D&P21 - Good Morning, Midnight

by Reginald Hill

  “So it wasn’t the same gun last night. Bang goes one bit of the copycat.”

  “But it still stays close,” said Novello. “I checked the details of last night’s gun. Practically identical. Had to be the other half of a matching pair. And the original permit was for two shotguns. No one seems to have picked up on that at the time.”

  “Why should they? It can hardly have been relevant. But hang about—has the permit ever been renewed for the remaining gun?”

  “No, sir. Presumably it just stayed in its cabinet in Moscow House.”

  “No,” said Pascoe. “It’s a single-gun cabinet and, from the look of it, there hasn’t been a gun kept in there since Pal Senior took his out to do the deed. So the other gun must have been kept somewhere else. Interesting, but as I doubt if we can pursue Pal Junior for shooting himself without a permit, not important. Worth mentioning, though. Very conscientious of you. And this stuff you did think worth lugging from the store, anything there you found significant?”

  “Significant? Don’t know, sir, as I’m not sure what you’re trying to signify. But there were a couple of things struck me as a bit odd.”

  “Suicides usually are a bit odd, aren’t they? I mean, even in our neurotic society, it’s a slightly offbeat thing to do.”

  “You reckon, sir? Seems to me, a guy gets depressed, waits till his family are out of the way, locks himself in his room, blows his head off, that’s pretty conventional stuff.”

  “Really? Didn’t realize that Vatican thinking was so laid back these days.”

  Novello was surprised. Heavy-footed religious trampling from the Fat Man, who numbered Joe Kerrigan, her parish priest, among his drinking mates, she’d come to expect, but Pascoe generally tiptoed through the tulips of personal belief.

  She said dismissively, “I’m talking as a cop, sir, not a Catholic.”

  “Which are, I trust, both permanent conditions, having in common the ability to believe several impossible things at the same time and before breakfast. So, on the one hand, a straightforward act of self-slaughter. On the other, an instance of that denial of God which is the unforgivable sin for which Judas stood condemned in the eyes of some theologians far more than for his act of betrayal. The black midnight of the soul which holds no hope of dawn. Strong stuff. Can you really keep it out of your cop-think in a case like this?”

  “As easy as calling a doctor and saying a prayer if someone falls ill,” she said with spirit. “You’re mixing up depression and despair, sir. One’s a condition of the mind, the other of the soul.”

  “And nowadays the Church can tell the difference?” he said smiling.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. God always can.”

  There’s a conversation killer, he thought.

  “OK,” he said. “So let’s get back to the oddities.”

  “Maybe I’m overstating it,” she said, starting to empty the bag. “As you can see, it’s a very full file, chaotic, but with all kinds of stuff bundled in that you’d not expect to find when it’s not a criminal case. Looks like Mr Dalziel caught the call and stayed in charge.”

  Pascoe looked at the confusion of papers on the desk. Definitely a Dalziel file. No pushing it off on to Uniformed here soon as suicide was confirmed.

  Odd. Even odder than his appearance last night. Copycat suicide ten years on might just about explain a Head of CID’s interest. But why had the Fat Man involved himself so deeply the first time round? Curiouser and curiouser.

  Novello said, as if he’d articulated his thought, “What’s really odd is … well, judge for yourself, sir. I made a sort of digest.”

  She produced a sheet of paper and looked at him enquiringly.

  He said, “I’ll stop you if I get bored.”

