Singing the Sadness

by Reginald Hill

  Dreams came like a trailer for the latest blockbuster thriller, full of flames and gunshots and cars crashing over cliffs and sweating naked bodies writhing now in agony, now in ecstasy. These must have been the closing frames, for he awoke, bathed in sweat and sexually excited. Beneath him, a tangle of bedclothes showed how much he must have thrashed around in his sleep. But surprisingly it seemed to have done him good, for when he moved he felt little pain, as if the exercise and self-generated heat had eased the aches from his limbs.

  All I need now is a good woman to complete the cure, he told himself. Or a bad one, even. He recalled Ella Lewis and Long John on this very bed and groaned with desire.

  On this very bed …

  ‘Oh shoot!’ exclaimed Joe, sitting bolt upright and dragging a sheet over his bottom half.

  If anyone was checking out the security screens, they’d have had a lovely view of all he’d got to offer for the past couple of hours or more.

  Hugely embarrassed, he slid off the bed with the sheet wrapped around him, trying not to glance apologetically at the security camera. He scuttled into the bathroom and stood under an icy-cold shower till he had dampened his desire, then switched it over to hot to cleanse the remaining perspiration off him. Then, with a large towel modestly draped around his body, he went back into the bedroom.

  Now he felt able to glance up at the camera.

  Except there wasn’t one.

  Now he knew what had been bothering him when he’d found himself watching the loving couple on his bed, only he’d failed to work it out under the greater bother of being an accidental voyeur. He examined all the walls carefully, then conjured up in his mind’s eye the picture he’d seen on the TV screen. From that angle, the camera had to be … there.

  He was looking at the wall clock. A plain not very attractive electric clock in a white plastic case such as you might find in any school or office or hospital.

  There was one in the bathroom too.

  Quickly he got dressed and went out into the corridor.

  His memory was right. There was a security camera here. He walked around and located other cameras where you’d expect to find them, covering corridors and outside doors. And he looked for and found more of the electric clocks too. In the dormitories. In the gym. In the changing rooms. In the showers. In the toilets.

  Finally, whatever the risk of being observed, he had to know. He went back to the sickbay, pulled the bed to the wall beneath the clock, stood on it and, with the pocket screwdriver he always carried, unscrewed the case.

  It took a single glance to show him he was right.

  ‘Oh, Mr Lewis, you are a piece of work,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Sixsmith? Joe? What on earth are you doing?’

  He nearly fell off the chair in shock.

  Looking round he saw Ella Williams in the doorway. She looked pale and drawn.

  Quickly, he replaced the plastic cover and stepped down.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Seemed to be losing, thought I’d put it right. What are you doing here, anyway? How’s Dai? Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘Yes, they think so,’ she said. ‘He’s not in any danger, they say. He opened his eyes for a minute and recognized me and spoke to me, but then he went again. They say that’s the best thing now, it’s more like proper sleep, see, now that he’s been properly conscious. But they’ll need to keep him in, naturally, till they can give him a real check-over, so as Mr Lewis was coming back, it seemed a good chance for me to pick up some of Dai’s things he’ll need, and Bron’s still there with him, of course, so there’ll be a familiar face if he wakes again. She told me it was you who found him and I just wanted to come along and say thank you …’

  Her words were coming in a torrent and her filling eyes showed tears were not far behind. She might not be about to collapse from grief, but she was clearly in some degree of shock and it didn’t seem at this moment to matter much what it derived from. Joe put his arms around her and said, ‘It’s OK, it’ll all be OK.’

  Over her shoulder he saw Beryl Boddington appear in the doorway, shoot up her eyebrows, then step back out.

  Now the tears came, but the words didn’t stop.

  ‘Why’s it do this to us, life? Why’s it always the same? Just when you think you’ve got it worked out, there it goes again, everything upside down, all your plans turned against you. You know what he said, Joe? He said, You and me have got it made, girl. Bad times all behind us, no stopping us now. It was like he knew …’

  ‘Knew what?’ said Joe.

