh had the illusion that they were about to begin slowly turning.

  Rickards said: 'Everything on this headland is contrast. After I left Pascoe's caravan this morning I stood on those low sandy cliffs and looked south. There was nothing but an old fishing smack, a coiled rope, an upturned box, that awful sea. It must have looked like that for near on a thousand years. And then I faced north and saw that bloody great power station. There it is, glittering away. And I'm seeing it under the shadow of the windmill. Does it work, by the way? The mill, I mean.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'I'm told so. The sails turn but it doesn't grind. The original millstones are in the lower chamber. Occasionally I have a wish to see the sails slowly turning, but I resist. I'm not sure, once started, whether I could stop them. It would be irritating to hear them creaking away all night.'

  They had reached the car but Rickards, pausing with his hand on the door, seemed reluctant to get in. He said: 'We've moved a long way, haven't we, between this mill and the power station? What is it? Four miles of headland and three hundred years of progress. And then I think of those two bodies in the morgue and wonder if we've progressed at all. Dad would have talked about original sin. He was a lay preacher, was Dad. He had it all worked out.'

  So had mine, come to that, thought Dalgliesh. He said: 'Lucky Dad.' There was a moment's silence broken by the sound of the telephone, its insistent peal clearly heard through the open door. Dalgliesh said: 'You'd better wait a moment. It could be for you.'

  It was. Oliphant's voice asked if Chief Inspector Rickards was there. He wasn't at his home and Dalgliesh's number was one of those which he'd left.

  The call was brief. Less than a minute later Rickards joined him at the open door. The slight melancholy of the last few minutes had fallen away and his step was buoyant.

  'It could have waited until tomorrow but Oliphant wanted me to know. This could be the breakthrough we've needed. There's been a call from the lab. They must have been working on it non-stop. Oliphant told you, I imagine, that we found a footprint.'

  'He did mention it. On the right-hand side of the path in soft sand. He didn't give any details.'

  And Dalgliesh, punctilious in not discussing a case with a junior officer in the absence of Rickards, hadn't asked.

  'We've just got confirmation. It's the sole of a Bumble trainer, the right foot. Size ten. The pattern on the sole is unique, apparently, and they have a yellow bee on each heel. You must have seen them.' Then, when Dalgliesh didn't reply, he said: 'For God's sake, Mr Dalgliesh, don't tell me that you own a pair. That's a complication I can do without.'

  'No, I don't own them. Bumbles are too fashionable for me. But I've seen a pair recently and here on the headland.'

  'On whose feet?'

  'They weren't on any feet.' He thought for a moment, then said: 'I remember now. Last Wednesday morning, the day after I arrived, I took some of my aunt's clothes, including two pairs of her shoes, to the Old Rectory for the church jumble. They keep a couple of tea chests in an old scullery there where people can leave things they don't want. The back door was open as it usually is in daylight so I didn't bother to knock. There was a pair of Bumbles among the other shoes. Or, more accurately, I saw the heel of one shoe. I imagine the other was there but I didn't see it.'

  'On top of the chest?'

  'No, about a third down. I think they were in a transparent plastic bag. As I say, I didn't see the whole pair but I did glimpse one heel with the unmistakable yellow bee. It's possible that they were Toby Gledhill’s. Lessingham mentioned that he was wearing Bumbles when he killed himself.'

  'And you left the trainers there. You see the importance of what you're saying, Mr Dalgliesh?'

  'Yes, I see the importance of what I'm saying and yes, I left the shoe there. I was donating jumble, not stealing it.'

  Rickards said: 'If there was a pair, and common sense suggests that there was, anyone could have taken them. And if they're no longer in the chest, it looks as though somebody did.' He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and said: 'Eleven forty-five. What time do you suppose Mrs Dennison goes to bed?'

  Dalgliesh said firmly: 'Earlier than this, I imagine. And she'd hardly go to bed without bolting the back door. So if someone did take them and they're still missing, they can't be returned tonight.'

  They had reached the car. Rickards, with his hand on the door, didn't reply but gazed out over the headland as if in thought. His excitement, carefully controlled and unspoken, was as palpable as if he had banged his fists against the car bonnet. Then he unlocked the door and slipped inside. The headlights cut into the darkness like searchlights.

  As he wound down the window to say a final goodnight, Dalgliesh said: 'There's something I ought perhaps to mention about Meg Dennison. I don't know whether you remember, but she was the teacher at the centre of that race row in inner London. I imagine that she's had about as much interrogation as she can take. That means the interview might not be easy for you.'

  He had thought carefully before he spoke, knowing that it might be a mistake. It was a mistake. The warning, however carefully phrased, had sparked off that latent antagonism of which he was uneasily aware in all his dealings with Rickards.

