Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  ‘Both of them, you’re saying?’ Chad stared at her. ‘Iain and Murdo, both of them involved with her?’

  She seemed to wilt in the chair opposite him. ‘I’ll never know. Not now. He always denied it. But there was something…’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘You can tell when someone’s lying, can’t you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I mean, generally. When someone’s holding something back, it always betrays itself somehow.’

  Chad considered this. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  The hum outside started up again, now much nearer.

  ‘So – what happened?’ Chad asked.

  She sighed. ‘It was so long ago. I’ll never know really. I would see her from time to time, flaunting herself with Iain. And then Murdo was so odd at home. They were very good friends, Iain and Murdo,’ she said. ‘Iain must be suffering too.’ She gathered herself, went on, ‘And then suddenly, it was all over. She took the job in Italy. Next thing we heard she was married. Murdo never mentioned her again. Life went on. Until…’ She sat straight-backed, drumming her fingers on the seat beside her.

  ‘Until your child died…?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And what brought her back now, do you think?’

  She looked so weary, he began to regret his questioning. ‘Who knows? Her marriage seems to be over. And a job came up here. She’s ruthless, you know? Whatever she wants, she gets…’

  ‘And Professor Moffatt?’

  She blinked at him. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I just wondered if he, too, was anything to do with…’

  ‘With Elizabeth? Why would he be?’

  ‘I just mean, as he’s now dead too…’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ She gazed at him, blank-eyed. ‘I can’t understand… it makes no sense,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed.

  She sighed. ‘Well, Iain’s welcome to her now.’

  ‘Her maiden name,’ he said. ‘Van Mielen.’

  ‘What about it?’ She was looking at him sharply.

  ‘It’s in that book. The book you gave me, the physics one – ’

  ‘She gave it to my husband. It’s from her family.’

  ‘How is it from her family?’

  She shrugged. ‘A long story, and a dull one, actually. One of her ancestors was a cousin of the author. It ended up with the American side. Murdo’s friend Neil Parrish at the lab, he told me. There was a local branch of the family, but her lot went to America before the Great War. That’s what he said. Anyway, it amused her that Murdo was so interested in it. That’s all.’ She shifted on her chair. ‘Now you can see why I was glad to give it to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He felt she was about to say more, but instead she looked down at her lap, at her hands clasped tight together there. A thin shaft of sunlight caught the edge of her hair, her face, her clear, freckled skin. She raised her eyes to his, and he saw their pale clarity, and thought how odd it was, that beauty could shine through pain.

  In the distance a door slammed. There were footsteps along the corridor. A uniformed officer put her head around the door. ‘D.I. Killick will see you now,’ she said.

  “My work has been a quest for the smallest, the purest, the most true particle of all, and my methods have been honed through the trials of the laboratory…’

  Helen turned the page.

  ‘…and the test of my own soul. It has come the time to set these words to the page, for darkness hovers above the surface of the world, and I fear for my dear wife and children…

  She put the book down.

  Darkness, she thought. Was Johann seeing the signs of war?

  She went over to the window. Outside clouds had gathered, and the sea was flecked with white.

  I wonder if Chad thinks that way. ‘My dear wife…’

  If he does think that way, he doesn’t show it. ‘My dear wife and children…’

  Perhaps you need both. Wife, and children.

  It was a constant pall, a background heaviness which drained the colour out of life. Every month the hope was raised, every month dashed, until gradually they made the choice, without ever speaking of it, to avoid it altogether.

  All that was left was the hollow sense of loss, and the knowledge that whenever she looked at Chad she saw it echoed in his eyes.

  My dear wife and children…

  She wondered what it was that Johann had found to be the test of his own soul.

  Berenice stood with her back to the window, her hands flat against the radiator.

  ‘Mrs. Maguire – Your nephew admits he was present at the old lighthouse tower at the same time that Professor Moffatt met his death.’

  Martin, the duty solicitor, sat at one side, scribbling notes.

  ‘Where is he now?’ Virginia’s voice was sharp with anxiety. She was in a chair in front of Berenice, with Chad next to her.

