Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  The girl in red tugged at his sleeve. ‘You wasting our time, bruv.’

  ‘Leave it, Lisa.’ He shook her off. He walked over to the corner of the studio and sat on the floor.

  Helen started the music CD again, and the class gathered into lines.

  ‘Adage,’ Helen began. ‘Chassé forward on the left, port de bras…’ She was aware of Finn watching the class. She was also aware that the energy had faded from the group and was now concentrated sullenly in his corner of the room.

  Chapter Five

  Chad stood at the church door, greeting the departing congregation, shaking hands, smiling, asking after absent parishioners, ‘How is Joan now? Out of hospital this week? Oh, good, I am glad…’ ‘The cat, yes, I know, all very sad, I heard… Lovely flower arrangement in the Lady Chapel, Mrs. Lynch…’

  There was no sign of Virginia. He watched them go, the tap of sticks on the old paved path, the sunshine silvering the gravestones.

  He went back into church. A relief, to find it empty. He would just finish the last few tasks, and then home for lunch.

  She was still sitting in the pew at the back. She turned as the door clicked behind him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t mean to scare you,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all. I didn’t expect to see you in church today, that’s all.’ He sat down next to her. The altar candles were still alight, and he found himself worrying about the wax dropping on to the altar cloth.

  ‘I thought of them all,’ she said, ‘all what they’d say, there’s Ginny Maguire, fancy her showing her face after all this time, and then I thought, let them. Let them gossip all they want. There’s been enough said about me in the past, and there’ll be enough said about me in the weeks to come.’

  He nodded his support, watching the flicker of the candles.

  ‘Your sermon,’ she said.

  ‘Hmmm?’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t what I expected.’

  He turned to face her. ‘I – I have no idea what I said, I’m afraid.’

  The hint of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Did it seem like that?’ he asked her.

  ‘Depends what they’re used to, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘I – ’ he hesitated. ‘I didn’t want to offer you empty hope,’ he said.

  She met his eyes. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘The thing is – we had bad news this morning, Tobias and me. The police came again. It – it wasn’t suicide.’

  He looked at her hands clasped tight together in her lap. ‘Not suicide?’

  ‘Type of injuries, they said, brain injury, bruising… suggests he was already unconscious when… when he hit the water.’

  He looked up at her. ‘But how…?’

  ‘Killed,’ she said. ‘By person or persons unknown.’

  ‘But – who? Why…?’

  She opened her hands, palms upward. ‘I can’t help them, can I? He goes to the lab. He comes home for tea. He talks to Tobias. We watch the television. I can’t help them…’

  A shouting outside, a hammering on the door of the church. Chad jumped to his feet, swung the door open. ‘Tobias,’ he said.

  He loomed in the church doorway, dishevelled and tearful. ‘Can I… ’ he sniffed. ‘Is she here?’

  ‘I’m here, love.’ Virginia spoke from her pew. Tobias screwed up his eyes in the dim light, stumbled towards her, sank down next to her. She put her arm around him.

  ‘I woke up and you weren’t there,’ Tobias said, his face half-buried in Virginia’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right, love, I’m here now.’ She looked up at Chad. ‘It’s been awful for our Tom.’

  ‘Uncle Murdo,’ Tobias said. ‘I keep thinking about him and who would do that to him, who would do it? I asked that woman from the police, why? I asked her, why do people do that to other people? She didn’t say anything, did she Auntie? She couldn’t tell me.’

  Chad walked to the altar and blew out the candles. He gathered up the pages from the lectern.

  Tobias had followed him. He stood next to him. The white altar cloth was splashed with colour from the stained glass window. Tobias circled a patch of red with a finger. ‘No one should do that to someone else, should they?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Chad agreed. His gaze fell on Virginia, where she sat, cold and still, at the back of the church. He took a step towards her, wanting to help, wanting to offer her warmth, kindness. ‘Come to the vicarage,’ he said. ‘Come for lunch.’

  ‘He’s the most talented of the whole class, and he spent most of it sitting on the floor.’ Helen tucked the phone under her chin, slipped off one ballet shoe and then another.

  ‘Babe, if he don’t want to do it, he don’t want to do it.’ The soft drawl of his voice down the phone. ‘I’d tell him you don’t need him.’

