Good Morning, Midnight (43 page)

Pascoe went in search of Wield and found him at his desk behind a mountain of paper.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Edwin’s book-dealing chums have their big thrash tonight. Thought I’d take the chance to get the department records in sight of the millennium.”

“Not invited then?”

“In-house only. You’ve got to be two hundred years old and leather bound. Something you want, Pete?”

“Maybe. But it could turn out even more boring than paperwork and probably less productive.”

“Try me,” said Wield, pushing his paper mountain aside.

As the last drinkers began to drift away from the Dog and Duck, St Cuthbert’s clock struck eleven.

It was a rather splendid chime, fit for a cathedral or a town hall, the old Cothersleyans used to boast. A man a mile or more away, tending a sick beast in the dead of night or ploughing a heavy field in heavy mist, need never be uncertain of the right time with Cothersley clock to set him true. But one man’s boast is another man’s burden and a couple of years earlier after petition from light-sleeping incomers, outvoting the native opposition by five to one, the quarters had been silenced between the hours of ten in the evening and seven in the morning. The objectors would have been glad to silence the hours too, but David Upshott (it was the first big test of his ministry) had offered this compromise, saying that anyone who could not get to sleep within an hour ought to consult his doctor or his conscience.

Dolly Upshott, rather to the surprise of the pub regulars who weren’t used to seeing her so late and alone, had come in at ten, ordered a large vodka and tonic and sat in a corner, nursing her drink and her mobile phone. She had replied politely but shortly to attempts at conversation and shown no desire to have company at her table. So the regulars had returned their attention to the less edifying but more entertaining sight of Sue-Lynn Maciver, who was more than happy to share the sorrows of her new widowhood with anyone who cared to buy her a drink.

Dolly was the last to leave the pub.

“You all right, Miss Upshott?” enquired the Captain, who was in a benevolent mood brought on by the realization that, far from being a turn-off, the presence of the grieving widow had actually bumped his takings right up.

“Yes, thank you. Fine,” said Dolly, looking across the green to where the bulk of the church stood black against a gloriously star-spattered sky.

The church getting in the way of the heavens. It was a conceit that pleased her.

But the stars were out of her reach and in times of trouble we turn to whatever comfort is most readily to hand.

When the pub door was closed behind her, she walked over the green and up the path towards the church.

Moscow House too loomed dark against the sky as Kay Kafka walked up the drive. She recalled taking the same walk two nights before. She hadn’t been frightened then and she wasn’t frightened now. She had surfeited on fear all those years ago when she’d gone running to the creche with Emily’s poem beating through her mind and by the time she stood two days later looking down at the still form of her daughter, so incredibly small it seemed impossible that life had ever informed those tiny limbs, those of her neural circuits that recorded fear had been burnt out.

Only on very few occasions since then had they shown any flicker of life. Once when after her first husband’s death it had seemed possible they might find a way to take Helen away from her. A second time when Helen had shyly but at the same time so hopefully confided in her that she was desperately in love with Jason Dunn. And yet again, here at Moscow House when Helen went into labour.

But such conventional terrors as might be expected to accompany a solitary visit to a house which held the memories this one did had no power over her.

This time the front door was shut but she had Helen’s key, the key Helen insisted on having when the house went on the market. And this time she did not need to rely on finding a stub of candle and a book of matches. Providently she had a pencil torch in her pocket.

Its thin beam led her up the staircase to the study door. She turned the handle and pushed. It swung open and without even a second’s hesitation she stepped into the room where her husband and her stepson had both died.

Now her mind did register something, but it was surprise not fear, caused by the room’s emptiness. She let the torch beam stray hither and thither. Everything had gone. Furniture, picture, even the books. How very thorough. Andy had told her DCI Pascoe was a man for fine detail but she hadn’t expected anything like this.

But their thoroughness had not taken them quite all the way. They had not attempted to remove the gun cabinet from the wall.

She went to it and opened it.