  “OK,” she said. “On March 18th Mrs Maciver flew to New York with her younger stepdaughter, Helen. On March 20th Mr Maciver killed himself in Moscow House, the family home. His body was found by his son on his return from Cambridge on March 23rd. The news was passed on to the daughter, Cressida, at Brigstone School, Lincoln, and she came home the next day. Mrs Maciver, travelling in America with her stepdaughter, was harder to reach, so she didn’t arrive until three days later. Now it gets odd. Turning up at Moscow House, she found she couldn’t get in. She contacted the police. We assured her it was nothing to do with us, but we were able to ascertain the locks had been changed on the instructions of Mr

  Palinurus Maciver Junior. We needed a contact address for Mrs Maciver and the one she gave eventually was c/o Mr Tony Kafka, Cothersley Hall, Cothersley. I expect you know she later married Kafka, who’s CEO of Ash-Mac’s—that’s Ashur-Proffitt-Maciver’s, which used to be the Maciver family firm till the Americans took it over in the eighties. Pal Senior kept a seat on the Board but seems it was just for show. There was speculation at the inquest about how much losing the top job could have contributed to his depression.”

  “Othello’s occupation’s gone,” said Pascoe. “And eventually the Widow Maciver becomes Mrs Kafka. Wonder how long it took?”

  “Nothing in this file about it, sir, but I checked. Eighteen months.”

  Pascoe looked at her speculatively and asked, “Now why should you have checked that, Shirley?”

  “Just being thorough, sir,” she said.

  Long years of listening to spinners, trimmers, quibblers, equivocators and every other kind of truth-mangler had fine-tuned Pascoe’s ear, and he thought he detected something here. A hesitation? A reservation? Something.

  He left it for now and asked, “And the inquest—anything interesting there?”

  “Interesting?”

  “Emotional outbursts. Wild accusations, that sort of thing. They didn’t come across as a very together family last night and this odd business of the young Maciver changing the locks suggests some antagonism.”

  “No, sir,” said Novello. “Seems to have gone off very smoothly. Verdict of suicide. End of story. I checked out the evidence exhibits while I was at it. As well as the shotgun, there was the book they found on the desk. Family can’t have wanted that back either. Don’t blame ’em. Even cleaned up and dried off for ten years, it’s not something you want lying around your coffee table.”

  From the bin liner she took a plastic evidence bag. Pascoe could see what she meant. The book it contained was open, presumably as it had been found on the desktop all those years ago. He’d looked at the volume on the desk last night before it went down to the lab for close examination. The words on the page had been hard to read under the mullock of blood and brain, but he’d made out the page numbers and the numbers of some of the small poems printed on them.

  He checked these now against the older book from which the solider matter had been removed, leaving the page severely stained but legible. The page and poem numbers corresponded. Pal Junior’s imitation had been exact.

  The poem numbers ranged from 1062 to 1068. How many had Dickinson written? He knew little about her except that she was American and responsible for the lines Parting is all we know of Heaven And all we need of Hell. Or was that Ella Wheeler Wilcox, someone else he knew absolutely nothing about?

  Ellie would know, though he would suffer for admitting his ignorance. She was big on the neglect of female writers. Pascoe smiled as he recalled Fat Andy’s riposte after listening to a harangue which he’d deliberately provoked: “I think I’ve got it now, lass. If it’s got tits and can put two words down on paper, it’s a lost genius.”

  He ran his eyes over the tiny poems.

  The first, 1062, seemed the relevant one.

  He scanned it–staggered–

  Dropped the Loop

  To Past or Period–

  Caught helpless at a sense as if

  His Mind were going blind–

  Groped up to see if God was there–

  Groped backward at Himself

  Caressed a Trigger absently

  And wandered out of Life.

  It was, he thought, surprisingly g
ood.

  Whoops!

  There he went. Patronizing or what? Because she was female, American, and he knew sod all about her, he was surprised to be impressed.

  The only thing surprising here, he could hear Ellie say, is your prejudicial ignorance, and I’m not surprised at that.

  He returned his attention to the poems.

  1063 had stuff about ashes in it and there had been a fire in the wastepaper bin. And 1065 began Let down the Bars, Oh Death—but then got into sheep imagery. The others had nothing suggestive in them. At least he couldn’t see anything. Maybe they needed a female eye.

  He said, “You read these poems, Shirley?”

  She nodded.

  “What did you make of them?”

  She shrugged.

  “For the tape,” he said smiling.