  She smiled, stretched herself along the sofa. ‘The problem is, Anton – ’

  He interrupted her. ‘The problem is, babes, you do need him. What’s the day job? Working with Miss Doris – ’

  ‘Dorothy,’ she corrected him –

  ‘Coaching all the Maisies and Evies through Grade Three – ’

  ‘Two of them are on Grade Eight – ’

  ‘It’s always been the hand-picked rude-boys where your heart resides. Nothing’s changed, even by the sea.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I’m tempted to join you there,’ he said. ‘I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Soho, on my own because a certain gorgeous man is late as usual, and it’s pouring with rain. How is it where you are?’

  She looked out at the slate grey sky. ‘Well, it’s not raining,’ she said. ‘But Chad will be back from church in a minute, and I’ve got nowhere with lunch.’

  ‘What kind of vicar’s wife are you?’

  She laughed again, at his fake-scandalized tone. ‘A very bad one, as you knew I would be.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Babe – how is it really? Apart from recalcitrant rude-boys and the lack of lunch?’

  She breathed a deep breath. ‘Whatever is wrong with my life here,’ she began, hearing footsteps outside, voices too, ‘it would have been just as wrong in London.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘Anton – I’ve got to go. Chad’s back, and he’s got people with him, from the sound of it.’

  ‘Needy parishioners,’ Anton said. ‘Rather you than me. Speak soon, Hon.’

  She clicked off her phone, unfurled herself from the sofa and went to see what was happening.

  Two people were standing in her kitchen next to Chad. One was a small blonde-ish woman of indeterminate age in a neat navy raincoat. The other was a huge young man, or perhaps a giant child, his fists clenched at his side, his eyes blinking as if he was about to burst into tears.

  ‘Helen – ’ Chad glanced at her nervously. ‘This is Virginia – Mrs. Maguire. And this is her nephew, Tobias. They’ve had some rather bad news. I don’t suppose there’s any, um… ’

  Helen was aware of the woman looking at her. She felt suddenly exposed in her layers of pink dancewear. ‘Lunch,’ she said, brightly. ‘Yes, of course. Nothing special, but I’m sure we can find something.’

  Twenty minutes later the casserole from the night before was bubbling gently on the hob, having been extended with various chopped vegetables, and there were potatoes roasting in the oven. Helen, now in jeans and cashmere jumper, put her head round the door of the lounge. ‘Drinks, anyone?’

  Tobias looked up from the large armchair. ‘I like Coca Cola,’ he said, ‘but I’m not allowed it, am I Auntie?’

  ‘I don’t think we have any,’ Helen said. ‘How’s orange juice?’

  ‘I don’t like orange juice,’ Tobias said.

  ‘Just water is fine for us both,’ Virginia said.

  As Helen stood in the kitchen pouring glasses of water, she wondered at her husband’s life. How had he not told her about this tiny sad-faced woman who sat on one co
rner of the sofa as if she didn’t deserve to be there, and this large man-boy who filled the huge armchair as if he belonged in this house made for giants.

  She returned to the lounge, and all four sat and sipped water. She felt as if she’d silenced a conversation. On the coffee table there was a book, a beautiful leather-bound, honey-coloured thing. She reached across and picked it up.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Chad seemed to blush. ‘A loan,’ he said, glancing at the sofa. ‘Virginia lent it to me.’

  ‘Gave it,’ Virginia said, with a harsh rasp.

  Helen looked up at her. ‘A gift? Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘And because he’s interested in it,’ she added, with a tilt of her head towards Chad.

  Helen tried not to stare, fascinated by her sharp tone. She flicked through the book instead. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Careful,’ Chad said.

  She glanced at him. ‘It’s only a book,’ she said.

  ‘It’s quite old,’ he said. ‘Late nineteenth century. It’s a kind of diary, someone’s copied out loads of natural philosophy, ideas about gravity and atoms, Newton and people, and then at the end there’s another writer, a woman, taking issue with it all, heart-felt arguments about the aether, absolutely fascinating, all hand-written…’

  ‘Is that what you were reading last night,’ she said, ‘when you wouldn’t come to bed?’

