Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  As it was in the beginning, he thought. Is now and shall be forever, world without end…

  He wondered if the physicists believed in a world without end. He wondered what his father would make of the lab’s work, then thought that probably there was, even in the maths, even in these curves and signs and patterns, too much wonder for a man such as he.

  He went to the Lady Chapel. Mrs. Lynch’s flower arrangement drooped on its pedestal, wilted and yellowing.

  He began to light the candles, listening to the rain hammering against the roof.

  Helen too, was listening, standing by the sitting-room window. Was that it, that low rumble, his car approaching through the rain? But then the sound faded away, to leave just the ticking of the old clock, the dripping of the guttering.

  Half an hour earlier, her phone had rung.

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ he’d said.

  His voice on the phone.

  She could hardly breathe. I know, she wanted to say, but he was still speaking. ‘It’s just, the police, they’ve been asking me questions, and I didn’t tell them everything, and it’s on my mind, I’m so worried about Tobias… Hello? Helen? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I’m here.’

  There’d been a silence, then, until he’d said, ‘I could come over. If you want…’

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said. ‘Come over.’

  Now she was standing by the windows, un-looping the heavy curtain cords, blocking out the rain and the darkness, as a car drew up, and she heard a knock at the back door.

  He was damp-haired and dishevelled, and she smiled up at him. ‘No dog?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think he’d disapprove,’ he said.

  ‘Of what?’

  He stood, looking down at her. ‘Oh God. Of this. Of us.’

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ she managed to say.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ he said.

  She wondered, briefly, what it was about her jeans, her navy sweater, simple stud earrings, no make-up… She thought, briefly, that it was a long time since she’d been admired. But then he put his arms around her, and once again there was that feeling of completeness, of his lips against hers, and it was only the clock chiming the half hour, reminding her that Chad would be back from church, that made her take a step away from him, shaking her head, brushing her hair back from her face…

  He was pink-faced, breathing hard.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said, and the words sounded ridiculous.

  He followed her into the kitchen, sat down at the kitchen table, watched her doing things with mugs and spoons. ‘Tobias,’ he said. ‘That’s why I came. Although, if I’m honest… it was you, of course.’

  She turned to face him. ‘Liam… it can’t be – ’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No. It can’t.’

  There was a silence. He glanced at the day’s paper on the table, flicked at its pages. He looked up at her. ‘Everything points to Tobias being there when Moffatt was killed, and it can’t be true. I’m a scientist, I deal with the evidence, that’s what I said to that policewoman today, but in this case, just because the CCTV images show Tobias, that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it? It makes him someone who likes being up at Hank’s Tower, that’s all.’

  The kettle whistled loudly on the Aga. She stood with her back to him, pouring hot water.

  ‘I tried to call Virginia today,’ he went on, ‘but she wouldn’t speak to me, and then I thought, perhaps your husband could talk to her, she trusts him, doesn’t she. What I’ve been thinking is, just because the evidence puts Tobias in the frame for Moffatt’s killing, it doesn’t connect him with Murdo’s, and anyway, Tobias loved Murdo, he wouldn’t wish him harm, and it’s far more likely that the two deaths are connected, something to do with the lab, I reckon. Something to do with Moffatt wanting to expand the lab into the neighbouring land.’

  Helen placed two mugs of tea on the table, then sat down opposite him. ‘These threats to the lab, you mean?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I think it goes back before that. Neil Parrish was talking about it, you remember him, you met him at the lab, red-faced, jolly type. Anyway, he says Moffatt was trying to buy the land over the wall, where the old house is. Neil thinks he’d actually completed the sale just before all this happened. And then I was telling Neil about the book, and he said the old house was owned by the van Mielens before one of them married one of the Voake family, and then it became derelict. He reckoned Moffatt got it for next to nothing, even though Iain was after it too.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t Virginia speak to you?’

  He tipped some milk into his mug. ‘I asked her about the book. Neil said that Moffatt had confided in Murdo about the sale, I thought maybe she’d know, and it might take the heat off Tobias… She said, “If it’s about that van Mielen house, I don’t care.” Then she practically hung up on me.’