  ‘He’s with one of my officers.’ Berenice left the window and came and sat down opposite them. ‘Let me repeat, Mrs. Maguire, this is not an official questioning. We want to help. But everything indicates that Tobias was there at the time that the Professor fell. And, unfortunately, Tobias’s response, whenever we mention the Professor’s name, is one of rage.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised.’ Virginia clasped her hands together in her lap.

  ‘He holds him responsible for the loss of his job. He also says that there were secrets that they held in common, but he won’t say what they were.’

  ‘It’s that blasted book.’ Virginia turned to Chad. ‘That’s why I wanted it out of my house. I don’t know why the Prof was interested, but it did Tom no good at all.’

  ‘Book?’ Berenice looked towards Chad.

  Chad glanced at Virginia, then spoke. ‘It’s a funny old thing, early twentieth century, a kind of rewriting of Einsteinian physics, with Newton, some other people, an obsession with gravity…’ He was aware of her blank expression. ‘It was in their family…’

  ‘Perhaps I should see it.’ Berenice looked at Virginia.

  ‘Ask him.’ Virginia lifted a thumb towards Chad. ‘I got rid of it. It caused too much trouble. It’s his now.’

  ‘It belonged to – ’ he began.

  ‘No it didn’t.’ Virginia spoke loudly. ‘It didn’t,’ she repeated. ‘It was ours.’

  Chad glanced up at Berenice. He nodded. ‘In their family, you see,’ he said.

  Berenice got up. She gazed outside. The window was steel-framed, double-glazed, but you could still hear the comings and goings down below, the vehicle sirens, bits of conversation, the patter of the rain. She turned to face them. ‘The evidence so far is circumstantial. Tobias is free to leave, but with some conditions. We will need to question him again. You have to understand, he’s in a very serious position.’

  Virginia clapped her hand to her mouth.

  ‘There’s no way he could have done it,’ Chad said. ‘And anyway, he’s disabled, you can’t just apply your normal rules…’

  ‘All the evidence places him at a crime scene.’

  ‘And my husband?’ Virginia’s voice was loud. ‘Two of them are dead, not just one. And Tom wouldn’t have harmed Murdo. Did you ask him about Murdo?’

  ‘We did, yes.’ Berenice faced her. ‘As you say, he says he wouldn’t harm him. He became upset at the suggestion.’ She went to the door and opened it for them. Martin the duty solicitor got to his feet too.

  ‘His friends,’ Berenice said. ‘Lisa Voake.’

  ‘What about Lisa Voake?’ Virginia faced her.

  ‘We’ll be talking to her, too.’

  ‘You can talk to who you like,’ Virginia said, tight-lipped with rage.

  Chad led her to the doorway, his hand gripping her elbow. In the doorway, Berenice turned to him. ‘I mean it, about that book,’ she said.

  “… And yet my husband spends his days in his laboratory, as if somehow that will bring about peace for him, for me, for us.” Helen lay on her sofa, the book in her hands. She
turned a page. “I pray that one day he will see, that our dear child needs him as her father. He tells me that the work he began with my brother, before they went away to battle, must continue, that he owes it to the memory of Guy to do so, and although I too wish my brother’s memory to be kept alive, yet do I also yearn for the return of the peace and happiness we shared before…”

  Helen wondered how it was that Amelia had placed these pages in her father’s book. Presumably it was without his knowledge, a record of her feelings.

  Helen shifted on the sofa cushions. Bright sunlight broke through the rainclouds. She checked her watch, thought about the trip to the supermarket, Chad had asked her to get some more biscuits for the church tin…

  She looked at her feet on the cushions. Dancer’s feet, Anton used to say. Born to be dancer’s feet, he’d say, ‘not pushed and pummeled and reshaped like the rest of us poor saps…’

  She heard Chad’s key in the door, looked up as he came into the room. He was grey and weary, and he sank onto an armchair.

  ‘How- ?’ she began.

  ‘They’ve let him go for now. On various conditions. They can see that there’s nothing that implicates him in Murdo’s death.’

  ‘And Moffatt’s?’

  ‘It looks bad for him. He was there, around that timescale, when Alan fell from the tower. Caught on CCTV and everything.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  Chad shook his head. ‘He’s not helping. He was very angry with Alan, and he won’t say otherwise. Virginia says he’s one of the most honest people she’s ever known, but it’s not helping him now. And he went on about that book – ’ he glanced at it where it lay on the table next to her.

