Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  ‘To me too, if I’m honest. But a great one. You won’t want the soppy details, not unless you became a Mills and Boon fan same time as you started digging swinging old Bach. Couldn’t believe it when Gina told me. What were you really doing in that cathedral, Andy?’

  I’m not the only one who’s stayed sharp, thought Dalziel.

  ‘Mebbe I were praying for guidance,’ he said.

  ‘Girl guidance, perhaps,’ said Purdy, laughing. ‘And you’re too old to get one of them. Well, a man’s entitled to his operational secrets.’

  ‘Not you, not if you want my help,’ said Dalziel. ‘Listen, you don’t sound like you’ve changed your mind about Wolfe being dead. So what about this photo? Gina says it’s definitely him.’

  ‘That don’t stop it being a fake. You checked it out yet?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Dalziel. ‘It looks fine to me.’

  ‘Andy, they could give you tits like Jordan and they’d look so real, you’d be shopping for a cantilevered bra. No, I’ll bet you’ll find it’s a fake.’

  ‘OK. And if I do, what then?’

  ‘Listen, I think this is more about me than Gina. My money’s on the whole thing being set up by someone down here who doesn’t like me and has heard about me and Gina getting it together, so he decided to stir things up and jerk us about a bit.’

  ‘Hard to believe with someone as lovable as you, Mick.’

  ‘Ha ha. You know we have to deal with some pretty sick fucks, Andy. In fact, one or two of the bastards we even have to work with! My first guv’nor warned me, keep your eyes wide open, especially in the office. Working in the Met’s like having your drink spiked with roofies. Doze off and you can be pretty sure someone’s fucking you.’

  ‘So why’d you not just tell Gina this when she rang?’

  ‘If she’d been able to get hold of me when she got the photo, I probably would have done. But I was on this op, mobiles off, security silence, all that crap.’

  ‘Sod’s law, eh?’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Purdy. ‘Maybe it was part of the plan. Anyway, when I got back to her and found she was already up there, I could tell she was in a hell of a state.’

  ‘Seemed pretty calm to me,’ said Dalziel, unwilling for reasons he didn’t altogether recognize to share his own diagnosis of Gina’s mental state.

  ‘That’s her way. Believe me, Andy, underneath the surface, she’s really seething. No wonder, with all that background stuff I’ve given you. I could tell if I’d suggested this was about someone getting at me, she’d probably have erupted and ended up on local telly flashing Alex’s picture and asking anyone who recognized him to get in touch.’

  ‘Aye, they’d have lapped that up down at MYTV,’ admitted Dalziel.

  ‘Exactly. And I’m sure you’ve got plenty of loonies up there who’d be ringing in to say they’ve seen him, he’s living next door, he drinks down their pub, he looks just like their local vicar. Our sick joker would be rubbing his hands to see this all get into the public domain. And once he’s got the taste of blood, who knows what he might try next?’

  Dalziel digested this, then said, ‘So what exactly do you want from me, Mick?’

  ‘I need someone to keep the cap on things. I’d been reading about you recently when you had your little blow-up. You back to full fighting fitness now, I hope?’

  ‘Nice of you to ask. Yes, I’m getting back into the swing.’

  ‘Great. Andy, if I’d been able to get away, I’d have been up there myself by now. But I’m stuck here on this job and I’ll be tied up a good few hours yet. I don’t want this to be official because that would just complicate things. But if you could check that photo out, that would be great. Learning it was fake is something she’d probably take better from you.’

  ‘And if it’s not a fake?’

  ‘Then I’d be even more grateful to have someone up there I can trust to keep an eye on her. Look, Andy, put simply, I’m just asking a favour from an old friend. OK, I know that’s maybe putting it a bit thick, seeing as we only ever met over a few days and that was a long time ago. But that’s how I’ve always thought of you.’

  ‘Glad we don’t have video,’ said Dalziel. ‘Can’t bear to see a grown man crying.’

  ‘Listen, got to go. They all think this must be some important operational message I’m dealing with and even so, they’re looking impatient. So you’ll do what you can?’

