Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

‘What?’

  ‘Physicists. All dysfunctional. No families, no connections, all wedded to our work…’

  Iain gave a dry smile. ‘Not worse. Just more committed. Anyway, you’ll be OK. Someone will sweep you off your feet, you’ll be married with two kids and a dog to walk on the beach – ’

  ‘Maybe…’ I’d like that, Liam was about to say -

  ‘Haunted.’ Iain spoke suddenly. His fingers assumed their tapping ‘Ghosts, walking the corridors. I was here last night…’

  ‘Ghosts?’ Liam looked up.

  ‘Murdo. That soldier. God knows. Definitely someone, over by the workshops, disappeared before my eyes…’

  ‘Iain, mate – ’

  ‘By the wall there.’ Iain went on. ‘You know where the old house is, on the other side. You know, where Moffatt was buying the land.’

  ‘The famous expansion.’ Liam smiled.

  ‘Don’t suppose it’ll happen now.’

  ‘We could never have afforded it. To rebuild the tunnel now. Although the new results are going to get us noticed…’

  Iain picked up a pencil from his desk, gazed at it for a long moment. He seemed to be elsewhere, edgy, anxious. ‘Do you think that’s why Moffatt was picking on Lizzie? Because of her family connection with the land there?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Doubt it. Don’t you just think it was her turn? He didn’t like people being cleverer than him.’

  ‘Even though everyone is. Was,’ Iain corrected himself.

  ‘There’s a book,’ Liam said. ‘From the van Mielen’s.’

  Iain focused again.

  ‘Newtonian stuff. The vicar’s got it, from Mrs. Maguire – ’

  ‘She gave it to him?’ Iain’s voice was loud.

  ‘You know about it?’

  ‘Sure. Lizzie had it. From her family. And when she and Murdo…’ He picked up the pencil again. ‘Murdo wanted it, she didn’t.’

  ‘Alan was bullying Tobias to give it to him.’

  ‘Alan?’ Iain’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Iain shrugged. ‘Alan bullies everyone.’

  ‘He was bullying you – ’ Liam began.

  ‘No, not really. Only because I thought I might buy the old house.’

  ‘There was that shouting match – the two of you…’

  Iain narrowed his eyes. ‘He hates competition, that’s all. And anyway, I gave up on the Voake house in the end. Left the field free for him.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why he wanted the book. Some old connection…’

  Iain shrugged. ‘Oh well. Now it’s with the vicar. Funny old world.’ He turned to his computer, pulled up a screen. ‘Back to work, eh?’

  ‘Sure.’ Liam got to his feet. ‘What’s that?’ On Iain’s desk there was a crumpled sheet of lined paper.

  ‘This?’ Iain picked it up. ‘Oh, this.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’ He handed it to Liam. ‘Pinned to the main gate last night.’

  ‘“Dont think it’s finished.”’ Liam read. ‘“The flood will come and our sins will be washed clean.”’ It was written in pencil, in capitals. ‘We should show the police.’

  Iain nodded. ‘Aye. That was my intention.’

  ‘The police have promised some kind of guard.’ Liam looked down at him.

  ‘Do you think it’ll help?

  Of course, Liam was about to say, but Iain was speaking again.

  ‘What if the threat is from within?’ He stared out of the window at the heavy sky.

  ‘Iain – ’

  Iain waved him away. ‘Do you think – ’ he turned back to Liam. ‘The ghost. He was bleeding. Red blood, you could see it. Or was I imagining it, do you think? The mind playing tricks…’ His voice was a whisper, almost to himself. ‘Torn shirt, you could see it, white shirt…’

  ‘Iain, you should talk to HR. Sort out a break from here…’

  Iain shook his head. ‘Murdo’s gone. The experiment is critical. And anyway, I’ve got nowhere else to go.’ Another wave to indicate the door.

  Liam leaned over and patted his shoulder, then left.

  ‘Lisa Voake,’ Berenice read. ‘Aged fifteen. Mother, Nina Carey. Father, Clem Voake. Family known to Social Services…’ There followed a record of interviews, incidents, visits from social workers, various concerns noted, various actions indicated.