  Rickards said: 'What you mean, Mr Dalgliesh, is that it might not be easy for her. I've already spoken to the lady and I know something about her past. It took a lot of courage to stand up for her principles as she did. Some might say a lot of obstinacy. A woman who is capable of that has guts enough for anything, wouldn't you say?'

  Dalgliesh watched the car lights until Rickards reached the coastal road and turned right, then locked the door and began a desultory tidying-up before bed. Looking back over the evening he recognized that he had been reluctant to talk to Rickards at length about his Friday morning visit to Larksoken Power Station and less than open about his reactions, perhaps because they had been more complex and the place itself more impressive than he had expected. He had been asked to arrive by 8.45 since Mair wanted to escort him personally and had to leave for a luncheon appointment in London. At the beginning of the visit he had asked: 'How much do you know about nuclear power?'

  'Very little. Perhaps it might be wiser to assume that I know nothing.'

  'In that case we'd better begin with the usual preamble about sources of radiation, and what is meant by nuclear power, nuclear energy and atomic energy, before we begin our tour of the plant. I've asked Miles Lessingham as Operations Superintendent to join us.'

  It was the beginning of an extraordinary two hours. Dalgliesh, escorted by his two mentors, was garbed in protective clothing, divested of it, checked for radioactivity, subjected to an almost constant stream of facts and figures. He was aware, even coming as an outsider, that the station was run with exceptional efficiency, that a quietly competent and respected authority was in control. Alex Mair, ostensibly there to escort a man afforded the status of a distinguished visitor, was never uninvolved, always quietly watchful, obviously in charge. And the staff Dalgliesh met impressed him with their dedication as they patiently explained their jobs in terms which an intelligent layman could understand. He sensed beneath their professionalism a commitment to nuclear power amounting in some cases to a controlled enthusiasm combined with a defensiveness which was probably natural given the
public's ambivalence about nuclear energy. When one of the engineers said: 'It's a dangerous technology but we need it and we can manage it', he heard, not the arrogance of scientific certainty but a reverence for the element which they controlled, almost the love—hate relationship of a sailor for the sea which was both a respected enemy and his natural habitat. If the tour had been designed to reassure, then it had to some extent succeeded. If nuclear power was safe in any hands then it would be safe in these. But how safe, and for how long?

  He had stood in the great turbine hall, ears pulsating, while Mair produced his facts and figures about pressures, voltages and breaking capacity; had stood, garbed in protective clothing, and looked down where the spent elements lay like sinister fishes underwater in the fuel cooling pond for a hundred days before being dispatched to Sellafield for reprocessing; had walked to the edge of the sea to look at the cooling water plant and condensers. But the most interesting part of the visit had been in the reactor house. Mair, summoned by a bleep from his intercom, had temporarily left them and Dalgliesh was alone with Lessingham. They had stood on a high walkway looking down at the black charge floors of the two reactors. To one side of the reactor was one of the two immense fuelling machines. Remembering Toby Gledhill, Dalgliesh glanced at his companion. Lessingham's face was taut and so white that Dalgliesh feared that he was about to faint. Then he spoke almost like an automaton, reciting a lesson learned by rote.

  'There are 26,488 fuel elements in each reactor and they're charged by the fuelling machinery over a period of five to ten years. Each of the fuelling machines is approximately 23 feet high and weighs 115 tons. It can hold 14 fuel elements as well as the other components which are necessary for the refuelling cycle. The pressure vessel is heavily shielded, with cast-iron and densified wood. What you see mounted on top of the machine is the hoist unit for lifting the fuel elements. There is also a connecting unit which couples the machine to the reactor and a television camera which allows viewing of the operations above the magazine.'

  He broke off and, looking at him, Dalgliesh saw that the hands gripping the rail in front of him were shaking. Neither spoke. The spasm lasted less than ten seconds. Then Lessingham said: 'Shock is an odd phenomenon. I dreamed of watching Toby fall for weeks afterwards. Then the dream suddenly stopped. I thought I'd be able to look down at the reactor charge floor and put the image out of my mind. Most of the time I can. After all, I work here, this is my place. But the dream still recurs and sometimes, like now, I can see him lying there so clearly that it could be a hallucination.'

  Dalgliesh felt that nothing he could say would be other than banal. Lessingham went on: 'I got to him first. He was lying prone but I couldn't turn him over. I couldn't make myself touch him. But I didn't need to. I knew that he was dead. He looked very small, disjointed, a rag doll. All I was aware of were those ridiculous symbols of a yellow bee on the heels of his trainers. Christ, was I glad to get rid of those bloody shoes.'

  So Gledhill hadn't been wearing protective clothing. The impulse to suicide hadn't been completely spontaneous.

  Dalgliesh said: 'He must have been a good climber.' 'Oh yes, Toby could climb. That was the least of his talents.'

  And then, without a perceptible change in his voice, he continued with the description of the reactor and the procedure for loading new fuel into the reactor core. Five minutes later, Mair rejoined them. On their way back to his office at the end of the tour he had suddenly asked: 'Have you heard of Richard Feynman?'