  Sometimes there were questions you had to ask even though you didn’t really want an answer. Which was just as well, as he didn’t get one.

  The sobs died away and she drew back from his embrace.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, drying her eyes. ‘Not like me, this. You’re a very kind man, Joe Sixsmith. I thank you.’

  They stood there awkwardly. Joe tried to think of something to say. Something comforting and uplifting, maybe a bit philosophical, like a line from an old movie. But the best he could manage was, ‘How long these clocks been up?’

  ‘Sorry?’ she said, amazed.

  Her expression convinced him that she certainly had no idea of their double function. In fact, now he thought of it, there’d been a lot more TV screens in the Lady House cellar than in Dai’s cubbyhole.

  ‘Just thought, if they’ve started losing, they might still be under guarantee,’ he said. He thought it was pretty good extempore, and at least her amazement faded to mere bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t recall… no, wait. Same time as the security cameras, yes, that’s it, we came back from holiday summer before last – that’s right, Dai’s sister’s at Barmouth – and it was all done. Mr Lewis said he’d arranged it then to save us the inconvenience, not that I’d have let Electricity Sample inconvenience me. We laughed, Dai and me, when we saw all the clocks. Way back when Electricity just had the shop, before he became a big businessman, they always used to say, you go in there to buy a fuse, lucky if you don’t come out with enough lights for the municipal Christmas tree in Caerlindys. As for guarantees, oh yes, Electricity gives them like a politician gives promises. But that’s for Mr Lewis to sort out. I’ve got more to worry about than clocks. Thanks again, Joe.’

  ‘Hey, nothing. Regards to Dai.’

  She smiled wanly at him and went out of the room, turning left down the corridor. A moment later Joe followed her out. Just to the right of the door he found Beryl leaning up against the wall.

  ‘Oh, Joe, Joe,’ she said, shaking her head sadly.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. How come every time some female lays a hand on me, I find you somewhere close, clocking the situation?’

  ‘Clocking? Now that’s a good word, Joe, coming from someone so interested in clocks. Or is that just the latest line in chat-up among the smart set?’

  ‘Listen, there was no chatting-up going on there. All I was doing …’

  ‘I know, Joe. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything. You were doing a good job. She’s right. You’re a kind man, Joe Sixsmith.’

  She smiled at him fondly. Which was nice.

  He said, ‘OK, just so’s you know that was all that was going on.’

  ‘Oh yes. With the mother. But the daughter that I saw sticking her tongue down your throat, was that just you being kind again? Like you had a premonition something was going to happen to her dad and were getting your comfort in before the event.’

  ‘You so funny, you must have been taking lessons from Merv,’ said Joe.

  This was an underhand blow. Beryl found Merv’s humour sad, sexist, and generally distasteful.

  But she didn’t react to the smear. Instead she said, ‘So are you going to tell me what’s really going on, Joe?’

  ‘Might do. But only if you promise not to give me the usual.’

  ‘Oh, and what might that be?’

  ‘That I’m getting out of my depth and shouldn’t get mixed up with things that don’t concern me and maybe Mirab
elle’s right after all and I ought to start looking for a proper job.’

  ‘I said that?’

  ‘Only nine or ten times.’

  ‘OK, I promise.’

  So Joe told her everything.

  She listened without interruption till he finished. Then she said quietly, ‘You telling me this place is wired so that the kids are on camera in the showers and the lavs and the dorms and everywhere? For whose benefit? I can’t believe that woman knew.’

  ‘No, I reckon the terminal in Williams’s flat is only wired up to the cameras you can see. The Lady House set-up is much bigger. I noticed it without really noticing it.’

  ‘So it’s down to that creep, Lewis,’ said Beryl angrily. ‘This is really sick. Joe, you’ve got to tell that inspector fellow. This is beyond anything you can do to fix. This is police business. You’ve got to pass it on straightaway. Nothing some DIY PI can do about this without getting right out of his depth!’