  Helen shifted to sit upright on the sofa. ‘What did he say about the book?’

  Chad sighed. ‘He’s been going on about the secrets in the book, and how Alan was after them. All that gravity stuff in there…’ He met her eyes. ‘You’ve been reading it too.’

  ‘The wife is very angry,’ she said.

  ‘Wife?’ He frowned at her.

  ‘Amelia, wife of Gabriel Voake. Daughter of Johann van Mielen. There are pages from her at the back.’

  ‘There are?’

  ‘Didn’t you see them? They’re loose, folded in. She must have added them in later.’

  ‘Elizabeth is a distant descendant of them. Virginia told me.’

  ‘Right.’

  He glanced up at her tone. ‘Elizabeth ended up with it, for some reason.’

  Helen leaned back on the cushions. ‘It’s all very odd. It all seems to centre around the lab.’

  ‘That’s why the police want to see it.’

  ‘Police?’ Her hand went towards the book.

  ‘I said I’d give it to the Detective Inspector woman.’

  ‘Oh.’ She picked it up, weighed it in her hands.

  ‘If it helps Tobias…’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see that.’

  They sat in silence, listening to the birdsong outside.

  ‘Poor Virginia,’ he said.

  She looked up at him.

  ‘She’s beside herself with worry.’

  ‘I can imagine she is,’ Helen said.

  ‘But – ’ he threw her a glance. ‘Surely you can understand…’

  ‘Understand what?’ She unfurled herself from the sofa, placed her feet in their sheepskin slippers.

  ‘She’s a very vulnerable person,’ he said.

  ‘So I gather.’ Helen picked up the book.

  ‘Helen – ’ He reached an arm towards her, let it fall to his side.

  ‘What?’ She stood, looking at him.

  ‘I’m her parish priest,’ he began. ‘She’s alone in all this. She and Murdo adopted Tobias, they’ve cared for him. And now this, her husband’s death, in these circumstances. It’s too much for anyone to bear, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘Tobias is the only person left in her life.’

  Helen headed for the door.

  ‘They had a child who died,’ he said.

  She turned to him. ‘And is that better or worse than having no child at all?’

  Her eyes flashed rage. He could think of nothing to say.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A burst of sunlight brightened the concrete of Police HQ, sharpened the signage to angular blue, before the next shower muted it all to grey again. In the trees, the gossip of the starlings rose and fell, between the sudden lurch of sirens and wet tyres.

  ‘I need to talk to them,’ Berenice had said to Mary the night before. ‘All of them,’ she said.

  ‘All of who?’ Mary had looked at her blankly.

  ‘Starting in the morning. Those clever scientists. And not just them, everyone. Secretaries. Porters. Cleaners, if they have them.’

  ‘I’m sure they have them – ’

  ‘… hoovering up that particle thingie by mistake. Always a risk, isn’t it?’

  Mary had laughed, then worried that Berenice wasn’t joking. Sometimes, she thought, scanning Berenice’s unsmiling face, it was difficult to tell.

  Now it was Thursday morning, and inside, the desk sergeant was all courtesy. ‘Of course, Madam, do wait here, the DCI will be down to see you shortly, we’ve had a lot of you lab people in this morning… Yes, Sir, if you don’t mind waiting a second, DCI’s instructions, although what she thinks she’s doing dragging you all away from the secrets of the universe, I read in the paper that you’re very near finding the last bit, ain’t that so?… There is a drinks machine, Madam, though I wouldn’t recommend it myself… Terrible weather for the time of year, Sir, dear me, look at it now, hope you brought an umbrella, they may give you a lift down here but once you’re out those doors you’re on your own, guvnor…’

  Upstairs, in rooms marked Occupied, questions were asked, notes were taken, ‘Were you aware of any hostility towards the Professor within the laboratory? Or to Dr. Maguire?’ ‘These threats to the lab that have been mentioned, can you tell me a bit about them?’ ‘Were they taken seriously at the time?’ ‘Can you think of any connection between Dr. Macguire and Professor Moffatt that might lead to their deaths?’