  Helen frowned into her tea.

  ‘She said the book was with the police,’ he went on, and that she hoped they locked it away for good. And then she put the phone down.’

  ‘How very odd,’ she said.

  ‘Which is a shame,’ he said. ‘As I’d like to see it again. I think it could be a clue, in some way, part of the evidence, and it could save Tobias from being charged with anything. I tried to say this to Virginia too, but she wouldn’t have it.’ He looked up at her, hesitated, then said, ‘Am I allowed sugar this time?’

  She smiled, got to her feet, fished in cupboards.

  ‘Sugar,’ she said, putting a packet down in front of him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  She was standing at his elbow. He looked up at her.

  ‘Tea,’ she said. ‘You and me.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

  He placed his hand briefly over hers. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, and left the room. He sat and waited, wondering what she was going to do, reappear in different clothes, perhaps, there’d been that girl he’d met once, in London, he’d gone back to her flat with that muon researcher from Imperial, Steve, wasn’t it, and then somehow much later he’d been left alone with her, what was her name, a loud and clumsy kind of girl, and she’d done this number of leaving the room and then coming back in wearing some ghastly kind of see-through lacy thing… He tensed with embarrassment at the memory, horrible it was, and he didn’t even fancy her, and as he’d left she’d called him a typical bloody physicist, shouted it down the stairs behind him…

  He heard footsteps, and Helen came back into the kitchen. Her clothes, as far as he could tell, were unaltered. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Not all the book is with the police.’

  She passed a pink file across the table to him. He saw the pages from the book, neatly stashed inside it. He drew one out, glanced through it, looked up at her. ‘How did you -?’

  ‘It’s Amelia,’ she said. ‘It’s Johann’s daughter. She’s trying to keep his work safe from her husband, and I felt I should look after her.’

  ‘“…My husband will have Aether,”’ he read, out loud, ‘“ and Atoms, and this Gravity, that holds the chaos at bay. My father will have God, who brings forth Light from Darkness, and the Earth from the Oceans, and who sent Satan away to exile…”’ He looked up at Helen. ‘Gravity,’ he said. ‘The force that makes the moon heavy…’ He frowned, read the next page. ‘It’s very like – ’ He met her eyes. ‘It’s like the threat letters we’ve been sent. This idea of Satan in exile. They seem to think that we’re in danger of starting the whole process again, with some kind of primeval battle between Satan and God…’ He glanced at it again. ‘And what’s this about a ghost?’

  ‘She talks about seeing her brother’s ghost. He died in the First World War.’ Helen looked up at him. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Me?’ He gave a narrow smile. ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I just thought – ’

  ‘We have one. The lab. A ghost.’ His gaze held hers.


  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in ghosts. But…’

  ‘But what?’ she prompted.

  He shook his head. ‘There’ve been odd reports. A man walking the corridors. Torn shirt, bleeding, military dress…’ Again, the thin smile. ‘Then again, we’ve had two of our number killed in as many weeks. People are bound to be frightened. If your Amelia here was talking of seeing a ghost, perhaps she had the same fears.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s frightened about that,’ she said, and her voice was thick with feeling. ‘I think she just wants her husband back.’

  She was flushed, with a stray lock of hair across her face, and he found himself imagining her coming back into the room in a thin lacy thing.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, um - I was just thinking about being a typical bloody physicist,’ he said. ‘Only – only, with you, I’m not, you see…’

  There was a long silence. Her gaze seemed to burn through him. ‘These writings,’ he said at last. ‘What should we do with them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘I wonder if Neil Parrish knows about this bit.’ He picked up his mug, put it down again.

  There was another silence. He met her eyes across the table. ‘So, Amelia,’ he said. ‘She wants her husband back.’