  And she’s ended up in a caravan by the lab with a villain for a father.

  Whatever you might say about my mother, Berenice thought, she would never have let me end up like that.

  Mind you, she seemed sparky enough that kid. Maybe she’ll survive too.

  Footsteps, the door opened. Mary was standing there.

  ‘Here you are, Boss.’ She slapped a file down on the desk in front of her. ‘The boys have been following up leads on this Voake character. Someone answering his description tried to off-load a doctored shot-gun. The guy in the shop, told us, reluctantly, that it had been altered. He wasn’t happy about it. Wouldn’t take it. The guy, if it was Voake, threatened him vaguely, then said there’d be plenty of people who would take it, and it was his loss not to get a bargain. It’s that little shop on the Dover Road. Dodgy bloke, though he was helpful, the boys said. He said it wasn’t the first time this Clem guy had been in. He said he must be storing them somewhere.’

  ‘Any thoughts where?’

  ‘We’ve checked the field again, round the caravan. The Chief has told the lads to go back to the disused airfield. He said someone’s shipping stuff that way.’

  Berenice looked at her. ‘The Chief? What’s he doing on a minor case?’

  Mary fiddled with the edge of the file. ‘Dunno. Guess he’s keeping an eye on the case.’

  ‘Not on the case. On me.’

  Mary threw her a look. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting…’

  ‘That a senior male copper might not be up to speed on feminist and multi-ethnic issues?’

  Mary smiled. ‘Didn’t think you were.’

  Berenice shrugged. She picked up the file. ‘So, what do we do about Voake? Is he adapting rural shot guns and selling them on to gangs?’

  ‘That’s what our friend in the gun shop suggested.’

  Berenice yawned. ‘He can’t be that good at it, if he’s slumming it in that caravan. And his daughter is in rags.’

  ‘Saving up, maybe?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Mary was about to answer, when the desk phone rang. Berenice picked it up, nodded, said Yes, twice, rang off.

  ‘Another shout. They’ve found the suspect boy who was at the tower.’

  ‘Tobias?’

  ‘That’s the one. We’re going to have to call him in. Now. Get someone to pay a call to his stepmother or whoever she is.’

  ‘Will do.’ At the door, Mary paused. ‘One other thing. That physicist dropped by. Hate notes. Wanted us to see them.’

  She passed a plastic bag across to Berenice.

  Berenice picked it up, peered through at the enclosed papers. She passed it back to Mary. ‘Get the fingerprint boys onto it.’ She clicked her computer into life. ‘And I thought it would just be cattle rustling out here.’

  Mary smiled. ‘Don’t chat breeze, Boss. You never wanted no quiet life.’

  ‘Don’t suppose I did,’ Berenice said, as Mary went out of the door.

  I could go home, Chad thought. He stared out of the windows at the late afternoon.

  Nothing to keep me here. The stationery order is done. The readers’ rota is e-mailed out. And Phyllis has sorted out the church hall bookings.

  The office was attached rather as an afterthought to the side of the church. It had a small dark window, a bright strip light which made a whining noise. His study at home was book-lined, comfortable, with a lamp on his desk and a broad window which gave on to the rose garden.

  I should go home. Helen will be… waiting for me? No, he thought. Helen will be in her studio, as if hiding. I’ll breeze in, pop my head round th
e door, suggest a cup of tea… There will be a distance, a frostiness, as if I’ve interrupted something private.

  It was not like this in London.

  In London, I would go home. Home to my wife. Not home to rattle around a huge vicarage in a weird kind of solitude.

  He bent to the computer keyboard, pulled up his sermon document. He flicked through the reference texts he’d printed out. He picked up Johann’s book, and flicked through that.

  ‘The truth is not that we are the Fallen. It is that we fall still, continuously, in this world now. The force of Gravity is exerted upon Everything, and upon Everyone…’

  He wondered about these words as a start for a sermon. Man’s Fall From Grace, he thought, picking up his Bible, scanning the Old Testament for references. How simple it was for van Mielen, to tie his faith to his physics. Enviable, really -

  The ring of the ugly grey phone on the ugly grey desk.

