‘He is?’
‘I’ve been thinking about this. He can round up Clem Voake, but I’m not sure that’ll solve anything.’
‘But – all the evidence so far…’
Berenice traced a coffee ring on the table in front of her. She sighed. ‘Maybe. Maybe I’m just going crazy. That book. That old physics stuff. About the gaps and the nothing and all that… There’s something about it…’
‘That’s the chaos bit, then?’
Berenice nodded.
Mary sipped her coffee. ‘It’s shit, life, innit. All this and cystitis too.’
‘What?’ Berenice looked blank.
Mary smiled. ‘It went, then?’
‘Oh. Yeah. Seems to have.’
‘Proves you can only have one thing go wrong at a time.’
‘Is that your philosophy, then?’
Mary shrugged. ‘If I have to have one, Boss, then, yeah.’
Berenice looked at her phone. ‘I’m still on a shift, technically. Though God knows what I’m going to do.’ She got to her feet. ‘The boys from the Met can track down Voake and he’ll admit to it all, and I can go back to traffic offences.’
‘All that paperwork you can catch up on, Boss.’
Berenice didn’t smile. ‘If that’s a joke - ’
Mary had focused across the canteen, as Ben approached.
‘Ma’am – there’s someone downstairs asking for you. The Chief tried to talk to him, but he said he’d only talk to you. The vicar, you know, Rev Meyrick.’
‘Ah well.’ Berenice reached for her coat. ‘Maybe he’s applying for a parking permit.’
Helen paced the living room, her phone in her hand. She stopped by the window, gazed out on to the drive, the hedge, the bright blue strip of sea beyond. Then she clicked on Liam’s number.
‘Hi – ’
‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘You. I was going to call – ’
‘I’ve been meaning to call you all morning,’ she said. ‘I want to go to the caravan, Lisa’s place, I feel we should be doing more to help her…’
‘Oh.’ He said nothing else.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘It’s all going off here,’ he said.
He was there, of course. Far away, surrounded by colleagues, computer screens, a click away from action, power points, particle collisions - what on earth made me think he’d be pleased to hear from me…
I can ring you later, she was about to say, but then he was talking again.
‘Iain’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘Hank’s Tower again. Same day as our huge press announcement, the director’s fuming… paradigm-shifting discoveries of the behaviour of B mesons, if that’s what they are…’
‘Iain,’ she said.
‘I don’t think I can bear it. My sister’s telling me to get out, go into hiding, it just feels so weird. When did being a science nerd get to be a high-risk profession?’
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Richard’s talking to the police about upping our security. Personal bodyguard stuff… Any of us could be next.’
She was aware she was gripping the phone tight against her ear. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Please – please be careful…’
‘Lisa,’ he said. ‘Visiting her?’
‘I thought – ’ she began. ‘I thought we might…’
She heard his distance. ‘I mean,’ she went on, unable to stop herself, ‘just to see if she’s OK…’
‘Helen - ’
‘What?’
‘It’s stopped being fun,’ he said.
She took a deep breath. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I can see that.’
His voice sounded faint. ‘You don’t know what it’s like here… police everywhere… we’re in shock. The secretaries all weeping…’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll call you later,’ he said.
‘Will you?’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said, but his voice was thin, the off-click of his phone too loud.
The room seemed cold. She stood, her phone in her hand, her throat tight with shock, with tearfulness.
Another death. Hank’s Tower. Iain. Of course he wouldn’t want to see me.
I don’t know what to do, she thought. I could call Anton, she thought. But no, he’s the last person I should call, he’d just commiserate about the need to stray, ‘oh Hon, it gets to us all in the end…’ ‘But I’ve made a complete fool of myself,’ I’ll wail to him, and all he’ll say is, join the club…
She went to the fireplace, gazed at herself in the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece.
I’m on my own, then.
Her reflection gazed back at her.
Was it really about Lisa? Or was it just an excuse to see him, to have some kind of stupid adventure?
