Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  Jones, who hadn’t been able to resist boasting among his colleagues that Dave the Turd was in for a nasty surprise, lost a lot of face. Perhaps it was this feeling of irritation that caused him to be less than diplomatic shortly afterwards when he found himself on a Question Time panel with Dave Gidman. He did not doubt that the juxtapositioning was deliberately provocative, but both he and Gidman were so determinedly polite to each other that the normally urbane chairman who’d been promised blood began to let his frustration show.

  When Gidman with charming modesty refused to take seriously a suggestion by one of the other guests that he was if not yet the Tories’ heir apparent, at least their heir presumptive, the chairman reminded Jones that he’d once described the MP as a modern Icarus, soaring high on wings created by his father.

  ‘Did you mean to imply,’ went on the chairman with his charming smile, ‘that, like Icarus, the higher he flies, the more he will be in danger of crashing to earth?’

  Jones had replied urbanely, ‘Some people might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  And then, almost as if in a dream, he’d heard himself adding, ‘Of course, as a classical scholar, you will doubtless recall that Icarus’ father, Daedalus, was mixed up in some very dodgy activities, and indeed as a young man he had been banished from Athens for murdering one of his apprentices.’

  While this fell short of being actionable, it made a nice headline in many of the papers, but from his own editor it had won only a stern reproof.

  ‘Don’t even dream of writing anything like that in my paper, not even if it’s in fucking Welsh!’

  So he’d gone quiet. But he continued to add to the police files he’d inherited from Owen anything else that came up about either of the Gidmans. Secretly he still felt that it was his mission in life to do radical chiropody on their feet of clay, but now the only person he trusted enough to share this feeling with was his young brother. The eight years between them meant there was little or no sibling rivalry, just a strong current of affection, protective from the elder and hero-worshipping from the younger. Gareth sometimes asked for advice and usually took it, occasionally asked for a loan and always took it, and if ever the chance arose to impart something that might impress his brother, he always took that too. Hearing the name Wolfe mentioned in connection with that of Goldie Gidman had sent him rushing to his phone.

  Jones tried to get in touch with Gareth as he drove back to Marina Tower, but there was no response. As he’d expected, the flat was empty. Might have been nice to find that Beanie didn’t feel the Shandy party was worth going to without his company, but he’d known better than to count on it. To tell the truth, he was quite glad to have the place to himself. Beanie would have required explanations, and even in their closest moments he never forgot that she too was a journalist. You might share your body and the deep secrets of your heart with a fellow hack, but you stopped short of sharing a story.

  He switched on his laptop and accessed his Gidman file. He’d already done a quick check after Gareth’s call to confirm that Wolfe was there.

  Now he ran through the relevant section again. Operation Macavity. Possible leak. DI Wolfe under investigation. Nothing proved. Wolfe’s domestic troubles. Breakdown, Retirement. Disappearance. State of fugue posited by medical experts. Goldie’s involvement posited privately by Owen Mathias, but no supporting evidence whatsoever. No trace of Wolfe ever found. (Owen’s personal note read: Murdered?)

  Then there was the wife. Gina Wolfe. She was looked at very carefully after her husband went walkabout, both by the police and even more so by the papers, who’d given her such a hard time, she complained to the Press Complaints Authority.

  Nothing from either source. No unexplained increase in bank balances. No sudden trips to faraway places. No untraceable phone calls. Nothing suspicious. She was either totally innocent or a consummate actress.

  His mobile rang. He picked it up, expecting it would be Gareth. But the caller screen read Paul, which was just as good.

  Paul was one of the sympathetic Met officers he’d encountered at Owen’s sickbed. An investigative journalist is only as good as his contacts and he’d worked particularly hard on this relationship over the past few years. Paul was a chief inspector, not all that high on the police totem pole, but he worked in the communications centre and what he didn’t overhear, he could usually find out. Jones had rung him on his way to ambush Gidman and asked him to check the current status of Gina Wolfe to see if there was any continuing interest in her.

