Good Morning, Midnight

by Reginald Hill

  The door of the house opened as they got out of the car and Kay appeared at the top of the steps in a bathrobe. Her hair was just a touch dishevelled. The distraught wife, thought Pascoe. But not overplayed.

  She came down the steps to greet them.

  “Andy, thank you for coming. And you, Mr Pascoe.”

  She expressed no curiosity about nor interest in Novello.

  Dalziel put his arm around Kay’s shoulders and urged her back up the steps into the house. Pascoe and Novello read the legend on the back of the robe, then exchanged glances, like Sweden and Switzerland, each vying for the greater neutrality.

  Novello thought, Is he going to suggest a tour of the grounds while that pair cosy up to each other inside?

  Pascoe thought, Two seconds here and she’s got him performing like a dancing bear!

  He said, “Let’s get inside.”

  They caught up with the odd couple in the spacious room he’d sat in the previous day.

  Kay Kafka was apologizing for her dishabille, occasioned, she explained, by the fact that since waking this morning she’d been attempting with increasing concern to contact her husband. It occurred to Pascoe that she might have thought Dalziel would turn up alone, in which case the loosely tied bathrobe could have been intended as a useful distraction. The impression he got of there being nothing beneath it certainly distracted him. Then he dismissed the suspicion. Anyone as bright as Kay Kafka would long since have sussed out that she had more chance of diverting a charging rhino with an amusing anecdote than taking the Fat Man’s eye off the ball with a glimpse of groin.

  “I’m sorry to have troubled you with this, Andy,” she concluded. “I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

  “You did right, luv. Look, there’s probably nowt to worry about, simple explanation. I’ve set the wheels in motion. Why don’t you go and get yourself dressed while I check if there’s any news. Young Ivor here can make us all a nice cup of tea.”

  Fuck that! thought Novello angrily. But when Kay Kafka made for the door she found herself meekly following and saying, “Where’s the kitchen, Mrs Kafka?”

  By the time the two women dead-heated back into the room—Kay Kafka immaculate and composed in slacks and sweater, Novello, bearing a tray laden with mugs and teapot, plus a jug of cranberry juice and a plateful of buttered scones—the last two items her own choice; if she was going to be a skivvy, she might as well be a well-fed skivvy—Dalziel had checked that there was nothing new.

  “Right,” he said. “It’s still early days. Let’s have a cuppa and I don’t doubt we’ll hear summat in the next half-hour or so. Shall I be mum?”

  “No, I think I can manage that, Andy,” said Kay. “Excuse me, my dear, I think you’ve forgotten the sugar and, as I’m sure you know, the super likes his tea hot and sweet.”

  Oh, but you’re living dangerously there, thought Pascoe. In a duel of words, you can probably slash our Shirley to pieces without breaking sweat, but if ever it comes to the real thing, I reckon she’d snap you like a twig.

  But Novello showed neither resentment nor antagonism as she rose and went out of the room in search of the sugar basin.

  Kay poured the tea and passed it over, then said, “While we’re waiting, it occurs to me that perhaps Mr Pascoe’s presence here might have more to do with my encounter with Sergeant Wield last night than with my concern about Tony.”

  She fixed him with an encouraging smile. At the same time, Dalziel gave him a look which would have frozen a basilisk, but the DCI was not going to let this chance pass. If they turned up some bad news about her husband she was going to move right out of his reach for some time, but at the moment all that the situation meant was that her usual super-efficient guard might have dropped a little. Such opportunities, he had been taught by someone not a million miles away, were not to be missed.

  He said, “Actually, I wanted to see you again even before the sergeant mentioned your encounter. Yesterday I got called away before our really interesting discussion had reached its conclusion. You’ll recall we’d been discussing the possible reasons your husband had for using one of Emily Dickinson’s poems as a farewell note, so to speak, and you offered a very moving explanation of what you thought he was trying to say. But what, I wonder, do you imagine his son was trying to say by leaving the same poem open on the desk?”