  A look from Virginia made her feel she’d said too much.

  ‘It does that,’ Virginia said. ‘Takes you over.’

  ‘It’s ours,’ Tobias said.

  Chad looked across at him. ‘I’m only borrowing it, remember?’ he said.

  ‘It’s all in my head anyway.’ Tobias breathed out. He picked up his glass of water and drained it in one gulp.

  ‘“If we are to say that there can be nothing, that matter can support the absence of itself, then we are lost,”’ Helen began to read. ‘“For nothingness is a gap that must be filled, if not by good, then by evil –’”

  ‘Then by evil,’ Tobias repeated. ‘That’s why you can’t have nothing – ’ he was almost shouting. ‘When you smash particles together, there can’t be nothingness, that’s what’s wrong with it all –’

  ‘Hush, hush…’ Virginia reached across and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘Tom, dear, it’s all right…’

  He quietened.

  Helen looked from Tobias to her husband. Chad was staring down, his hands gripping his knees. She turned a page of the book. ‘“He is an uniform Being,”’ she read, ‘“void of Organs, Members or Parts, and they are his Creatures subordinate to him, and subservient to his Will; and he is no more the Soul of them, than the Soul of a Man is the Soul of the Species of Things carried through the Organs of Sense into the place of its Sensation – ”’

  ‘Newton,’ Chad said, a false brightness in his voice. ‘That’s what’s so fascinating about the book. Great chunks of people copied out, references to all sorts, even alchemy, mercuries, all higgledy-piggledy.’

  ‘The Prof says you can have nothingness.’ Tobias was calmer now. He addressed Chad directly. ‘And I tell him he’s wrong. But he’s not a nice man, is he, Auntie?’

  Virginia shook her head. ‘Prof Moffatt. He runs the lab. My husband didn’t like him either.’

  ‘He says that some of the bits are mass-less and I say what about gravity, then, and he just laughs at me as if I’m stupid, I don’t like him.’ Tobias stopped, breathing fast.

  ‘He’s a difficult man. Brilliant, everyone agrees,’ Virginia said. ‘But not to be trusted. Murdo always said he’d steal your research and take the credit for himself.’

  ‘Perhaps he killed him, Auntie,’ Tobias said, with an odd equanimity.

  She shook her head. ‘He might be difficult, but I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘Well someone did,’ Tobias said.

  ‘Yes,’ Virginia said. She looked even smaller, sunk in her corner of the sofa. ‘Someone did.’

  Helen looked from one to the other. She wondered if anyone was going to explain.

  Tobias met her eyes. ‘They hit him on the head,’ he said. ‘They pushed him from Hank’s Tower into the sea, that’s what the police told Auntie.’

  Helen glanced across at her husband, waiting for him to step in, to explain, to take control. He didn’t look up.

  Tobias got to his feet, and began to roam the room, running his fingers along the edge of the bookshelves. Helen stood up too. ‘The potatoes will be done, I expect.’

  ‘Ballet shoes.’ Tobias was standing by the window, framed by the heavy gold curtains. He was holding up her shoes, one in each hand.

  She blinked at him. ‘Yes. They’re mine.’

  ‘I did that, didn’t I, Auntie? Dancing. I used to do it at school.’

  ‘He loved it,’ Virginia said.

  Helen looked at him, standing in the window’s light. She tried to see a dancer in this huge figure, his hands dangling at his sides, his feet at odd angles as if they were so far away he’d forgotten all about them. But then he raised his arms to shoulder height, one shoe still grasped in each hand, and turned a perfect double pirouette. He stood and faced her, perfectly still.

  ‘Pirouette en-dedans,’ she said.

  ‘And this one’s en-dehors,’ he said, and did another perfect turn.

  It was as if the proportions of the room had been restored, she thought, watching this tall boy-man suddenly graceful in the golden light.

  ‘Where did you learn that?’ she said.

  ‘His school…’ Virginia’s voice was weary. ‘He had five years at an excellent school. While his Mum was still alive. It closed…’

  ‘She danced too.’ Tobias was standing poised, balanced. ‘My mum. She was a dancer too.’ He placed the shoes back on the floor.

  There was a brief silence. ‘Well,’ Chad said. ‘Lunch, I think.’