  Paul had laughed when he understood the link to the Gidmans. It amused him considerably to think that Jones had inherited the Mathias obsession. But it didn’t prevent him from doing a good job, though unfortunately it was pretty negative.

  ‘Had to go way back to find any mention at all,’ he said.

  He then proceeded to give Jones the stuff he already had, though, of course, the journalist made sure that neither Paul nor any other policeman was aware of this breach of security.

  So if there was nothing since, this presumably meant she was rated lily-white.

  ‘One thing, though,’ Paul continued. ‘The name rang a bell, I’d heard it recently, so I asked around. Probably nothing, but it seems one of our commanders, Mick Purdy, has got something going with this Gina Wolfe. I checked and it’s definitely the same one. Maybe she just likes cops.’

  ‘Maybe. Thanks, Paul.’

  He fed the new name into his laptop, told it to search the Gidman file.

  It came up twice. Thirty years ago, Owen Mathias, newly promoted to sergeant and not long arrived in the Met, had investigated an allegation of assault against Goldie. A DC Purdy had interviewed one of Gidman’s employees who’d been cited as a witness. Result, negative, and despite Mathias’s conviction that the man was guilty, no case was brought.

  The second time was more interesting. Purdy, now a DCI, had been interviewed in the course of the internal investigation into Alex Wolfe. It seemed to have been merely a background interview. Purdy had been Wolfe’s boss during his early years with the Met and the investigators were checking to see if there’d been any previous doubts as to his reliability. Purdy had given him a glowing testimonial.

  Now, seven years later, Purdy and Gina Wolfe were an item.

  Significant? Probably not, but he added a note to the file. By indirections find directions out. A favourite quote of an old English teacher who fancied himself as a Richard Burton manqué.

  What to do now? He tried Gareth’s number again. Still nothing. Probably needed a top-up. How many times had he told the stupid sod that his mobile was a tool of the trade?

  So all he had was what his brother had told him. Not a lot, and when he’d tried to bluff it into something bigger, Dave the Turd had been puzzled rather than alarmed. He certainly hadn’t reacted like a guilty thing surprised. It was Goldie he should have gone for. No doubt young David would be hurrying to complain to Daddy that a big boy had hit him then run away. Perhaps it had been a mistake to gate-crash the Centre opening.

  But it was done now. And the question remained–what next?

  He couldn’t let it go. He liked the smell of this, and he’d learned to trust his nose. But he doubted if he would find anyone else at the Messenger who shared that trust, not when the name Gidman was mentioned.

  So keep it to yourself till you’ve got something concrete. The advice he’d pumped at Gareth–Don’t tell a soul your story till you’re sure you’ve got a story to tell– still held good.

  But it was pointless hanging around here. If there were to be any action, it was going to be up in Mid-Yorkshire.

  He started tossing a few essentials into a small grip. As he did so he debated how to deal with Beanie. The key to her luxurious apartment nestling in his pocket wasn’t something to give up easily and, despite her efforts to appear indifferent, he’d seen she was seriously irritated by his defection from Shandy’s party. Returning home to find he’d taken off into the wild blue yonder could
seriously piss her off. He’d need to think of a really good story; family emergency, maybe. She knew that Gareth had rung, so that could provide a firm basis. It was always best to have enough truth in your lies to hold them together. Old gran dying would probably sound too corny not to be true!

  But not a note. A phone call. A besotted admirer had once told him he had the kind of vibrator voice that could sell bacon futures to an ayatollah. His old English teacher wasn’t the only Burton manqué.

  As if issuing a challenge, ‘Cwm Rhondda’ played. He checked the name: Gem Huntley. He’d promised to meet up with her later. No time for that now. He couldn’t be bothered to talk to the girl, but he’d better not leave her totally disconnected. For one thing, she’d be expecting some feedback from the opening to put into her piece. Not that she’d be getting more than a couple of paras.

  The phone stopped ringing. He thought for a moment then tapped out a message on his laptop.