  The power of Dalziel’s gaze was now so intense that Pascoe thought, if I duck, birds in a direct line will be falling out of the sky for several miles.

  “I’ve really no idea, Mr Pascoe,” said Kay. “Only Pal could tell us that, and I suspect the poor boy was so confused at the end, even he might not have been certain of his own motives.”

  “No? Possibly you’re right. It’s just that I thought he might have given you some indication of how he was thinking when you saw him at Moscow House that same evening.”

  She was excellent. Not by a flicker of the eyes, a tremor of any visible muscle, did she let him see if he’d registered a blow or not. He got more sense of reaction from his two colleagues whom he wasn’t looking at, Dalziel still and menacing as an unexploded mine left on a resort beach by the ebbing tide, Novello—who’d slipped back in at some point with the sugar bowl—just as still but completely rapt, mouth open, scone poised a couple of inches in front of it, like a freeze-frame in a telly ad.

  “I didn’t see him at Moscow House that evening,” said Kay Kafka gravely.

  “But you did go to Moscow House,” said Pascoe. “Before you turned up with your stepdaughter, I mean.”

  “Yes, I did,” she replied, as if surprised there should ever have been any question about her earlier visit. “But I didn’t see Pal.”

  The ease of the admission surprised him for a second but no more. She must guess he had strong evidence to put the accusation, so why deny it?

  Perhaps she’d even been forewarned.

  He put that thought from his mind and said, “You never mentioned this visit earlier?”

  “If anybody had asked me to account for my movements, then of course I would have mentioned it. But if you didn’t think my movements were of interest, why should I?”

  “That’s just a touch disingenuous, don’t you think, Mrs Kafka?” he said with a slight smile. “But, putting that question aside, let’s address some larger ones. Why did you go to Moscow House, and what happened when you were there?”

  She relaxed slightly as if they’d passed some dangerous point and now she was on safer ground.

  She said, “I went because Pal invited me to go. I arrived. The door was open. I went inside. I could find no sign of life. I came away.”

  “I think a little more detail might be helpful, Mrs Kafka.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t really recall any more detail at the moment, Mr Pascoe. But be sure, if and when it returns to me, I shall be assiduous in relaying it to you.”

  She spoke with a calm courtesy. He admired the way that not once did her gaze move from him towards Dalziel, whom he estimated it would take very little to bring blundering in.

  He said, “Nothing I’ve heard in the past couple of days suggests to me you were on very good terms with your stepson. So what was it, I wonder, that he said to make you agree to meet him in a deserted house on such a dark and dreary night?”

  She laughed and said, “Really, Mr Pascoe, you make it sound like I had a rendezvous at Wuthering Heights at midnight. It wasn’t long after six o’clock in the evening and the house in question is one where I’d lived for several years. As for the weather, OK that was pretty gothic, but not desperately so, and in any case it could just as easily have been a bright moonlit night.”

  “Even so, I can’t believe your stepson said, or wrote—how did he contact you, by the way?”

  “He rang.”

  “I see. Said, ‘Hi, Stepmomma, why don’t we meet at Moscow tonight and have a little chat about the good old days?’”

  She said, “No, he didn’t say that.”

  “So what did he say
?”

  “He said he wanted to talk about his father’s, my husband’s, death. He said he had things to tell me which I ought to know.”

  Pascoe did dubiety well, head cocked lightly to the left, teeth pressed tight, lips stretched wide, nostrils flared to draw in an audible breath. He gave it the full Henry Irving now and said, “And that was enough to make you agree to meet him in a deserted house where I gather your previous one-to-one encounters had been, to say the least, distressing?”

  Now she did look at Dalziel.

  “You gave him the tape, Andy?”

  The Fat Man nodded as if not trusting himself to speak, and she turned her attention back to Pascoe and said, “If you’ve listened to it, Mr Pascoe, you’ll understand pretty well all there is to know.”