  ‘I’ll see how it all looks after we’ve had lunch.’

  ‘Thanks, Andy. Only wish I could be there to pick up the tab.’

  ‘Not to worry, lad. This being unofficial, I’ll send you an expense claim. Cheers!’

  Dalziel put the phone down. There was stuff going off here he didn’t yet understand. Be nice to have some input from Mr Clever Clogs and Mr Ugly, but not till he was sure if it amounted to owt or nowt. As things stood, he could ill afford to let himself be seen flapping around on a wild-goose chase.

  At least he now had something to get his teeth into over lunch aside from the Keldale’s famous Aberdeen Angus beef.

  He rose and went upstairs to his bedroom. Here he regarded himself in the long wardrobe mirror. He’d told Novello scruffy was the new smart, but that didn’t apply to overweight fellows in advanced middle age. There, scruffy was just the old scruffy.

  As he stepped into his shower he felt an urge to break into song.

  Bit of Bach might have been appropriate. From what he knew about the old Kraut, he’d had about fifty kids, so likely he’d written a tune or two to celebrate the prospect of having lunch with a well-stacked blonde Mädchen. Gina Wolfe would probably know.

  In the meantime, it was the thought that counted.

  He opened his mouth and in a bass-baritone more leathery than velvety but nonetheless melismatic he boomed out the opening lines of ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’.

  TWO

  con forza

  PRELUDE

  Happy days are not even a memory for him. He does not have memories.

  Merlin-like, he lives backwards.

  He clings to the present, would make it infinite if he could, but inexorably he advances to the past.

  Once he woke to flee from dreams. Now he sleeps to hide from visions.

  If he pauses to study how he feels, the best answer is he feels safe.

  He does not ask safe from what? for knowing what you are safe from means you no longer are.

  Forgetfulness is his friend.

  For a man in fugue is like a beast of the plains that takes refuge in a dense wood.

  He can move but not freely. Trunks impede, roots trip, briar hooks, mire sucks.

  He can see but not clearly. The canopy of foliage filters the light and each gust of wind fragments and scatters it.

  Forgetfulness is his friend and fear is his companion.

  Fear tells him when to move, when to keep still. Fear shows him how to blend with the forest.

  He survives by limitation and simple repetition. He makes the unfamiliar familiar by staying in one area. He makes his own existence familiar by following patterns as strict as a square dance.

  From time to time a brighter light through the crowding trees tells him he is looking towards the boundary beyond which stretch the sunlit pastures where he once roamed free.

  But he looks and turns away, for though he has forgotten who they are, fear tells him there are hunters out there, and he lies very still for fear tells him also that once his presence among the trees is suspected, they will send in their dogs to flush him out.

  Yes, forgetfulness is his friend, fear is his protector.

  Anything that challenges fear and forgetfulness is dangerous. So the first faint scent of the possibility of happiness sets off alarms like the first faint scent of a distant forest fire. He is not sure what it is, but instinct warns him that it means change and change means movement and movement brings the past closer and the past is pain.

  How he knows this he does not know, but he knows it.<
br />
  But happiness is insidious, it does not make a frontal assault, it creeps up gradually. And because it is gradual, he feels he can control it, just a little step at a time, just the tiniest relaxation with each step, advancing like a wild beast towards the proffered hand, ever suspicious and ready to flee at the breaking of a twig.

  And suddenly, without realizing it, he is there, close up, in contact, the hand caressing his head, the fingers combing his hair.

  The past is closer now, but no longer does it feel like a pain that must be relived. It begins to feel like a tale that can be re-told.

  Then in the space of a few words, happiness explodes into joy.

  Joy clears memory but clouds judgment, joy lets him see the sunlit fields but dazzles his eyes so that they miss the hidden hunters.

  Joy makes him feel whole again, brings him love again.

  But love is his betrayer.

  12.00–12.15

  Shirley Novello had not been convinced by her boss’s assurance that scruffy was the new smart.