  ‘Hey,’ he protested. ‘You promised you wouldn’t say things like that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, after I saw that chit tonguing you, I promised myself there was no way I was ever going to let those old chapped lips of yours come anywhere near mine again. You want I should keep all my promises?’

  She was regarding him with a fondness which set Joe’s hopes rising.

  ‘No way,’ he said, reaching for her.

  ‘Hey, the camera.’

  Joe dragged the bed to the wall, pulled a sheet off it, jumped up on the bed-end and draped the sheet over the clock.

  ‘Let it roll,’ said Joe Sixsmith.

  Chapter 23

  Endo Venera, Joe’s American guru, had pretty firm views about cooperating with the police.

  ‘Dealing with the cops is like buying real estate in Florida. Makes no matter what kind of good deal you think you got, you’ve been screwed. Never tell a cop anything without the alternative is he hits you in the nuts with a length of hose, and maybe not even then. A PI is only as good as what he knows. You don’t share information with a cop, you give it away.’

  Well, even gurus got it wrong sometimes. He had a lot of stuff loading him down which he was going to be only too glad to unload on Ursell. And despite all their talk of a fair exchange, he was beginning to wonder if he really wanted anything back. A vague appreciation of what this was all about was beginning to form in his mind. How it all fitted together was a million miles from clear, but like the guy in the old school poem who gets the notion that a fearful fiend is coming up fast behind on a lonesome road, he had no desire to look again and see things plain.

  Trouble was, he still had a professional involvement. Well, he could get out of that by returning the retainers. Anyway, professionally speaking he was out of his depth. Way things were going he was finding more loose ends than a trainee surgeon. Let Ursell have the messy job of tying them up all to himself. As for his still strong desire to know what there was to know about the burnt lady, he could read all about that eventually in the newspapers.

  His resolve to step away from the case, plus his pulsating memory of the brief but explosive interlude he’d enjoyed with Beryl, sent him down to the assembly hall for the reception with a light step.

  Soon as he saw Ursell, he was resolved to tell him everything he knew or suspected from A to Z, or more probably in the DI’s view, from A to C. And it seemed like God was approving his resolution to clear the decks when the first people he saw as he entered the crowded room were the Haggards, who descended on him with mile-wide smiles, like he was a returned prodigal.

  ‘Joe,’ exclaimed Fran the Man. ‘How are you? You look well, doesn’t he look well, my dear?’

  Franny agreed that Joe looked good enough to eat, running her tongue along her teeth like a pianist playing an arpeggio.

  ‘So, have you made any progress on that little enquiry I commissioned you to do?’ asked Fran.

  ‘Yeah, well …’ Joe recalling Haggard’s insistence on confidentiality glanced towards his wife.

  The man laughed, put his arm around her waist and squeezed.

  ‘It’s all right, speak freely. No secrets between man and wife.’

  Joe avoided catching the woman’s eye and said, ‘No, I’m sorry, nothing more than the police have been able to find out. Probably less. They don’t tell you everything. Listen, I’m glad you’re here, I can give you your advance back …’

  ‘Joe, I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve no doubt you’ve been most energetic in your enquiries. Not your fault if nothing has come of them, don’t you agree, my dear?’

  ‘Surely do. But we’re letting this darling man stand here without a drink, and him with that poor sore throat. Could you whistle up one of those Nice Young Things, sweetie?’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Drinks were being carried around on silver trays by a selection of teenage girls in Welsh costume who presumably were the Nice Young Things. Fran the Man reached out for one, missed, and went in enthusiastic pursuit.

  ‘Mrs Haggard,’ began Joe.

  ‘Franny. It’s OK. I know what you’re going to say. No result for me either. But it doesn’t matter. Soon as Fran told me he’d hired you too, I knew I was chasing wild geese up the wrong tree. Jeez, what an idiot you must think me.’

  ‘No, ‘course I don’t … I mean, not because I think … look, I’ve got your cheque right here …’

  ‘You keep it, Joe. That’s yours.’