The dust that had gathered inside looked undisturbed.

She reached in, took hold of the gun-retaining clip, twisted it anticlockwise and pulled. It swung out easily on well-oiled hinges and she let the torch beam play into the revealed chamber.

At the same time the room’s central light came on and a voice said, “Once saw a movie where there was a safe hidden behind a safe. Should have thought of that.”

For a second she froze but when she turned, her face showed nothing but the pleasure of a welcoming hostess.

“How nice to see you, Sergeant,” she said. “I’m so glad to have been of assistance.”

“You’ve certainly been that,” agreed Wield. “So what brings you here, Mrs Kafka?”

“It was Mr Pascoe, actually. He asked me if I knew anything about another gun. I said no, but later I got to thinking, and I had this recollection of seeing my husband, my first husband that is, closing this cabinet one day. It struck me as odd that it should swing out completely but I never really thought there might be another cabinet behind it, not till Mr Pascoe made me think, that is. And once I got the notion in my head, that was it. I found I couldn’t rest until I’d seen for myself.”

“Didn’t think of just ringing Mr Pascoe?”

“And send him on a wild-goose chase? No, I thought I’d come down here myself and ask the policeman on duty if I could test out my theory.”

“And when you saw there wasn’t a policeman on duty?”

She smiled at him.

“But of course, there is, Sergeant. You. So here you are. One little mystery solved. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be getting home. My husband’s away and he will probably try to ring me from his hotel. Good night to you, Mr Wield.”

She walked towards him.

He watched her approach, his face giving away nothing.

Then he stood aside and said, “Good night, Mrs Kafka.”

In St Cuthbert’s church Dolly Upshott had no idea how long she’d been sitting.

It was cold in here, but not cold enough to mask the unique smell of the place, what her brother called the odour of sanctity. It comprised wood and leather and cloth and stone and dampness and the ghost of incense and hyssop (David was quite “high”). The stained-glass windows, beautiful with the sun behind them, were too heavily tinted for starlight to penetrate. Only to the south-west where a gibbous moon glanced on a high narrow window did a diffused light pass through, and she’d taken her seat here.

She didn’t move, not even when she heard the church door, which she’d left ajar, creak fully open and footsteps come up the aisle.

“I saw the door was open as I drove by,” said Kay Kafka. “It seemed like an invitation. But if I’m disturbing you…”

“No more than life. Have a pew.”

Uncertain if this was an English joke or not, Kay sat down and looked up at the window where the moonlight set the stained glass glowing. The design showed two haloed figures walking towards each other across a stretch of water. This was usually interpreted as Herbert of Derwentwater visiting his chum Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, or maybe vice versa. One of the figures (probably Herbert) looked a lot less certain than the other, as if not quite able to get it out of his mind that the slightest flicker of faith could have him plunging to a weedy grave.

“I know how he feels,” said Kay.

“Sorry?”

“The picture in the window. Walking on water’s fine till something comes along to remind you it’s water you’re walking on.”

“Like a ship, you mean?”

“Or a shark.”

They shared a moment of humour, but soon they moved beyond sharing, each into some private space where they looked for whatever it was that had brought them into this place at this time.

It was the church clock striking midnight that brought them out of their reveries.

Even now neither spoke nor moved till the twelfth note had sounded across the green, rolling out beyond the sleeping cottages and farms, past the near meadows, over the still streams, finally fading to nothingness in the neighbouring valley-glades.

Now they rose and walked down the aisle together.

Outside they stood for a moment looking up at the brilliant stars above the dark unheeding village.

“Looks set fair for tomorrow, doesn’t it?” said Kay.

“You think so?” said Dolly. “Doesn’t matter. Even if it rains, water’s not the end of the world, is it? We can always swim.”

“So can sharks,” said Kay.