  Hotlips, hi! Opening went fine. Gidman made moving speech about his family’s origins, said his father felt affection and loyalty towards the community as did he etc etc. Universal applause. Centre a joy to behold. Sorry, something’s come up, family emergency, gran about to snuff it but won’t go without seeing me first, so need to head west. Look forward to catching up with you soon as I get back. Anticipate I’ll be emotionally vulnerable and in need of a lot of TLC! Love G x

  There, that should keep her on hold. One excuse fits all. The economy of genius!

  He sent the message, closed the laptop, began to put it into its case, then changed his mind.

  Nowadays there were computers wherever you went. Lugging a pricey bit of kit like this around was a liability. Up there in the frozen north they lifted everything that wasn’t nailed down. He had no fears about leaving it here. Marina Tower had better security than Westminster Palace and another thing he certainly hadn’t shared with Beanie was his access code.

  He stuck the laptop at the back of the top shelf of the wardrobe and headed down to his car.

  As he drove away he felt that surge of excitement that always accompanied the start of a trail. This was what made him the success he was. Brought up in a strict nonconformist socialist tradition, it was easy, and useful, to claim a moral imperative for what he did. Sometimes he almost believed it himself. But this time he revelled in acknowledging to himself at least that it was completely personal.

  Getting some dirt on Goldie Gidman and making sure it spread out wide enough to hit his son would be a real pleasure.

  He selected one of the discs in his CD player, found the track he wanted, pressed the play button.

  The tremendous opening bars of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ thrilled out.

  The image it brought to his mind had nothing to do with buxom divas and grand opera, which he disliked almost as much as male voice choirs. It was the helicopter squadron in Apocalypse Now signalling its devastating approach to the Vietnamese villagers.

  Whatever was going on up there in the frozen north, the bastards were in for a real shock when they realized who it was that had them in his sights.

  He turned the music up full blast.

  ‘Here I come, ready or not!’ he cried.

  12.25–15.00

  Ellie Pascoe wasn’t happy with the way her Sunday had gone and she blamed Dalziel.

  The explosion of glass that proclaimed his imminence to the pastoral idyll of baby Lucinda’s christening party should have warned her. This was a promise of disruption as clear as thunder on an east wind. But bathed in the golden glow of the autumn sun, not to mention the golden glow of the Keldale’s champagne, she had refused to let it dissipate her feelings of mellow fruitfulness. Peter had never looked more attractive and the afternoon stretched out before them like a fair field over which they would wander to that most private corner of their garden where a suburban Adam and Eve could imparadise themselves in one another’s arms with no witness other than the lusty sun.

  But things started to go downhill thereafter, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum.

  The baby grew fractious, a condition that spread rapidly to his parents with an interesting role reversal in that it was the anxious dad urging that the best place for little Lucinda was home and the laid-back mum retorting that this was nonsense, babies were like viola players, they cried to get attention, but if you left them alone, they usually fell asleep.

  Whoever said that music has charms to soothe a savage breast clearly hadn’t heard the clarinet duet now played by Rosie Pascoe and a stout young woman called Cilla who had been less abstemious than her partner. All went well till Cilla was assailed by a sforzando set of hiccoughs which might in less musically sensitive company have passed for an amusing experiment in syncopation. Baby Lucinda, who had shown signs of nodding off, came back to screaming life and a vengeful violist observed loudly that if these were Ali’s primas, he would not care to hear her secondas. The duet limped to its end with Rosie winning by several bars. Cilla left the pagoda in tears, Rosie in a rage.

  When her parents caught up with her, she refused to be consoled, declaring her conviction that this must inevitably signal the end not only of Ali’s friendship but of her tuition, in acknowledgement of which she threatened to break her clarinet across her knee, prompting Pascoe, who’d found the duet quite hilarious, to say brightly, ‘Not all bad then,’ which did nothing to improve the moment. Nor did it help that the Sinfonietta quartet who were back in the pagoda now broke into a schmalzy rendering of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’.