  ‘Hello – ’

  ‘It’s Virginia. It’s not over…’ Her voice was faint and shaky. ‘They want to see him, tomorrow, Tobias, I tried to refuse but they talked of arresting him…’ A choke in her voice, then she carried on. ‘Can you – can you come too? Tomorrow? Solicitor there and everything… Oh, it’s all so impossible, why won’t they leave us alone? Tomorrow at ten o’clock, we have to be there…’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  An out-breath of relief. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll come to you and we can go on from there,’ he said.

  There were more thanks, and then she’d gone.

  Chad replaced the phone receiver.

  He returned to his screen, scrolled through his notes. ‘Fall,’ he saw he’d typed. ‘Gravity. Emptiness.’

  It had come on to rain.

  Emptiness, he read, again.

  He saved the document, folded up the papers into his briefcase, and left for home.

  The name was still visible. Voake. Carved into the old post box on the edge of the path.

  Clem ran his finger along it. He turned towards the house. In the twilight, in the rain, the old walls loomed in front of him. He reached the front door, pushed against the rotten wood, which gave at once. He was inside.

  He twitched his nose at the smell. Animal, fox, perhaps. Wood smoke too, though the grate when he touched it was cold and damp. Rain dripped through gaps in the ceiling, edged through the broken windows.

  He tried to remember how it was, all those years ago, when his mother had brought him here. He was six, seven, perhaps. A visit to her Uncle Voake, she’d said. An old man, sitting by this very fire. He remembered warmth, and light. He remembered the pattern on the carpet, dark red with curled green leaves, long since rotten under foot. Uncle Voake had been vague and kind and whiskery. ‘Are you looking after your Mother, boy?’ he’d asked him.

  Clem hadn’t known what to reply.

  How? he’d wanted to say. My father is so much bigger than me. When he goes for her, there’s nothing I can do.

  ‘I did try once – ’ he’d begun to say, but his mother had flashed him a warning glance. She knew how that had turned out, and she didn’t want him telling anyone.

  And then there’d been a woman bringing in cake and lemonade, not his mother’s aunt, a paid woman. And they’d sat by the fire and eaten, and he’d wondered, is this how life is for other boys? This feeling, of warmth, and safety and kindness.

  He put his finger through a hole in the glass window. I wouldn’t have called it those words, but those are what I meant. And those are what I mean now, now that Digby’s gone and this house can be mine, and I can make a home for Lisa and me and it will be warm and safe like it was when it was just Mum and me…

  A clap of thunder broke overhead. A gust of wind threw raindrops down the chimney.

  Three years later, Mum was dead. Cancer. And I was left with Dad. Not that I stayed around much after that.

  He stepped across the kitchen into the hall. There was the cellar entrance, its door swinging half off its hinges. He put one foot on the wooden steps, then another.

  What do you hope to find? Manny had asked him. Poking around in the old house? Then Voakes would have left nothing behind.

  At the last step he tripped. His foot twisted, and he found himself sitting on the cellar floor in two inches of rainwater. He bashed his fists on the ground either side of him. He wanted to howl with rage, at the step, at the rain, at the doubters, the ones who said nothing would come to him, he didn’t deserve any of it, he didn’t deserve to raise his own child, the ones like his dad who said he’d brought it on himself, the ones like his Mum…

  Not that memory. Not that one. He’d remember her as she’d been here, in a pink dress, floating in the sunlight, sipping tea with her whiskery uncle. Not how she was later, when they got home, and he was trying to say but I didn’t say nothing, Mum, I didn’t tell him nothing, and then later, curled into the corner, his hands over his ears, and her screaming at him, like she always did, about him heading for a beating again, ‘you never learn do you, you stupid or something, am I going to have to learn you all over again?…’

  He could remember the smell of the wall, the bare plaster damp and cold against his cheek.

  He sat in the puddles of the cellar and looked around him. Then he got up and began to search.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Helen placed the breakfast things in the dishwasher. She sat at the kitchen table with a second cup of tea.