  “Yes, I’ve listened to it, as I’ve listened to almost everybody else who could throw any light on the life and times of the family Maciver. If not exactly dysfunctional, certainly not the most functional of families, wouldn’t you agree?”

  He leaned forward and tried to stare her out. It wasn’t the cleverest move. Like the Fat Man said, never start a fight you’re not pretty sure of winning. And this was like taking on La Gioconda.

  When she didn’t respond, he sat back and said, “OK. So what precisely happened when you went to Moscow House?”

  “The front door was open. I went inside and called. There was no reply. I tried the light switch but the electricity was switched off. I noticed a stub of candle and a book of matches on the sill by the door. I lit the candle and called Pal’s name. There was no reply but I got a sense of …”

  For the first time her fluency deserted her.

  “Of what, Mrs Kafka?”

  “Of a presence. I’m not sure. The mind can play tricks. And I thought I heard … something.”

  “Something? Some particular thing?” pressed Pascoe.

  “A piece of music … rather the ghost of a piece of music, so faint and distant it might have been from another world …”

  “What kind of music.”

  “Piano. Just a few notes. But I recognized them. It was “Of Foreign Lands and People” from Schumann’s Childhood Scenes. The first classical piece that Helen learned to play …”

  “The piece on the record in the study, right? And the same piece Pal played to lure you into the music room ten years ago …”

  “That’s right. And that’s where I went the other night. The music room.”

  “Despite the fact that last time you were in there according to you Pal attacked you?” said Pascoe with the sceptical raise of his left eyebrow that he’d perfected in front of the bathroom mirror.

  “Got something in your eye, Chief Inspector?” said Dalziel.

  Kay smiled at him and said, “I’m sorry if I’m disappointing your expectations, Mr Pascoe, but I am not a gothic heroine. All I felt was curiosity. But the music-room door was locked and the key wouldn’t turn. So I went upstairs. I tried the study door. It was locked too. I stopped to look through the keyhole, but I couldn’t see anything.”

  “Because it was dark inside or because the key was in the lock?” said Dalziel.

  He might have known the old sod couldn’t keep quiet.

  “I don’t know. All I know is I felt this weird joke had gone far enough. I went downstairs, put the candle back where I’d found it and left.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “I saw a couple of women. Hookers, I think. One of them said something. I think she was asking if I were looking for sex. I walked back to where I’d left the car and drove round to my stepdaughter’s house. I always go there on a Wednesday evening when Jason is playing squash. Sorry, Andy. I should have told you all this before, but it didn’t seem relevant and, to be quite honest, the thought of getting close up to another Maciver suicide was more than I could bear.”

  The change of focus to Dalziel was something Pascoe had been looking for, even before the Fat Man opened his mouth. She’d need to know if she still had him on board or not. He sat back and waited to see if Dalziel was going to take the next step or leave it to him.

  His phone rang.

  Shit!

  He took it out and checked the display.

  It was Wield.

  He stood up, caught Novello’s eye, mouthed Stay!, and left the room.

  In the hallway he said, “Wieldy, it’s me.”

  “Sorry to butt in, Pete, but you did say to keep you posted.”

  “It’s OK. Shoot.”

  Wield gave him a succinct account of his visit to Tom Lockridge’s surgery, then went on, “After I left him, I dropped in at the hospital to see if I could have a word with this Chakravarty guy. His secretary was blocking like Boycott, but when I told her to mention the name Maciver, I got shown straight in. At first I got the impression he was ready to co-operate, but when I explained what I wanted, for some reason he seemed to change his mind and all he would say was that he was unable to confirm at this time whether Pal Maciver had been his patient or not. You any idea what’s going on, Pete?”

  Pascoe thought for a moment then said, “I do believe I have. You leave him to me, Wieldy. Now what about that stuff from Moscow House.”