  “Load of bollocks,” she said. “But I’m not really into poetry and stuff.”

  “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” he said.

  He’d taken the volume out of the evidence bag now. After all these years, the risk of contamination hardly applied. Set in one place all these years, the spine creaked and cracked as he turned to the title page.

  It bore an inscription in an elegant flowing hand.

  “The World ~ stands ~ solemner ~ to me~

  Since I was wed ~ to You!”

  For my darling Pal

  from your solemnly loving Kay

  “Nice,” said Novello over his shoulder.

  “In what way?”

  “All ways. If she meant it, brings-a-tear nice. If she didn’t, nice one, Kay! Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, is there something going on here? Do you reckon there’s something dodgy about last night’s suicide?”

  He said with a smile, “Just being a good housewife, Shirley.”

  Despite trying to keep it light, he could see she took it as a shut-out. But explaining that he probably wouldn’t still be messing with this if his boss hadn’t told him to leave it alone wasn’t the best example to lay before a subordinate!

  Was there anything here to justify further delay in passing this over to Paddy Ireland? The answer was no … except maybe for that suspicion of a hesitation …

  “Right,” he said negligently. “That’s it, dear. Over to Uniformed. Could you dump this stuff back in the store, then we can both get back to some real work?”

  The dear worked. He saw her jaw set and guessed he was at last going to get what was bugging her in the form of a Parthian shot.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said as she started gathering the tumble of papers together, “there was that—”

  That was a tape cassette.

  She pushed it across the desk towards him. He looked at it without touching. It was the kind of cassette they used in the interview room but without a label.

  He said, “This was where?”

  “Tucked away in one of the box files,” she said. “Could just have ended up there by accident.”

  “You haven’t played it then?”

  “No, sir.”

  Positive without being over emphatic. She was good. But Pascoe had been where she was now.

  She’d listened to the tape. It contained something she didn’t care to admit she’d heard. She’d been uncertain what to do about it till he’d got up her nose with his dear, which had made her decide it would be amusing to leave him to listen to it alone, and later observe surreptitiously how he reacted.

  It was time for her to learn that DCs had no secrets from DCIs.

  “OK. Probably nothing, but I’ll have a listen,” he said.

  He took the tape, swivelled in his chair to face the table that bore his computer and other electronic equipment, and loaded it into the cassette player.

  Novello, laden with the file material, was trying to negotiate the door.

  Pascoe said, “Tell you what, Shirley. You might as well sit down and listen to this too. Then if it’s got to go back with the rest of that stuff, you won’t need to make an extra trip.”

  She halted, turned, looked at him over the files.

  Their gazes locked for a moment. Then she nodded as if getting a message.

  “As you wish, sir,” she said, returning to her seat.

  He waited till she was settled and pressed the “start” button.

  A familiar voice boomed out. “Voluntary statement made by Mr Palinurus Maciver Junior in the presence of Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. Date March 27th, 1992. Time one thirty-seven. God, I should be out enjoying me lunch! All the meat pies ’ull be gone. Never mind, duty calls, eh? Off you go, Mr Maciver. The floor’s yours. Tell us thy story. But try and keep it short!”

  Pascoe looked at Novello and tried to keep his face as blank as hers.

  An unlabelled cassette. The super’s voice casually breaking several clearly spelled out rules of procedure. Already, without hearing a word of what Maciver might say, he understood Novello’s concern—and her well-hidden glee.

  He settled back to hear the dead man talking.

  6 • Pal

  I hope you’ll be taking this a little more seriously by the time I’m done, Superintendent.

  My name is Palinurus Maciver Junior. I am making this statement of my own free will.

  This is in relation to the alleged suicide of my late father, Palinurus Maciver Senior. I’ve already tried to indicate to you what I think really happened. I haven’t yet seen any indication that you’re acting on my suspicions, which is why I want to make this statement formally.