  And, as the morning gave way to lunchtime, and Berenice sat at her desk ignoring a chicken sandwich at her elbow, the reports piled up in front of her. ‘Interview with Roger Newbold, technician at CLEAR’, ‘Interview with Gwyneth Wilcox, administrative assistant at CLEAR’, ‘Liam Phelps, research physicist’, ‘Richard Moraes, deputy director’, ‘Neil Parrish, Physicist’, ‘Elizabeth Merletti, physicist’…

  She read about the threats to the lab, ‘There was a note pushed under my door once, must have been an insider with security as tight as it is. What did it say? Oh, something stupid about how the lab is endangering humanity. I reckon it was a contract person, unhinged. They stopped after a while. Oh, and by the way – ’ Berenice checked the name. Roger Newbold, interviewed by DC Ashcroft. ‘… where Tobias is concerned, he’s done nothing wrong, that kid, is that clear? I want that on the record. Heart of gold that boy.’

  Berenice yawned, picked up the next report. ‘Gwyneth Wilcox. “Well, yes, you could say there was bad feeling, I suppose, but they’re all like that, aren’t they? And the women are worse, although luckily we don’t have many women in the department, just as well if you ask me. To kill someone? Oh, no, I don’t suppose it went as far as that. I mean, people get very furtive over their results, don’t they, and some of the more senior men are very competitive and secretive, but I can’t imagine any of them coming to blows over a few numbers here and there…”’

  She yawned again. The sandwich at her side was looking tired too. ‘Neil Parrish,’ she read. ‘I won’t have any nonsense about people not getting on. We’re all a team, can’t do physics without it. Between you and me, Ma’am, there’s a big announcement due, ground breaking stuff, though don’t go telling the world, eh? Hate mail? Some nutter. Best ignored that stuff. I’ve lived round here all my life. ‘Fraid we’re like that, us Kentish men, don’t get me started�
� Clem Voake? Case in point. The way that family has gone – you know that big house over the wall from the lab? The derelict one? That was their family home, two, three generations ago, and now here they are, living on dodgy dealings at the back of the old airfield. Apart from old Dot, she’s Clem’s aunt, she has a second-hand furniture shop on the Faversham Road, probably the straightest of the lot though that’s not saying much. Our Moffatt here had his eye on the old house, wanted to expand the lab. I suppose now old Digby’s died, might have raised a few issues. But it’s up to Digby who he sold that house to, he don’t owe Clem anything, if anything it’s the other way round….’

  Berenice scribbled a note. ‘Old House. Lab. Moffatt. Neil Parrish.’ She turned a page.

  ‘Interview with Iain Hendrickson. Senior team member. “It makes no sense. No sense at all. Why us? Why target the lab like this? What did you say? Is there anything I can think of to explain it? Nothing. Murdo… I mean, Murdo Maguire of all people. One of the best men you could hope to meet. Key part of the team. And Moffatt? I don’t understand it. I just don’t.”

  Berenice picked up her phone. ‘Any chance of a coffee in here?’ she said. She replaced the receiver, rubbed her forehead.

  The next report read, ‘Liam Phelps. Interviewer DC Ashcroft. “I can’t believe he’s gone. Murdo was a good man. Very good physicist too. The Prof? Well, I wouldn’t say I was as close to him, no. And it’s an open secret that his work was pretty thin. Shouldn’t speak ill and all that, but even so. We’ve been getting some interesting results on super symmetry, bumps on the curve, you know, talking to our colleagues at CERN a lot, and there he is, posturing away, claiming it as his research, when everyone knows it’s a team effort, the CP violation stuff is all very well, but… sorry? Have I lost you? All I’d say is, I have no idea who would want Murdo dead. He’s a great loss to us all…” [silence while he wipes tear from his eye]’. Berenice looked up and smiled at her sandwich. She took a bite from it, admiring Mary Ashcroft’s attention to detail. She thought about this physicist having a quiet weep at the death of his colleague.

  ‘Why did he leave? No one turns down the opportunity he had. The Higgs mechanism confirms the Standard Model, you see, but raises questions of asymmetry… Have I lost you again? And Murdo was never the same, after they lost their child, him and Virginia. Talked of going to CERN. We were glad he stayed with us, though.’