  ‘It’s like that…’ Helen stared at the table in front of her. ‘When the man you love goes away from you, when you see him every day, when he shares your house, your meals, but nothing you say can reach him, and what he believes is so far away from anything that makes sense, and he only believes all this stuff about God the Father because his own father was so disappointed in him, or at least that’s how I see it…’ Her words tailed away. The room was quiet, and it occurred to them both that the rain had stopped.

  ‘When you came here,’ Liam said. ‘Your husband said it would all be OK.’

  She nodded, sniffed.

  ‘The thing that your husband said would be OK, if you came here… Was that having a baby?’

  She met his eyes. ‘There was no baby.’

  He waited.

  ‘We had a miscarriage,’ she said. ‘Since then, nothing…’

  In her mind she saw herself breaking down, here, just like this, with us sitting at this table, with Liam there, looking at me like that, and I’d start to howl and be unable to stop…

  They sat, motionless, in the room.

  He reached out his hand and took hold of hers.

  ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said.

  A loud hammering on the vicarage door shattered the air around them. Helen paled, jumped up, her hand clutching the neck of her jumper.

  ‘Chad?’ He got to his feet.

  ‘He’s got keys.’ She ran to the hall.

  ‘Be careful – ’ He was behind her as she opened the door.

  Finn was standing on her doorstep, breathless and sweating. Leaning heavily on him, there was a girl. She was bleeding from a head wound, one eye half closed, her jaw swollen. She was wearing a scarlet leather jacket.

  Helen stared into the blank eyes. ‘Lisa? What the hell has happened?’

  The girl swayed, shivering with shock.

  Helen stood aside to let them pass into the vicarage. Behind them the night sky was seared red with the last of the day.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Do we need an ambulance?’ Liam half-carried Lisa into the kitchen.

  ‘No – ’ It was the first word she’d spoken, indistinct through her swollen mouth.

  ‘No ambulance,’ Finn said. ‘He’ll kill her.’

  Lisa sat heavily on the kitchen floor, then lay down, curled into a ball, and closed her eyes.

  ‘Blankets,’ Liam said. ‘Warm water.’

  Helen did as she was told. Liam eased Lisa’s jacket from her, bathed the cuts to her face, kept up a quiet stream of questions – ‘Does this hurt? Can you move this? Can you wriggle your fingers… your toes…’ He checked her pulse, her pupils, washed the blood from her hair.

  ‘What happened?’ Helen pushed a mug of hot sweet tea across the table to Finn.

  ‘Her dad went for her.’

  ‘Why?’

  Finn glanced at Lisa, who moaned something.

  ‘It’s her dog. Tazer. Lisa’s dad went for the dog.’

  ‘Why?’ Helen and Liam spoke in unison.

  ‘Cos he’s a bastard, that’s why. Reckons he won’t hurt a hair of his little girl’s head, and then goes for her dog.’

  Lisa murmured something that sounded like ‘Not me.’

  ‘Why did he go for the dog?’ Helen asked.

  Finn glanced at Lisa. ‘Promise you won’t tell no one,’ he said.

  Helen looked at Liam. ‘That depends.’

  ‘Then I can’t tell you,’ Finn said.

  It was Liam who spoke. ‘Do you want us to help you or not?’

  Finn sighed, put down his mug. ‘The tower, right? Hank’s tower. Lisa’s dad is doing trading there. Storing stuff. The gavvers were on to his lock-up. And he said Tobias was telling the gavvers, else why else was he hanging around there, and that Moffatt who died, he was in on it, because Moffatt wanted the house that Lisa’s dad should have, right?’

  Helen nodded at him. Liam was listening intently.

  ‘So, Lisa’s dad was going to go to the feds and say that he knew that Tobias had done it, and so Lisa starts to argue with him, right, and then Lisa says she knows what he’s up to, and then Tazer’s growling at him, and then he starts on the dog, and she jumps in front of him…’ His voice faltered. ‘I’ve never seen him go for anyone like that. I was like on my way there, heard her screaming, legged it up there, shoved on the door… I yelled at him to stop, shouted at him…’ He wrapped his fingers round the mug. ‘Thought he was going to go for me then.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Dunno. Clem kind of pushed me, legged it out of the door, ran off. Lisa was on the floor. All that blood… I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Did she black out?’ Liam asked.