  It had taken the direct intervention of Ali Wintershine to lift the girl from the depths of despair, for which Ellie was grateful. But her gratitude grew somewhat dusty when Rosie, now revelling in her role as justified sinner, demanded yet one more reassurance that she was truly forgiven and Ali said, ‘A few of my very dearest friends are coming to the house for a cup of tea after we finish here. Why don’t you join us, Rosie? And your mum and dad, too, of course.’

  Refusal would clearly have tipped the girl back into the depths, so Ellie had put mellow fruitfulness on hold, gritted her teeth, and said brightly, ‘That would be nice.’

  Pascoe had taken the diversion fairly philosophically. Though looking forward with much enthusiasm to the promised bliss awaiting him at home, the afternoon was young, not yet half past two, and he didn’t mind a brief interval of tea and cake to neutralize the side-effects of too much champagne.

  It was quickly apparent to Ellie that the alleged tea-party was little more than a ruse to complete Rosie’s restoration. There were only two very dearest friends there: a timpanist with a roving eye and a habit of testing all surfaces he encountered for resonance, including, whenever he got the chance, those of the other musical friend, a bassoonist too intoxicated to know her Arne from her Elgar. Ed Muir, perhaps thinking of the large cost of what hadn’t turned out to be a totally successful celebration, appeared somewhat distracted, provoking a sotto voce reproof from his partner, who clearly felt he wasn’t pulling his weight as co-host. Only Rosie looked unequivocally delighted. Getting her out of there, Ellie realized, was not going to be easy.

  At this stage, though already feeling Dalziel’s unexpected appearance as augurous, she was still far from ascribing to him full responsibility for the day’s divagations.

  Then Pascoe’s mobile rang.

  Ellie sometimes claimed there was a ring tone undetectable by ordinary people. Only a policeman’s wife could catch it, and she heard it now.

  He looked at the display, mouthed ‘Wieldy’ at her apologetically, and left the room at the same time as Ed Muir who’d vanished a little earlier re-entered to tell Ali there was a small catering crisis at the Arts Centre that required his presence. Ali started demanding details and there was no saying where this debate may have led if Pascoe hadn’t appeared in the doorway looking distracted and said, ‘Ellie, sorry, I’ve got to go. Can you get a taxi?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ she replied instantly. She knew it had to be serious stuff to bring
the afternoon to such a sudden conclusion.

  Ali, sensing this too, backed off her confrontation with her partner, who said, ‘I can drop Ellie and Rosie off.’

  ‘But it’s out of your way,’ said Ellie. ‘We live north. You’ll be driving into the town centre.’

  This seemed to nonplus him for a moment, then he said, ‘No problem,’ reinforcing his assurance with a rare smile.

  ‘Then thank you very much, Ed,’ Ellie replied, returning his smile. Generally she found him reserved to the point of diffidence, but as she got to know him better, she was beginning to see what Ali saw in him. And his tranquillity provided the perfect foil for Ali’s usual ebullience.

  Ellie followed Pascoe out into the hall.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she murmured.

  ‘There’s been a shooting. Someone dead. Shirley Novello hurt.’

  ‘Oh shit. Not again.’

  A few years earlier she’d actually been present when Novello was shot.

  ‘How bad?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t have too many details, but it doesn’t sound good.’

  Ellie felt all the residual warmth of the day fade from her body. She and Novello weren’t best buddies, but for a policeman’s wife, hearing of a serious injury to any officer is like a rehearsal of that moment when the bad news will be yours alone.

  ‘Was it an op?’ she asked.

  He hesitated then said, ‘Nothing I knew about. Wieldy thinks Andy might have been using her for something.’

  This was untypically vague.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘We will, when we can raise him,’ he said neutrally. ‘Wieldy’s tried. He’s not answering his mobile.’

  Many questions were buzzing through her head. Already these uncertain references to Dalziel were shifting his role from ominous apparition to guilty first mover.