  ‘But I haven’t earned it. I haven’t begun to earn it.’

  ‘Joe, just dealing with someone so honest is worth twice the price,’ she laughed. ‘Don’t say a word about this to Fran, then you’ve earned it, believe me. Now where’s that drink?’

  Fran reappeared, steering before him what had to be an NYT. She was certainly young, and nice enough to look resentful of the directional pats to her buttocks. She bore a tray carrying a choice of wine or orange juice. Joe took the orange. He was still trying to work out what was going on here.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said to Haggard. ‘Thought you were going back to London.’

  ‘Change of heart,’ said Fran the Man. ‘It’s so lovely up here just now that we thought, let’s turn this thing round, just because the circumstances are unpleasant doesn’t mean we have to mope. So we decided to hang around a bit longer, take the air, drink in the scenery.’

  Franny came in sharp, ‘We mustn’t hog Joe, I’m sure he wants to be among his friends, talking music.’

  She don’t know I know he’s lying, thought Joe, but she’s bright enough to see no point to it less you really have to.

  He said, ‘Catch you later then.’

  Across the room he’d caught sight of a group consisting of Lewis, Penty-Hooser and Electricity Sample, deep in conversation. And there, approaching them from the side, was the man he really wanted to see, DI Ursell.

  Joe set off on an interception course but the best he could manage was a dead heat.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said. ‘Can I have a quick word?’

  ‘Later,’ said Ursell dismissively, his gaze fixed on the Deputy Chief Constable. ‘Sir, can we talk?’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Lewis, smiling broadly. ‘I really must insist, both as host and High Master, that no one talks shop tonight. Unless of course it’s musical shop. Though I’m a fine one to talk, having been beating Edwin’s ear for the past ten minutes with a little technical problem we’re having. Could interest you two, your line of country, so to speak.’

  He paused. Wants us to ask, thought Joe. Not my game, let Ursell call the shots.

  The DI said, ‘And what might that be, sir?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing earth-shattering, just a bit of bother we’re having with the CCTV security system that Edwin’s firm installed for us a little while ago.’

  ‘I always said the clocks might be a problem,’ said Sample. It was the longest sentence Joe had heard him say and it came out like a line learned by the kind of amateur actor who gets to play the second footman in t
he chapel drama group.

  Suddenly Joe was on full alert.

  ‘Clocks? This to do with the millennium bug?’ said Ursell.

  ‘Oh no. These are real clocks, Inspector,’ said Lewis. ‘You see, I felt that cameras in full view were fine for open-access areas like corridors and this room we’re in …’

  He gestured towards a camera winking red high in a corner before going on.

  ‘… where the very sight of them is, in fact, a deterrent, and very reassuring to our parents, but in some areas they seemed inappropriate, dormitories, showers, that kind of place. Yet these too needed to be accessible for checking, perhaps even more than the other areas. So I looked for some form of camera less intrusive than these blinking monsters. And Edwin suggested a system concealed in clocks.’

  Oh, you tricky teacher, thought Joe.

  ‘I told you, all that steam, maintenance could be a problem, though,’ said Sample in his high-pitched monotone. ‘Can’t say I didn’t, can you?’

  This, though evidently extempore, was no more convincing to Joe’s ears.

  ‘Very true, Edwin. Still, there is the little matter of guarantee, five years I believe it was? But I am doing what I have forbidden these gentlemen to do, and dragging mundane matters into what should be a uniquely artistic occasion. I apologize.’

  Joe regarded him with something like admiration. For once he didn’t need hours of deep thought and an icepack to work out what was happening. Lewis must have spotted him on one of his screens checking out the clocks and decided that, when concealment’s impossible, best move is to get your revelation in first.

  Ursell said, ‘Very interesting,’ in that way which means, very boring, ‘but I’m afraid I too am going to have to talk shop. Mr Penty-Hooser, sir, I thought you’d want to know that we’ve identified the woman in the cottage.’

  If this was meant to produce a shock/horror reaction in anyone, it failed miserably.