  ‘Don’t think so. She was talking and thing. I just thought I need someone to help her and I couldn’t think of anyone, her mum’s miles away and anyway she’d just say it was her fault, her mum would… so I came here.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’ Helen reached out and touched his hand.

  ‘I thought with him being a vicar, like…’ Finn tilted his head towards Liam.

  ‘Oh. That’s not my husband.’ It was all so strange, Helen wanted to laugh. ‘This is Dr. Phelps,’ she said. ‘He’s a physicist, he worked with the two men who died. His sister is Sinead, a social worker,’ she added.

  Finn stared at him. ‘Sinead Foster?’

  ‘You know her?’ Liam smiled.

  ‘Sure. She’s cool.’

  Liam leaned close to Lisa. ‘How are you feeling? Do you want some tea?’

  ‘Tea?’ she mumbled. ‘Brandy more like.’

  ‘Tea will have to do,’ he said.

  ‘What are you, a bleeding doctor?’ Lisa sat up, wrapping the blanket around her.

  At that moment, the door opened. Chad stood there. At his ankles a dog cowered, black and white and scruffy.

  Chad looked at Finn, and Lisa. He looked at Helen, and then, finally, slowly, at Liam.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect this. Didn’t expect this at all.’

  He’d left the church, after the Eucharist. Joyce Benfield had come, all set to read the lesson, and had brought her sister, so the Lady Chapel had felt quite full. Mrs. Lynch had asked him about the flowers, ‘I know they’re fading fast, apart from the carnations, they do something strange to them in the shops these days I reckon, they’re like plastic, but what I wanted to say, vicar, was, we’ll just have to manage until next week, unless I dig the artificials out of the store cupboard, there are some dahlias that would match, but I’d much rather not…

  Yes, of course, that’s fine, Chad had said t
o her. Whatever you need to do. He’d wanted to add that he rather liked them fading, wilting. ‘A meditation on decay,’ he’d have said, but there would have been the now familiar twitch of disapproval, the implication that dear old Robinson, faced with a meditation on decay, would have reached for his plastic dahlias…

  He’d walked back along the sea front, the sky a translucent grey, streaked pink with the sunset.

  In his mind he saw the wilting flowers, the fallen petals lying on the old stone floor.

  Decay, he thought.

  ‘The body that is sown is perishable…’ He heard once more the words echoing through the chapel in Mrs. Benfield’s wavery voice. ‘It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body… So will it be with the resurrection of the dead,’ Mrs. Benfield had declaimed, with great certainty. Chad wondered whether she really thought that. He wondered, as he picked his way along the shingle, whether he really believed it too.

  Certainly, Johann thought there was a life beyond this one. For him, it all seemed to make sense, that life on earth will turn out to be a particular way, to mean a particular thing. Chad thought of him, writing in his book, putting down his account of how it happened, his explanation for how it all came to be. He thought about the lab, all those crisp young men with their glasses of white wine, doing the same. This universe, this set of rules, these particles, this mechanism. This, is how it turned out.

  He reached his house, feeling in his pocket for his keys.

  And, he thought, if we have a child, Helen and I, then that’s how it will have turned out. And if we don’t… He’d turned the key in the lock, preparing himself, once more, for the silence of the vicarage, for Helen hiding away in her studio.

  But there had been lights, and noise, a dog, and a slouching young man sitting at his kitchen table, and on the floor, an injured young woman. And Liam Phelps.

  Liam jumped to his feet, arm outstretched. ‘Chad,’ he said. ‘Just the man.’ He waved towards the sofa. ‘Finn Brady. And Lisa. They’ve escaped a horrible event. No need for police or anything,’ he added.

  Chad, standing by the table, lowered himself on to a chair, still in his coat. He wondered why Liam seemed to be in charge, as the physicist continued to explain that everything was under control. ‘… surface injuries only, I’m sure your wife can lend her a change of clothes…’