  I think my father was deliberately driven to the point where he took his own life and I think that my stepmother Kay Maciver was involved. I’m not saying directly involved. The bitch made sure she was well out of the way in the States when it happened. That strikes me as being pretty indicative in itself. I don’t know the details of what took place. That’s up to you lot to find out, isn’t it? That’s your job—though, God help us, you don’t exactly seem desperate to get on with it. Probably there’s no physical evidence to find. But deliberately driving a man to the point where something snaps and he blows his head off, that’s cold premeditated murder in my book. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that somehow my stepmother was actually in the study with him, pulling the trigger. How could she have managed it when she’s got an alibi putting her six thousand miles away? I don’t know. Perhaps she’s a witch as well as a bitch. Nothing would surprise me about Kay. Yes, she could be a witch. There’s certainly something dark about her, and it’s pretty plain to see she’s got you magicked, Superintendent.

  No. Scrub all that out. I don’t want her getting away with anything because they say I’m making absurd accusations.

  Here’s the physical facts as I know them. I hope some of them aren’t too physical for you, Superintendent.

  To start with, it has to be clear to anyone who knew my father and knows my stepmother that she’s an unscrupulous grasping cow who married him partly for his money but mainly so she could lead him on to sell the business to those Yankee pirates she works for. That oily bastard Kafka will be up to his neck in this. Ask yourself where she headed as soon as she realized I was on to her and wasn’t letting her back into Moscow House. Straight round to shack up with Kafka, that’s where.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Let’s go right back.

  I was fourteen when my mother died, Cress—that’s my sister Cressida—was eleven and Helen, that’s my other sister, was only three. Mother had Helen late and she was never the same after the birth, physically or mentally. It was a hard time for Dad in so many ways. Problems at home, plus he was fighting to keep the firm afloat while all around him other businesses were sinking like stones under the recession. When mother died, it must have seemed like he’d hit the bottom. His sister, Lavinia—that’s my Aunt Vinnie—moved in to look after us. She did her best but she wasn’t really up to it. Birds are her thing. She treated us like fledglings, saw we were kept warm and fed on a regular basis, but that was it. She spent more time
in the garden than in the house. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, being treated like young birds I mean, if she’d followed it through and kept off the predators. But when the witch-bitch turned up on the scene just over a year later, all that Vinnie saw was her best chance of getting out of Moscow and back to her country cottage, which is like an open aviary.

  You’re looking impatient, Superintendent. Let’s cut to the chase. Manufacturing business was in a bad way generally, but in the jungle of international commerce, one firm’s disaster is another firm’s opportunity. Show signs of weakness and you can guarantee there’ll soon be buzzards floating overhead waiting to snack on your juiciest morsels. Ashur-Proffitt in the States was the main buzzard with its eyes on Maciver’s. God knows why they fancied us, but fancy us they did and nothing was going to stop them. OK, we were in a bad way, but there was still hope. I mean, look what’s happened since. The place is booming, isn’t it? If Dad had hung on, found a bit of extra finance somewhere, he’d have been round the corner and Maciver’s could have been one of Maggie Thatcher’s big success stories.

  But Dad was vulnerable, his mind wasn’t really on the job, and those Yankee bastards soon sussed out the best way of making sure that’s the way it stayed. I’m not saying they planned it from the start, but I don’t doubt they did their homework on Dad’s personal life pretty thoroughly and soon as someone noticed he was paying as much attention to their top man’s PA as he was to their balance sheets, they hit the button.

  Did she play hard to get or was it a tit-flash job from the start? I don’t know. I’ve only seen her in the latter mode. That surprises you, Mr Dalziel? It surprised me. All I saw at first was this skinny foreigner with a funny accent that my crazy father wanted us to accept as a substitute for our lovely mother who was hardly cold in her grave. That was bad enough. I didn’t believe it could get worse. I had no way of knowing from those first meetings when she was so unremittingly nice to me and Cress and so droolingly gooey over little Helen that here was a sexual predator, completely out of control, thinking of nothing but satisfying her own depraved needs.