  'The American physicist? I saw a television programme about him a few months ago, otherwise the name wouldn't have meant anything to me.'

  'Feynman said: "Far more marvellous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined. Why do poets of the present not speak of it?" You're a poet, but this place, the power it generates, the beauty of the engineering, the sheer magnificence of it, it doesn't particularly interest you, does it? You or any other poet?'

  'It interests me. That doesn't mean that I can make poetry out of it.'

  'No, your subjects are more predictable, aren't they? How does it go?

  Twenty per cent to God and to His saints,

  Twenty per cent to nature and her proxies.

  And all the rest devoted to the plaints

  Of guys pursued by or pursuing doxies.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'The percentage for God and His saints is down but I'd agree that the doxies are more than holding their own.'

  'And that poor devil out there, the Norfolk Whistler, he's not poetic either presumably.'

  'He's human. That makes him a fit subject for poetry.'

  'But not one you'd choose?'

  Dalgliesh could have replied that a poet doesn't choose his subject, it chooses him. But one reason for escaping to Norfolk had been to avoid discussions about poetry and even if he had enjoyed talking about his writing, it wouldn't have been with Alex Mair. But he had been surprised how little he had resented the questions. It was difficult to like the man, impossible not to respect him. And if he had murdered Hilary Robarts then Rickards was faced with a formidable opponent.

  As he raked out the last ashes of the fire he remembered again with extraordinary clarity that moment when he had stood with Lessingham and looked down at the dark charge floor of the reactor beneath which that potent and mysterious power was silently working away. He wondered how long it would be before Rickards asked himself why precisely the murderer had chosen that particular pair of shoes.

  Rickards knew that Dalgiiesh was right; it would have been an unwarranted intrusion to call on Mrs Dennison so late at night. But he couldn't drive past the Old Rectory without slowing down and glancing to see if there was any sign of life. There was none; the house stood dark and silent behind the wind-torn bushes. Entering his own darkened house he felt a sudden overwhelming tiredness. But there was paperwork to be got through before he could go to bed, including his final report on the Whistler inquiry; awkward questions to be answered, a defence to be argued which would stand a chance of rebutting the charges, private and public, of police incompetence, poor supervision, too much reliance on technology and not enough good old-fashioned detection. And that was before he could begin scrutinizing the latest reports on the Robarts murder.

  It was nearly four o'clock before he tore off his clothes and slumped face downwards on to the bed. Sometime during the night he must have been aware that he was cold for he awoke to find himself under the bedclothes and, stretching out his hand to the bedside lamp, saw with dismay that he had slept through the alarm and that it was almost eight o'clock. Instantly awake, he threw back the bedclothes and stumbled over to peer at himself in the glass of his wife's dressing table. The dressing table, kidney-shaped, was trimmed with pink and white flowered voile, the pretty matching set of ring stand and tray still neatly in place, a stuffed doll which Susie had won at a fair as a child hanging from the side of the glass. Only her jars of make-up were missing and their absence suddenly struck him as poignantly as if she were dead and they had been disposed of with the unimportant detritus of a life. What, he wondered, bending low to look more closely into the glass, had anything in this pink and white, utterly feminine bedroom, to do with that gaunt face, that rough, masculine torso? He experienced again what he had felt initially when they first moved in a month after the honeymoon, that nothing in the house was truly his. When he was a young DC he would have been amazed had anyone told him that he would achieve such a house, a gravel sweep of drive, its own half acre of garden, a drawing room and separate dining room, each with its carefully chosen suite of furniture which still smelt pristine new, reminding him every time he entered of the Oxford Street department store in which it had been chosen. But with Susie away he was again as ill at ease in it as if he were a barely tolerated and despised guest.

  Dragging on his dressing gown, he opened the door of the small room at the south of the house which was to be the nursery. The cot was in pale lemon and white, matching the curtains. The changing table with its lower she
lf for baby paraphernalia, its hanging bag for clean nappies, stood against the wall. The wallpaper was a riot of rabbits and leaping lambs. It was impossible to believe that any child of his would one day be sleeping here.

  And it wasn't only the house which rejected him. With Susie absent it was sometimes difficult even to believe in the reality of his marriage. He had met her on a cultural cruise to Greece on which he had booked as an alternative to the usual solitary walking holiday. She had been one of the few younger women on the ship, travelling with her mother, the widow of a dentist. He realized now that it was Susie who had made the running, who had determined on the marriage, who had chosen him long before he had thought of choosing her. But the realization when it came was flattering rather than disturbing and, after all, he hadn't been unwilling. He had reached that time of life when he would occasionally indulge in an idealized picture of a wife waiting at home, domestic comfort, someone to return to at the end of the day, a child who would be his stake in the future, someone to work for.