  Tobias. It seemed too terrible to think of, that that boy could be accused of such an awful thing.

  At least Chad has gone with them, she thought. He’ll make everything OK. He’ll be there, quiet but forceful, good in a crisis.

  Virginia will be glad he’s there with her.

  There was a flurry of birdsong from the eaves outside, next-door’s cat aggressing the house martins, again. It had rained overnight and the garden was green and damp in the morning sunlight.

  The book was on the table in front of her. She opened it at random.

  “… of Water does each Thing have its Beginning,” she read. “It is Prime Matter, the Abyss of Darkness, the Residence of Behemoth…”

  She thought about Liam’s hands on these pages.

  She wondered what Chad was doing now.

  At breakfast, they’d hardly spoken. He’d been packing papers into a briefcase, murmured something about notes for his sermon. Should I have asked him, she wondered now. Is that what a vicar’s wife should do, express interest in what her husband wants to tell the faithful on a Sunday morning?

  She stared into her cold tea. It was her mother who’d put it into words, all those years ago, and of course she’d ignored her. ‘But surely, darling, if you can’t even share his beliefs…?’

  There was no point even trying to tell my mother. There was the time we’d talked, me and Chad, about the rare moment in a dance when one simply is the dance, when one’s self merges into the role, into the physical being of the role… and Chad had said, ‘that’s what I mean by God.’ She’d never forgotten it, the way he took her hand, the deep undertow of shared belief.

  She got up, poured her cold tea down the sink. She stood at the window, watching the flickering sunlight.

  It had gone, that shared delight. And now all I can think is that perhaps Chad should have married someone who was capable of believing in the same God as his.

  Chad stared up at the window, which was high in the gloss-painted wall, and grimy with neglect. He looked back to Virginia. She was standing by the coffee machine, prodding hopelessly at its buttons.

  ‘I think it needs money,’ he said.

  They had been ushered into this room, ‘relatives’ room,’ the desk sergeant had said, and were now left alone. There was a sporadic loud hum from further down the corridor, a vacuum cleaner, perhaps.

  ‘You’d think they’d let me in there with him,’ she said. ‘What does that solicitor know about any of it?’

  Chad fiddled with the machi
ne. ‘Fifty pence,’ he said. ‘Do you want any?’

  She shook her head. She met his eyes, briefly, looked back to the carpet, which, like the chair she now settled on, was a faded orangey-brown.

  Outside the hum seemed to draw near, then faded away again. Chad sat opposite her. ‘Murdo,’ he said. ‘And the Professor. And the Book…’

  She gazed at him. ‘What about them?’ she said.

  ‘What has brought them to this?’ he said. ‘What is the connection that has proved so dangerous?’

  She shook her head, but he went on, ‘It was you who said it. About secrets. When I mentioned Elizabeth – ’

  She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘There’s secrets enough where that one’s concerned.’

  ‘Well?’ He sat upright, his gaze fixed on hers. Confessional mode, Helen always called it. She reckoned he could get anyone to divulge anything when he took up his Confessor’s pose. She claimed he’d try it with her, he never knew what she meant, but it used to make her laugh.

  Used to.

  He wondered when he’d last heard that laugh of hers, so bright and full of life, her eyes dark with joy, with desire…

  Weeks. Months. She has been absent from me all this time.

  He felt a sudden, overwhelming, wave of loss.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Virginia’s voice sounded loud in the sparse room.

  He blinked, tried to smile.

  ‘It’s not your fault we’re here,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed.

  ‘You asked me about secrets,’ she said. ‘The big secret, the one I can’t fathom, is what he saw in her.’

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘Who else? Who else came prancing and smirking into my life like that?’

  ‘Did – Did they have an affair…?’

  ‘An affair?’ Virginia gave a harsh laugh, her eyes fixed on his. Then she said, ‘Murdo always denied it. Always. The fact that Iain was after her, everyone knew that. But the rumours about my husband… they wouldn’t go away. It was demeaning – ’ she spat the last word. ‘Every time I walked into the lab, the glances, the women exchanging looks…’ Her words faded away. ‘Still, now she can be happy with Hendrickson after all.’