She turned away from the mirror, trying to keep at bay a convulsion of desire, of need, of the memory of their bodies intertwined.
She found her coat. She looked at the car keys in the palm of her hand.
Chad would tell me not to go. Chad would say, three physicists dead – it’s not a game.
She thought about Lisa, standing, bleeding, on her doorstep.
I have no choice, she thought.
‘I have no choice.’ Amelia, standing in the empty parlour, spoke the words out loud.
She crossed the room, ran through the hall, out to the kitchen, arriving breathless in Gabriel’s workshop.
He looked up with that now familiar expression, a frown of irritation, a distant, distracted look.
‘Our child is still unwell,’ she said.
‘Worse since this morning?’ He returned to his machine, his fingers tracing the line of light across the bench.
‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But she’s listless, and sleepy.’
‘Dr Keppler said we were doing all the right things.’
‘What if it’s not a chill?’ Her voice was fierce.
He glanced up at her. ‘Do we have any reason not to believe Dr. Keppler?’
I have no choice. The words kept a pulse with her heartbeat.
‘Gabriel - ’
‘What is it?’
‘She cannot thrive.’
Again, the absent frown. He checked his notes.
‘My brother,’ she began. ‘We – we miss him so. Guy…’
‘Guy.’ Gabriel breathed the name. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We miss him so.’
‘If he were here…’
‘He would have known. This, for example, this trace here… It seems to have no mass.’ He was talking to himself, fingering a punched print-out that unfurled from the machine. ‘I would ask him, how can these charges, A and B and C, how can they add up to more than their sum…’
‘Gabriel - ’
He looked up at her tone.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘And what did you mean?’ He leaned on the bench, waiting.
‘There is a gap. Where there was love…’ She stopped.
‘You mean us?’ His voice was sharp. ‘Nothing has changed, my dear.’
‘A nothingness,’ she said. ‘It is as if Love has died for you.’
A flicker of confusion in his eyes. ‘Our love?’ he tried.
‘Or another love,’ she began. ‘A love that died on the battlefields.’
He found himself silenced, his throat constricted. He stared at her. ‘Your brother…’ he could barely say the words.’
‘I don’t want to know anymore.’ Her eyes burned with rage. ‘How can our child thrive?’
‘I don’t accept - ’ he began. ‘Our Grace… She is my salvation. She will live. She must live.’
‘How can you ask that? A mere child, and you ask that she saves you?’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned away.
‘Amelia…’ He lifted a hand towards her.
She went to the door, un-clicked the latch. The door closed behind her.
He stared into the silence. ‘Amelia,’ he
said, to emptiness.
He turned back to the machine, switched on the coil, watched the growing green glow of the aether waves.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The caravan seemed to have sunk further into the mud. Helen tried the door, which was locked. At the windows, a curtain had come unhooked. Inside she could see an unmade bed, empty beer cans.
The heavy sky threatened more rain. She wished she’d eaten lunch. She wondered what to do.
Then, footsteps approaching, hurried. She turned, fearful, saw no one, then heard a snuffling, growling noise.
‘Tazer – ’ she called. And there she was, bouncing towards her.
‘What are you doing here?’ She bent to pat her, and she jumped up, tail wagging, sniffing at her hand. ‘Where’s Lisa?’ she was saying, ‘Where’s she gone?’ realising as she spoke that she had an unfed, unkempt look. Realising, too, that if Lisa had had any choice in the matter, she would keep her dog with her.
She looked around the muddy site.
I don’t know what to do, she thought.
A flash of colour, at the edge of the field. A figure, approaching – Lisa? She wondered, but this was older, thinner, a woman, she realized, as she drew nearer, as the dog barked, ran to greet her. The woman bent to pet the dog, called her by name, then looked up at Helen.
‘You’re – ’
‘Helen. We’ve met.’