  “I’ve just rung the lab. I hope you’ve not arrested Mrs Kafka; Maciver’s prints were all over everything. No sign of hers. There was a bit of piano music on the tape in the microcassette. Dr Death thought it was Schubert maybe.”

  “Schumann,” said Pascoe.

  “Whatever. But the diary might be interesting. No forensic except for Maciver’s prints and someone else’s, a lot older, most likely Pal Senior’s. It’s his diary for 1992, and it finishes a few days before he topped himself. Death’s done with it now and I’m on my way there to have a read.”

  “Great,” said Pascoe. “I’m heading back to the station myself shortly so I’ll see you there.”

  He switched off the phone and turned to see Novello coming out of the sitting room.

  “Mr Dalziel wants his document case from the car, sir,” she said apologetically. “I played deaf the first two times he said it, but I think if I’d stayed any longer, he’d have thrown me out of the window.”

  “That’s OK. We’re done here. Why don’t you go and start the car?”

  “But the super’s document case …”

  Pascoe said, “The super wouldn’t recognize a document case if he found one in a document case shop with “document case” stamped all over it.”

  Then he winked and said, “You make a very nice cup of tea, Shirley. I hope your getaway technique’s up to the same high standard.”

  This has got to be that post-operative irony you hear those plonkers with the verbal squits talk about on the telly when you’re too pissed to switch it off, thought Novello as she went outside. It means he wants me to know he really appreciates me. At least that had better be what he means!

  In the sitting room Dalziel and Kay Kafka hadn’t moved but somehow it felt as if they were closer together.

  Pascoe said briskly, “Sir, that was Sergeant Wield. I need to get back to talk to him. No need for you to come, though. I thought you might want to hang on a bit with Mrs Kafka to see if any new information comes through about Mr Kafka.”

  “You’re finished with me, Mr Pascoe?” said the woman.

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. I’m sure you’ll get some good news soon.”

  He took in the Fat Man’s faintly puzzled expression without catching his menacingly demanding eye as he turned on his heel and moved across the hall almost at a trot.

  The car was at the bottom of the steps with the engine running.

  He slipped into the passenger seat and said what he’d never expected to hear himself saying to Novello, “Fast as you like, Shirley.”

  She gunned the engine and they were already thirty yards down the drive and accelerating before the rearview mirror showed him Dalziel erupting out of the front door of the Hall.

  “I think the super’s trying to attract your attention, sir,
” said Novello.

  “Really? No, I think he’s just waving goodbye.”

  In fact what the Fat Man was now doing was running back inside. Then they were into a gravel-spraying skid on the bend which took them out of sight of the house and heading down the straight towards the gateway.

  “Sir,” said Novello. “I think the gates are closing.”

  Pascoe looked ahead. She was right. The fat bastard must have found the switch and thrown it.

  “I heard you were a fast driver,” he said sceptically.

  Novello heard and accepted the challenge. They got through the gates with only a lightly affectionate clip to the passenger mirror.

  Pascoe wound down his window and adjusted it.

  “I think we can drop within hailing distance of the legal limit now, Shirley,” he suggested.

  “Yes, sir,” said Novello, maintaining her speed. “That would be so you can tell me what’s going on, would it, sir?”

  And Pascoe, recognizing an offer it would be foolish to refuse, said. “I was going to anyway.”

  6 • an Irish joke

  Shirley Novello listened with an intensity matched, to Pascoe’s relief, by a proportionate deceleration as he described Wield’s encounter with Kay Kafka the previous evening and the subsequent forensic results.

  “So instead of making Mrs Kafka look more guilty, her showing up at the house last night and opening the cabinet puts her in the clear?” she said.

  “You sound doubtful, Shirley. Or is it disappointed?”

  “Doesn’t worry me one way or the other,” she said. “So now what you’re thinking is that Maciver deliberately set up his suicide so it would look like Mrs Kafka murdered him?”