  Tobias shifted from his ballet posture, and immediately seemed to forget his feet again, as he lumbered towards the door. Virginia followed him. Chad glanced at Helen as she joined him in the doorway, and briefly squeezed her arm.

  ‘Nice boots, Ma’am,’ Detective Sergeant Ben Conway said, as he sat down.

  ‘Thank you.’ Berenice nodded a smile at him. Well-turned-out too, she thought, crisp checked shirt, and those jeans look brand new.

  They sat alone in the airless office. ‘How was she?’ she said.

  He settled into his seat. ‘We followed the rules,’ he said. ‘But how do you tell someone that her husband was hit on the head and then thrown from that lighthouse thing…’

  ‘Estranged husband,’ Berenice said.

  ‘There is that,’ he agreed. ‘No tears. No – hist… what’s the word? Cowling always has these posh words – ’

  ‘Histrionics?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He gave a quick smile. ‘But – she said this weird thing. She said, “So he didn’t even have the courage to kill himself”. Weird, eh?’

  Berenice reached for a notebook and wrote down the words. ‘Weird,’ she agreed.

  ‘Guess that means she didn’t do it,’ Ben said, as footsteps approached and the door opened.

  ‘You can never tell with wives,’ Berenice said.

  Mary stood in the doorway. ‘Don’t get the Boss started on marriage,’ she said. She handed a series of photographs to Berenice. ‘CCTV,’ she said.

  ‘Any good?’ Berenice spread them out on the desk.

  ‘I’d say not.’ Mary took a seat. ‘A couple of number-plates they’re following up. There’s this guy here…’ She pointed. ‘And he’s here again, along the seafront, but we’re nowhere further on until they confirm time of death.’

  ‘What about the physics lab?’ Berenice flicked through the photos in front of her.

  ‘They’re obviously a tight team – more tearful than the wife, I’d say.’ Mary glanced at Ben, then opened her laptop, clicked on a few keys. ‘There’s Liam Phelps, nice chap. We met a colleague of the dead man’s, Iain Hen
drickson. He said they had a controversial experiment that was Murdo’s own, he said they were at a loss as to how to carry on. The rest of the team, we didn’t meet them but I got their names. Roger Newbold, he’s a physicist. The director’s called Alan Moffatt, he wasn’t in. And there’s a woman on Murdo’s team, Elizabeth Merletti. Merletti’s her married name. Used to be known as Elizabeth van Mielen.’ She closed her laptop.

  ‘Can you get those names to Ben here?’ Berenice stacked the photographs and tucked them into her file. ‘Well, thanks, both of you. You might as well go back to Sunday lunch.’

  Ben got to his feet. ‘Cool. Mum’s doing chicken specially.’ He gave a sort-of bow, and left.

  Berenice stared at the door. ‘How old is he?’

  Mary laughed.

  ‘What I need to know is…’ Berenice picked up her phone, and glanced at it. ‘What changed in this man’s life? It all seems so stable. Whoever wanted to kill him, it must have been triggered by something.’

  ‘The wife?’

  Berenice gave her a look.

  ‘OK, not the wife. The physics,’ Mary said. ‘This ground-breaking experiment?’

  ‘They all sound tight-knit.’

  ‘They’ve had death threats.’

  ‘We need to look into that.’

  ‘They don’t take them very seriously,’ Mary said.

  ‘That’s the seaside for you.’ Berenice put her phone into her bag. ‘Any talent?’

  ‘Talent? We’re talking scientists.’

  ‘Some of them must be OK.’

  ‘I think my radar went dead as soon as I came South,’ Mary said. ‘It ain’t quite party city out there.’ She got to her feet. ‘Am I allowed to go home to Mum too?’

  ‘What, seriously?’

  Mary looked down at her. ‘Mum is three hundred miles up the M1, as is yours. No roast chicken for me.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  Mary passed Berenice her jacket. ‘How about the pub, then? Steak and chips? Or are you going home?’

  Home, Berenice thought. Cold white rented formica and a shabby floral carpet. ‘Steak and chips sounds great,’ she said.

  They walked along the corridor together. ‘Boots not too warm, then,’ Mary said.