Peter Pascoe awoke on Saturday morning feeling good. Drowsily he tried to give shape to the as-yet amorphous causes of this pleasant state. It was the beginning of a free weekend; last night’s concert had been close to a triumph, Rosie playing with a brio which visually more than compensated for her somewhat cavalier attitude to musical notation; he and Ellie had put her to bed with love and kisses, and not long after put themselves to bed with even more; and one of the shapes which was contributing largely to his euphoria, or perhaps one should more accurately say two of them, was, or were, pressed invitingly close against his belly at this moment.

Then a thin wail from his mobile phone brought him out of his dream.

He grabbed it from the bedside table, switched off the sound, checked the display. It was Wield. What the hell did he want at ten to eight on a Saturday morning?

As he staggered out of the room to find out, it occurred to him that his irritation was misdirected. His long lie-in was already spoken for. He had a date with Dalziel to pay a visit to Cothersley Hall. Plus, and even more imperatively, he had an agreement with Rosie to drop her off for her nine a.m. clarinet lesson on the way in to the station. After last night she would have the Royal Festival Hall in her sights, or at least the Wigmore. Indeed, as he settled on the loo seat to answer his phone, he could already hear her running up a scale whose atonality would have left Schoenberg gasping.

“Yes?” he yawned.

“Morning, Pete,” said Wield, sounding disgustingly wide awake. “Wanted to catch you before you set out.”

Briefly he described the events at Moscow House the previous night.

“You didn’t bring her in for questioning then?” said Pascoe.

“No point. Would have meant rousting you and Andy out of bed, and for what? She had her story ready anyway.”

“Which you believed?”

“No way. I reckon she wanted to check what might be in there. Anything she didn’t fancy us finding, she’d have removed. Then some time today she’d have ‘remembered’ about the hidden cabinet and passed on the info like a good citizen.”

“Tell me again what you found.”

“A silver whisky flask, initials P.M. A silver cigarette lighter, same initials. A medicine bottle, empty, but the label says it contained Valium capsules prescribed to Mr P. Maciver. A microcassette. And a diary, stamped with the year 1992. I’ve not done anything with them yet other than photo them in situ and bag them. I’m at the lab now. I rang Dr Death and told him I needed some bodies down here a.s.a.p. Soon as they show, I’ll get this stuff tested and printed. Of course it may turn out it’s all covered with Mrs Kafka’s prints, and she was in the study to recover the evidence. But if that’s the case, why’d she leave it there in the first place?”

“Good question. I wish you’d got in touch to ask it last night.”

“For what? To spoil your sleep? There was nowt to be done till this morning, at least nowt I could think of,” said the sergeant, sounding slightly aggrieved at the DCI’s reproachful tone.

He was quite right, thought Pascoe. Dalziel might have said, read the diary, play the tape, bugger the risk of cross-contamination! But he knew he would have contained his impatience till the lab did its work.

Also there was the memory of what Wield would have disturbed if he had rung…

He said, “Sorry, Wieldy, you were quite right. Listen, there’s something else you can do for me now that you’re out and about so bright and early. Once you’ve got those idle sods at the lab working, could you give Tom Lockridge an early call before he makes for the golf course or whatever it is he does on a Saturday morning? Shake him up a bit. Tell him he’ll have to be suspended from our medical examiner list for concealing his intimate connection with a key witness in a case he was advising on.”

“OK. Anything special you want me to shake out of him?”

“It’s clear Sue-Lynn imagined she was going to benefit substantially when her husband died…”

“But the photo gives them an alibi,” interrupted Wield.

“I know. But it’s more her reaction now that she knows Pal changed his will… and Pal’s reasons for changing his will… and one or two other things…”

“Sounds to me like you’re coming round to Andy’s point of view, Pete.”

“Yes. Ironic, isn’t it? Just when I feel I’m making headway getting him round to mine! Anyway, my point is, while I can still see lots of motives for murder, I can’t yet see any for suicide. But Sue-Lynn will clearly be desperate to prove he was going doolally. And I’ve got a feeling Tom Lockridge is on the case too. So shake away. Keep in touch, will you? I’ll be out at Cothersley.”