The woman put out her hand. ‘Elizabeth. Merletti. Of course, we met at the lab. You’re the vicar’s – ’
Helen accepted the oddly formal handshake.
‘Sorry. Not the vicar’s anything,’ Elizabeth was saying.
‘I’m looking for Lisa,’ Helen said.
‘So am I.’
‘I think she’s in danger,’ Helen said.
‘I think so too.’
Elizabeth was in a short tailored wool coat, and smart brogue shoes. Helen felt rather underdressed in her jeans and sheepskin boots. They sat on the damp caravan steps.
‘I’d light a cigarette,’ Elizabeth said. ‘If I still smoked.’ She turned to Helen. ‘How do you know her?’
‘I – I teach her.’ It sounded rather thin. ‘I don’t know her very well, but she was injured, she turned up on my doorstep the other night, with Tazer here, and her friend Finn, then she left. I wanted her to stay,’ she added.
‘Injured?’ Elizabeth stared at her. ‘Her horrible father?’
Helen nodded.
‘Her mother’s so hopeless. She gets passed from one to the other, and neither of them are any good for her at all. Actually… actually Clem is probably better for her than Andrea. Which isn’t saying much. But all she’s ever known is running away, that kid.’
‘How do you know her?’
Elizabeth fiddled with a button on her coat. ‘We’re kind of related. That house over there – ’ She tilted her head towards the wall. ‘The Voake house. One of my distant ancestors lived there.’
‘The van Mielens - ’ Helen stared at her.
Elizabeth nodded. ‘I met Lisa through Tobias, you know, that sweet kid who worked at the lab, Murdo’s kind of ward. Anyway, we established the link. I’ve tried to keep in touch with her.’
A whining made them both turn, as Tazer appeared, carrying something in her mouth. It was red fabric, and she shook it from side to side.
‘Here…’ Elizabeth bent and took it from her.
‘Lisa’s – ’ Helen said. ‘Lisa’s hairband. She was wearing it when…’
Elizabeth passed it to Helen.
‘… when her father went for her.’
Elizabeth looked at Helen. ‘Oh God.’ She glanced up at the sky. ‘Look, it’s raining again. There’s no point us getting wet here. Let’s go and look for her at the house. She may have gone there.’
‘The house?’
Elizabeth got to her feet, smoothed raindrops from her coat. ‘The old Voake house. It’s just over the wall there, Lisa might well be hiding there. Come on Tayze… It’s a silly name for a dog, isn’t it? And a girl dog at that. Lisa spells it with a ‘y’, like T-A-Y-Z-A but no one else does.’
Tazer jumped to her feet too. She trotted at their side along the leaf-strewn path.
‘He saw what?’ Berenice stared at Chad. He looked tired, or perhaps it was just the flat strip lighting of the interview room.
‘One man carrying another. Towards Hank’s Tower.’
‘I thought that’s what you said.’
‘The impression Tobias gave was of a limp body being carried towards the steps by a much stronger man. He said it was difficult to tell, and he thought maybe it was a ghost, so he fled.’
‘A ghost.’ Berenice nodded. ‘Easily done.’
‘Don’t mock him.’ Chad was thin-lipped and tense.
‘I wasn’t. Believe me. My brother…’ She stopped.
‘Your brother - ’
She interrupted. ‘So, Reverend Meyrick. What do we do?’
‘We?’ He met her eyes. ‘All I know is, Virginia didn’t want anyone to know. She’s worried enough about him, so if this causes any further trouble for him, she’ll be upset…’
‘Of course. It will go no further.’
‘Promise?’ He looked doubtful.
She nodded. ‘For reasons I don’t yet wish to share, I have no reason to discuss this information with anyone else at all.’
‘Will you go and see him?’
‘Yes. I think so. But I’ll go alone. Informally. No powers of arrest or anything like that.’
He seemed to breathe more easily. ‘Good. Good.’ He got to his feet. ‘I appreciate it. I just couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t tell anyone…’ He paused, his hand on the door. ‘Thank you, Inspector,’ he said.