  Refreshed by an hour’s sleep followed by an alternating scalding freezing shower that left her skin glowing like a sun-ripened apricot, she had dressed with care. She didn’t overdo it. When you were on a surveillance job it was daft to draw attention to yourself by wearing your shortest skirt and tightest top. But she certainly looked good enough to make the young man checking lunchers on to the Keldale terrace return her smile with more than professional enthusiasm.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Table for two, please.’

  One meant you were either a hooker or just sad.

  ‘Have to be on the upper terrace,’ he said in a rather sexy Italian accent. ‘Garden terrace she is all booked up. Sorry.’

  The terrace was on two levels, the upper one protected from the weather by an awning, the lower open to the skies. Today, with little breeze and lots of warm autumn sunshine, it was the al fresco area that was most popular. Already, just after twelve, most of the tables here were occupied. At one of them, in the right-hand corner overlooking the gardens, sat a striking blonde wearing a frock that looked like it would have cost Novello a month’s pay and sunglasses that would have eaten up another week’s. Fat Andy knew how to pick them!

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Novello, checking the empty tables on the upper terrace. ‘Could I have that one there?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, smiling. She smiled back, full beam. His name tag read Pietro, and he was fairly dishy in a Med kind of way. Bit too slender for her taste, but no harm in being friendly.

  He led her to her chosen table, which was right at the edge of the upper terrace. From here she had a good view of both levels.

  He said, ‘I’ll keep an eye open for your friend, Miss…?’

  ‘Smith,’ she said. ‘Yes, she shouldn’t be long.’

  She opted for she because when no one else appeared she didn’t want him thinking she’d been stood up. A girl has her pride, even a WDC on an op!

  A glance at the menu told her Dalziel was right about the prices. She felt quite hungry, but it was probably best to go through the motions of waiting for her imaginary friend and when a waitress approached a moment later, all she ordered was a Bacardi Breezer.

  On the lower terrace, the blonde was still by herself. There was a water jug on the table from which she topped up her glass from time to time. Maybe she wanted to keep her head clear for the encounter to come. The only table close enough to permit meaningful eavesdropping was occupied by two couples engaged in a conversation so animated it verged on the raucous. Novello let her gaze slide over the other tables. Apart from the blonde there were no solitaries on the lower terrace and only one besides herself on the upper, a brawny gingery man, yawning his way through one of the Sunday Supplements. As she watched he was joined by a woman who, tight blonde curls apart, looked like the other half of a matched set.

  Of course no reason why watchers shouldn’t come in pairs. In fact, Sunday lunchtime, it was solitaries like herself that were going to stick out.

  It was nearly ten past twelve when Andy Dalziel swept past her table without the slightest flicker in her direction.

  There was something different about him. Like herself, he had smartened up. This morning he had been decently dressed but with little care for colour coordination or the location of creases, and though his face had been in recent contact with a razor, the effect had been that of a badly mown lawn. Now his drumlin chins were smooth as a bowling green and he wore a dazzling white shirt tucked into pale green slacks whose crease fell like a plumb-line on to matching deck shoes.

  Novello made a bet with herself that everything below the waist at least had been bought by the Fat Man’s partner, Cap Marvell. She wasn’t quite so confident that Cap would know, or approve, the occasion of what looked like their first airing.

  She watched carefully to see how Dalziel greeted the blonde. Disappointingly (not that she bore Cap Marvell any malice, but what a story it could have made!) there was no embrace, not even the airiest of air kisses. So his decision to smarten himself up didn’t seem to be sexually based. In any case, he’d hardly have invited a subordinate to witness the encounter. Unless of course he didn’t trust himself and she was really there as a kind of chaperone…

  She grounded these flights of fancy and once again checked out possible watchers over her Breezer.

  Dalziel had attracted a few glances as he made his way across the terrace, but that was only to be expected. He had never been one of Mid-Yorkshire’s blushing violets and his close brush with death in the Mill Street terrorist explosion had got most of the local media trailing their prepared obituaries. But none of the lunchers showed any sign of continued interest.