Inspector, she thought, as the door closed behind him. I’ll think about that later. For now, there’s work to do.
She pulled out her lap-top, tapped at the keyboard. There were some results from the Imaging Department, a series of car number plates, tracked along the coastal road. A fuzzy image from the sea front, time-matched. A tall-ish, male figure.
Could be anyone, she thought.
The TV news had gone mad. At lunchtime they’d had local reporters camped outside. Now, getting on for four o’clock, there were vans, OB units, reporters three deep on the doorstep… Can you tell us anymore? Why do you think the lab has been singled out? What measures are you taking to prevent a fourth killing…?
Berenice scrolled through her e-mails. And what do we tell them? Every patrol car is out, combing the streets. Door-to-door officers, although the nearest door to the lab is about four miles away, and the only report we’ve got so far from the neighbours is from an elderly couple who reckons ‘they kept themselves to themselves…’ The Chief’s sent everyone back to the lab, interviewing every physicist again. And every time, the same answer. ‘What can anyone have against us? We’re doing sums, that’s all.’
An e-mail from the Chief. She scanned it, leaned back in her chair.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said to her screen. ‘I get the picture. “Assigned to Ashford for the next month”. Sure, whatever you think best…’
“We can’t afford another death,” she read.
Rain hammered against the window. She switched on the desk lamp.
No, she thought. We can’t.
She bent to her briefcase, pulled out the book. She flicked through the pages, catching at words. “For if gravity can be said to be the force that acts upon all matter, we must assert that it is put in motion by the Lord…”
She went to her screen, clicked on the photos, the threat letters that had been sent to the lab.
‘The infinite circles of Satan,’ she read. ‘Your days are numbered…’ Clumsy handwriting, threatening the end of the world. Not the same as the elegant faded script of the book in her hands.
Johann van Mielen, and his daughter. And his son-in-law Gabriel Voake.
And now, a hundred odd years later, another Voake has camped on the edge of the Lab, with h
is vulnerable daughter, peddling guns or drugs or both. And has been seen round Hank’s Tower. The Scallop Tower.
She got up, went over to the window, fingered a gap in the blinds.
Where is the connection? she wondered. How do I get from three dead physicists to a low-life dealer and his mouthy and possibly-at-risk daughter, via a weird old book of quasi-religious writings?
I’m not used to this, she thought, sitting back at the desk, scrolling through e-mails. I’m used to straightforward criminality, greed or fraud or theft or murderous rage, where the motivation is obvious, the outcomes are clear. Not this, this life-threatening danger, so acute, so dark, so frightening – and so completely hidden from view.
She picked up the book, fingered the yellowing pages. Then she switched off her machine, packed everything into her briefcase, grabbed her coat and left.
The daylight was already fading, and the headlamps of her car cut through the falling rain as she pulled away from the exit barrier and headed towards town.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Oh. It’s you.’ Virginia stood at her door. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you.’
‘I assume you’ve heard the awful news.’ Berenice took a step nearer the threshold.
‘You mean, poor Iain.’ Virginia gazed out beyond her at the rain.
‘Auntie, who is it?’ Tobias jostled behind Virginia. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s you. Come in, come in, we’ve got lots to talk about. Haven’t we Auntie, it’s got very bad, very very bad.’
Virginia, reluctantly, stepped aside. Berenice went into the cottage, shaking rain from her coat. ‘This isn’t an official questioning,’ she said.
‘Good.’ Virginia indicated a chair, and they all three sat down. The cat appeared, eyed Berenice, slunk away again.
Berenice put the book down on the table, which was cluttered with old coffee mugs, newspapers, a tweed hat, a wooden box. Virginia eyed the book. She appeared to shudder at the sight of it, although, Berenice thought, it might just be the chill of the room, with its unlit fire, its single lamp against the dark outside.
Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) Page 21