  Pietro passed by, ushering a middle-aged couple to a nearby table. The man, hook-nosed and balding, protested that he’d asked for a table overlooking the gardens. Pietro apologized profusely saying there must have been a mix-up but now, alas, all the al fresco tables were booked. Hook-nose, who gave the impression of a man used to getting his way, looked ready to make an issue out of it, but his companion, slightly younger though that might have been down to her make-up, uttered soothing noises and gave him a consoling stroke of the crotch area which, in view of their advanced years, Novello assumed was the result of age-related myopia rather than erotic targeting. But when she observed that under the table the man was responding in kind, Novello closed her eyes in horror. They had to be over fifty, for God’s sake!

  ‘No sign of your friend then?’

  She opened her eyes. Pietro, having disposed of the lusty geriatrics, had paused alongside her.

  ‘No. Typical. Maybe I’ll start without her. What’re the open prawns like?’

  ‘Opened fresh every day! I’ll order one for you, shall I? Such a shame a good-looking girl should have to eat alone though.’

  ‘You trying to wangle an invite to join me?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Love to, but I’d get fired,’ he said. ‘Don’t work all the time though…sorry, got to go.’

  He headed back to his station where some new arrivals were waiting impatiently.

  Doesn’t work all the time, she thought. Unlike me and all the rest of us sailing on the Good Ship Dalziel.

  Mind you, she could do with a lot of work like this. The sun was shining, she had the Fat Bastard’s money in her purse, there was even some music drifting up from the garden; not the kind of music she’d have dreamt of listening to normally, but here in this place it fell very pleasantly on the ear.

  She found herself wondering what time Pietro got off, then pulled herself together.

  He wasn’t her type, and she had a job to do.

  Once more she started checking off the other lunchers, one by one.

  Result as before. No one suspicious.

  Now she let her gaze return to Dalziel and the blonde, and then beyond them to the source of the garden music.

  There seemed to be some kind of buffet party going on, with tables set up on a square of lawn at the c
entre of which stood a gazebo that held the musicians. Occasionally a cork popped; everyone seemed to be having a good time. She felt quite envious. Being a cop could be a lonely business.

  Then she saw someone who wasn’t entering into the swing of things. A guy standing on the edge of the lawn. Maybe he just didn’t like that kind of music either. Or that kind of drink. He had ’phones on his ears, a bottle of lager in his hand, and he was nodding his head so that his black Zapata moustache and his matching shag of hair bounced up and down as though in time to a beat from his MP3.

  Hard to tell precisely what he was looking at as he was wearing big reflective sunglasses, but he was facing the hotel and there was an uninterrupted line of sight between him and Dalziel’s table on the lower terrace, a distance of twenty or thirty yards.

  Maybe she was being over-cautious, but those ’phones were a bit too big for the general air of cool the guy seemed to be trying to project. And the Zapata moustache was a bit démodé too.

  She took out her mobile, brought up her phone book and selected Dalziel.

  12.10–12.20

  Dalziel was not a religious man but he felt grateful to something that a day that had started so badly had taken a distinct turn for the better.

  Certainly, sitting in the sun with a good-looking young woman opposite you and the prospect of a tasty meal ahead of you was not the worst way to spend a Sunday lunchtime, not unless you were his old Scots granny, of course. She wouldn’t even have given him brownie points for his visit to the cathedral. A kirk should be small and homely. Those overblown buildings said more about man’s vanity than God’s greatness.

  Well, it were twenty years since she’d gone to her long home, so now she’d know for sure if she’d been right. Which she probably had been, according to the eschatological model Dalziel sometimes liked to propound at the end of a long night in the Black Bull. In the Gospel according to St Andy, after death, everybody discovers they’ve been right. In other words, we all get the afterlife we believe in, whether it’s eternal harping or eternal oblivion. Even suicide bombers, except that in their case when they find themselves exploded into the midst of their seventy-two doe-eyed virgins, they find the one bit missing after the reassembly process is their dicks.